I think it was around 4 AM this morning. I was splayed out on a wooden floor, face first with my ankles uphill and my head down. I was hurting with, as a summary, exhaustion.
It was the lower deck of a passenger ferry that was docked in Obidos – the Ana Beatriz. Mike had seen some of the dock workers go up there to sleep, so I had gone to take the first shift of sleep. There was a handful of dock workers sleeping around me on the floor. My mind, so in need of sleep, was in survival mode. Where was my backpack and my water? How would I be sure to wake up? Should I worry about any of these guys lying around me? At least there were no bugs crawling on me there. I didn’t want to think about what may have happened on the wood floor I was laying on, but those thoughts did occasionally enter.
But I did somehow sleep. The phrase “heavy sleep” describes what it felt like. My body and my eyelids became so heavy that nothing could go fast.
Mike woke me up at 5 AM. The Lider do Mar, going to Santarem, just arrived. The guy sitting next to us for hours before I slept was getting on – it was his boat. It was not ours, but at least it was a chance to get to Santarem.
By this time, though, people’s priorities had changed – from going to Santarem to getting to sleep. There was nothing we had to be in Santarem for. Yes, we confirmed the boat was going to Santarem, but it was going to Monte Alegre afterwards. Could we get on? They let us jump on. With the chaos of one of these boats and bad Portuguese, we walked upstairs, saw a mass of humanity and hammocks but no one in charge. Back downstairs, Steve found someone authoritative who was working on the lock for a camarote (sleeping cabin). He was saying something and Steve was asking for my help.
“What did you ask?” I wanted to know.
“Nothing,” Steve said, in lingering but lesser frustration from a long night.
I redirected to the person apparently in charge, “Can we use these tickets to get to Santarem?”
“That’s not this boat,” he responded after looking at them. It didn’t answer my question exactly. He then continued working on the lock, so I took it as a “no.”
Behind me, Mike and Mary stood amid a nest of hammocks going every direction, more packed than any boat we’d seen before. There was almost no room to stand, much less sit or lay down and sleep. The decision to make was clear – take this boat to Santarem for 6 hours of standing or wait some more, with a clear finality of seeing Paulo, our host, in the morning and getting his help. It was a pretty easy decision for me, despite some inner instincts saying to always push on – I wanted to wait it out on the dock of Obidos. So did the others.
I didn’t go back to my wood floor. With no one left but us, the benches were available to lay on. Laying there counting the minutes before we could do something to find Paulo, that’s when I really missed my wife and kids. With this story, the kids will never want to travel with me again, but I’m glad I get to go hug them when I get home.
With a little coordinated scouting, we left notes for Paulo in places we thought he might see them (we didn’t know where he lived because we stayed at his parents’ house). He came to get us at around 6:15, having seen the note on his car. The engine on our boat, the Cezar Brelaz, had stopped working, blah, blah, blah. All I wanted to hear was that I could sleep on a bed for a while and for Paulo to assure us that we’d get back to Santarem sometime. I heard both and then crashed.
Monday After Sleep
Upon waking, Paulo said we’d actually go back to Santarem on the Ana Beatriz, the boat whose floor I was sleeping on a few hours earlier. He made no guarantees of a camarote. Lunch at 1 PM tasted exceptionally good after a night of really no dinner beyond lots of beer.
We then rested at home until Paulo got another break from work. Mary and I went with him to a store, then his school (with a nice air-conditioned computer facility with broad band), then to the Obidos museum. It had pictures of his dad and grandfather, both of whom having been mayors. As we walked out of the museum, he got mayor treatment. Lealberto (a Rotarian who ran the store we had gone to) rode up on a motorcycle and told us the Cezar Brelaz was coming! In 15 minutes! We walked faster, Mary struggling to keep up. I told her to get Mike and Steve ready as we went by the house toward the travel agency. A guy on the street told us the boat was leaving at 5:30 – half an hour. The travel agent echoed the same thing. But everyone in town seemed to know of the Americans who slept outside all night waiting for the boat.
We gathered our bags and raced to the dock three blocks away. We would be the only passengers, the boat having transferred all the others last night when it broke down (probably to the Lider do Mar, which was so overfull). On the boat was us, the crew, and about 30 motorcycles.
We pulled away from the dock at about 5:45, just before sunset. Party music sang from an amplifier upstairs and a couple kids were grabbing their clothes from lines strung across the top deck. They would dance in between each set of clothes they picked up. I looked ahead to the endless horizon of the Amazon River. I walked to the aft and wondered about the story of the boat last night. I remembered staring upstream frequently last night looking in the dark for this boat. Finally, I looked back at Obidos. The colorful angular buildings cut a small swatch out of the surrounding jungle. The structures climbed from the white boats at port up the hills, but none towered over the surrounding jungle. They stood out, but not over.
That made our stay in Obidos a total of 61 hours. “All you do in Obidos,” they had told us in Manaus, “is eat, drink, fish, and sleep.” Yeah, that is about right, but it is also the short version…
Saturday, Our First Day in Obidos
Our first morning in Obidos, Saturday the 26th, was hot. The sun, like everywhere else around here, was direct, but here it was God Light, making the land a bit more colorful, reminding me of Guanajuato in Mexico. The sidewalks, lojas (stores), praca (square), houses, and churches all beamed their own identities amongst each other. Photos came easily.
That afternoon, we piled into Paulo’s green 4-door sedan on our way out of downtown Obidos to get lunch in Curucamba. The state road of 8 km turned into a state mud pit obstacle course at around 5 km. A dog took a mud bath on the right side of the road as we navigated the left side a good 2 meters lower.
Paulo’s English isn’t great. He is one of those people I like speaking to in Portuguese because he finds it a lot easier to speak Portuguese. But does like having people to talk to in English, so he was also a good guide for us. He could say things that we’d understand, but they wouldn’t have the full connotation. 
For instance, he said we were “going to Curucamba for lunch.” That was like saying we were going to the Super Bowl just to get a bag of peanuts. Yeah, we had lunch, but that wasn’t the main attraction.
We pulled up to a wooden bridge, the stream running under it and forming the restaurant. A couple tables at partially submerged in the stream. A wooden walking bridge also was partially underwater. Roofed shelters had tables high and dry but with obvious openings to go in and get out of the stream. No one was there but us and the help! For 5 reais (about $3) a plate, we got a few plates of (very good) fish and rice, some chicken, and some beef for “Stevie”, as he is called here and as we have started calling him.
Shoes off, we walked on the partially submerged bridge to our shelter. We ate, drank, and floated down the stream – all repeated over and over again. It was Mike’s birthday, so we sang for him. We played Uno, told jokes, and told stories. We drank 14 bottles of Nova Schin beer, each one probably a liter. We talked about books, politicians, and health care. Mike and Stevie picked on each other. We talked about movies and music. I translated some of the craziness for Paulo. Some of it didn’t need translation. It was 4 or 5 hours doing what you’re supposed to do when surrounded by friends, nature, and a supply of alcohol. We drank two more bottles of beer on our way to leave. Mike wrote in chalk on the pool table, “For a good time, call Steve Molitoris at 215-555-BALLS.”
A couple hours later, we presented Rotary pins and a district flag to Paulo and three other members of the Obidos Rotary. We didn’t hide our sophomoric stories of the afternoon, but our sophomoric selves were a little tired. In fact we talked of business, family, and philosophy. Paulo’s wife, Marilene, particularly passed this on: “Tudo vale a pena se a alma nao e pequena – Everything is worth it if your soal is big enough.” She spoke of the special Carnaval in Obidos – Carnapauxis, the “pauxis” part being a special reference to the povo (people) of the area. It was her favorite Carnaval and all spoke fondly of it. There is much pride in Brazilian people and I could tell that Marilene had much pride for the povo of Obidos particularly.
Sunday, Our Supposed Last Day in Obidos
After 29 hours in Obidos, it was 9 AM on Sunday. Things began again. We tried to tour the downtown, only a couple blocks from the uptown we toured the day before. But the fish processing plant was closed. They had two large catfish with remarkable patterns in them. We looked at them for five minutes, pinched ourselves for the opportunity to enjoy standing around looking at two dead fish in the middle of the Amazon, then moved on.
The People’s Market was a decrepit wooden structure on the edge of a little inlet off the river. Inside was a market of meat and meat and fish and maybe some other things. It wasn’t the cleanest, but what struck me was that the end of the market away from the street – it was flooded with water. People went on.
We got a little tour in a little boat on the little inlet. The driver had a little issue bring the boat to us through a not-so-little tangled mess of floating plants piled up along the side of the inlet. I had the distinct impression that no one had ever gotten a boat ride from there before. But I also realized that no one did exactly the same things there every day. Nature and nurture forced people to improvise every day there.
“Just one” was Paulo’s way of ordering beer all day the day before. As we got out of our little boat ride, Paulo was there with another beer. I helped him finish it. Then we were off with his wife, daughters, and two Rotarians, Mario and Celeste.
Mike and I were in the back of Mario’s homemade truck. (The thing shifted gears like I have never seen before with no obvious logic to how he did it.) Mike tried surfing the bed of the truck. I got used to jumping as a good way to get out. It rained on us, at times pretty hard, but the heat and the wind were enough to keep us from soaking.
The Swamp
The first stop was Paulo’s uncle’s house, about 7 km down the 8 km road to Curucamba. He had gotten electricity for the first time the day before. They already had a TV and a TV guide. They were cutting up a turtle for a churrasco when we arrived. Chickens ran wild all over the place. Birds that walked like ducks, talked like ducks, but only kinda looked like ducks ran with the chickens.
One of his uncle’s workers led us out across the fields to hike. Marilene was dressed up in dressy platform shoes, short skirt, designer sunglasses, large bracelets and ankle bracelets, and a jeweled belly button ring. As the trail became an elevated wooden path, she continued. The bridge ended and we had to walk through water to another elevated wooden path. She walked through the water with the heels on! The image was so contradictory. She did turn back when the wooden path became unstable, but most of the rest of us continued.
The path led through a swamp. The wood creaked, cracked, and sometimes perilously slipped around. The swamp made eerie sounds. My god, there had to be some kind of dangerous man-eating creature in there or Hollywood has no credibility. We walked for 5-10 minutes and no one fell in. At the end was a larger platform on the edge of a stream, the stream that actually comes from Curucamba. The wood still was about to fall apart and Mike almost ate it when a very loose board popped up as he stepped on it. Rusty nails were everywhere. I decided that swimming was safer than walking on the platform for very long. People seemed to watch me from the platform as though I was a circus performer sticking my head in a lion’s mouth.
Of course, it was all fine. Walking back on the same elevated wooden path over the swamp was the bigger deal. You just can’t count on Uncle Sam rules of safety and handicap access in such places.
Curucamba, The Second Time
How you arrange your seating is such a big deal in situations like this. Paulo and I are the primary intermediaries in the group – the two who speak both languages. When we arrived at Curucamba for Round 2, we didn’t get the seating quite right. I was at the end tucked in with the GSE team. Paulo was better positions but alone in trying to build interconversation. We moved shortly to another location and mixed far better.
It was also easier there to play Uno. A game played on as Marilene and I engaged in a second philosophical conversation. Her depth of thought and of Portuguese easily outshone mine. I did have to protest her fatalistic belief that Brazil would only be treated as a colony, especially by a nationalistic America. With similar underlying beliefs – “peace and love” as she said in English – we did differ in extension. And maybe it is my longtime inability to adopt any simple philosophy. I don’t think that all people or even most people are one way or another. They all emphasize different emotions, thoughts, drives, and abilities. Building a philosophy or moral code without explicit understanding of human variability seems to lead to generalizations that people take too far too often. I couldn’t express that in Portuguese and I apologize to whomever it harms. Marilene and I may not have seen eye to eye, but we sat and discussed face to face some things that did make me – at least me – think. Whether you agree on how much your head or heart should rule – something we disagreed upon – it was good to use a little of the head.
Nightfall
After many more “just one’s” and more swimming, we only had a few hours before our schedule 8 pm boat back to Santarem. Before then, we wanted to give Mike an opportunity to drop his clothes and soccer balls with needy kids in Obidos. Not just “drop”, but actually interact. Paulo led us to the part of Obidos to do that. We jumped out of the back of the truck and it began.
The people knew they weren’t saved by knights on white horses. They got a few things to help out. The kids would smile, the parents were quietly appreciative. A couple kids loved their stuff. Some kids didn’t seem to know what to do, especially one little boy with his soccer ball who had very subtle expressions of joy, fear, and confusion. “I just wish I had more,” Mike said. You can always say that, though, about a lot of life.
We arrived at 7 pm at the docks for our 8 pm boat. At the bar right next door, “Just one” rang out at least 8 or 9 times as Paulo, Steve, Mary, and I drank beer as it got late with no Cezar Brelaz showing up. At 9 pm, I suggested Paulo bring his wife home. The DVD music video wasn’t entertaining anyone any more. Marilene, Mike, and Mary all got rest in the car. Paulo, Steve, and I shut down the bar approaching midnight. I walked around to stay awake. The boat, Cidade de Oriximina, was in port, I noted.
Finally, Paulo said his good-bye, leaving us on the dock under shelter with 15 or 20 other people. That was midnight. My water was running low, as was my energy. A TV was on and showed various shows from Garden State to some vampire movie to random Brazil novelas. Stevie, Mary, and Mike mostly sat and tried to sleep. Stevie never tried but sat patiently. I walked – or paced – looking up into the dark of the up-river Amazon for boats. I sat on the ground for a while and slept for maybe 15 minutes, the bugs creeping around my ankles and anything that got near the ground.
At about 3 am, a boat came in. It wasn’t ours. A guy asked where we were going – I said Santarem. He said we should have gotten on the Juli Bel, which went by at around 12:30 or so. Mike was getting testy, Stevie was losing patience, Mary was frustrated. Somehow there was an effort to get on this boat, regardless. It was not going to Santarem, I already knew. Mike kept trying to talk to people and I had gone back to shelter to stay dry. He said he needed me because he didn’t understand what people were saying. “They are going to Oriximina!” I said, not calmly, wanting to make clear that getting on a random boat was not a good option. I talked to the guy who told me I should have gotten on the Juli Bel. He at least told me that the Cezar Brelaz hadn’t gone by. Where was it? They didn’t know. Steve complained about, “Don’t they have a radio? Is this how rock stars get treated?” One of the few people remaining with us was also trying to go to Santarem, but on the Lider do Mar. That sounded like an option for us.
That was when Mike saw the dock workers sneaking up to sleep on the Ana Beatriz. I don’t know why I was the one who went up there. I remember finding out that the Ana Beatriz would leave at 8:30 pm the next day. Then I remember entering survival mode.
We survived. In the big picture sense, calling it survival seems overly dramatic. We’re now in a camarote, almost alone on a boat to Santarem. The boat had to perch itself on a little island to wait out a big storm. Not doing that would have been more dangerous than anything we endured since 8 pm last night.
