From me to you

After a very relaxing day in Lagunas, we boarded the boat and resumed our journey to Iquitos.  This boat was similar to the one that we had been on before in that everyone had their own hammock to sleep on, but that’s pretty much where the differences stopped.  This boat had 3 levels:  the first level was for cargo and livestock.  You see, the city of Iquitos is only accessible to the outside world by air and by river.  And so, anything that you find in that city has been carted up the river on a boat very similar to ours.  The livestock that were on our boat seemed to be in pretty bad shape, and other than a few bananas I saw them feeding one that had collapsed, I’m pretty sure they didn’t feed them for the two days we were aboard.  Not surprisingly, one of them didn’t make it.  If you look closely at the picture, you’ll notice a headless carcass on the right.  Once that guy had stopped breathing, they got out the machetes and butchered him right in front of his friends.  They all got the point and managed to stay alive until we got to Iquitos. 

On the second floor, you had the economy class tickets.  The arrangements here were a lot like the first boat we took.  It was crowded, there was a kitchen at the back where they made meals but you had to bring your own dish.  We all walked down there at one point or another (the snack store with the cold Cokes were on that level) to take a look before returning to our floor grateful that we could afford to be on the third floor.  However, they did have a monkey passenger, which I was a little jealous of, because if there is one thing that is lacking on a 2 day boat trip, it is entertainment. 

We stayed on the third floor, which was worth every sol that we paid for it.  It had more space, the best views, bathrooms that had showers in them (even though I wasn’t quite brave enough to use the showers), a kitchen that served pretty nice meals that came on plates and everything, and most importantly, plenty of space.  We spent most of our time reading or just watching the riverbank pass by.  The boat would often dock at towns that we passed along the way, and those always provided the opportunity for entertainment.  We’d pull up to shore and people would come up to either load stuff onto the boat or get stuff off of it.  Some of the villages were better off than others, but don’t ask me why that was or what kind of work they did out there.  A lot of women were always waiting along the shore to try to sell things to people on the boat.  One lady came on board selling shish kabobs, but instead of meat they were grubs.  But like I said earlier, I had already crossed that experience off of my list and was therefore able to pass.   She must have been better at finding them though, because her grubs were a lot bigger than ours had been.  Eventually though, even the random towns disappeared and we were left to our own devices.  By the end of the second day, we were seriously desperate for entertainment, which was when we became so grateful for the extra space on our floor.  We discovered, as people tend to do when they are bored, that there were previously unexplored uses of the everyday objects surrounding us.  For example, hammocks can easily be turned into swings and blankets into capes.  I believe we also spent some time finding out exactly how many gringos could fit in one hammock.