Caballococha to Iquito

I am now on an 8 hour trip via boat from Caballococha to Iquito.

My cell phone woke me at 5:00. The promised wake up call never came. I glanced at the shower and decided to give it a miss. I checked my ipod and it had no charge, at least my notebook was fully charged. Packing and dressing took about 3 minutes, then I brushed my teeth and headed down the stairs. The front doors were locked and no attendant was in site. Thanks, assholes. The large double steel doors were secured by a lock with three deadbolts. I operated the huge barrel bolts on the top and bottom of each door and gave the doors a pull with some reluctance they swung inward.

The sun was not up yet people were gathered in doorways socializing. As I passed I realized that they were not early risers, they were still partying from last night, pouring beer from 600 ml bottles into small glasses in the style of the Amazon. The next casino I passed was filled to capacity with five or so couples dancing to a quick salsa. The were no signs of serious inebriation that I had witnessed repeatedly in the last week. A large boat , the …………. was now docked. A rat scurry on the embankment. I walked down the stairs until I was level with the deck and got aboard. As I attempted to enter the lowest of the three levels I was directed to the second level. After ascending the stairs I surveyed a large open area, maybe 20 feet by 150 feet with a dark, dank interior. Hammocks hung from the ceiling the whole length, all were populated and large backpacks lay on the floor beneath the hammocks. Benches lined the side on which a score of passengers sat, presumably as all the hammocks were occupied. This was is going to suck big time. I took a seat on the bench and put my backpack and rubber boat bag on the floor in front of me. A crew member approached and said “No rapido barco.” Well that was a great relief, this is not the fast boat. I grabbed my bags and returned to the dock.
I just noticed that my computer battery is drained 30% and all I have been doing is typing this entry. A quick look at process manager shows me that works is consuming 70% of the CPU and all I am doing is typing. I shutdown all works and started again in wordpad, now I am running at 1%. How much does microsoft suck? Why am I even booted into windows? Oh yeah I need to backup my itouch.

With no sign of the boat anywhere I walked over to a cafe and ordered a coffee. The woman poured a cup of coffee into a small bag, tied the top in an overhand knot, stuffed the coffee bag and an egg sandwich into another bag and handed it to the customer next to me. A girl came out and poured hot water from a thermos and handed me the cup. "Necessito cafe, por favor, este solo agua caliente." The woman picked up a jar of instant coffee and handed it to me. I don't get instant coffee. The price for the coffee? Uno Sol, about USD .36. I gave the lady a coin and asked for an egg sandwich. The bun wasn't bad and the two eggs inside weren't bad, but somebody had a heavy hand with the salt. "Necessito pagar pora huevos, quente questa?" "Uno Sol." Another coin for the the sandwich.

The pagoda was filling up, I guess everyone knew that the 5:45 boat didn't leave at 5:45. Around 6:00 what was obviously the fast boat pulled in. The steel hulled boat had a beam of about 8' and was about 45 feet in length and had a freeboard of about 4 feet. With its steel top and rows of windows it had a look of a marine bus. Passengers swarmed the boat and I was at the end of the line. Women were delivering envelopes, and small packages, this was also apparently the Federal Express for this part of the amazon. I threw my boat back on top and entered the boat through the door centered next to the pilot seat on the bow of the boat and opening in the highly raked windscreen.

The aisle seat in the first row was unoccupied; strange as this is a prime spot, with extra leg room. In short order we departed. The twin Volvo jet engine operated quietly with no vibration. The Garmin 525s GPS showed our route with numerous checkpoints, presumably to ensure that progress is according to schedule as it would be exceptionally hard to get lost on this trip. The small town we just left was on a river which flowed into a second river which emptied into the Amazon, the rest of the way is just about due west on the big river.

6:57 Pulled into a small pueblo. Five police officers read the passenger manifest and board the boat. Each passenger hands over an ID card, or in my case, a passport and the names and numbers are compared to the passenger manifest.

A man walked holding a tray of twenty cups hot chocolate. I kept trying to move my computer out of the way but he seemed adamant on holding the tray over the top of my computer. I took a cup hoping this would make him go away faster and was pleased when he moved on.

Screw this. Just because I'm bored out of my mind doesn't mean you care about the minutia.