12 March

What is it now... Thursday or so?...

So we're still in Belem...

Last night we made some lovely Argentinian friends and sat up on top deck with all of them and 2 guitars, waiting for the ship to set off.

It was calm where we were, but all around us in the night there were constant flashes of lightning... now we are learning the Spanish words for everything as well as the Portuguese!

We got all tired and eventually gave up waiting for the boat to set off, and went to bed with images of waking up somewhere different with exotic forest floating past our window! If we can see the window through the mass of hammocks that is.

But this morning we woke up feeling suspiciously still, in the exact same place as we dropped off.

We have got various answers as to when we might leave, ranging from meia hora to meia dia amanha, so we went to the bar in the port for a coffee so as to be back with a safe amount of time- then not long after 12 we actually set off!... turned round a couple of times, and went back to port, where everyone started jumping over to the next door boat with their bags and hammocks. It was a huge palavre (which means 'word' in Portuguese) with hordes of people grabbing all their stuff and climbing from one boat to the next, bagsying spots for their hammocks- panicking about finding space bacause the last boat was so crammed!

But as it turns out this boat's got quite a bit more space than the last- which sort of balances out that it is supposed to be leaving at 10 tonight even if it is on time- which seems unlikely, as this is Brazilian time.

This is really nice, we're hanging out in our laughably little and nearly trustworthy hamocks (rede's) tangled among everyone else's, our Argentinian friends are playing music on their guitars, flute, ukelele, water bottle, and i just remembered my bag of flamboyam beans I gathered in Capao and handed them out too, so now there's some rattling going on too :)

It's funny, everyone's always really suprised about the beans, and always lacking in percussion (unless you count chair-tapping) so it works out really well. I don't know why everyone doesn't do it!

It's nice- the really frustrated peoplew have all left so everyone is just chilling with the music.

It is a bit of a shame because we are really going to have to hurry the rest of our trip if we're going to see the lot before Ash has  to go home, but that's not the aspect we're going to think about, it won't make waiting any easier!