9 Barco para Manaus

There is a control, looking for drugs with dogs. This is impressive. 

Till now this is the first time I saw such control. And of course a dog decteted something in my bag .... what a stress. You know these movies when someone puts drugs in your bag without you knowing ... I was like, no it is not possible :o . Finally all went well, no Brazilian jail for me :)

The boat is simple, 3 floors, the first one for goods, the 2nd was for hamacs, a cantina and bathrooms/showers. The water came directly from the river. 

The meals were really early: 5/6am, 11am and 5pm. But why so early ???? :o

In the boat I made friendship with some people, a french tourist, a guy from Colombia and his friend, a Caribbean woman, and 3 women traveling with their child’s. 

I play the translator with the Colombian a couple of times. He was a old military guy joking most of the time and telling his military travels, no wars but were he has been sent as exchange between different friendly forces. Ok once it talk about an ambuscade by the FARC.

One of the woman was kind of flirting with me. :) I have beautiful blue eyes. We exchange kisses... 

I learned that she is leaving in a small town. She thought that Tabatinga is big... it means a lot :D. I guess Tabatinga has maybe some 80 000people... big but not so big. She has no job there, only survived with the bolsa familia. But delayed by 3 months. 

She left one day after. 

A little Girl, 11 years, came to me, curious :) She told me I have a beautiful color, white. I told her, her color is beautiful. She is black. But she still think that no, white is better... :/ 

I had to insist that she has a really pretty color :) 

Then we become friends and talk about bikes, school, WonderWoman the movie ;), and other stuff :)

At one port, I saw one boat of the Marina H10, named Rio branco. I went to say Hello. It was a boat like the Ary Rongel, the boat I went to Antartica. So we, with an official, exchanged some words about our experiences. He knew the Ary Rongel. It is funny to speak about antartica in the middle of the amazon. This boat was doing a hydrographic mapping of the amazon. 

I decided to exercise/work out. Not easy to start in the middle of all these people. But I did it :). So here you found me in sport wear doing flexion, abdominales etc between all the suspended hammock. 

Meanwhile I was doing it, a little baby girl was looking at me curiously, an old lady too, but she was more like appreciating the show :D. 

The Second day I did it again. This time I inspired some people ;) 

The little baby girl became my friend. Every time she had the opportunity she jumped into my hammock and start speaking baby Brazilian language :D ... not easy. We went doing some tours on the boat. The mother was happy, some free time :).

The Colombian woman, from these two Colombian friends, told me I have a “sweet blood” for children. She saw many of them playing with me.

The following day the mother and I became closer :D some kisses and extra play but nothing more! Hey, it s a boat without private space ;) 

During the evening, it was impressive to see really clearly the planets: Venus, Jupiter and Mars (disclaimer I used an app to identify them). They appear before all stars and were close enough to understand the planet plane (line in the sky). We could also guess that the equator which is almost aligned with this plane. As we were on the equator, the planet line was passing above our heads.