I would like to write about Tabitinga, military curfews, jilted
boyfriends and motorbikes rented, but I wanted to get this one down
while I remember the details...

There are border crossings and then there are border crossings. This
was one of the latter.

I woke up this morning at 4am in order to cross over the river from
Tabitinga in Brazil to Santa Rosa in Peru. I was catching the fast
boat in Santa Rosa to Iquitos. It is not a wide river and the ride
across should be about 10 minutes in a small open boat. The owner of
the hostel took me down to the docks on his motorbike and I hopped in
an outboard motor launch. Three other guys and an older brazilian
woman also got in the boat. This is when it started to get
interesting. The guy running the boat tried to start the motor a few
times, but it wouldn't start, so he got off for a few minutes to go
get a tool. While he was gone it started to drizzle, nothing too bad
but I took out my rain jacket and put it on. This was a good idea
because a few minutes later the heavens opened up in a torrential
Amazonian downpour. There was no cover on the boat, but the Brazilian
woman had a piece of tarp so I huddled under that with her. Of course
my bag was getting soaked and I had my passport and phone in my
pockets, getting wetter by the minute. I gave up any hope of staying
dry and opened up my bag to get the rain cover out (thank you Deva!) I
tried my best to cover the bag and stuffed my passport and phone in
it. The guy finally came back to the boat, managed to get the engine
started and we made our way across in the pitch black and driving
rain. At one point the rain was so strong that the boat filled with
water past my ankles and I couldn't even see the guy sitting in front
of me. The engine stopped once along the way, but thank you whatever
Amazonian god allowed the guy to restart it. On the other side of the
river we stopped against a floating dock where the fast boat was
waiting. By this point the woman was completely hunched under her tarp
and all I could hear above the rain was 'Puta madre! Puta madre! Puta
madre!' She had some large luggage that she could not carry so I
grabbed that along with mine and made a break for the dock, having to
walk across several boats to get there. I almost fell into the river
at one point, but fell on her luggage instead. On the dock some people
waiting helped pull me up and I stood dripping, thinking that at least
that was over. Hah. I managed to change into some dryish clothes and
found my ticket for the boat, but when I went to board the ticket
taker looked at my passport and said 'stampa?' I had forgotten that I
needed to get the Peruvian entry stamp on my passport. I looked around
and asked him 'donde?' He motioned off into the distance along a few
hundred feet of rickety wet planks that led off to land. I thought
about changing into my wet clothes again, but I wasn't sure how much
time I would have, so I decided to leg it. I put my passport in a
waterproof sack and walked along the thin and very wet planks. On land
at the other end there was no light at all and I made may way blindly
to the right on a street filled with mud and water. Sometimes so muddy
that my flip flops would stick and I would have to reach down into the
murk to retrieve them. I had no clue how I was going to find the
border police, I could hardly see through the rain in front of me.
After a minute or two I realized that I would have to stop at a house
and ask. I saw a house with a crack of light off to my left and I made
may way up to it. When I reached the door a policeman opened it! I
walked in and he laughed at the state I was in and motioned me to a
candlelit desk. There, under a flickering candle, I filled out the
immigration form, trying not to drip too much water on it, and he
stamped my passport. As I finished I heard the door open and another
guy in a similar state came in, he looked at me and said "jaysus, this
is a bit of rain isn't it." Apparently Irish people are everywhere. I
told him I was Irish too, which I think shocked him, and he asked me
not to let the boat leave without him. I said, "sure, if I make it
back." The way back was even worse because my flip flops sank into the
mud in a giant puddle and the straps broke when I tried to extract
them. Not only that, but I slipped completely into the muddy water and
ended up walking back to the boat barefoot and covered in streaks of
mud. When I finally got on the boat I changed into my only remaining
dry clothes, a pair of jeans and a undershirt. You might have thought
that was the end of it, but the first hour of that trip was the
scariest boat ride I have ever done. At one point I strapped my
passport, my phone, and some money into a waterproof sack and tied it
to my arm in case I had to swim. The entire river was covered in
debris from the rains, huge tree trunks fallen into the water, and our
captain had to keep dodging between them, and this without being able
to see through the rain or out the front window. He drove by sticking
his head out the open side window, with another crewmember acting as a
spotter. We did hit some small debris, but luckily nothing big enough
to damage the boat. By the time it was light the rain had eased up to
a slight drizzle and now, a few hours later, we are shooting down the
river at high speeds. I'm writing this on my cell phone, mostly dry
and looking forward to getting to Iquitos. I really hope it is not
raining there. (Sending this finally from the iquitos airport where I
have signal, bit crazy getting here but on my way to see sean, clive
and jeff!)