Hit me baby, one more time

Locals admire the dawn on the Amazon while others continue to sleep in their hammocks

Our journey down the big river continues - this time, we´re changing boats in Santarém, for our final leg to ocean itself. And for the first time, it feels that the climate is actually improving, rather than getting more opressive and brutal by the day. How´s that you ask? Well, we have finally encountered our first sea breeze. Well, maybe its technically a river breeze, but the mechanism is the same, and when its 35°C and horribly humid, I´ll take any respite from the heat that I can get thank you very much.

The trip down from Manaus over the last two days was a bit of a different one - first of all, we actually had company along the way, in the form of quite a few other gringos. It seems that we have returned to Gringoland, somehow.... D´oh! This was also by far the most crowded boat that we have been on yet - everyone was pretty much hip to hip in their hammocks for the first night - in places (such as my hammock), the air flow became seriously restricted and unplesantly stuffy. For the first time, there were neither live animals nor bananas on the boat either - heaps of toilet paper and soft drinks instead, for a couple of intermediate villages along the way.

We also met a friendly little nipper called Diego, aged three, who was particularly fascinated by both my camera and Trev - he was a great fan of crawling all over me trying to get the camera. Then he started attacking us - I got smacked in the eye twice, for which his punishment was being lifted off the ground by the arms while Dorthe tickled him - he didn´t like that too much, and struck back later - as I was fixing up my hammock, I received a surprise blow to my front as high up as he could reach... which corresponded pretty well to a place where you don´t really want a three year to smack you. Hostilities ceased at this point, with the result being a victory to Diego. Final score: Diego 3, Mark 1.

And finally, a geeky engineering story. Somehow, the length of my hammock was such that it managed to achieve resonance with the motion of the boat i.e. the motion of my hammock and the motion of the boat coincided perfectly so that the net result was greater than the sum of the two individual parts. This lead to a wild and violent swinging of the hammock most of the day, and lots of unnecessary bumps and bruises as the hammock carreened into other punters (mainly an unhappy Dorthe). And yes, before I get blamed for being unable to sit in a hammock safely and demurely, it was genuinely resonance! Honest!

And so, from here, we head off one last time on a boat, bound for the Atlantic and the mouth of the Amazon. After so many days in a hammock, we find that we are still not bored by it - indeed, everytime we set sail, you get that same thrill of excitement as we wave another town goodbye and head out into the river, destined for days of nothing but lounging in the hammock, eating, taking a cold shower to escape the stickiness, and the occasional excitement of a small river port, fist fights with three year olds, or, if you´re lucky, a cooling sea breeze to make it all the more bearable. Ahhhh, yes. Life on the river: Hit me baby, one more time.