passenger's log

a trip on the amazon river part 1

21.12.2011 - 21.12.2011

Night 1
I got on the boat two hours ago and realized that I should have asked for a room number! I knocked on the doors of rooms to find either they were already taken or were locked. Then I found the under-paid, unhappy woman in charge of rooms. She found me a nice room on the outside deck. I was to share the room with a teenage portuguese girl who was already settled in on the top bed of the bunker. I got the keys for the room and happily settled in the lower bed. Then I went out to explore the boat and sat at the back deck for a while. At one point I needed something from the room so I went back. There was a portuguese woman sitting on my bed talking on her mobile. The teenager said something I didn’t understand. The woman had put all my stuff off the bed into a corner on the floor and settled there herself. Without interrupting her conversation on the phone, she handed me her ticket and camarote 32 was written on it with no room for doubt. I was homeless once again! And all the good rooms were taken by then. I found the short and unhappy shuffling woman again. She said things to me and left. I waited. They were over booked. That could have been a good thing for me on one hand (“there are no regular cabins, but we can upgrade you to a suite which is more spacious and has a fridge”) but on the other hand, there was: “no rooms, here is your money back, you go down to the hammock area with the commons” The issue was resolved in half an hour with the shuffler coming back to me a few times and saying things that I believe were updates on the situation. They gave me the room for the crew! It is definitely worse than the regular rooms but at least I have it to myself. It’s not like I have a choice anyway. The decoration consists of some loose cables hanging from a/c, two pocket size bibles in portuguese, one pair of man's trousers hanging from a hook and photos of jesus christ.
camarote 22