Travel Diary: 5 days on an Amazon Ferry Boat (January 2024)

Tuesday 9 January (Day 1)

6:00 – Early morning wake-up call at the private marina we have been camped at the last few days as many kayakers and rowers arrived for what we presume is pre-work exercise session.

9:30 –  After a quick stop at the bakery we arrive at the ferry dock and Stuart sets off to try find out how we “check-in”.  There seems to be a lot of organised choas.  At first there is some confusion as too our ticket and the boats list but eventually it is clarified and we are told to wait.  The ferry is only due to depart at 18:00 today but we had been told to come early, no idea when they will load the cars and there seem to be far more cars than deck space. In the meantime, they are loading all sorts of cargo into the hold and onto part of the car deck.

10:00 – We take our hammocks on board and find the bottom deck to be quite full so head upstairs to the 2^nd deck.  It is not clear how or if anything is organised and while standing around looking a little lost, a friendly chap in plain clothes introduces himself as the Captain.   We ask him where is the best place and side to put our hammock and he helps to rig them up.

10:15 – Stuart decided he may as well start working on the new bumper watertank (our previous one cracked a couple of days ago) and so leaves Tania with her kindle and hammock and our phones plugged-in too a electrical outlet directly above our hammocks

12:00 – There seems to be some activity around the cars, so Stuart finsihes up with gluing the watertank and packs his tools away.  Hopefully he can complete the cutting and gluing of the tank while underway on the ferry so we are “good to go” once we reach Manaus.

13:00 – Roughly 14 cars/SUVs have been loaded, Mr. Jones was second to last to be loaded.

14:00 – Upper deck is starting to get fuller.

14:35 – we get our taste of what could be a regular occurance, a torrential downpour.  There are tarpaulin sides which can be dropped to prevent rain entering the sleeping quarters.

18:18 – We are underway, no streamers or firecrackers to mark our departure so we pop a selfie of the two of us in our hammocks.  Not being regular selfie takers, in the first attempt Tania looks like we suspect we might feel on day 5.

19:00 – the rivers serve as a highway to all over the Amazon river delta and its tributories and so there are many ferry boats going all over the place.  We get overtaken by one that is similar in look and size to the one we are on

21:00 – 

Our location @ 21:00

We had originally hoped to be able to lift Mr. Jones roof and sleep inside him as well as cook suppers but as we didn’t know how easy it would be to access him and had read that the deck of the ferry was quite sloped, Tania had pre-prepared a number of meals which just required heating up.  As it turns out we can’t lift the roof without potentially blocking the Captains view of the river ahead, the deck is sloped and we won’t even be able to use our external gas stove as there is no space next to MR. J, the cars are packed in like sardine.  Supper tonight was cold hot dogs!  At least we can bring our chairs upstairs and have created a “lounge” in which we can drink our wine.

10 January 2024, Wednesday (Day 2)

6:00 –

Our location @ 06:00 on 10 January

8:00 –

Docked in Breves, loading new passengers and offloading cargo and for some perspective: this is the largest town on an island called Marajó. The island is comparable in size to Switzerland and is the worlds 35th largest island.  And we are not even in the ocean, just the river delta!

10:44 –

Latest location, we are idling in middle of river so this guy can pull up and offload his multiple bundles of what look like broomsticks.  Who would have guessed the logistical chain involved in getting a wooden broom stick to a store near you…

13:30 –

Cruising slowly through a narrow tributory. The locals paddle out towards the ferry boats in anticipation of “parcels” being thrown overboard for them. The parcels consist of food or clothes which passengers have put together and donate – on one hand it can look like a nice charitable thing to do but having seen how many boats are plying this route their must in fact be a booming second-hand thrift shop in the area. And in the most extreme case a powered motorboat picked up a few packets, then pulled alongside and proceeded to sell sundried shrimp and açaí to the passengers (don’t think they where in need of donations).

14:30 – 

We just paused for a quick passenger pickup: Mom and her about 6-year old daughter transferred from this local taxi to our ferry. Stationary time, possibly under one minute 👀👀

17:15 – 

We have finally entered the Amazon River having reached it 23 hours since leaving Belem and as we did, this little canoe motored up with a food delivery. It’s about the 4th one today, so we are beginning to think that some passengers have the equivalent of a Mr D delivery app. Always the same food: sun dried camorone (shrimp) and acai 

21:00 Gurupa Town – 

Per Wikipedia, the town is 300km inland from Amazon mouth and is the centre for palm heart extraction in the region. Looks like we will be here for a few hours as they unload cargo. We thought it was strange when the boat lights went out 30min earlier tonight in the sleeping area but that was so they could switch them on again at 9pm it seems..

11 January, Thursday (Day 3)

5:00 – Town of Almerien – 

Didn’t think the boat could take anymore passengers but silly us.  Stuart was already almost bumping hammocks with the lady next to him and yet a mother and daughter who just boarded managed to put theirs either side of the lady next to him.  The mother has serious attitude but on the “bright side” she had to string her hammock like a bunk bed and her top bunk is now directly below the night light that stays on when we sleeping and so Stuart doesn’t have to sleep with his hat over his eyes anymore

With two nights of sleeping in hammocks under our belts, we haven’t done too bad for rest, Tania slept very well on night 1 and Stuart okay. On the second night we seem to have reversed the roles.  Hammocks are not that great for sleeping in as they place a lot of pressure on certain points and you can’t just roll over. Also, ours are perhaps a bit small when comparing to other passengers. It seems the best way to sleep in them is slightly diagonally and a bigger one is better for that. (The things you learn 🙈)

9:10 –

We are in the middle of nowhere, all of a sudden the engines go into idle and many curious passengers get up to see what’s happening down the side of the boat.  A small boat has pulled up alongside, ties on briefly while a few huge polystyrene cooler boxes are offloaded (presumably shrimp or fish) and one passenger who is standing on the roof of the small boat embarques.   5 minutes later we are back underway

12:00 – Prainha

The larger village of Prainha. After the 5am boarding earlier today we were now truly convinced that no more passengers could be fitted, guess we were wrong once again. All those under the canopy in the below pictures are boarding. We are hanging tight to our seating area and having learnt from previous “space invaders” when we lost valuable real estate because we either weren’t in the hammocks or had them tied out the way for our seating/lounge have put our hammocks and chairs out BUT based on the circling peeps with hammocks in hand looking for a spot,  don’t know if we will be able to resist an invasion for too long.  Interestingly, based on the map it seems this town and a few west of it are actually connected by some kind of road inland.

17:00 Town of Monte Alegre

It has taken 5 hours to sail from Prainha to this one, two of the towns connected by road inland.  

It is also the first first mass disembarkation since we started in Belem and we actually have a little space around us, we were a bit sad to see the family directly next to us leave, as they have been super sweet and had a real cute little boy who, on the first morning,  decided Tania was his new favourite aunty to play “hide behind a 10cm wide pole with”.  We have felt quite sorry for some passengers as some that boarded earlier today could not find space anywhere so have been hanging around the last 5 hours hoping to get a spot. As soon as people started to pack up they moved into spaces.  Will be interesting to see if we get a lot of new arrivals, embarking from this town as well and where they will find space.

The dockside vendors here have an ingenious method for both receiving payment and passing goods up to the passengers.  In other towns they have just stormed on board as soon as the boat pulled alongside and then have to dash to get off again when it starts to pull away.

12 January, Friday (Day 4)

00:35 The major town of Santarem

The Captain told us when we passed him on the deck yesterday afternoon that we would dock in Santarem at 1am, so when we were woken by the engines going into idle at 00:35 we thought we were early BUT in what was a truly impressive parallel parking maneuver (over the next 25 minutes) we did in fact tie off to the dock at only a few minutes passed 1.

The ferry behind us only got bumped once in the entire process, causing it to shift slightly and create a bit of excitement for a few of its passengers who were on the gangplank disembarking at that point.

If Stuart’s Portuguese counting was correct we will be here until 11am although our Ghanaian friend who speaks Portuguese seem to think we may be here all day as the offload and load cargo.  And if we understood the Captain correctly we can go ashore and wander around Santarem. 

First priority however, once it is a more reasonable hour is to use the fact that we should now have cell signal on our “hotspot” phone to answer some queries that have come through on Tania’s Colombia visa application (while we have Starlink connection on our phones these queries need a computer the WiFi we paid for on the boat is for one device only).  We have limited time to answer those and so don’t want to wait until getting off the ferrry in Manaus to attend to that.

Once we had dealt with the visa queries we decided against going onshore in case we had misunderstood the departure time, last thing we need is for the boat to pull away without us as there is no passenger check as to who disemabrks or embarks at these stops.  They do very informally “check-in” new passengers.

So instead Stuart used the stationary time to finalise the last bit of cutting and gluing for the watertank. In the below pic it is clear how tight the parking space was when we arrived, the forward hull of the next boat overhangs ours.

11:00 Santarem

And we are underway again.  Looks like Stuart’s  ability to count and tell the time in Portuguese has improved as he understood EL Capitan perfectly yesterday for both arrival time and departure time.

As we pull away from town we get to see our first “meeting of the rivers”.

There are a couple of points along the Amazon river system were two rivers come together but don’t mix for a number of kilometres.  This non-mixing occurs because the two rivers flow at significantly different speeds, have different temperatures as well as different solid densites making the division clearly visible.  In the case of Santerm, it is the sediment heavy Amazon and clearer Tapajos river.

17:20 Middle of nowhere, Time for sundowners

It has been a long day of cruising with no stops or small boats pulling up alongside, probably because we have been in the main Amazon channel which is just ginormous. You can barely see the other side and even ocean-going size vessels look small when far away.

Got the GPS out around lunchtime to see what speed we cruise at = it seems to be constant 17km/h

When we do venture into the side channels or around islands there is noticeably less dense forest and more grassland which means cattle farming. Have spotted a few barges setup like floating kraals presumably for taking the beef to market. 

13 January, Saturday (Day 5)

5:10am, Small town of Parantins

Another early wake up call, as we pull into this little village. Mr Jones will lose one of his voyage mates as the car next to him (with bicycles on the back), gets off here. But first they must offload the one in front of him (this one joined in Santarem).

That was our 4^th night of sleeping in the hammocks and hammock life ain’t all it’s cracked out to be (not a palm tree or cocktail in sight). Sleeping twisted like a banana is awkward, puts a lot of pressure on your neck and gives us a headache! Wriggling can set off a domino effect with the hammocks to your side BUT wriggling is the only way to change position and put the pressure on a different point.

5am wake-up call

The locals seem to cope with hammock life much better than we do, from really young to some on the boat who must be in their late 70’s already.   This youngster even had a very cool hammock which was perfect for a little boy. 

As we pulled away from Parantins we made a number of sightings of the pink river dolphin, known in this part of the world as a Boto.  Folklore has it that they morph at night into handsome men and seduce the women. Seeing as it was early Saturday morning we reckon they were heading home after a succesful night on the town.

8:15 Middle of the main Amazon channel

As we head down the back stairs for breakfast @ Mr. Jones, the further inland we have gone the wider the river seems to have got. For perspective, in the below picture, there is another ferry boat in the top middle left of the picture.

11:25 / 10:24 Saturday

Time zone crossed, we just gained an hour, however lunch (for those that take it in the canteen) is being served on the old time zone time. In the meantime, while we are cruising close to the one bank, you can barely see the other side.

In the dry season (which we are currently at the end of) the Amazon is usually between 3 and 10km wide. In the wet season that width can triple meaning some parts are 50km wide creating huge underwater forest areas. 

And the delta mouth where it empties into the Atlantic is 328km wide, the fresh water pushes up to 300km into the ocean. The river was first discovered by a Portuguese sailor in March 1500 when he noticed that he was sailing in “freshwater” while over 200km offshore.

14 January, Sunday (Day 6)

6:15am – Roughly 4 hours until we reach Manaus

4 hours to go until we can dis-embark

The rain is pouring down and it’s a little chilly. Weather app says it is 24 deg C but after months of living with the temperature never really dropping below 30, this may have us searching for jackets when we get back to Mr Jones.

Rain has scuppered Stuart’s plans to get up early and mount the bumper water tank, which he completed during the voyage, and to be able to put the grill back on the front of Mr Jones.

It’s a good thing that we plan on going shopping once off the boat and that most attacadao’s (Makro style supermarkets) have large undercover areas – guess he will be completing that job while Tania shops.

9:00 – getting closer to Manuas

The storm has cleared up giving Stuart the opportunity to mount the watertank and tidy up his tools from the passenger footwell so that Tania will have place to sit once we disembark.

10:40 – The meeting of the waters outside Manaus

“The meeting of the waters outside Manaus“

This time it is the meeting of the Rio Negro (with it’s clearer tanin coloured water which flows from the Venezuela highlands) and the sediment rich Amazon river which has ultmately flowed from the Peruvian Andes.  It is surreal to think that we parked Mr. Jones on a small cement bridge which in theory crossed this river close to it’s source back in 8 months ago!  To read that travel diary entry click here

Having crossed into the Rio Negro, we have clean water off the back of the boat now.

Tannin collared waters of the Rio Negro

11:15 – Manaus

It is crazy to think that we are 1600km from the Atlantic Ocean, yet only 45m above sea level and we are surrounded by ocean going cargo vessels and even a cruise ship. Almost everything that comes to this city of 2,5million people arrives by boat.

We estimate there was somewhere between 300 – 350 passengers on board the boat and we had hoped we would not be the only international overlanders (aka persons able to speak English) on board in order to have some company.   As it turned out there was a Belgian on board (who was not friendly and we had zero engagement with) and one Ghanain (married to a Brazilian) who was super friendly and helped us out with a number of things, not least of which was understanding how the one and only single gas burner (available to passengers) worked so that we could reheat suppers.

saying goodbye to Tedd and his family

If we had thought getting Mr. Jones onto the ferry had been a little nerve wracking, it was a good thing we did not know what awaited us in Manaus until it was too late.  The dock was super busy and our boat pulled up offcentre in front of small floating dock.  Stuart and Mr. Jones were the first to exit but because of the position and tight spacing of cars on the boat it took quite some manovering just to get onto the ramps of which the right hand one was super close to the waters edge and a pole with bent metal sticking up only centimtres from Mr. J.  To keep things interesting, it was pouring with rain.

Hold on tight while you watch the below video:

Once on the floating dock we needed to get him up the other side, but the ramps didn’t reach all the way and the metal was super slippery, even with the differential locked and in first gear low range Stuart could only make it halfway before losing all traction and slipping.  Once the wheels started to slip it changed the angle Mr. J was facing meaning that as Stuart backed back down, Mr. J got close to the waters edge between the dock and boat alongside.  After two failed attempts, the help of a delivery truck was sourced and we got an assisted tow up the slope.   Needless to say, the ferry located to a different berth for offloading the rest of the vehicles.

And that is how our first ever “cruise” ended, perhaps next time we consider a 5-day cruise experience we will spring for tickets on a fancy ocean going cruise ship with a proper cabin for berths.