into Brasil – Puerto Narino to the border – notes up til that fateful day

Brasil marked a new phase. Things were different there. In Brasil fishermen catch huge fish for export, wherelse in Peru it´s small fish to feed the family. People also dressed more trendy.

We dodged storms, grilled fish and generally avoided people up until a fateful day (night) we got robbed by a child with a rifle. The camera was stolen. So sadly no pictures, apart from a couple Nina took with her phone. Also lost a video of Nina wielding a hatchet on the Iquitos raft. Sad.

leave Puerto Narino- 

realized that metal ore holders, now hammered in firmly, were going to corrode ores (before the nails would come loose and we´d have to bash them back in periodically.) slept on beach, put the net, at dusk water surface stirred with much life. tried sleeping in the tent it was too hot, drowning in own sweat hot. Slept outside of the tent with the mosquito net. Fishermen patrolling their net in the night. awoke to fishy massacre

Next day-

took out the fish from fishy massacre. strung them on strings to try to sell them in Leticia. but Leticia further than expected, have to go the long way round because other route dry. Infact by the time we arrive at the marketplace the fish are half rotten and a man comes up to us, looks at the fish, and frowns and wags his finger disapprovingly. Things rot so fast here. Try to take the turn into Leticia port but river almost dry so channel is very narrow. sucked into side of giant boat, people pull us alongside, upstream, hard going. people unloading beer. Nina says dame cerveza (giveme beer) and they give us beers. got stuck on sand in middle of traffic and boat coming out crashes into us and there are many boats going past in very small space with slashing motors and they don’t have brakes. Nina gets out and turns boat around then we rowed back out onto the Amazon downstream to Tabatinga, Brazil. Stay at a shithole raft with giant cockroaches and a polite rat and a massive spider about hand span.

Tabatinga

Went to Brasil Marina to try and get a good map and a man tells us not to go and they won’t give us the map and he shows us a form to get a permit and we need a satalite phone and a gps and all sorts of complicated things. Print out a google map. Hard to bathe privately on raft there are lurking men. Boy leaps eagerly into canoe to bathe with Nina. Have to tell him to sale de ahi like you would a dog. Man lurks at the door and tries to buy Ninas body. Seedy raft hotel.

Another day in Tabatinga, a sunday-

Get drunk and people give us things, lots of things it is bewildering, peanuts and candy and water and cigerettes and more beer, and everyone is drinking to music but it is very hot and everyone has glazed eyes and the culmination is the punk kids fight. (there are punk kids in Brasil) We make a fire to asado fish and some indigenous people come and take over the fire. They put their fish atop, it is a very indigenous-person attitude, no sense of ownership, they move our fire under their fish

Fish we grilled in Tabatinga, a fav. Picture retrospectively taken in fish market because camera got stolen

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