We arrived in Manaus, rubber boom capital of Brazil, at sunrise yesterday. Coming into the big city, the view from the back of the N/M Onze de Maio (11th of May) was a red hazed sunrise graduating into a deep blue sky with a single star hanging above our wake, while Manaus's refineries spewed flame and black smoke into the sky to my left.

Getting off the boat was a huge relief for me. While I did enjoy this trip immensely, I also caught a nasty stomach bug on the 3rd (or was it the 4th) day on the river. Diarrhea, fever and the occasional bout of throwing up for one day, then thankfully the fever eased by the next morning but I still have diarrhea now, a full day after getting off the boat. It was probably caused by the meat or the ship water, and 5-6 people on the boat also caught it. I personally feel it was the meat as I had two big servings the day before I got sick, and afterwards I saw how they store the beef: hanging from hooks downstairs (the boat has big windows that are just open to the air) for up to a day before they get butchered - and in the tropics, there's plenty of flies and other random wee beasties flying around... and don't even ask about the meat's proximity to the crew toilets!

So if you ever plan doing the epic "birdcage" journey up the incredible Amazon, I echo advice found elsewhere online: be very wary about eating the meat! Bottled water probably doesn't go amiss either.

Other than my sickness, the trip was awesome. Most of the people on board were great, and we've continued travelling with three of them. You spend all day chilling out on the top deck, playing cards and shooting the breeze... then at night, maybe have a few drinks and a dance, or sit at the back of the boat away from the bar music and play some guitar or one of the mouth organs that were going around! I managed to write five chapters of a story I was thinking of writing too, and a rather long diary that wasn't really important stuff but more random thoughts and observations I had at the time.

Sleeping arrangements aren't awesome, obviously. In heiji (hammock) class, you'll most likely be strung up with the people to each side so close you'll undoubtedly be touching one, the other, or both when you go to bed. Then the people in front and behind, if you're unlucky, may overlap, and you'll get feet over your head, or wonky hammock syndrome. Don't get me wrong - you can get very comfy in a hammock and have an almost-good night's sleep (I got one, on the night after my fever broke) - but there's certainly an art to it, and a degree of luck too. It can be quite stuffy some nights and very cold on others, when it's windy.

The Amazon itself is a very big river. I took a photo from port and starboard after we'd left the Para River (part of the massive, sprawling delta that's sizeable even on a world map) and it became one impossibly wide waterway. You could barely see the shore on each side.

The trees on the shore aren't really proper rainforest most of the time, though there are sometimes patches of quite tall jungly trees that seem to be trying to form a proper canopy, and you can almost imagine the monkeys swinging from the trees. A lot of the land is cleared though - and I mean a lot. Some of it by man, some of it probably because the water level rises and falls quite considerably depending on the season, so nothing but mangrove-type trees can grow safely close to the edge.

Very large swatches of almost-tamed grassy blocks are abundant. Some are natural, narrow stretches that run for miles between strips of water, as if the river's been through a paper shredder. Others are deforestation, stumps as evidence, but with no sign of humans for miles. Then there are the tiny settlements, which are so common it makes you wonder how the hell the Brazilian government can ever hope to do an accurate census. There are no roads, just little farms with a few cows, the occasional village with a few buildings and a church in the middle of the jungle, or maybe just a house. Every point of human habitation has a jetty, and they use boats here like northern Brazilians use motorbikes.

Anyway, I could write a lot more about what we saw as we lounged up top on the gently swaying deck of the 11 de Maio, passing time and chatting, whether in english, german, portugese, spanish or scottish (haha - one of the guys on the trip was from Skye!).

Today, after we get our laundry back, we're going to try and get to the meeting of the waters, which I'll blog more on afterwards... our new travelling companions are very handy - native spanish speakers, and one is fluent in portugese too. Miguel and Christian are from Mexico, and Derianne is from Puerto Rico. They met at uni in California and decided to come travel around South America, and we're going with them as far as Peru after Manaus, and may well bump into them again in Bolivia!

Signing off...  ¶ 9:05 AM