Quick Trip report

The boat trip to Manaquiri went well. The only things of note (apart from the fantastic scenery, the birds and the fish), were: 1) when we nearly ran aground on a sandbank on the Solimoes. It was only that I noticed this bloke walking about in the middle of the river and figured that something wasn’t quite right, that disaster was narrowly avoided; 2) the planned entrance to Manaquiri doesn’t exist when the water level’s down 5 metres, so we had some trouble locating an alternative; and 3) on the way back, with the motor fully run in, we achieved a top speed of just short of 50kph, which is pretty good. The outward journey took us 9 hours; the return journey took 5.75. Oh, and since I fitted a sonar transponder on the back of the boat, the steering is all over the place, leaving me with a fairly sore left arm from trying to stop the boat skidding to the left – must fix this on my return from the UK. This also meant I didn’t get much time to take photos, so I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with these three. The last one is a backward glance at our original destination, Careiro do Castanho, as we were leaving to return to Manaus. Sorry – will do better next time.

…And speaking of the UK, as a lot of you will know I’ll be in town for a few weeks from this Wednesday (12th September) and will no doubt see you then. Whether I update the blog or not during this time will depend to a large extent on whether I have a computer and connection, whether there’s anything interesting to report, and whether I’m sober enough to type it if there is.