Another day on the boat

07.07.2016

I spent the better part of the morning hiding from the rain in my hammock. I was reading Clarissa still, but close to finishing the ninth and final volume of it! Finally!

Suddenly wissam appeared and apologized for not knocking. Haha hammock joke. He pretty much ordered me to get up and keep him company out on the deck again. The rain was dying down and he was hilarious so of course I went.

We spent the morning and afternoon observing the "anthropological experiment" in the lanchonete.

Wissam was monumentally upset about some Danish women who pretty much ignored everyone and pretended they were on some kind of royal Caribbean cruise and not this dinky river boat. I think they got on the wrong boat. They spoke to us only once, when they wanted to know which drinking water was safe. (Hint it wasn't the water in the bathroom sink) They changed clothes every few hours and took a shower in their bikinis on deck at the busiest time of day. It was quite humorous.

There was also a man with an abundance of prison tattoos, even the quintessential tear under the left eye. He was hitting on every single middle aged women in sight. I was glad I wasn't in his targets quite yet. Our Turkish friend was though, and she seemed to enjoy his broken English. *shrug* I tried to tell her he was obviously a criminal but I'm not sure she understood.

Another guy looked exactly like Clark Kent and I felt a twinge of pain and nostalgia when I came to the realization I was probably 10 years older than him. He also smoked, so I left him alone and spent most of my time with wissam laughing my butt off instead.

In case you haven't guessed, wissam is Islamic and he's also married. Imagine, an Islamic guy treating me like a human being and not just some sort of object. I think it has something to do with his happy family, but I might be wrong. There are so many awful Islamic men out there, I wish they could all be like wissam. Unfortunately most of them are sexually frustrated, treat women like pieces of garbage, especially non Islamic women, and can be classified as plain old assholes until they can rope some idiot woman into their lifestyle. I wish this wasn't the truth but it really is.

Eventually the Turkish woman came back and she sort of slowed our conversation down with her crazy eyes, unintelligible English and incessant psychopathic laugh. I was beginning to get a little worried about our adventure to alter do chao, but I pushed those instincts away, to my peril.

I went to bed early because I figured I'd have to wake up early. We were supposed to arrive in Santarem in the morning.

Various sunrise photos