SLOW BOAT TO MANAUS

I wanted to spend a day exploring the small towns along the Amazon with my Tikuna Indian friends. We set off after breakfast from Leticia, Colombia 

I had been offered the larvae of palm weevil (siri, mogohohoi) but I politely declined as I did not wish to have gastrointestinal problems during the day of exploration.

Leticia is a small town and it takes only five minutes to walk down to the boat jetty (which changes location according to the water level of the river).
A short interchange and a boatman (they say pique pique for these same boats) agreed to take us for one dollar each to the Brasilian town of Tabatinga.

It was an overcast and the sky was full of angry clouds and I knew it would pour torrentially but it did not bother me, after all we are in the biggest rainforest in the planet and they need water..

 we waited at the boat dock at Tabatinga for a fast boat to Benjamin Constant. You pay (5 dollars each) and take a number and when the boat is full you are ready to leave, usually the boats accomodate 10 to 15 passengers and there is fair bit of traffic between these two small towns

Tabatinga is a non descript town. While Leticia has tourist infrastructure and fair amount of tourists, Tabatinga does not get any tourists and it is also less safe than Leticia.
Until recently the health clinic at Tabatinga had 7 Cuban doctors but the ultraconservative new leader had voiced an opposition to Cuban presence so the Doctors withdrew and the town is left without any sort of medical attention (4 peruvian doctors are left behind).

Very interesting to watch the people who get on the boat. Humble people with the entire continents written on their faces and a few Indians.

After a few minutes the boat leaves the mighty Amazon and turns into River Yuvary which is also a gigantic river. Half an hour later we are at Benjamin Constant. I could recognize the polyclinic buildings from far (until recently they had two cuban doctors)

 Benjamin Constant is the name of this small town. I had known of the existence of this town for a long time and I have to say that this is my fourth or fifth visit to town. the main attraction in town for me (before it was my Cuban doctor friends in addition to ) is the museum of the Tikuna people and i had been friendly with the old curator who was very active and you can always expect to meet a diverse group of people there. the new person in charge was not present and you can already see the deterioration of the museum, what a pity.

It is worthwhile coming to Benjamin Constant just for the museum but make sure that the curator (not really, the man with the key, and pay his 2.5 dollars)

This building always intrigued me, looked a portugese colonial architecture in this town of modern shacks and soul less buildings.

EU amo BENJAMIN .  that is what they call this town, Benjamin..  If you are interested in how this town came to be called Benjamin Constant, Wikipedia has the story...

 Another pique pique and the destination is ISLANDIA in Peru

Once again a dollar each would take you along the banks of the river which is already Peruvian, to the hamlet of Islandia in Peru. Remember you have to use Pesos in Colombia, Reis in Brasil and Sole in Peru

Floating shacks some of them selling gasoline, which is expensive.

It did not take us long to get to Islandia.

This is my third visit to Islandia and the welcoming features of the church was familiar.

It was fun walking in the rain through the raised pathways of this town which is completely on water.

Looking for a place to have lunch turned out to be tedious as few shacks offered chicken and i was adamant that i wanted fish, after all we are surrounded by water..

 managed to find a place, the chef coming over from his place of rest across the pathway, and offered us a lunch menu of soup, fish, rice and lemonade, less than 3 dollars each.

 this fish is from the river and i also had a piece of the fish from the lake. Indians prefer to eat the fish from the lake, they say it is healthier

 Like the Israelis and their Zatar, FARINA is ever present, Indians love it and they add it to every thing including drinks, soups, main meals and they love its crunchy taste.
It began to rain
wonderful amazon rain 
sheets and sheets of it 
i was in no hurry 
i had a piece of fish a little rice and lemonade 
to watch the rain 
when it rain the river becomes empty of the small crafts

I truly enjoyed it .. the rain of the amazonian tropics

once the rain stopped, time to walk around the village which is rather small.

what is a Jew (me) and a Tikuna indian who prays to the spirits of the jungle doing inside the church?
I like to enter these little churches in out of the way places
I remember a line from a movie 
More ubiquitous than Coca Cola...
but that may no longer be true..
Amazon is being flooded with Industrial soft drinks and packaged foods and Obesity is setting in.. While you are here you know that Obesity is caused by soft drinks and preserved foods..

 One of my responsibilities as a Global Health doctor is to alert the Indigenous people of the dangers of these soft drinks. Many Tikuna indians reject soft drinks knowing what it does to human bodies.

 It was time to go back to Benjamin Constant.

The river was not bumpy even for a small boat, i appreciated the calm ride and soon we were back in Benjamin 

as we were coming into Benjamin, I caught sight of the giant boat slowly moving into the berth, yes it was the slow boat to Manaus. It might have left Tabatinga early in the morning and will go down stream to Manaus perhaps to reach there in 7 or 8 days. There is a fast boat that makes the journey in 36-48 hours also, but i have always chosen to fly the route from Tabatinga to Manaus (one hour).

When I was a high school student, I remember taking a boat from Singapore to Miri in Kuching and then Miri in Sarawak. It always brought back to me the romance of travel of Somerset Maugham. 
This huge brother of our little boat did not evoke any romantic notions in me..every one knows of the reality of slow boats along the amazon river, which are strictly practical.

Soon after we caught a ferry back to Tabatinga

One in Tabatinga, walked around a little bit in their shops selling tchochkes from china and the local stuff and many colombians from Leticia come to Tabatinga to shop because the goods are cheaper in Brasil than in Colombia (Leticia)

It was a wonderful days in the waters of the Amazon, the mightiest waterway on this planet with children of the forest to explain their view of their world..