Making Friends and Influencing People

Hola

The Amazon. WOW!

Totally not what i expected. I think that i really should research things before i do them but i just like surprises too much!

This thing is huge! and i don’t mean long huge, everyone knows that, but it is so wide too! David Attenborough just goes down the small off-shoots and its totally not like that!

There were a lot of little river-side village things along the way, but you could tell that they had been invaded by religion (so they all had expensive looking churches standing high above the poor stick shacks the congregation lived in) and also the big Satellites that poked out in-between the Banana groves kinda tainted the places of their charm somewhat, but that’s the price of getting good TV i guess...

Hammocks and ship life is really something i could get used to.

Waking up to the ships bell for brecky at 6am, then a short nap before learning some Spanish, then a short nap then it was time for lunch. after a quick nap it was up on deck to top up my none electric light-bulb inflicted NATURAL tan, then a shower, a quick nap then supper. After this its up on deck to drink and be merry and all in bed by 10.30 when the bar shuts for a nap till breakfast.

The people on board were all really nice. Not any English speakers at all which was excellent for my Spanish! I´m not normally proud of myself, but i did a hell of a lot of Spanish learning whilst on board and was often swaying in me hammock with dictionary in one hand and note book in the other. I really made good use of my time, i only hope i can transfer that into normal life with all its distractions and trickeries!

There was a TV on board but it was normally only background noise, but at one point as someone flicked around i saw a glimpse of the Liverpool European match, oh how happy was i!

I think i was lucky i was in Brazil, as in most other countries the sight of someone screaming and shouting at the footy on TV, crying out in anguish every time we did not have the ball and applauding every touch we did have, would have been seen as slightly crazy. Especially as i was the only one doing the shouting and screaming.

At the end of the match most people seemed quite amused by my antics (which i am in no way ashamed of) and i even got a free drink out of it, which i ritually shook up and sprayed all over the place! After that i kind of drank a bit more, then a bit more, then someone got out a bottle of Tequila, and before i knew it i had everyone chanting ¨Liverpool Liverpool Liverpool¨ and was attempting to learn em You´ll Never Walk Alone, well i tried!

Peru tomorrow. Just to prove how good The Lonely Planet is, one of the first bits of information about Lima is that its where Paddington Bear comes from. Yes. Great, now err...where is a good hostel to stay please? muppets.


Mattaus


p.s. Sorry i haven’t been keeping people updated with the Mozzy count, but its is way past the 100 mark by now, and at the rate i am scratching them i will have all the scars to prove it when i get back!