The river boat had stopped during nighttime and it didn’t depart until lunch. As I found out later on this stop was actually scheduled. Since the Trans-Amazonian Highway becomes especially in the wet season impassable, the river boat is a major mean of transportation in the area. Therefore, the boat is stopping at a number of towns along the river; people are leaving the boat and new people are joining. The stops may also occur in the middle of the night such as the last one. The Brazilian family, which was sleeping next to me, was gone and with them my hammock, meaning that except from the ground I had nothing really to sit on. Luckily my fellow traveler Tony offered me the usage of his hammock during the day.

Although the boat was stopping for multiple hours none of us went off to have a wander around. The problem was that there was no written schedule when the boat will be departing and nobody wanted to stay behind in the middle of the jungle. The locals seemed to have the same feeling because with the exception of the people arriving at their destination everybody stayed on board. I really would have liked to leave the boat for a few minutes and have a look around because these small towns seem to be quite remote and I was wondering how life will be there.

After the boat started moving again around lunch time it became calmer and I thought that it’s now the right time for some heavy literature. I have some classical books and philosophy books on my Kindle which require some intellectual involvement while reading. I chose to read “Liebe” (in English “Love”) from Richard David Precht who is a popular German author. Precht wrote books on philosophical issues such as ‘who am I?’, ‘the art of not being an egoist’ and ‘love, a messy emotion’ which is the topic I started to read about. Unfortunately only his first book “Who Am I and If So How Many?” was published in English, so if you are up for some mind opening German literature you might want to give it a try.

In the evening we stopped again at some place and there were local people in front of the boat selling hot food. Since I don’t speak Portuguese I couldn’t ask what is actually inside the dinner package and so I just purchased one and was surprised by some chicken with rice.