Wednesday 15 December 2010 – Parintins to Obidos (170 km)

We left this morning by 06h00. Weather started off well enough, but by around midday that easterly wind picked up and we were pounding through the chop once again.

As we head more east, the river becomes wider and wider. In places its so wide that it becomes a horizon – you cannot see the other side – so that’s at least 20 km wide in places.

With our boat only managing 23 kmph maximum, and even less beating against the chop, we generally hug the bank as far as we can to seek shelter from the wind. However, there are times when we just have to cross and this is a bit harrowing to say the least.

 An exposed little boat across such a vaste and choppy moving lake – gets a bit hairy !

A new problem has arisen too. The GPS seems to have outdated software, or otherwise there are shifting sandbanks/ river banks. Sometimes we are firmly in a channel and the GPS tells us that we are driving over land !

So far this has not been a problem, but as we get closer  to the river delta we are going to rely heavily in that GPS once again!

Driving the boat over land ..??!

Arrival in Obidos

Fuel stop - Obidos

Thursday 16 December 2010 – Obidos to Santarém and on to Alter do Chão (100km plus 35km)

There was a severe buildup of cloud during the night and we were expecting bad weather for our departure from Obidos. True to form, when we finally got away at about 07h00 – a full hour later than planned, because we had skipped a time zone the day before and not realised it – the weather was already showing signs of what was to lie ahead of us.

Even though this was to be our shortest leg so far – a mere 6 hours planned – the day’s journey proved to be, by far,  the most unpleasant by far !

Within an hour of departure we were headed into a 15 to 20 knot easterly wind and sheets of rain.

 No matter what measures we tried to take by rigging up our small hammock tarpaulins, we were being properly pounded and properly drenched! It was thoroughly unpleasant.

As we went along we saw all most other boats taking shelter from the bad weather and then waving at us as the funny-looking mv Bukkit, with two crazy Grigos and  SA flags flapping madly,  battered it’s way to the east.

8 hours later we reached the seclusion of the harbour area at Santarém. Then, heading west down a tributary we finally arrived at the beautiful  little village of Alter do Chão, where we decided to spoil ourselves and check into a local backpacker spot so that we could dry out. Which is not happening as it is still pouring down in “Bukkits”, (excuse the pun)

Absolutely everything that could get wet was drenched! We had to string bits of rope all around the room and unpack all the electronic bits onto the bed with a fan blowing on it – so that it could dry out. As we speak the satphone and GPS device is non functional due to it being wet, we hope to be able to rescue these as it will spoil our positioning updates. We managed to rescue the battery charger  floating around in Bukkits water, and its doing its job charging our 165 ah battery at present.

Mandla Le Lion was kept from all this, (in John’s bag), as he was in no condition to face it after almost drowning the previous day.

We decided to stay a few days here , do some running repairs on the boat and recharge our batteries a bit – literally and figuratively.

Entrance to the river at Alter do Chao

Some pics of this quaint little village

Friday 17 December 2010 – Exploring the Amazon jungles around Alter do Chao

With all of our stuff still hanging up in the room on make-shift wash lines

(hopefully this will help, because it’s still raining and it’s all hanging indoors),

we took the boat down some tributaries to get a feel of the surrounding jungle.

Lunch break on one of the 1000’s of Amazon tributaries

The locals make palm wine from the sap that flows from a chopped open palm tree.

Cutting our way through the jungle bush so that we can get the boat upstream

Sometimes we have to pole our  way along the shallow streams – luckily the Bukkit has a flat bottom ! 

Getting a bit clogged up in  the shallower streams

Saturday 18 December 2010 – Alter do Chão

The day started normally enough with what was to be a few final running repairs and adjustments to mv Bukkit, collect all the semi-dry clothing still wet from our rough trip down, rationalize equipment and the load in the boat – all in preparation for the 2^nd half of the journey.

Little did we know how the next 48 hours were to play themselves out…..

As luck would have it  we overheard that since it was full moon, there was to be a ceremony of AYAHUASCA in the nearby jungle and that  if we played it correctly, we might be able to ‘crash the party’ as it were.

We have not yet had opportunity  to research ‘Ayahuasca’, but have been told that it is a ceremony originating with the Incas and passed on from  the ancients of the Amazon Indians over the centuries. There are apparently also such similar ceremonies performed by the Aborigines and other ancient cultures.

 Suffice to say – it was all intriguing enough for us to consider that we should go for it .

To cut a long story short, by the end of the morning we had made arrangements (through a local spiritual guide and mediator – Paulo Brasil )  to attend the ceremony / ritual that evening .

Paulo Brasil

Our timing was extremely fortuitous and Paulo was able to make arrangements for us to partake - who are we to turn our backs on such synchronous events?

Unfortunately for our readers out there, the ceremony is not a commercial event  and we were unable to take pictures, but what follows is my account of  ‘ a trip within a trip’.

We arrived at the camp at about 19h00 and were briefed by Paulo Brasil on the procedures and some history about the ritual.

We were allowed to hang our hammocks under the shelter of a large communal hut and told that when the spirits took us we should stay in the hammocks or else just sit around in the open around a big fire that was lit in the centre of a big clearing in the jungle vegetation – adjacent to the communal hut.

 There we would find  ‘ peace in the stars’.

Fortunately once again, the Amazon delivered a beautiful clear evening – bright moon and stars – a real gem .

After standing in a circle listening to the words of Paulo, we held hands and started chanting. Later we were each given a cup of ‘tea’ derived from 2 plants found in the nearby jungle – one , a root, the other a tree. The technical composition of the plants we will I am sure , be able to research  together with more information about the ceremony but at this stage  let’s just stick to the experience itself.

The ‘tea’ that we drank was more like coffee flavoured dirty gearbox oil  but we duly complied and then went off to our seats around the fire. Talking was not permitted for the next 7 hours  and there was this constant and repetitive music playing in the background.

Within about an hour the tea had kicked in properly and the effects were to last a full 7 hours with only a small top-up cup of tea after about 2 hours.

Other than a brief period where my system rebelled against this gunk we had drank and I was trying to hurl my guts out, I spent the majority of those 7 hours curled  up in one position in the bottom  of my hammock in the ceremonial hut.

The journey was both terrifying and enlightening. During the dark parts I watched the structures and trees around me twisting and distorting and dark spirits jumped out at me from the surrounding jungle.

Sometimes waves of light and threads of what seemed like fairies wings on fire in different colours floated through the blur of my vision.

At times I wanted to escape these effects but simply could not move – I was trapped in the bottom of my hammock.

At the peak of my experience (which despite what I have written above was largely positive) I clearly and without a doubt locked into the ancient spirits of the Amazon river itself and the ancients who had lived and died along this vast waterway.

In waves of light  and certainty and music (which was repeatedly playing in the background and which was to be my guide through the negative parts of my experience) I connected with the river and its spirits and was carried to our end destination – which is to be the river mouth.

I realized though it that this trip that we are on is not about myself and AB visiting the Amazon jungle, as had been in my mind up to that point, but is about us taking on this impossibly large river with an impossibly small boat. I knew than too that we are being swept along by the river and that whatever obstacle it threw at us along the way  we were  guided and protected by it’s spirits and that we would reach our end destination.

All sounds dramatic  I know, but it was a dramatic experience.

When I came out of my dazed stupor at about 3 am the next morning I was still in that same position in the bottom of my hammock and clutching my daughter’s photograph in my hand.

Anyway, that’s my story about my own ‘trip within a trip’. I am sure AB has his own version to tell.

Glad we did it – the timing was right and a rare opportunity to experience the ritual that the Incas and Amazons have used for centuries to open their ‘doors of perception ‘ – but would not do it again. Too intense, too scary, too far out of control.

Sunday 19 December 2010 - Alter do Chão to Monte Alegre – 135 km

After our ‘spiritual adventures’ of the night before we were exhausted and only managed to get all our semi-dry stuff packed into the boat and were  away by about 09h00. We ditched our auto-steering mechanism and the spotlight before we left. They had both been absolutely destroyed by the wet arrival those few days before and there was not much point in hanging onto them.

 The day started badly – the small stream that we had entered at Alter do Chão to moor the boat was silted up at the entrance and it took us a full 2 hours of shoving, cursing, sweating and pushing to drag the boat out into clear water. Of course, those of you who have followed the story up to now will blame a lot of the pain on the hangovers we had from the night before  and rightly so , but nevertheless, we battled on to get the boat into clear water.

We motored out the tributary and joined the main river at Santarém– which is a major port situated at the confluence of the RioTapajósand the Amazon.

Leaving Santarém

After Santarém we hit the north shore to escape the wind and the chop. We had been warned that from this point on the river feels the effect of the tides – we are getting closer to the Atlantic ocean and even though we are still 600 km from the river mouth there are tidal effects in the river. 

Water Buffalo

At around about 16h00 and about ½ and hour from Monte Alegre at our normal travelling speed the real problems began. The boat motors suddenly stopped and we started being washed towards the shore. Because of the bad wind, counter current and chop it was difficult to keep the front of the boat into the wind and water started pouring in over the gunnels.

While being repeatedly pushed into the shore and after ages of pull-starting we managed to get the motor running again and AB left me on the sand bank and took the boat out alone to try to move it forward, open the bungs and get the water out. Unfortunately the boat was too full of water and it started shipping more water and started sinking rapidly. AB was about 200m offshore and screamed at me to get onto the boat and assist him by getting some weight to the front .

In the ensuing chaos, and while I was swimming madly to get back onto the boat , the motor  cut out again and now we were in serious trouble. The boat started sinking with absolutely everything on board!

 In the rapidly fading light , I  jumped aboard and together, with both of us on the front of the boat to stop the inflow of water over the gunnels, we managed to paddle the boat to shore.

So far it had made for some really tense moments and now of course it was dark. We were stuck on sandbank in the middle of the Amazon river with a boat full of water and no motor.

With leatherman, some basic tools and our head-torches (we had ditched the spotlight as I said before), AB tackled the outboard motor to see if he could get it going. I managed to find a whole lot of reasonably dry driftwood , poured petrol all over it and set it alight – to give us some light and a fire for later if we were destined to sleep on the sand bank for the night.

While AB was battling to get the outboard going again we also somehow emptied the boat – kind of – and inspected the extent of water damage.

We had bought a small emergency motor in Manaus, but had stupidly neglected to  assemble and test it  completely before we left.In any case, it had been in the boat which had virtually sunk – so all the electrics, carburettor, fuel tank and air  filters were have been completely soaked.

Having given up on the main motor and after about 3 hours of working by the light of his headlamp AB managed to get the emergency motor going and it was cause for much cheering when the motor finally caught. But, our elation was premature and Murphy’s laws were playing their part well .

 Once we tried to put the propellor shaft onto the motor (it’s a direct drive) we found that the cast iron moulding did not match the bolt holes on the motor, the bolts that the dealer had supplied us with in Manaus were too short, there were no bolts at all for the steering handle at all and the bolt that holds the actual propellor shaft to the motor had sheered right off – Chinese technology sucks when you need it !!

After dismantling part of our shade structure to get the 8mm bolts for the emergency motor and tying the other bits and pieces together with the binding wire we have on board, we finally managed to get the emergency motor going. Every 20 minutes or so the Heath-Robinson kind of arrangement we had made would come apart, and AB had to jump in and out of the water many times to keep the propshaft of the emergency motor connected  while we battled to keep the boat moving.

 Bear in mind this was a dark night (the full moon from our party the night before was hiding behind some very ominous looking clouds)  and to spend half the night in the water and holding onto a tiny boat in the middle of the the dark Amazon river is something for which I will eternally take my hat off to AB…

My hero!

Anyway, as this story goes – and yes folks, this is not a dramatised version at all – its fact! – we limped into the Monte Alegre port at 3 in the morning. We had to go into the rather tricky harbour with our rather ineffective emergency motor and with no GPS – since the GARMIN had fallen into the water a few hours before when we nearly sunk the boat. Exhausted and drained we tied up next to the fuel station , found a really scanky Pousada and slept! 

Next morning tied up behind the fuel station

Scanky Pousada

The next morning we gave our small generator away to the surprised petrol attendant – with the flooding of the boat the night before the electrics would have been soaked and there was just no point in keeping it. We wanted to get back to basics – after the previous experience we need to ditch weight – that’s what causes all the problems when the wind is up. AB also ditched 50% of his clothes – because they had become waterlogged again and just carry water and weight !

Monday 20 December 2010 – Monte Alegre

After the adventures of the night before we once again needed to do some running repairs on the motor.

This involved stripping the thing entirely and finding out what the cause of the previous day’s failure had been.

As it turned out there was a problem with the 2 stroke oil we had used on occasion up to that point. It had somehow combined with the fuel to form a glue. A gungy mess that clogged up all the filters and the jets and float chamber of the carb.

Nett result was we had to clean off all the gunge, get some fuel filters from the town and ditch the full 85 litres of mixed fuel that we had left to avoid further problems. An expensive exercise.

 In addition to the loss of fuel, we had  also now  lost the Garmin GPS in the previous evening’s chaos.This means that we will have to try to navigate the most difficult part of the trip with a very basic and rather inaccurate Portuguese speaking GPS that by chance we had just happened to buy in Manaus.

We found Monte Alegre itself to be a Sh…t hole of a place and we felt a very unfriendly and almost evil vibe. No doubt this feeling was heightened by the bad experience from the day before.

Unfortunately though we had to spend the day there while we sorted out the problems with the dirty fuel and we scheduled to leave early the following morning.

One thing that the previous day’s experience had taught us was that from now on we must travel from first light in the morning. This is a safer option since it would reduce  the amount of wind and chop encountered and would  also give us more time to deal with any unforseen emergencies by the light of day.

The river had spoken and we were showing it some more respect !

Tuesday 21 December 2010  – Monte Alegre to Prainha ( 100 km)

We left Monte Alegre at about 5 am and made our way down the dark channel to the open river.

 The weather was calm and the water flat the whole way. Apart from a broken shear pin on the propeller, which we quickly managed to replace, we got to Prainha at around 11h00.

In line with our new rule to spend less time on the choppy water, we decided to stay the night and secured the boat by tying it to the main jetty for the town’s boat traffic.

Already we were beginning to notice the effects of the tide as we got nearer to the open sea.

Feeling in better spirits because of the morning’s easy trip, we tucked into a bit of admin, updated emails and wrote up the daily log.

Unfortunately neither of us could get signal on the local cell phone network but we did manage to make contact via the ‘cyber café’ that seems to function in most of these little towns along the river.

Because we were to leave early in the morning, we scheduled to check on the boat at 01h00 (high tide) to move it to a position where it would still be afloat on the morning low tide.

Wednesday 22 December 2010 – Prainha

At around 01h00 we went to check on the boat to see that it was  clear for the mornings’ departure.

We were in for a cruel surprise..

As we got to the dockside we looked down to see that mv Bukkit was lying on it’s side in the deep channel with only the edge of the shade structure sticking out of the water ! We were dumbfounded to say the least ! This  seemed like the last straw.

It seems that what transpired was that the mooring line was too short for the extent of the tidal shift. It got stuck on the pole and as the tide came in the nose went down and the boat filled up with water and went down. Our overgrown canoe had sunk completely on its moorings!

I think that seeing Bukkit fully submerged on its mooring has certainly been the lowest emotional point of our journey so far. We could both almost taste the exhilaration of reaching Macapa in only 2 days andnow we had the next problem to deal with.

We now needed to wait until first light and  low tide to try to remove the motors and the rest of our equipment from the boat and try to get the show on the road again…

At around 07h00 we got down to the little harbor and with a lot of help from the locals and a lot of shouting we got the motors off, removed anything that could weigh the boat down , baled frantically and got the hull floating once more.

With the aid of a local mechanic we drained the motor, cleaned out the carburator, changed gearbox oil and got the Yamaha purring again. The emergency motor also needed an extensive overhaul and of course, absolutely all the fuel tanks and fuel containers needed to be drained and cleaned – another whole day lost and another loss of over 120 litres of fuel.

For the full day we had ½ the town’s population watching us while we slaved away getting the motors running and drying out all our stuff – yes, once again ! – at the town jetty

By 16h00 we had got all the bits together again and had secured the boat for the next morning’s early departure.