I pulled up near the ramp in a location that I could see the ferry and they could see me and I wasn’t hindering the loading of the ship. My new home for the next couple of nights. I wandered aboard between moving vehicles and explored the ship. I found a woman with a desk and a short queue, and she checked my ticket and gave me a wristband. That’s it. Work the rest out yourself.

The ferry was slightly bigger than I had imagined but turned out to be just the ferry I wanted. It does what we Australians call the milk/mail run. It stops in at all the little towns and villages along the way and drops off things and picks up stuff. But first it needed to be loaded. An Australian Worksafe nightmare. Having spent several seasons in Antarctica where we are to people who load and unload the ship, it was so refreshing to see how smoothly it all ran. Even without all the top heavy levels of safety and management.

The boat appeared to be loaded by the departure time, but they still hadn’t called me on. They gave me the wait there signal, and the thumbs up signal and then the ferry untied and backed away from the shore. I had no idea what was going on but I just did what they asked. It moved over several metres and then came ashore again, and a new flatter ramp was attached with the same old clapped out front end loader they were using earlier. A semi then backed on and unhitched its trailer and drove away. Then a small truck and a couple of cars went on and then they waved me on and said park anywhere but leave the bike unlocked so they could move it if needed. No tiedowns on anything.

Then the loader helped take some of the weight off the ferry’s loading ramp as they manually hauled the chains to raise it, and we were off. 15 minutes behind schedule. I’d call it on time. Just on sunset. I grabbed a beer from the bar and watched Santarem light up as the darkness arrived. I also watched as we crossed the line in the water from the Tapajos River into the Amazon River. Seamless. Not even a bump. It was pretty cool to be on a ferry, on the Amazon and sailing off into the darkness.

I’m sure I was the only tourist on the boat. And the only white guy. And the only person who spoke English. But I was cool with that. The ferry had everything I needed. Toilet/shower combos. A bar and a little snack shop. A gym. Ha. A little restaurant that opened for 3 meals a day. I had evening meals both nights. First night fish. Second night meat. Both times with rice, beans, spaghetti, and a sort of salad. All crammed in a styrofoam container and eaten with plastic cutlery at two small communal tables. And a bargain at about eight bucks.

There were two sleeping decks and numbered places for over 300 hammocks but fortunately only about 70 passengers, so we were well spaced out. I grabbed an edge location so I could lie in my hammock and watch the world go by. Despite motoring downstream, we had the engine running and it was a pretty consistent noise, although by the end of the trip I didn’t notice it anymore. When I did notice it was during the night when it backed off. And so I would get up to see why. It was mainly because we pulled up to jetties at little villages to do people or supplies transfers. Sometimes just for a few minutes. Other times for an hour or so.

Sometime on the first night we must have stopped and loaded on hundreds of crates and bags of limes. I could smell them before I saw them.

Another time we stopped outside an iceworks and loaded on styrene foam boxes in wooden frames. I imagine they were full of fish and ice. Working in the dark and in thongs it was interesting to watch the crew manually haul about 50 crates onto the boat. There was a small onboard ferry that would move things around once they were loaded on. The boxes must have weighed over 100kgs each. A lot of manual dragging and lifting but I guess they do it at least twice a week.

Other times we would just slow down and boats would pull up alongside and people would get on or off. Other times supplies like bags of flour or corn, or seed were dropped off and money exchanged. Other times just a couple of boxes of fish or some fruit. One time it was just a metal tub of freshly slaughted meat (which I guess we ate), and another time a big fish which I guess ended up in the kitchen as well.

Sometimes the boats just appeared from the darkness and then did their business and disappeared again. Some well lit, and others without lights. I was able to track our location on my phone and found sometimes the boat was on land. We took all the side channels and short cuts and went behind islands. It was a maze out there but all wide and all deep enough for our ferry obviously. and in the main river there were huge ships like the one in the top right photo below.

In the day time it was great just watching little places we passed and wonder what it would be like living your life out there. A lot of the land near the river seemed flooded but I assume that it dries out for certain parts of the year.

Some places had little strips of land with several houses, others had wooden walkways joining a few houses together. All simple little wooden houses. No city services. Just us and the ferry. Now and then there were little towns that were only accessible by boat. Others maybe had poor road access.

I saw a few places that had some sort of cattle or water buffalo. Some pigs. Some chickens. And everything was green. So green.

Sleeping in a hammock works better after too many beers and I didn’t want to do that, but I did manage to get a few hours in here and there. I didn’t really talk to anyone for the trip. Now that I think about it no one talked much to anyone. It was all peaceful. Except when they cranked up the speaker at the bar. Fortunately that didn’t happen much. There was only a couple of people on the ferry that drank a beer. Lots of locals going to the big smoke or returning home. Only once we stopped long enough to lower the ferry ramp and unload a heap of sack of grain and some construction materials.

And just a couple more random photos because I can. The Amazon is so huge. Did I mention that?

About 4:00am on the second night the engines died down and I saw lights and so knew we were in a place with electricity. We had arrived in Macapa about 4 hours early. I think that it is probably a common thing. Some people just stayed in their hammocks. Others slowly packed up. I went down onto the main deck and the guys were starting to offload the fish crates. All manually onto carts with big wheels. Then a truck arrived and started taking limes as I was packing up my bike.

Once I was packed up, I nodded a goodbye to my hammock neighbour, and said goodbye to the crew. Although we never really spoke, we had some sort of rapport as I was often down on the main deck watching stuff being loaded and unloaded at all times of the day and night. It was a fun adventure and now I was off to find a hotel. I had picked one with 24 hour reception as it was still dark and very early. I stopped and filled up with fuel and to put on my rain gear as it had started raining. It was a 20 minute ride form where the Quirino Neto docked and the city of Macapa. And strangely enough, it was in the northern hemisphere and I was still in the southern hemisphere and so I had to ride across the equator. In the dark.