Manaus To Santarem

Another early morning start as we walked down to the port at dawn to catch the Santarem boat. This time there was none of the queuing and complication that we had in Tabatinga - we showed our ticket and went straight on to the boat.

The early bird catches the best hammock position, and the first impressions of the Madame Crys were positive. It seemed to be a more modern boat than for Tabatinga to Manaus. It didn’t fill up completely but was busy and we did the right thing getting there early.

As we left Manaus It was clear that this was a more powerful, but less noisy, boat. We were up front looking for the meeting of the waters as the appropriately named Río Negro joins the Amazon a short distance out from Manaus For kilometres the two rivers run with little mixing and very different colours, and our boat steered very close to the visible dividing line.

By now of course the river is very wide, although still the boat often takes a course closer to one side. We were now seeing a different forest from that of the upper Amazon, less dense and with much more signs of human impact and settlement.

Lunch confirmed that we were on a smarter boat, the food was similar style to the previous boat but noticeably better. We had a bar that sold beer and plenty of space on the upper deck for river watching. Mealtimes were still early, so not long after dark we were already settling in the hammocks for the night.

Daybreak was hazy over the river, as It had been approaching Manaus. The boat stopped in a couple of places on the way, quite large towns like Obidos and Parintins. It was a relatively short 30 hour journey, short by Amazonia standards.

By mid afternoon we could see Santarem ahead of us, we arrived more or less on time. First priority on arriving was ensuring we had out tickets for the next, and final, boat to Belém. We were going to have one more day than expected in Santarem but were still on target for getting to the end. The taxi driver who took us to our hostel explained the hazy visibility. Fires in the región, and this was more or less a normal situation here.