Posts Tagged ‘boat’

I went to Uruguay on Saturday. It’s winter but it’s a nice sunny winter, so why not? If you’ve never been to Buenos Aires you wouldn’t necessarily know it, but it’s a mere 60km across the River Plate (widest river mouth in the world fact fans) from the Buquebus ferry terminal to Colonia de Sacramento, the jewel in Uruguay’s colonial crown.
Colonia is a nice little place, with the emphasis on little, 3 hours easy strolling and you’ve done it. I’ve been before and I’ll go again. In fact this time, I had to go and I’ll need to go again. Colonia you see, has a secret.

A tree, Colonia

When you arrive in Argentina as a tourist and if you’re paying attention you’ll notice the stamp that you get in your passport says Turista 90 Dias. As a tourist I would be just be a little bit excited about getting a stamp in my passport and would play very little attention to the length of time given. However, when you’re actually living (and working) here you have to pay closer attention otherwise you’ll be getting a nice fine when you try to leave, and maybe they won’t let you back in.

Colonia’s dirty secret is that every boat that leaves Buenos Aires for Uruguay has at least five long-term “tourists” on board who need to get a fresh 3 month stamp in their passport. And they’ll get one. Argentinian immigration officers must be aware of what is going on, but they just don’t even bat an eyelid and just stamp you in.  Now that I’m working I have the possibility of getting residency through work, but to be honestly, having seen the hoops I’m going to have to jump through and the money I’m going to have to spend, it’s going to be easier just to jump on a ferry once every 90 days..

What’s This?

Leaving Ketchikan on the Ferry, August 2009

What’s This?

The River Amazon taken from a boat between Santa Rosa and Iquitos, Peru

At 2am last Tuesday morning, the good ship Henry 3 arrived finally at the port of Pucallpa more than 100 hours after leaving Iquitos. This was not the happy moment I was expecting. It had taken nearly 4 days for me to be truly sick of the boat, the river, the food, my fellow passengers, the parrots, everything. I had reached rock bottom, I needed out. So you can imagine my despair when the boat actually docked and nothing actually happened. Nobody got off. No stream of vendors pushed their way on board screaming “Hay gaseosas! Hay panes!”. No procession of motortaxis arrived to spirit the happy passengers away. Nothing. Not a thing.

As noted before a bus is not an option to get of Iquitos, it’s plane or boat, so we thought we’d give the boat a try. We went to the dock Friday morning to pay for the cabin which was basic but clean, went shopping for supplies, got our rucksacks and at around 4:30 in the afternoon settled in, ready for the ride about an hour before it was due to leave.

4 hours later we finally set off, chugged 100 metres down the river, pulled up at another dock where a guy wearing a hard hat got on, got off and then we sat there for an hour. Eventually we set off again, only to return to the spot we’d started from where we sat for another hour. At this point we went to bed, before we’d even left.

I look back on the 4 and a bit days and honestly am unable to tell you how we passed the time. The boat had 4 decks, the bottom on with cargo and some hammocks. The 2nd one, a big open space FULL of hammocks. 3rd one up was open with hammocks and 10 cabins (one of them ours). 4th one was basically the roof with a little cockpit for the captain. That’s it. No bar, no TV lounge, no Observation lounge, in fact no seats of any kind.

The scenery was nice in a “I’m in the Jungle” kind of way, but it didn’t change (except for the sunsets, which were spectacular). The Amazon basin is flat, a bit like the Norfolk Broads but bigger and with trees and piranhas.

I don’t wish to sound ungrateful, but I’m glad I did it, but I’m not gonna say I enjoyed it. The food consisted of chicken, platano, rice and beans for every single meal (including breakfast, served at 6:50 sharp every morning) and most of ours ended up feeding the fishies. It was just that little bit too “authentic”  to be truly enjoyable.

So, by the time we arrived, I really had had it. It felt like my entire life had been spent sweating on board this floating tin can. Luckily fate and an innovative mototaxi driver came to rescue, he came on board and asked if we needed a lift. Oh boy did we! So off we trotted, and in 15 minutes (which admittedly we both spent terrified of being stopped and robbed) we were safely tucked up in an air-conditioned room, back in civilisation again.

Spent 10 hours of yesterday bouncing (that’s on a boat not a spacehopper) up the river Amazon to get to Iquitos in Peru, a town of 370,000 people, that has the honour of being the largest city in the world only accessible by boat or air.

It’s a chaotic sort of place, the streets full of motorbikes and mototaxis (tuk-tuks) which make any sort of crossing the road into an interesting challenge, although getting a lift anywhere is easy.

As to getting away, well, we’re limited to air or boat – the plane costs a fortune so boat it is. We’ve been asking around today and it looks like the Henry II is our baby which leaves for Pucallpa on Friday, arriving there 4 days later. We’re going posh and are going to get a “cabin” which is a metal box with bunk beds, but at least we’ll be able to lock it, something you can’t do with the alternative which is stringing up a hammock and holding tightly onto your things for 4 days…

I’ve just boarded the venerable MV Colombia which, in a mere 38 hours, will deliver me to Ketchikan, Alaska where I will be staying for a week or two with my cousin. In the last 3 weeks I’ve made my way up from San Diego, via Los Angeles, Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. I’ve enjoyed it, seen some wonderful things, jaw-dropping scenery on the Pacific Coast Highway, strolled down Hollywood Boulevard, been record shopping in Haight Ashbury and sampled some of (and when I say some, I mean a lot) the local Portland brews.

But there’s been something missing. Travelling “alone” in South America never actually meant that. I can only think of a couple of days in all the weeks I was “alone” when I was actually on my own. As long as you stuck more or less to the backpack trail, you could always spend time with other like-minded travellers, perfectly happy to chat, share a beer or go exploring. Often at the same time. Some I’ve stayed in touch with, others just spent the day with and can’t actually remember their names. And all of them have added something positive to the trip (with the exception of Sally, the eager yet oh so boring English teacher).

However, travelling alone here seems to mean, at least for me, truly alone. Outside of the people I’ve stayed with (and a big shout goes out to all of them, love you guys!) I’ve barely spoken to a soul. Some of this is pure laziness or grumpiness on my behalf but people here seem so much more self-absorbed and unapproachable. Maybe this has something to do with most people travelling in couples or groups, but I’m not sure. People will talk, if you start a conversation, but then the conversation is all about them. You don’t get a look in, they show absolutely no interest in listening to anything you say. Kind of annoys me. Hence the grumpiness. I am enjoying it, missing Laura, but enjoying it nonetheless, and glad to be doing it – catching up with people and, through them, meeting new ones. Just looking forward to getting back to Argentina, not for the first time!

Note, what do you know!, in the 15 hours since I wrote this, I have spoken to some very nice people – 3 50 -somethings on a Harley trip to Alaska they’ve been planning for 2 years and a couple of others. Some idiot who said the dolphins we saw were killer whales. I’m no marine scientist but know when you see killer whales, these things are the size of tanks, and these were not. Nice dolphins (good dolphins) though, pretty damn cool.

After 5 days of nothing but beer and steak, I’ve managed to get myself into some sort of organisational order and am off to Uruguay tomorrow. There’s 3 of us and we’re heading across the River Plate on a boat to Colonia first of all then on Thursday onto Punta del Diablo, a small port town with miles of empty beaches up towards the Brazilian border. Not sure how long I’ll be away but I’m not taking the computer and there ain’t much up there in the way of anything so I’ll report back here when I return.