The End of the Rio

Our final boat journey up the Amazon was to be aboard the Eduardo VII.  After a brief hiatus on the fast ferry, our trip to Yurimaguas was once again on a slow ferry/cargo ship.  We were to spend 68 hours aboard.

As compared to the ones in Brazil, slow riverboats in Peru are more cargo ships and less passenger vessels.  There was still room for at least a couple of hundred passengers on the mid and upper deck of the Eduardo VII, but the mid deck was sparsely populated and the number of passengers sharing the upper deck with us varied from three at the start of the trip to none by the end of it.

And unlike in Brazil, where the boats would stop only at major towns with formal docks, this boat stopped at pretty much every little village on the way, simply nosing up to the riverbank, laying out a few gangplanks and setting the (many) crewmembers to work loading and unloading goods.

The mixture of these goods was rather different than in Brazil.  We left port with a 2.5m cube of plywood that was filled first with big slabs of ice, then with fish inside these.  And tons (quite literally) of building materials.  The crew offloaded probably about a ton of cement for a new water tower at one town, as well as lumber and bricks for whole houses at two others.

There were quite a few vehicles as well.  Two pickup trucks that spent the whole journey on deck, and several Motocars that were on and offloaded during the trip.  And two small combine harvesters that were very nearly the cause of disaster.

Shortly after we left port we pulled up alongside a rice field where the two combines were to be brought aboard.
The boat deck was considerably higher up than the field and the crew laid out three planks (they only had one long enough to make a ramp of a reasonable angle, so the ramp for the other tread of the harvester was made up of two planks).  These were not huge pieces of wood, so they were supported underneath with piles of pallets. The ramps were quite steep, not quite even and seemed to be inadequately supported from beneath.  Before they'd even started trying to drive the first combine up I was thinking to myself "no, bad idea.  This is NOT going to turn out well." It was the kind of situation that I honestly would have called WorkSafe about back in NZ, even as a member of the general public, much less as an engineer working on a project.

They'd got the combine about three quarters of the way up when it lurched to the left, the right tread having come off its ramp.  Gasps, and a woman's scream came from the deck below.  Very luckily the machine didn't roll over entirely (which could have led to half a dozen farm workers who'd chosen a bad place to watch being crushed, to say nothing of the driver) and stayed kind of sort of on the ramps, its underside now resting on slipped out gangplank and a small pile of crushed pallets.  The driver had leapt clear, but a few seconds after he did, something caused the harvesting mechanism at the front to start up and some brave soul had to jump back up to shut it off.

Miraculously no one was hurt, and even the machine remained operable.  They managed to get it off its pile of rubble.  And then the boat was pushed back and moved to a spot where ground level was closer to the boat deck.  New (somewhat) more secure ramps were built up and both harvesters were brought aboard with no further incident.

As with our final boat trip in Brazil, meals were included.  Breakfast was the same every day: a weird thin, sweet porridge with bread or crackers.  Lunch was rice, boiled plantain and a small amount of meat. Dinner was soup.  It wasn't as nice or plentiful as on the Brazilian boats, and there were no dishes available. We knew this, but had broken the largest of our plastic containers, so for two meals a day we had to eat in series, presenting a 400ml "bowl" to the stern-faced chef. I never saw him smile, but he gave other hints of friendliness, not least dealing with Sarah's requests for vegetarian(ish) meals.

There was quite a bit more selling of goods aboard, and almost all of them were local produce.  Fruit was a big one, as were prepared (and rather nicer looking) meals.

Our fellow passengers were a mix of Peruvians and a surprising number of Colombians.  One of these set up his gear and tattooed a marijuana leaf on a fellow passenger's wrist next to our hammocks.  Another shaved the sides of his head eery morning in the bathroom and, rather to my surprise, told us that he collected coins from around the world. I have a bag of miscellaneous change in my pack and gave him Canadian, NZ and Filipino coins.  He was delighted and offered me an English book.  To my delighted surprise, it was one I really wanted to read, Fear, Bob Woodward's account of the first 18 months of Donald Trump's presidency.

The sleeping areas weren't quite as fancy in Brazil either.  No hooks for your hammock.  You needed to tie it up using your ropes.  And fewer lights (good for easier sleeping) and power outlets (not so good, but we pretty much had the single one on the top deck to ourselves).

Aside from the boat itself, the surroundings were quite different as well. 

The village were smaller but more frequent. They looked more Amazonian to my eyes. Which basically meant that they were (likely) poorer, and surrounded more tightly by the forest.  The buildings had more thatched roofs and wooden (rather than concrete or block) structures.  And most of them were on stilts instead of being built higher up in hillsides as in Brazil (because there were few, if any hills).  Though only the smallest were without a concreted main street and electric lighting.

At one village I hopped off, trying to pick a moment when I wouldn't get in the way of the constant flow of crew unloading bricks and beer and rain gutters.  I was constantly anxious about getting left behind.  The boat never waited more than a few seconds after finishing up loading/unloading until it was off again.  But I still managed to buy a drink (expensive) and a watermelon (hardly pink at all and not very sweet, but very cheap).

There was less traffic on the river, with the exception of small motorized canoes.  And the river itself usually flowed faster, at a quick walk or a slow run.  It was narrower too.  The night we left Iquitos at the confluence of the Marañón and Ucayali rivers we headed up the Marañón and said goodbye to the Amazon River itself to the second and last time.

The forest on the Marañón looked denser and darker than in Brazil.  Never was there a large expanse of unforested land on the banks.  It looked as though any area that had been cleared had been done by hand.

There was (a little) more wildlife visible, with the usual parrots, cormorants, swallows and ospreys appearing.  These were joined by black and yellow birds that built colonies of woven nests that hung from the branches of tall trees.

And though we thought we'd left the dolphins behind in Brazil, we saw plenty.  At one memorable stop both grey and pink dolphins hunted, played, splashed and even jumped fully out of the water for almost and hour as we sat and waited for cargo operations to finish.

Our final river journey ended rather unexpectedly.  I'd been watching our progress on my phone's GPS and map app.  But the port had recently moved about 15km downstream. So just as we were thinking about having a quick shower and starting to pack up, the horn gave three toots and we pulled up to the dock at Yurimaguas.  The start of the road and, for us at least, the end of the river.

Our journey up the Amazon took us from Macapa to Belem to Santarem (and Alter do Chão).  Then on to Manaus and Tabatinga at the Brazil-Colombia-Peru border.  And on to Iquitos, and then finally to Yurimaguas.

I'm certain that the constant lazing in hammocks led to my losing fitness and gaining weight. But both Sarah and I got tons of reading and audiobook listening done.

On reaching Yurimaguas, we had covered 4,897km by river and spent a month and four days to make the journey.

Saying farewell to the river and getting used to life back on land was going to take some getting used to.