Yurimaguas to Iquitos day 2

 I am not sure exactly where in time I have posted.I'll just tell you about today.

I have only spotty and no internet access, so there are lapses in my posting and my memory of details of the days. The days all run together. Thanks to the pictures I take, my memories have a better chance of being organized.

I do have a nice picture of a sunrise this morning. Hope you enjoy it.

The downside on this trip is that I saw all this scenery ono the trip down to Yurigamaguas and have been lazy about taking more pictures.

In the early moring hours, while  it was still dark, I woke up to the noise of cargo being unloaded. We were parked for at least a couple hours.Now that we are on the later half of this trip from Yurimaguas to Iquitos, we are stopping more often to unload cargo. At most of the stops today, a few more passengers board the boat and a few get off.

Let me tell you a bit about life on the boat. The boat is like a motorized barge with a metal warehouse building built on it's deck. This particular boat has an upper about 165 feet long with an additional open deck on the front about 80 feet or longer, So the boat overall is close to 250 feet long by about 45 feet wide. The enclosed area where we the passengers are looks like a large metal warehouse building from the inside.

Some boats have 2 levels for passengers, others, like the one I am on now, have a single passenger level, that is shared with cargo. The cargo is stowed on the front end of the space. On this boat there is about a truck load of eggs, lots of 100 lbs sacks of rice, cases of soft drinks alots of other boxes of miscellaneous merchandise. 

All the  cargo is hand loaded and hand unloaded, up and down a set a steps to the main deck, a 80 ft walk to the front of the boat, then onto shore most often that also requires a walk up the river bank where it is stacked for loading on to a truck or in other cases, several tuk tuks. Some of the guys will carry 2 - 100 lb bags over their shoulders each trip. It is very labor intensive and very time consuming.

Who are the passengers? There are no roads connecting these villages to the outside world. The river is the road and the boats are the busses. Some passeengers are traveiing solo, others, a mother and young chiild, others,  whole families and even whole, what appears to be extended families. Most sleep in hammocks, a few bring thick mats or even mattresses with them to sleep on.

On this boat there a quite a few young children, they bring there toys along to entertain themselves, some watch videos on their cellphone or just run races up and down the upper passenger deck.

People mostly go to bed for the night by 10 pm and start getting up at sunrise.
I may have mentioned to this in the past. On the slow boats you may spend up to 20 hours a day in your hammock. 

The highlights of the day are sunrise and sunset, meal calls 3 times a day, and pulling into the shore for loading and offloading. Sometimes this is  not  just an event for the people on board, but also for the people in the village. As was the case  here where a  large  dump truck was  being offloaded at  a village. I have seen scenes like this before. It always required heavy equipment on shore to prepare a path for unloading. This particular time,  it was complicated by the battery of  the truck being dead. After replacing the battery and the excavator explanding the roadway, the  truck drove off without any more issues.

At this stop,  a couple guys boarded temporarily to show and I expect to earn tips showing off this huge beetle. They didn't stay on board long  because  nobody offered tips. How would you like to come across one of these in the wild?

I have a 1 minute video I will attach just to give you an idea of the pace of life on the boat. The boat ride from Iquitos to Yurimaguas was 4500 minutes.

This afternoon we had a heavy squall. It didn't last long, less than 1 hour. I took advantage of the rain to go out under one of the down spouts for a cooling natural shower.