Lyn's Log, 10th May 2006
Amazon

Brazil, mouth of Amazon.
N2º00', W49º03'
9,740 miles.

After about a week in Belem sorting out our arrival and leaving documents and buying charts from the navy, we topped up with fuel, water, food and drink and set off up the Amazon on 30th April. We motored around 50 miles a day and kept the sun awning up to give us shade from the sun and collect water when it rained. The current in the river reached two and a half to three knots but we managed to have it with us most of the time. As long as we could make more than four knots over the ground we kept going. The fastest speed we made over the ground was when leaving the estuary, making ten knots!

For a day or two the river was quite wide and shallow at the sides, so we could not see much of what was on the shore, but on the river were various ferries and local craft, logs and floating islands of mangrove caught up on bits of wood – all best avoided. There were also barges mostly carrying long-vehicle trucks. Two of these barges, one behind the other, were pushed by a short boat three stories high, as high as its length, so that the helmsman could see over his load. The biggest pusher we saw had four barges carrying fifty trucks.

Sometimes we heard a big splash in the water like a large fish had jumped. Then we might see a dorsal fin. These were dolphins of which there appeared to be two kinds in the Amazon rivers, very pale in colour. Some were pearly pink and some silvery grey. We heard their breathing holes as they surfaced and saw a bottle nose and a fin more fish-like than normally associated with dolphins, as they curved through the surface of the water.

The part we enjoyed the most was when we went up a couple of smaller, less used rivers. There was always at least one residence in sight. These dwellings were very like the summerhouses found in garden centres in England - single storey pitched roofed wooden huts with a door and one or two windows in the front, and maybe a porch. The windows would not have glass but possibly wooden shutters inside. They were built on stilts with a wooden staging jutting out into the river on which would be tied a dugout canoe. As we came up the river the children and often the women too, would leap into their dugouts and come paddling out to get a closer look. Sometimes they would try to paddle as fast as we motored, and loved to get in the wake behind. Everyone waved.Now we know how the queen must feel waving and smiling for hours on end! When we stopped near one house for the current to weaken, some children paddled over and offered us some bananas and a jar of palm hearts. Two nights later we anchored off a tiny village in the middle of nowhere just before a terrific thunderstorm. Soon after we had a surprisingly pleasant visit by a mother and two daughters who paddled out to give us a couple of fish beautifully prepared for cooking with a couple of limes, and some fresh bread. We insisted on giving her a little money and the girls each a tin of guarana (a fizzy drink). We were probably invited to visit, but not speaking the language makes it very difficult and we would have been too embarrassed to visit. Their house seemed to be larger than most and shared by at least two families. Their staging was where the ferry docked. They were the only house with a noisy generator providing them with electric light until around ten o’clock when the ferry had left.

There were three villages we visited en route, Breves, San Sebastian, and Afua. Here we were able to get very basic food supplies and top up on diesel. I enjoyed these towns, particularly Afua, more than the city of Belem. In Afua, the children were flying kites they had made from pieces of plastic, thin canes and fishing line. There were bikes everywhere with passengers on the crossbar or rack behind the saddle, and four-wheeled bikes with bench seats able to carry four to eight people. The whole town was built over mangrove swamp with the buildings on wooden stilts, joined by wooden boardwalks. The people wanted to shake our hands and talk to us, asking if we were from the yacht and where we had come from. Wherever we went in the Amazon we were a curiosity.

It took a week to get from Belem to Afua, and then another three days to leave the Amazon waters on 10th May.