6/21/2014 On the Itaberaba and a Fast Boat to Manaus

As we went to bed, we thought that Saturday would be another relaxed day on the river, watching three World Cup games and enjoying a warm afternoon on our deck of the boat witnessing the sun set on the riverside jungle.

That was not to be the case.

At about 4 am last night, we ran into a violent thunder storm. We could hear the rain beating down on the roof like hail and see flashes of lightening though our louvered door.

Before long, we heard a banging coming from outside. It sounded as if someone were dragging a heavy metal box along the corridor outside our door.  Groggy from malaria pill induced deep sleep, we speculated that it may have been thunder because we certainly had the rain.

At daybreak, John looked out the door and saw that our bow was incrusted into the jungle river bank and that the boat was listing slightly to the port side. In the background, we heard someone on the boats intercom giving some sort of message. We hurriedly dressed and went out to the back deck to find other passengers milling around, the younger passengers with their life vests already on. 

Back at the bow, we saw that we had been thrust at least 30 feet into the jungle bank and that a number of trees had been knocked down. Looking down at the bow buried in the mud, we saw several crew members clambering around on the fallen trees with machetes in hand. We assumed that they were trying to extricate the boat from the tangle of fallen trees until we realized that they taking advantage of the situation and were harvesting wild cacao pods!

Aboard the Clavero up the Maranon, at night and during storms, we had tied up to trees on the river banks so we thought that this was a routine storm related tie up. However, as we returned to the stern, we saw that the engine was being revved up unsuccessfully trying to disengage us from the river bank.

Of course, none of the passengers knew what was going on so we began try to piece together what had happened. The purser, a very attentive woman to whom we had been introduced before we left Tabatinga, told us that during the night a sudden wind storm had arisen and had blown us around 360 degrees. Then the wind had forced us along the shore and finally we were pushed bow first into the jungle. There we sat unable to get off the bank.

Over coffee, we learned from the other gringos aboard what had happened below decks. They had felt the boat moving erratically and suddenly a rush of water poured onto their deck drenching the luggage, back packs etc. which were on the floor between their hammocks. The passengers scrambled out of the hammocks and loaded their stuff back into the hammocks to get out of water. At that point, the below decks passengers were not sure whether the boat was going down or not.

By now it was apparent that we just were stuck on the bank. We were not in any real trouble. While David sent a text message to Susie over the SAT phone a passenger from Alaska had, John watched as a small passenger boat tried without success to help us off the bank by attaching a tow rope to our stern.  The small boat just didn’t have the power, so off it went. Next a tugboat appeared heading up river pushing two big barges loaded with among other things, school chair/desks, three new aluminum skiffs and a big truck. The tug crew tied a thick rope from the barge to our stern and pulled and pushed us for about 45 minutes while our captain revved the engines. All of this provided entertainment to local people on a half a dozen canoes who appeared from nowhere.

David had a fiesta photographing and filming the goings on and interviewing the passengers. He was a regular little Wolf Blitzer and if he had had internet connection, you would have seen him on CNN’s I News.

Finally we came free of the bank with a crashing of trees knocked down by our departure. The tug continued up stream and we, downstream.

We learned that with this delay and the other ones up river, our arrival time had been pushed back from 6 pm to 2 am on Sunday, the day of the USA vs. Portugal game in Manaus. We were told that we could stay aboard to sleep the entire night if we wanted, rather that brave the Manaus waterfront with all of our bags in the middle of the night.

A short time later, from our upper deck we noticed a long thin “fast” passenger boat approach and tie up alongside.  John went down to investigate and found that some of our fellow passengers were jumping ship. He told the fast boat crew that we too would like to join the exodus and he ran upstairs and alerted David. We stuffed our bags in a hurry leaving behind all the food supplies, towels, knives and forks, t-paper etc. that we had bought in Leticia and made it down to the lower deck as the crew of the fast boat hurried us on. Fortunately, one of the crew had followed John to our cabin and picked up David’s heavy bags.

We finished an airline type chicken dinner on a tray and felt as if we have escaped the “green hell”, at least for a while.

Luck was with us so we flew at 40 MPH in the fast boat and arrived in in Manaus in six hours. There was the usual 3^rd world scrum of porters, taxi drivers, hangers on, pickpockets and passengers at the dock as we disembarked with our bags but we made it through and got a taxi to our very nice hotel near the Manaus Amazonas Opera House.  The hotel was filled with pale faced North American soccer fans who looked with askance at two smelly, unshaven, sunburned Amazon travelers as we checked in.