on saturday i boarded the boat. having no idea how long i would be on the boat, i bought 5 liters of water, cans of tuna and crackers. it was raining when i got to the port and the boat was absolutely insane. two guys helped me hang my hammock, but that a woman asked me if I could move my hammock next to hers because she was also travelling alone. the tricky thing is you really have to watch your stuff while the boat is still at the port. there are a million people on board: families of travelers, travelers, and people selling things. its noisy and chaotic and raining outside. you have to be careful of the people selling things, esp the children, becuase they will try to run off with your bags. so, i piled all of my stuff into my hammock, spread my raincoat on top of it and read for the few hours until we actually left (which was about 1.5 hours behind schedule). the first night we didnt really do much, except they blasted peruvian music from the jungle region. the trip wound up being three days and four nights, all of the food was included in the $25 per hammock price. the food was pretty bad. well, it was fine. except breakfast. i never even tried it. i think one morning was rice floating in milk. i gave my breakfast to the people around me who had tons of children. lunch was rice, chicken and some form of veggie. dinner every night was chicken soup with a boiled plantain floating around in it. dont boil bananas. its not worth it. theyre really bad.
the bathrooms on the boat were rather gross. the showers were above the toilets and constantly dripping when i tried to pee. the water was brown, not because of garbage dirt, but because of all of the vegetation...the water was water from the river. i took one shower because it was pretty pointless. the boat itself was made out of metal, which meant that it creaked and made horrible noises. we also made stops at 5 am two of the days, which meant there was no sleeping. even if we hadnt made stops, i was sharing a room with 150 peruvians, at least 30 of whom were under the age of ten. we all had hammocks, but people were all over the floor and always running and yelling.
i was the only gringa on the boat. it was actually kind of humerous. at first i told people that i live in argentina, then some of them started to catch on that i was an american. that meant that i had to spend about an hour telling a 9 year old boy the english word for every part of the boat....because i really know my boat parts and all. then i had two girls come up to me while i was in my hammock and just stare at me. that was all. just stare. i asked them whats up and all that. they just wanted to see a gringa. one of them had to touch me. they all wanted to know if i was pure gringa and if my family was gringa also. then they had to know why i wasnt married and why i dont have kids yet. the woman next to me wanted a picture of her 1 month old son with the gringuita. every time i would get up to go to the bathroom it was like a parade of just me. every man on the boat would watch my every move. i dont know if it was because i was white or because i was female....or both.
we got to pucallpa at 3 AM on wednesday, but i stayed on the boat until 6ish. at 4 they began to blast more music. same group. same songs. i think they only have one dvd in concert of this group. so i went into pucallpa, found a bus to lima and spent the next few hours walking around, using the internet, buying fruit, and water for the bus ride. the bus ride was 24 hours long. it was amazing though. you have to cross the mountains, which means you go up on the jungle side, with waterfalls everywhere and really beautiful vegetation and you down the desert side with cacti and mining towns. i really love the andes; theyre such beautiful mountains. the waterfalls were so beautiful and the scenery was generally georgous. the roads were sort of difficult in that we would go around a 90 degree curve on mud to swing onto a one lane bridge over a waterfall. i generally loved the bus ride except the part where we were decending towards lima. my left ear is still blocked from that. i got to lima and realized that even though the names are the same, i was not in the same part of the city as sierras friends house. they came to pick me up, i went to the apartment and had my first real shower in peru.
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