Embark and Arrive

An early morning didn’t seem so bad because we were so excited to make our next move. We were remarkably efficient about gathering our gear, which is even more impressive than it sounds because we have a LOT of gear.  We are traveling with our own personal belongings, of course, but we also have bags of tools (including cordless power tools), tons of first aid and “medical” supplies, lots of extra food (like Clif bars, hot sauce, and Ritz crackers), and an incredible array of goods that we believe will make our camplife more efficient (like clotheslines/clothespins, backup flashlights and headlamps, and various things to help us ward off mosquito bites).  So when we move around, we literally have about an actual ton of stuff (probably a little bit more) to wrangle.  

But that ton of gear was no match for us this morning, as we had it fully under control and ready to load long before our actual planned departure time. We even managed to make it all happen in one vanload, which seemed like it would be impossible.  We hustled down to the riverfront to connect to the community boat and found it in a tangle of other similar boats, all painted blue and white, all with similar designs, but distinguishable by their unique names.  Ours was called “Josué Yeshuah” and the crew knew that we were about to show up with crazy piles of baggage. The water is pretty high right now so we could walk right up to the boat and load bags in from the shore.  In past years, we either had to walk through long muddy shallows to get to the boat or actually ferry things out on smaller rowboats.  So this load-in was cushy.  

The boat was pretty full, mostly because of our bags.  They were all through the underdeck and stacked along the middle of the main deck the length of the boat.  Some of us used them for seating, some of us used them to sleep.  

We got out into the open water and were immediately awed by how vast the rivers of the Amazon are.  We were technically mostly on the Tapajós, which meets the river that is actually called the Amazon right at Santarém.  As you might notice in our pictures (assuming we’ve managed to post them somewhere along the line), there is a big line offshore where the brown river (the Amazon) and the blue river (the Tapajós) run alongside each other in different colors but don’t merge.  Our destination was technically the Arapiuns river, which is said to be the cleanest and most beautiful of the Brazilian Amazon tributaries. 

On the boat, we were amazed by how warm and welcoming all of the locals were, especially a precocious 4-year-old named Nicola, who gave a few of us some of the best direct Portuguese language instruction we’ve had so far.  We snacked on local chips and cookies, including hamburger-, chicken-, and ham-flavored chips and cookies that tasted like cupcakes.  Some of us sat out on the prow for a bit and took in the vastness of the waterway we were navigating.  A lot of us journaled and a few of us slept.  Our four hour trip felt like no big deal.  

As our boat approached the shore near Anã, we could see different folks start to collect on the bank, awaiting our arrival.  A bunch of them were little kids.  So as soon as we got close enough, the bags started moving onto the beach and eventually up a staircase where they were met by an “ox cart” (but no ox – except the locals and/or us) and delivered to our camp.  Our group set up a series of bucket lines to move our pile a little ways down the beach, then a little bit more, then up the stairs, then onto the cart.  Some of the locals joined our line, while some of them just picked something up and carried it all the way from the boat to the guesthouse.  Even the little kids were fearless in grabbing our fifty-pound bags and running down the beach in the deep sand to deliver them where they belonged.  

Once we got to the top of the stairs, we were thrilled to be on a rainforest path to head into our new home. The first building we encountered was our ôca (or hammock hut), which is a big round building with a huge pole (an actual tree trunk) in the middle that has hooks all around it.  Around the outside of the screened hut are more hooks, which in combination with the center ones become the supports for our hammocks.  Also along the outside walls are cabinets for the hammock spots that mean each of us has a little wedge of the room as “ours,” with a few extra cabinets and spaces to set up our various gear zones: tech, tools, sports, meds, camp.  We don’t have it all arranged properly but we’ve gotten pretty far pretty fast.  

The next building is the bathhouse, with four indoor showers and two outdoor ones, plus four individual toilet stalls and a laundry area.  Just down the path from that is the kitchen and dining area that we call the pousada.  It seems clear that we will live a lot of our collective life in the pousada.  

That’s where we gathered with our local hosts and met each of them individually. We each introduced ourselves as well.  We ate a quick snack of some local foods made of the regional dietary staple mandioca (which would be called manioc in the US). And because we were hot and sweaty from our load-up, boat ride, and load-in, we made our first foray into the beautiful Arapiuns to throw a frisbee, relax, and cool off.  The sand is soft, the water is warm, and the sky is beautiful on the beach nearest us, and we heard ourselves saying words like “perfect” and “paradise” more than we might have predicted for our first day onsite.  

We had a dinner of tambaquí (from the community fish farm), chicken, beans, rice, pasta, salad, and a cupuaçú dessert.  We drank maracujá (passionfruit) juice and lots of water to help us overcome our day in the sun.  

We gathered for our nightly reflection and love for this place flowed freely.  We shared the desire to tell everyone who had expressed anxiety about our January destination that we truly think we feel safer and more at peace here than we ever have anywhere else in the world.  Different ones of us talked about our friends’ and families’ expressed fears and we just couldn’t get over how far off base all of them were. 

As we climbed into our hammocks, rain started to fall, bringing welcome white noise to help us find a state of slumber. We have some snorers but no one snored enough the whole night through to stop us from sleeping quite well.  We know that it will get even easier to sleep when we start to do our work, as we are going to hit our hammocks on those days even more tired than we did today. 

Saturday will bring a tour of the community and our first look at the jobs that prior groups have already done.  We are definitely getting the impression that those groups had big impact and are remembered fondly.  Seems like we are primed to carry on this proud tradition.  

On our long boat trip from Santarém to Anã, our double-jointed teammate Jaron fell asleep… for Boo, mimicking him was too hard to resist. 

We finally arrived to Anã after two painful days of travel and a 4-hour boat ride. This is the beach we pulled up to, at which we swam after we DIED moving bags.  

This is the Ôca, our home for the next two weeks. Also included is the washer our program bought for the community! 

This was also on the boat ride, after Boo mimicked Jaron (as you can see, he’s still asleep).  Boo and this little girl, Nicole (pronounced nic-o-lee), became the best of friends. Even better, she taught Boo a lot of Portuguese!

The Josué Yeshuah, the vessel that transported us from Santarém to Anã.  

[Special Note: the team below used screenshots to try to save bandwidth.  We think we have figured out another way so we won't likely do it like this later.  A few more days will be like this because we are behind.]

Jaron and our new friend Nicole (pronounced Nikola) playing a game of patty cake. There was an obvious miscommunication here!

View from the boat heading down the Amazon river to Aná.

The hammocks hanging in the boat were so close you could roll off one and land on another.

The view from our ôca which shows the orange bath house to the right and clothes hanging on a clothesline to the left.

Saying “Tchau!” to our bus driver, Maia, at the docks!