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I just took a boat down the amazon river


PhillyB

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Highly recommended. poo went sideways with a few things (dating is fuging stupid) so I bought a next-day flight to South America because I've always wanted to raft down the amazon. Why the fug not?

I flew to Colombia, then Peru, and started in Iquitos, first time in the amazon rainforest. Fuging incredible. 

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From Iquitos I started the first leg. I took a speedboat for that, about a day downriver until I reached the triple frontier of Colombo, Peru, and Brazil.

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Then I hit a brick wall. The hazards of last minute travel is having no flexibility for people's screw-ups. The Brazilian consulate fuged up my visa application and it got delayed by an entire fuging week, grounding me in tiny Leticia, Colombia. There was nothing to do in that goddamn town but drink cheap shitty Colombian pilsners and walk around the docks. The only real highlights were hanging out with a pair of Swiss girls that came through for a few days and taking a boat upriver to hang out with a bunch of monkeys.

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My visa got cleared and I walked across the border to Tabatinga, Brazil (my 32nd country) and bought a boat ticket. People just hop on river ferries with hammocks, hang them, and take them downstream. That's what I did. It took four days. No WiFi, just my hammock, cheap shitty Brazilian beer, and a cornucopia of the most incredible things I've ever seen in my life. The Amazon is fuging massive and beautiful and easily the wildest place I've ever been.

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Really just fuging wild and incomparably beautiful to the point I hate posting pictures of it because they fall so short of the real thing.

I got to Manaus and ran out of time - the boat to Belém (dumping out into the Atlantic and ending the trip) was over four days away and I wouldn't have been able to make my flight home. Instead I spent a few days exploring the city, which was completely unremarkable save for a few of the absolutely seediest concrete clad jungle strip clubs where I thought I was going to get murdered.

Now I'm back. I highly recommend doing a trip like this - Americans won't need visas starting June 17, so you could do it cheaply by flying to Bogota (probably $200 through spirit airlines) and then catching a cheap internal flight to Leticia. Twelve bucks a night for the ferry, meals included. Four days from Tabatinga to Manaus (first half) and four from Manaus to Belém (second half. Flights from Belém to RDU or CLT are like $400. Beers are a dollar. That's one fuging cheap ass insanely amazing adventure.

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One thing I try to remember about my travels all over the world, Philly.

While you may think they're shitty Colombian beers and shitty Brazilian beers, you're luckier and more fortunate than 99% of the population of this country who will never know what shitty Colombian or Brazilian beers taste like.

Another subject.... been to Patagonia? Trying to talk the wife into a week or do down there.  

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