wiii, new pictures. finally i managed to arange some new albums. you can find them on this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9296405@N05/
you know the procedure: first click on the album (on the right), then “view as slideshow” and “i” on the first picture for detail information.
have fun!
Guest co-writer: Marcelo “The Gorgeous” Barreto
Hello people out there… I finnaly decided to give my contribution for this blog; not that it was lacking of anything, it’s just that a change sometimes doesn’t hurt.
As you guys read in the last posts we just had an amazing boat ride throught the biggest river in the world, the amazon river, so I decided to give you the inside scoop from this expedition with a kind of a day in the life report, but first i’ll give you some quick tips for the preparation for those’, who may one day wanna experience it first hand. here they are:
1- Buy your hammocks and ropes in the city market of belem (ver-o-peso). it’s the start of the fun already, to searsh in between love potions, chickens and baskets where you can fit in and find the one that suits you.
2- Buy a mosquito net. you will look like a chimp in the first days, cause nobody else has it, but believe me, it will pay off by the third night, once the spiders, moths and mosquitos take over the boat and pick hostages.
3- Bring cookies and snacks, cause sometime in the 4th day, when you can’t even smell 3rd string meat, rice and cold pasta, they will come handy.
4- Bring your English-Portuguese dictionary; the crew is not trained in international manners, so it will be handy to learn the sentence “back off, thats my place you crazy woman”.
5- Don’t bring deodorants or any perfumes, first they attract mosquitos and seccond it’s better to smell your own stink then your neighbords.
6- Forget about anti-malarics. The only people who were taking them in the boat were the ones that got sick! Not with Malaria thought. At least in this trip from Belem to Manaus it is not that big of a risk. Unless you’re going actually in the jungle, you should be fine.
7- Just in case, buy also repelent and b-complex, which will help you stink more, so mosquitos will search for other victims.
8- If you like drinking, you will find your guys really quick. step into the second floor and drink your face off with good selections of cachaça and beer; by the end of the day I bet you’ll feel fluent in portuguese already.
9- For you ladies travelling alone, man can get very very “friendly” as the trip goes on, so set your borders quick to avoid unpleasent situations. Carmen even met a guy who his cousin was the brazilian embassador in China and every year he receives about 5000 to 6000 slovenes in this city in the middle of nowhere. WOW, isn’t this something? 
10- and last but not least: Don’t miss any sunsets or sunrises, they alone can make your trip worth it!
Ok, that will be enough tips for basic survival, the rest you can figure it out by yourself, cause it’s part of the fun also… 
and now a guick glance of our typical day:
days would start very early in the morning, like 5am. hammocks would be set very close together, so first person to get up awakes the next two, who awakes the next four, who awakes the next eigth and from there you can get the picture. Breakfast is an inspiring “proja” (I have no idea of the word in english but the slovene nation probably got it) and bread with butter (make sure you get 2 breads right away, cause the tray is not coming back!), the thing that makes it worth your time, is the sunrise in front of you.
After that (probably 6:30 or 7) is the time, when everybody runs to the showers that, althought are refreshing (read cold), they don’t make a really good job in cleaning - the water is pumped from the river that is the color of chocolate milk. strong one… 
From there you have 4 hours till lunch, when you can entertain yourself in the way that best suits you: reading, napping or observing the surroundings (gras, river, river dolphins, birds, bigger birds, flowers, trees, more trees, even more trees, cows and somethimes even horses).
from time to time, you can spot locals (usually kids from some native tribes) canuing very close to the boat, start waweing and wait till somebody throws them some food, toys or clothes.
Lunch is the biggest meal for brazilians, so you go to the tabble with great excitment. It was (always) beef with rice and spaguetti, you just throw all in one dish, mix everything up and eat. not a very gourmet experience but tasty nevertheless. i don’t think my companion would share my excitement, but she said it was much better then expected. The problem is that it’s the same meal every single day…
After lunch you still have a couple of hours of decent temperatures, but from 2 pm it gets very hot, so you usually lay down (again) or head upstairs, where we discovered some “fancy” showers, that keep you wet while you tan in the deck - nice place to mingle with the locals.
Sometimes during the day we would stop in some city to dump some cargo and pick something up. the estimate time should be 30 mins, but we allways get stucked there for 2 or 3 hours. That was not a entirely bad experience, for who is in a 5 day expedition, a couple of hours feels like 15 to 20 min of normal time… and it was also very entertaining to see the citys and crazy kids jumping up and down from the boat and try to sell you stuff.
A little before sunset would come dinner. usualy some ”interesting” stew with the left overs from lunch. pretty heavy stuff, but you eat anyways, cause your next meal is only in 12 hours. Get up from dinner and run to the front of the boat to enjoy the last sunrays of the day and start putting repelent; as the sun sinks in all the insects come out to play!
Night time there’s a bunch of interesting things going on, if it is a soccer day, you can go upstair and swear, scream and drink with the guys. You can also enjoy the beauty of nature as spiders take control of the boat and eat the mosquitos and moths one by one (my favorite :)), you can even throw them some, they like it a lot! Or you can go and lay down and search your mosquito net for intruders and then call your boyfriend to kill them (Carmens favorite :)).
Well everybody usually go to “sleep” pretty early, cause you wake up early and also the fact that nobody really sleeps that well ever, so you try to mix quality with quantity…
And thats about it, sorry if me and my big mouth went forever, but for those who know me it’s kinda to be expected…
