DAY 66 Manaus / Amazons - Brazil
07:00h Woke up with the birds, had my second malaria tablet. We started by having a morning swim in the Amazons River, the same place we fished piranhas and catch Alligators. According to our guides; the Alligators swim down to the bottom during the day to sleep so it's not dangerous to swim at the surface, but you should not dive deep. 10:00h We went in to a new wooden boat with the water line 10cm down, to get deeper into the Amazons and sleep in the wild jungle. We got on the boat for a 3-hour trip; the sales guy said it would take 2 hours. It actually took us 6 hours to get there due to a storm that almost sank our boat. We were on one of the wider parts when the storm got in and made waves who went over the side. Our guide asked if we could swim and asked us to jump overboard to save the boat. The boat had no floating parts, so everything would have gone to the bottom including our stuff, would have been nice deep in the Amazons. We made it close to the shore, before we had to jump out and go into the bushes at the riverside. The rain came down like a shower while we made our way through the bushes, our guide was very afraid for snakes and continued to hit all the bushes to scare them away before we passed by. We found a native house some hundred meters up the river were we had lunch and got dry again. The dinner was as usual made of chicken, but this time with both the feet and neck left, yackh. It cleared up and we continued further into the Amazons, it started to rain, but it was not too much but it got us wet. The camp was located in the jungle, but half ready made, that were OK now when it was raining. Lot of sounds and small animals all over the place, our guides started by hitting all things in the camp with a stick to check that there was no snakes hiding inside. We started to hang-up our stuff and then of into the jungle for a 3-hour walk, the guides told us to always look were we put our feet. IT was very dark due to high trees and dark sky, the only thing we saw was spiders, frogs and some parrots, but we heard some monkey screaming. We also tried some jungle fruits and other Amazon stuff, we got back to camp and had as usual chicken and rice for dinner it took several hours to prepare due to wet wood, our guide manage to catch some fish which we grilled, tasted very good this time. 23:00h Got to sleep in my hammock, woke up at 00:30h the heavy rain had started again and it was a small hole just above me, were the water was dripping on me, manage to get some cover and go back to sleep. 04:30h Woke up by a high scream from the jungle, it was a Jaguar who hunted and scared a gang of scream monkeys just some 300 meters away, they made a terrible noise for 30min before stopping and we could get back to sleep. One of our guides spend most of the night checking for snakes around the camp and kept the fire burning. It was an interesting night with all the sounds. Lars had one comment during the night: "This would the nature idiot, Bo like, it must be a getting older thing to get out in the forest and camp".
