Amazon River 1: Tabatinga to Manaus
7th - 10th January 2026
I am writing this after the trip as I was too worried about getting my laptop out on the boat. I had a good look around and no-one else had laptops with them so I thought I should keep mine in my bag.
The morning of the 7th I got a tuktuk from my hotel to the port in Tabatinga. I was told to arrive 3 hours before departure but it was two hours away by the time I arrived. There were already two lines of luggage forming and lots of people milling around. The luggage is used to denote your place in the queue so I added mine and then went and signed in and was given a green armband. Some people had yellow armbands but I never did work out the difference between the two as we all seemed to do the same thing once on board. There were two guys with their luggage in front of mine and it didn’t take long to ‘hear’ that one of them, Alan, was from the London area, he was loud and cocky! The other, Luis, I found out later, was from Colombia. While sitting waiting for the action to start I decided that I should try to befriend these two lads and stick with them for the journey. This was not a hard task and so, just before we boarded, I had found myself some travel companions.
Once on board we headed straight to the top deck and set up our hammocks. This was the bit I was really nervous about but the videos I watched did the trick and I even ended up helping Alan and Luis do theirs! It didn’t take long for the lads to get out the alcohol, and they had tons of it, beers, whisky and rum, not to mention some lethal looking red and blue stuff. I had my bottle of Colombian red wine which wasn’t much of a contribution, but at least it was something. I soon learnt that they are alcoholics, and they even happily admitted to it. Alan so much so that he get the shakes in the morning and has to drink a fair bit before he is ready to eat. I don’t think Luis is as bad as Alan, he certainly didn’t seem to drink as much and definitely ate a lot more and more regularly. It’s funny how all the alcoholics I have met justify why they drink and these two were no exception, but as I explained to them I am not one to judge others and have been around worse.
It didn’t take long for the top deck to become, what felt like, full with hammocks, a few pregnant women, lots of children, tons of luggage and a couple of dogs. Once we set off I took a quick look downstairs and it was even more packed than our floor, it was quite a sight and the way the hammocks lined up made a fantastic display of colour. It is really quite a sight to behold and as a westerner such a novel way to travel, but for Amazonian people this is normal and a means of getting from one town/village to another and some even use it to commute to and from work.
As you can image the Amazon is stunning and I spent the first few hours staring at the brown water and watching the jungle pass by. It wasn’t long before we made our first stop and lots more people got on, suddenly both floors of hammocks became really packed and the space I had around me disappeared as a family set up next to me. I was quite upset, especially as the husband and wife were sharing a hammock which made it spread out really wide and made them lean into me. As we settled in for the night it became a bit of an elbow fight between me and the woman, but I think it annoyed me more than her as she fell asleep quickly while I lay there pissed off. Eventually I gave in and laid the other way round so we were head to foot, it was the right move as I now had space and could stretch out to sleep. Much to my relief they disembarked late the next day.
I followed all the advise I had read online and slept diagonally across my hammock. Due to the fact it was a double one I managed to lay reasonable flat on my back and got a couple of hours sleep before we made another stop. I joined a few of the other passengers and watched loading and unloading of goods and people. More people got on than got off, which was quite alarming as the boat was already full. This continued throughout the next day, and became one of the highlights of the journey. I am not sure how so many people squeezed on and set up their hammocks, but they did at every stop. There was no turning anyone away and there were hammocks in places where I didn’t think you could fit another hammock. That first night we pulled up next to another boat and it looked like luxury compared to ours, it only had a few hammocks and there were tables and chairs to sit at. I think this may have been the fast boat and a lot more expensive.
The food situation was not brilliant. Breakfast was a buttered bread roll and a sweet cup of coffee, lunch was chicken, rice, noodles and beans with grated cassava, dinner was chicken, rice, noodles, beans and grated cassava – repeat repeat repeat. The only difference was breakfast, the second day I went and queued earlier simply because I was up earlier and this time I had cheese in my roll and was given a small slice of cake. My third and final breakfast was even earlier and far better, not only did I get cheese in my roll, and cake, I also got a cup of rice pudding sweetened with coconut, which was actually very delicious. Lunch and dinner never changed and the queue was always so long that I waited until the end of the serving window to get mine.
As much as the Amazon is stunning and the boat journey relaxing and an awesome experience and novel, for me, means of travel, it did all become quite monotonous very quickly and I was very grateful for the company of Alan and Luis. I was also happy that a guy called Tilman, I think he is from Germany, decided to befriend me on the first night. We had such a good conversation leaning over the railing watching the world and water go by, but I was very drunk by then and did not recognise him in the morning – lol. Good job that I am unforgettable! Anyway he actually turned out to be quite a moaner and on the third day asked me to tell Luis to turn his music down, he said we were annoying everyone on the boat and not even playing Brazilian music. Strange that because the people next to Luis were tapping their feet away and trying to sing along to some of the tunes. I didn’t tell Luis anything so Tilman decided to speak to him himself which, unfortunately, really changed the mood of everything. This was also compounded by the fact that the 2 lads had also run out of booze – they were not happy.
The most exciting part of the journey was on the last night when we pulled over to the river police station and the police came on board with a sniffer dog. The lads had THC vapes and a small bit of weed which they stashed up in the rafters just before we pulled in. We had to tie all our hammocks up in the air, line our luggage up and then the men had to stand on one side of the boat and the women on the other. The dog run around like a nutter sniffing everything and then suddenly stopped by this young guys bags, he had been walking around smoking weed for most of the journey and the police put him in handcuffs while they searched his stuff. They then took him away but soon released him, I think he just got a fine. One police officer checked all of our handbags and then the excitement was over. However, Alan told me to go and look over the side of the boat where he had been standing, there was a large family of grey dolphins frolicking around just by the boat. It was too dark for photos but such a magical sight, especially as I had spent hours watching the water in the hope of seeing some pink dolphins, which are native to the Amazon river. Unfortunately I didn’t see any.
