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Boarding the Clivia

Be prepared - thats my moto. For anything. So with blinding headaches we made prep for the boat trip. The lady from Hotel Fortaleza advised us to buy water for the boat and to get there early to get a good spot (as the Lonley Planet advises).

We bought the equivalent of 10 liters of water each (for five days travel) and got to the boat at about 12:30.

Humph! - The boat has filtered water on board. As much as you can drink in a lifetime. Its from the Amazon. And our boarding time was 17:00. So we sat with all our baggage and ten big bottles of water for a long time.

But we did meet a Brazilian dude who helped us establish our boat boarding status and a German guy, Wolfgang.

At five we were first in line to go through the customs check and almost last to put our hammocks up. While doing so we made friends with Zack, an Aussie guy on his way to Bolivia to do some volunteer work in a National Park before meeting a friend of his.

And that was our gringo party: James, Mianne, Pix, Zack and myself. There was a gringo tour group on their way to Manaus and some other gringos in cabins but we were traveling peasant class so didn`t spend as much time with them.

As they day drew to a close more and more and more and more people started boarding the boat. Much to our surprise. We all thought we had the prime spot as there were very few hammocks around us when we put ours up. By the time we left we had the most crowded section. With the exception of James and Mianne. Good advice - hang your hammock next to the stairwell.

Then we were off. No dinner on night one, glad I had that scrumptious soup for lunch!