Adieu and Bom Dia

The Brazilian immigration office was rather easier to find than the French one had been.  They were just about to reopen for the afternoon when we arrived.  We offered our passports and my visa to the official, but he just waved away the visa.  After a bit of examination and consultation he called me back and said I'd need to go back to Cayenne. To get a visa.  I produced the paper he'd waved away the first time and when he realized what it was he quickly apologized and stamped us into the country for up to 90 days.

Our Portuguese had improved enough during our first stay that we could read menus. But speaking and even listening still needed some work, so it was nice to be able to speak French to many of the residents of Oiapoque.  These included the owner of the restaurant where we had lunch and a group of taxi drivers who told us from where and at what time the bus to Macapa, the first city south, departed.

We took a cab out to the Rodoviaria (long distance bus station) a kilometre or two from town.  The two companies offering buses to Macapa operated on alternating days, so after visiting the ticket window for the first we were redirected to the second where we learned that the evening departure for the day was already sold out.

Boo! This made me a bit grumpy, as the excitement of a new(ish) country and the confusion and stress of trying to sort out our French exit stamp had made me keen to be on the move.  Ah well. There was nothing for it but to buy tickets for the next evening and spend the night in Oiapoque.

Which actually turned out to be just fine. Better than fine even. Having been roughing it sleeping in the car the previous two nights and with the prospect of an overnight bus trip the next, we splurged a bit on an aircon hotel room (with a fridge even!) and spent the rest of the afternoon just relaxing in the cool.

Come evening the public square across from us came alive, with football games, a busy skate/BMX park, mass aerobics classes and lots of friends and families just hanging out.  I went out for a walk and found the town lively and friendly, far from the "remote, not especially pleasant," place described in the Lonely Planet guidebook.

The next morning we had a loooong, lazy breakfast at the hotel. Brazilian breakfasts, especially at hotels, are all pretty same-y: white crusty buns, ham, cheese, coffee, a bit of fruit, sometimes juice and/or cake of some type. This was a particularly good one, with a variety of all the above, plus a sandwich press and ice for the juice.  By the time breakfast was done the sun was already out in all its equatorial fury, so we mostly just passed the time on the breezy terrace until 15:30 came and we could walk to the bus station without melting.

The bus was a middle aged, but sturdy looking Mercedes.  By the time we departed it was just after 18:00 so we managed to see the jungle fading into dusk as the road started to get bumpy. It remained so for most of the night but Sarah and I still got a good sleep before arriving in Macapa at 04:36.

We didn't have an exact plan for our time in this city of 350,000 on the north shore of the Amazon delta, but while waiting in the station, nursing a couple of small, sweet NZD 0.40 coffees we decided to go into town, do a bit of sightseeing and try to buy tickets for the boat journey across the Amazon's mouth to Belem.

Come 07:00 or so we left the bus station, squeezed ourselves onto an already busy city bus (the ability to do this kind of thing is one of the many arguments in favour of the minimalist packing ethos we'd adopted for this trip) and made our way into the centre of the city.

Macapa is a fairly unremarkable city, but does have a couple of things going for it from a tourist perspective.  First, its old Portuguese fort. Constructed in the late 18th century, it's a huge, star shaped (or turtle shaped if you asked Sarah) construction that dominates the river bank.  We walked the circuit around it, then joined the many school groups inside.  There's actually not much going on at the fort, but it was still fun to walk around peering over the battlements and playing sentry in the observation towers at each corner.

Macapa's second attraction is the riverfront itself. There's a nice path that was getting a lot of use by joggers and cyclists in the early morning, and a series of fun outdoor restaurants set just back from the waterfront.  We had lunch at one of these. Churrasco [spicy salty savoury sausage and BBQ chicken]! Vegetables! Welcome back to Brazil!)

One thing Macapa does NOT have is supermarkets or convenience stores. I went out on a mission to locate a large drink to stave off what I worried was pending dehydration and spent literally half an hour wandering the streets of the central city.  The place is almost entirely "import" shops which range from dollar store type places to clothing/luggage boutiques to almost-department-stores. But none of which sell drinks.

While on this walk I checked out a couple of boat ticket offices. Their prices seemed a touch high, and they said it wouldn't be possible to spend the night on the boat before next morning's departure, something that I'd read is pretty common.

So we decided to head straight to the source and took a bus to the port town of Santana, 25km south on the outskirts of Macapa. We would've found the passenger port in about ten minutes, but after about five, two cheerful Brazilian women found us and brought us to their boat ticket office, one of many right near the passenger pier.
They were very friendly and seemed to be having fun with their job and all the ticket kiosks were displaying the same prices anyway, so we happily bought our tickets from them for a 10:00 departure to Belem the following morning.
We couldn't spend the night on our boat, but they arranged for us to sling our hammocks up on its sister ship, which was in port for the night. Plus they looked after our bags and gave us directions to the supermarket so we could do some grocery shopping for dinner and for the next day's 24 hour long boat journey.

The NV Bruno was almost empty, with just a few crewmembers and us aboard.  It was shady and breezy on the top deck, so the 2.5 hours before sunset were spent relaxing in our hammocks, strung from the boat's ceiling beams, and watching the bustle of the port just over the side (ever seen two or three tons of Açai berries unloaded 15kg at a time? I have now!)

The next morning we woke around sunrise. Before swapping boats over to the NV Breno, we got the surprising treat of seeing two or three pink Amazon River dolphins playing in the ~500m wide channel we were moored alongside.

Instead of getting straight on the Breno we were directed back off our pier to give our personal details (passport number, date of birth, etc.) and swap our tickets for boarding passes.  Nevertheless we were near the front of the queue when boarding started.

The Breno was a sizeable vessel with room for over 500 passengers on the top two decks and the bottom one for cargo and vehicles.  We chose spots for our hammocks most of the way fore on the top deck. There were numbered hooks for slinging up hammocks, though these we were pretty tightly spaced, with no more than 50cm between them. We chose numbers 400 and 402, hoping that the boat would be empty enough that no one would want to sling up between us or in position 403, whose hook was missing.

'Twas not to be. As we suspected, the boat started to get crowded as departure time neared, so we shifted hammocks to be right next to one another.  Then shifted again to two of the nearby hookless spaces when a mom and her small daughter came around looking for space, but helpless to find any as there were no more spots with hooks and she (like many others) had no rope for her hammock.

By the time 10:00 arrived the boat was packed full (though with few if any more passengers than there were hammock spots, so it clearly wasn't OVERloaded.)

The engines grumbled to life and with a hoot of the horn we pulled away from the docks and out into the Amazon.

It's a long way across the mouth of the Amazon. Like a really long way. The large island between the main northern and southern channels is about the size of Switzerland. And by boat it takes around 24 hours to get between Macapa and Belem on the south bank.

Our journey took us from narrow channels, not much more than 100m wide to huge expanses of water, brown but with white capped waves and swell that were almost open ocean.

Small settlements came and went and we passed many other vessels ranging from tiny dugout canoes barely big enough for two people to huge barges packed stem to stern with cargo trucks making the journey across the river (as the crow flies it's over 2000km up the Amazon until we leave Brazil, and there's not a bridge across anywhere.  North of the river is completely removed from the road network of the rest of the country).

On board the boat it was actually pretty comfortable despite the cozy quarters. The boat's movement kept a breeze constant and I like sitting around in hammocks and reading anyway.  There were power outlets, and while they weren't numerous enough for everyone to have one, many passengers brought extension cords/power bars so they could be shared.

And not just comfortable, the trip was lively. There was a small canteen at the back of the boat that was well customed by passengers buying a steady stream of beers, creating an impromptu party on the rear of the upper deck. Big speakers kept music going (stopping near bedtime thank goodness!) And by late afternoon many patrons were dancing, skirting their way around the painter who had set up his easel nearby, painting river scenes as we cruised along.

Even though the hammocks were close together people generally hung them at different heights to their neighbours, so there was enough room to sleep fairly comfortably, and we'd got a good rest by the time sunrise and breakfast (the one meal that came with the ticket, though others could be bought) came.

Not long after we left the smaller channel we'd been travelling in and were back out into nearly open ocean.  Ahead were the towering buildings of Belem, capital of Para state with a population of 1.5 million, and our destination.

The boat docked at the fairly central Hidroviario port.  Everyone took their casually relaxed time getting off (a bit irritating when it's on a plane and you've been in an uncomfortable narrow seat for hours, but kind of nice when you've just spent 24 hours in a hammock... It allows you to slowly get ready to meet the outside world again.)

Belem hadn't been part of our original plan. We'd been thinking of heading straight up the Amazon from Macapa, but we realized that our timing was such that if we hopped across the river mouth we'd be there for Cirio de Nazare, one of the largest annual religious events in the world.  And of course you can't say no to an opportunity like that!

It was only a couple of kilometres from the Hidroviario to the home of our Couchsurfing host, Lysmar, so we made our way there on foot.  Lysmar greeted us warmly and welcomed us to our home for what was going to be a pretty full on weekend.