It was time for an adventure. Well maybe a sub adventure to the main adventure. But one I was looking forward to. As I mentioned earlier it was very difficult to get any current info so I just plugged my destination, Santarem, into google maps, and followed the road about 15 minutes to where my first ferry departed. Or so I thought. Here is my plan again. Ride from Belem on the blue line. Take a ferry or boat of some kind on the red line down the Amazon to Macapa. Avoid the common overnight ferry on the yellow line.

Turns out google maps was wrong and there was no ferry there, and no one knew anything about such a ferry. This didn’t bode well for my ferry based trip. After about 15 minutes I finally found someone who said there was a ferry and gave me the name of the correct departure point and it was only 5 minutes away. In the long run it didn’t affect my departure time at all as I arrived just as the ferry was about to load. Another nice little ferry ride that took me out of the city and saved me a couple of hours of riding. These ferries always seem to be about an hour and a half and cost $8AUD.

I was able to eat some nice fatty food which they sold in the shop on the ferry and enjoy the first part of my ride in comfort as Belem City disappeared behind me. There weren’t many people on the ferry.

The ferry was really just a barge that was cabled to a little tug boat thing. They seemed pretty common and went lots of directions from Belem to various little places dotted around the river system. It was cool to see some of the local villages and houses nestled into the shoreline as we sailed past.

It was a 450km day and the roads were pretty good. Even some of the potholes were marked. I stopped at some random place and had a nice feed. There was one pleasant surprise when I came across a hyrdo dam and the spill gates looked like they were all open. It is amazing how much power water has. I sat there for a while watching it. Like some sort of weirdo. There’s a weir joke here somewhere but I’ll skip it.

With the ferry crossing and the ride I ended up in Novo Repartimiento just on dark. I had a hotel pre-picked out just in case I got that far but turns out they were full! So I went to the second option down the road, Hotel Shalom $42AUD with a crappy breakfast but I was tired after a lot of riding in the rain so I was just happy to have somewhere. The next day I planned to ride to Uruara so that my third day would be short because I had heard there was 100kms of bad road in that last section.

I left about 8:00am and was doing well and thought I would end up doing the 550kms quite quickly and get into town early for a change. That didn’t happen. I didn’t even make it to Uruara. The scenery was not very jungly, by the way, but I think this road had been here for quite a long time and so it was well settled on either side. There was one patch of a couple of kilometres of roadworks which wasn’t nice in the rain. I had been thinking how nice the road was, and how there were hardly on trucks on this road. and then around lunchtime I found out why.

There was one short ferry crossing on a river that I didn’t even know about it. Turns out that the local indigenous fishermen were blockading the ferry with their small boats. There was a long queue, and I skipped to the front and ended up being there until 6:00pm. Interesting little stop.

Stinking hot then a tropical downpour. A tiny ferry town and only one small hotel which was booked out, so I decided if the ferry started at 6:00pm as per the rumours, then I’d go on it.

Broke all my rules. Riding in the dark. Riding in the rain in the dark. Riding fast to keep ahead of all the ferry traffic (because the bikes always get a head start). Fortunately, the road was in really good condition, probably one of the best, and even had cats eyes which were great with my somewhat dim headlight. And it was only 66kms to a big town of Altamira, where I was able to find a room at the hotel Soft Inn for $39AUD. Nice room. Jovial check in. Safe parking and great breakfast.

Next morning I still had 189kms, just to get to Uruara, the town I had planned to get to the previous night. Google said 4 hours. The weather said put on all your best raingear. It was raining as I loaded my bike. And I was off. Turns out google was wrong. It took 5 hours. The first part was some potholes and crappy bitumen but then there was 110kms of unfinished roadworks to ride through and it was horrible (but a bit of nice jungle on the road edges). Bogged trucks. A low small car with fuel pouring out from the tank. I had to drop back as I couldn’t pass it, and the fumes were terrible. Sliding everywhere, rain, mud, deep holes, water crossings and overall unpleasantness. At one stage I was riding slow in a 300mm deep trench caused by a truck. It suddenly was almost deeper than the wheels but the bike just rode up out of it with me just hanging on. In several spots I slipped around a few times and almost dropped it once, but I made it through to Uruara in time for a late petrol station lunch. Then I did a weather check.

Today was bad. Tomorrow was expected to be even worse. It was 2:00pm and I still had 200kms to get to Santarem and the Amazon River. I decided both me and the bike were already soaked and in mud mode so we’d just continue on. The bad section was the first 100kms and then okay bitumen after that. So mud in the daylight and still rideable on the better road in the dark if I had to. I was pumped. As I was leaving a truckie came up and had a brief chat. 1/3 English 1/3 Spanish and the rest Portuguese.  He was interested in my trip. He also mentioned that the road I was about to ride on was all sealed. Maybe a translation problem.

I sat at the start of the road under some shelter with some local bikes as we waited for the rain to ease. I was really touch and go as to staying the night in town and starting fresh tomorrow. Then there was a break in the clouds and the locals were off. So was I. The first 5kms was new bitumen and I was happy to have as many kms of sealed road as I could get. Every kilometre was a bonus. Suddenly it was 10kms and then 20 and then by 30kms I was daring to think I’d understood the truckie correctly and it was all bitumen. And new bitumen at that. Lovely riding and the sides of the road were not over developed, probably because the road was so new. It was pretty cool to see these two trees remaining from what was once all jungle. Sad also of course. I read that Brazilian law requires 80% of jungle to be left when land is cleared. Not sure how much law enforcement there is.

The new road gave me the time to take a few photos and stop off at a little store for a coke and nice charade interaction with a couple of farmers. I also watched a couple of guys fishing and a fast flowing river.

I arrived in town before dark and checked into the Practico Hotel ($51AUD). Looked flash but the room was pretty ordinary and no view. I wandered around for ages looking for something to eat. I found a pizza place that didn’t sell beer, and the guy said it was a 15 minute wait. I had a soda water and then after half an hour he came out and apologised for the wait and said it would be about another 20 minutes! He also said I could cancel if I wanted to. I was pretty tired after my long day and so I cancelled my order. He didn’t charge me for the soda water which I felt bad about. So I just went to bed hungry. Breakfast was good the next day.  I wandered out in the rain in the morning and walked along the river. The Amazon. How cool. And found a better hotel who said I could check in straight away. The Sandis Mirante and for only $8AUD more I was on the 3^rd floor with a window overlooking the Amazon. Fantastic.

The Amazon is really wide and obviously deep considering the size of the fuel tankers and container ships that I saw sail by. The water is also distinctly two colours or two rivers in Santarem. The light brown one closest to town is the Tapajos River (named after the Tapajos Indians who lived there before the Europeans arrived) and the other darker brown one that looks like a sand bank, is the Amazon. It has to do with temperature, flow rate and turbidity. They do mix together downstream a bit. I think they are both so brown at the moment because of all the heavy rain. I just found this rain chart. Maybe I should have looked at it in my planning stage. Who am I kidding? What planning stage? I think the bottom row means I was always going to get wet anyway,

It was nice being able to move into my new hotel early as it gave me time to dry out all my stuff and search for a ferry. I found the ferry terminal down river a couple of kms and there were lots of ferry booths but only one said a ferry to Macapa. One was all I needed. It left two times a week and takes about 38 hours for the 600km journey. The next departure was tomorrow night and that seemed fine. I bought a ticket. $85AUD for me and $170AUD for the bike. They did have a couple of cabins for about $300AUD but the hammock option was free. I just had to buy a hammock. There was a shop in the terminal that had one for $25AUD and she said she would be open tomorrow so I decided to buy it then, so I didn’t have to lug it around.

I also found a bike wash place just around the corner and so the bike was sparkly clean for the boat ride. That evening, I went for a walk around and then settled at a riverside bar and watched the passing traffic which included some swimmers. Upstream seemed a lot harder. And a floating petrol station. Half a pizza and one beer would have been better, but I was swallowed up by the enormity of sitting alongside the Amazon and over consumed. Needless to say I didn’t eat much breakfast the next day.

Checkout was at 12:00pm so I got my full 24 hours’ worth and then left my bike in the garage and went for a last wander and then sat upstairs in the hotel café for a couple of hours writing and enjoying the view and the passing squalls. About 4:00pm I rode around to the ferry terminal and then a couple of things didn’t go to plan. The hammock shop wasn’t open, so I had to find somewhere else. Which I did. Just near the ferry there was someone selling hammocks of course. A couple of bucks more but still very cheap. And then I couldn’t find the way to get into the ferry departure area. It was via an obscure gate where you had to pay the gatekeeper $10AUD to enter the port. But there it was, the “Quirino Neto” sitting there waiting for me. Just like you. Waiting for me to write about the trip down the Amazon. And it was awesome.