saltwatersteve.com/travel

At about 2:30 AM, the boat made its first stop, so out came the guys to collect everyone’s money before anyone got off. Then, everyone was awake, so right by my hammock, three guys played cards and smoked cigarettes for an hour or so. After that, many people walked by, bumping into my hammock. Remember, Meghan and I were late to pick our spots to sleep, so we were basically in a heavily trafficked aisle on the side of all the other hammocks.

Did I mention that they left all the lights on throughout the night? I was paranoid about getting our stuff robbed so I tried to keep one eye open all night. Then at about 5 AM, the restaurant started preparing for the day and with my one open eye I saw a woman carrying 2 or 3 whole chickens (feet and beaks and all - although they were dead and de-feathered) and almost lost her grip on them, so she set them on the floor for a moment to get a better grip.

Did I mention the sanitary conditions on board? There are a few sinks at the back of the boat, and rooms that lock that are combination shower/toilets. Now if you can imagine a toilet where the water that you flush it with already looks like diarrhea, you’d be getting pretty close. All the water for the sinks/toilet/shower comes from the river, which is brown. And quite opaque. So anyway, there’s “agua” all over the bathroom floor, mixed with whatever people don’t get into the toilet when they hovered (I’m assuming they hovered of course - that was my plan). So when people go to the bathroom they track the “water” all over the floor in the main cabin. So when I saw the woman briefly marinate the chicken in this mess, I almost vomited.

It’s a good thing my last meal had been 15 hours earlier.

Wouldn’t you know? 6 AM on the boat is time to crank back up the sound system and put in the 80’s DVD. We are the World was playing. This was not very soothing when you have spent a night trying to sleep on a hammock that eventually starts to feel as if it were made of sewn-together forks.

Oh, one more thing. I was actually a bit excited about sleeping in hammocks because I thought it would be nice and breezy since we were on a deck that was basically open to the outside air on 4 corners and had many more operable windows. Guess what? When the temperature drops below about 85 Fahrenheit, Peruvians get cold - so they closed up all the windows and bundle up. No shit. Some were wearing fleeces! I sweated all night.