3-4-06
THE ZONE
We just got in this morning after five days on a barge. The first day in Puerto Vehlo was spent loading the barge with trucks, busses, one car and trailer, and our bikes. There were some problems that delayed our departure but since heading south of the US border, that has been the norm. I had to ride through a huge mud puddle to get to the barge area and my bike didn’t look so clean when I got there.
Dirty bike X
It was fun to see all the trucks getting loaded on the barge. Some were just trailers that were to be transported and others were loaded with their tractors for the trip.
Getting loaded X
I finally got a photo of a couple of those older Mercedes Benz trucks. I really like the looks of these trucks and some of them are kept so well polished and shinned up it looks like they are almost new.
Benz trucks X
I also got a pretty good photo of the system that most trucks use down here to keep their tires pumped up.
Tire pressure X
I finally got my bike loaded between two truck trailer boxes and set up my tent under one of them. The first night I just used my tent but after that I also used the tent fly as the rain can come sideways and blow in the netting. It was actually much warmer that way as well as it got rather chilly at night with a good breeze.
Barge camp X
I walked around the shore and got this photo of the boat that would guide us down the river and up the Amazon to Manaus.
Pusher boat X
While we were waiting for the second barge to be loaded, some of the guys had lines out in the river and were catching some small catfish, or at least they were similar to the cats that I have seen up north only longer whiskers. One guy left his line and went off to do something and I could see that something was biting at it. I hauled it in and found the hook in a little piece of gristle couldn’t catch anything so I reset the hook and tossed it back in. it didn’t take long until I had a nibble and when I set the hook I got what ever it was. They guy came back about then and made motions that I didn’t catch anything. Oh yah I did, I told him and proceeded to pull up this little fish. Wow, when I got it on deck everyone came running over and proceeded to beat the shit out of it. Evidently it is the bad-est fish in the river, even worse than the piranha. I don’t know if that is the case or not but no one would even touch it, they beat it with sticks and stabbed it several times with a knife. I was a big hero for getting that little bugger. Up until then, the trucker crew hadn’t paid much attention to me.
Bad fish X
In the morning we finally got under way. It was a rather noisy night as the truck trailers mostly had refers on them and they came on and shut off all night long. The trailer my tent was under was a rather noisy one too but I can sleep through almost anything.
Once we were on the river and headed down stream one of the crew, I think the first mate, took Jim and I around the boat and showed us the head and kitchen facilities. This barge trip was complete with three meals a day. What a great deal, five days (we didn’t know exactly how many days when we loaded on) with meals for a hundred and sixty-five bucks. The food turned out to be wonderful. We ate at the captain’s table, actually we ate after the captain and crew had eaten. Every meal had beans and rice and the special of the day was always different. As we went down the river some small boats would come along side and offer different things for sale. I didn’t see this little critter come aboard but I got there in time to see the cook cut it up for supper. Some of the trucker guys told Jim that it is a Pack-a or something like that.
Pack-a X
My guidebook says that they eat a giant guinea pig and I think that must be what it was. That night I wasn’t feeling good as I think I was coming down with a cold and missed the chance to try it. Jim didn’t miss the chance and said it was very white meat and not unlike chicken or turkey but very moist and juicy, yum, good. The next day there was some new little pieces of meat in the beans and I fished out several pieces and I think they were the pack-a. Yup, that is good food. One of the guys opened the freezer on deck and fished out some sort of big bird, larger than a chicken, and said it came from one of the river people. I saw an armadillo in the freezer and I did see one guy come on board with a dead one that he was trying to sell. I didn’t know what I ate most of the time, but it all was good and somehow special as we were living off the fat of the land or jungle as we toured down it. I hope I don’t catch hell for eating some sort of endangered species from my daughter, who has made it a focus of her professional life, to protect this jungle and all that it contains. I certainly am in favor of protecting this area but I can certainly see how difficult it would be to police this river.
I took a few photos of small houses or shacks that are along the river. Most of these places have no windows or doors, only opening. It is finally an area where there are no bars on the windows and doors. There have been bars on the window every place since getting near Mexico in the US.
River shacks X
Here is a cargo barge that looks something similar to what we looked like going down the river.
Cargo barge X
Here is one of the passenger boats that we luckily didn’t get on to go down the river. When we first got to Puerto Vehlo we looked at one of these boats that would take our bikes and us down the river the guys said. The problem was that there were only a few long springy boards placed on logs as a way of getting the bikes on board. The bikes would have to be picked up and carried on board and it didn’t look possible without dropping them in the river. We were both really spooked especially after talking with the deck hands who were pretty tough looking after a night of carnival. Neither of us liked the looks of going on that boat with lots of people and not much security for our bikes especially if we had a cabin and the bikes were left lashed on the deck where a hundred poor people were staying. We both felt really fortunate to be on the barge and it turned out to be much cheaper too.
Passenger boat X
As we went down the river I tried to figure out if any of it was virgin forest but decided that it must have at least been high graded of its good old stands of hard woods and beautiful furniture woods long ago. The river is such a good transportation system and I am sure it has been used that way for many years. Here is one nice older tree that must be just a pecker pole to the wood guys and has no value so they left it.
Big tree X
Most of the trees along the river seem to be much smaller than that one and quite a bit of it I can tell has been cleared and is now used for grazing. There was not a lot of grazing land along the river but it could be that there is more away from the river on higher ground. I only saw one place where there was a pile of logs all ready to load along the river. They were big logs and I bet they were worth a pile of money.
The barge family got sorted out after the first day and it seemed to form into little groups of like minded folks. Here is one group that made its home next to my tent camp.
Card game X
The guy on the right is a cowboy from the southern part of Brazil, or so I understand from one of the guys. He was always dressed well and much different than everyone else. He wore pants that were very roomy at the butt and necked down at the ankle. His shirts were loose too and he wore a big wide very fancy belt sort of like a sash with no belt loops. He was the chicken cook this day and brought his knife to cut up the chicken.
Kitchen X
Here is a picture of the bridge from the deck of the boat. The guy driving this day was the first mate and he saw me taking photos and motioned for me to come on up.
Bridge X
The view from up there was great as I expected. The bridge has to be really high to be able to see over all those trucks and cargo that these boats push up and down the river.
View from the bridge X
I took a panorama photo of the jungle on the east side of the boat as the sun was setting in the west. It is about six photos put together so I don’t know how well it will come out for you but this is what we saw for about a thousand kilometers.
Jungle Panorama X
i dont think the jungle panorama came out htat good so here is the knife sheath the cowboy wore.
Here are my neighbors cooking up some grub. I don’t know why they decided to cook their own grub rather than eat the food the cook made but there were quite a few guys that cooked their own food. Almost all the trucks have these little kitchens on the right side of the truck and I have see them in use all along the way. It is common to see them cooking at truck stops and parking areas and sure makes a lot of sense to me as they get good food and much cheaper than eating out at restaurants all the time. They have a two burner stove that swings out for cooking and I think they use a small door in the refer box as their refrigerator.
Cooking grub X
There were some interesting river traffic going by at times. There was not as much traffic as I had imagined there would be but every now and then someone would come by. This is a rather common family headed someplace.
Family cruise X
This is a rather low budget affair.
Low budget X
Here is a couple of barges loaded down with cars. This is a rather expensive load I guess. The truckers said that they were charged about 3600 reals or $1800 bucks each and that was just for Puerto Vehlo to Manaus. Some of these boats travel much longer distances on the Amazon.
Car-go X
Here is a common motor boat. They use a single cylinder air-cooled motor like a Honda or something like that with a long shaft with propeller on the back. It swings side to side and up and down. They seem to work really well and it sure gets away from the water-cooled system with complicated gear drive and water pump.
Motorboat X
We passed buy these guys doing some repair or rebuilding on some boats.
Rebuild X
This was the way most of the days were spent on the barge. The scene was endless and I never got tired of watching the jungle change or seeing new stuff along the way.
Viewing river banks X
There were some places that I just wanted to stop and hang out for a while. I really liked this house on a little hill above the river with excellent view. I suppose they have some cattle to keep the grass mowed around the house.
River house X
This was my constant companion on the voyage. It is a Thermo King refrigeration unit on the truck box.
Thermo King X
This darn thing was keeping the cargo at a temperature between 4 and 6 degrees Celsius. When it got above six degrees it would start up and run for about five minutes at low idle and then blast up to full speed for maybe fifteen minutes, then back down to low idle for a couple of minutes. It would be off for maybe ten or fifteen minutes which was wonderful. Now imagine being surrounded by another ten or so units at different distances and on their own time schedule. It was noisy but I didn’t seem to mind it for the first few days. After five days of this constant noise, it got really irritating and I was glad to finally get off the barge.
As we finally got near Manaus we saw lots of shipping activity along the banks. I forgot to mention that the river is a high water or flood stage now. The book says that the river goes down about fifty feet during the dry season. They were loading this boat with those shipping containers.
Shipping containers X
I was the fist one off the barge when we hit the dock. I had to wait until they got some of the trucks and truck boxes off before I could get my bike off and back on dry (well sort of dry as it is the rainy season don’t forget) land.
Off in the Zone X
When Jim finally got off we went up to get out of the loading area we had to stop at a guard shack. I pulled up next to the shack and Jim was behind me and stopped behind a truck tractor that was parked there. As soon as he stopped, the truck started backing up and he had only a splint second to get it in gear and try to make it out of the way. He didn’t make it and the truck hit him in the saddlebag and almost knocked him over. It was a glancing blow and it put a long gash in his bag but fortunately he wasn’t hurt or the bike damaged severely. Wow, even when you think you are safe and in no danger, you gotta be on guard and ready to react. When we went into the guard shack the guy wanted my document. Document? What the hell is that, passport, title to the bike, oh, maybe the little paper that they gave me when I paid my freight bill? I was lucky enough to find that and handed it over. That was what he wanted and I told Jim what he needed. Well, going through several rain events in a small leaky tent on the barge had one time found that little paper of Jim’s and he tossed it as it was nothing but a wet little rag that he thought he would never need. The only reason I kept mine was there was no place to throw it away other than the river (the river is a garbage disposal area on these barges, everything goes overboard).
The guard was informed that Jim had lost his paper by the group of truckers that were all around us. These are the same truckers we just spent five days with. You could tell that they were working on Jim’s behalf and finally the guard said that my paper would be ok and went back in and came out with two papers allowing us to get going. These truckers were great and I know they told the guards that we needed to get going and hurried us through as much as possible. It was another big round of hand shakes and slapping each other on the shoulder and we finally got out of there.
Manaus is a big town and we didn’t have any idea of where to go other than I remembered something about an area called zona franca being a hotel area. After several quick questions about where that might be, we ended up in an area that has several hotels and we got one with bike parking. It isn’t the fanciest place, but it isn’t that bad either. We drug a lot of our gear up to the room and I got my tent out of its bag and hung it up to dry. When we got up in the morning we had both tried to get our tents dry, but nothing dries well in this humidity in the morning. The air-conditioned in the room takes some of the humidity out of the air and I got mine dry. Jim hung his up over night and it got dry too, finally. We had been living on a steel deck with frequent showers, the guys cooking throwing water everywhere, and each of the thermo kings peeing water constantly. It is good to have everything dry again. The room looks like a tornado hit here or some flood refugees are here but we are very happy to be on dry land, with good beds and a shower. We stopped for an hour or so on the way down at a place where a small river met the Maderia. It was much cleaner water and the buzz around deck was we were stopping to take on fresh water. I couldn’t figure out what they meant by that since we didn’t hook up to a hose or anything from shore but finally realized what they meant when I saw guys dipping water out of the river and filling their water jugs with it. A bunch of guys came over and were giving each other showers so I put my swimming suit on and joined them. It was great as I was pretty grubby after three days. Jim decided that he wanted to go for a swim. Everyone was aghast and told him not to do it. They didn’t know Jim and I tried to talk him out of it too but he had his mind made up that he was going in and he did. He didn’t stay in too long and when he was ready to get out the truckers grabbed him and drug him on board. I was glad to see he didn’t have any holes bitten out of him. He told me later that he went down to the pusher boat and got in again. The truckers there thought he had lost his mind as well and were happy to drag him back on the boat. So, he made two successful swims in a river teeming with piranhas and alligators as well as electric eels and who knows what else. Dumb lucky bastard, but hell, what a story to tell when he gets home, eh? All I told him was that it is a good thing I caught and the guys killed, the bad-est fish in the river before he got in it.
3-5-06
We checked the airport and found out that it is possible to ship the bikes out of here on Wednesday and we can grab a flight any day for Miami so we are seriously considering it, or we can ride on up to Venezuela and take off from there.
3-6-06
we go to the airport after posting this nad see about the bike transport