Santarém To Belém - We Ran Out Of River

Daybreak on our last full day on the river could hardly have been more depressing. The sky I could see from my hammock was a grey-brown colour, and the smell of burning wood was stronger than ever. We were in the middle of the river and there was very little visibility. It hardly even makes It into the news headlines any more, our ability to adapt to the mess we have created means that relatively few people are aware of just how serious the situation is as Amazonía burns.

Fortunately we were not going to spend all of the last leg with the smog. Slowly the sky started to clear, and things seemed better again. The forest on either side even looked a bit more like It had in the upper part of the river.

We hadn’t realised that this was going to be one of the best river watching days of the whole trip. As you get nearer the end the river splits and spreads, and there are some relatively narrow channels. So for a few hours in the afternoon we had great views of life on the river banks. Then in the afternoon we got some much needed rain as a storm passed overhead.

More entertainment was provided by having the final of the Copa Libertadores shown live on TV on the upper deck. Then It was down to the hammocks for the final night. The boat had got busier as we stopped on the way, and there were hammocks everywhere, making It quite hard to move around. I didn’t sleep that much, I spent a couple of hours in the middle of the night reflecting on the journey and thinking a bit about what was to come after the big river.

As the sun came up we were already close to Belém, but the boat had to do a circuit around some islands before reaching the city. It felt as if we were already at sea, the boat moving with the swell and the land now far away. But as we moved into the channel approaching Belém we got our last views. After doing more or less 3500 km of river from Iquitos It was finally time to roll up the hammock. Was It worth it? You bet It was.