You Can't Always Pick Your Friends...Or Can You???

While everybody on board was fast asleep, myself and Simon decided to pull a few pranks on our buddy Adam. He had tried earlier to catch Simon so we decided that all is fair in love and war. We tried the old finger in a warm bucket of water but soon decided that plan would be too harsh for the person in the hammock below his. My shaving board had mysteriously disappeared yesterday so we settled on putting toothpaste on his face and hid away from sight better than James Bond could ever try.....we lay down under the next hammock.

Although Adam laughed this off, we soon realised that all was not right and he stopped talking to us altogether, wouldnt even talked to the Portuguese girls. This morning we had docked in yet another town so we thought that this might give him a chance to get over it.

It was hilarious walking down the street with Thalywan close to my heels, it was as if I WAS his real father! It was now clear to me that I was the unofficial baby sitter of the boat. This revelation as I realised that I was like the Pied Piper walking through town with a group of kids chasing my shadow. The plus side is that the parents did make sure that there was always a drink close to hand for me. The drinks were supplied to me when the children had gone to bed, im not that irresponsible (Please dont remember my earleir comments wishing a young boys life to end). By this stage young Sarah had already left the boat with her family for home. Some of the other kids were very memorable also. David was a ball of energy who never seemed hurt when he fell (not my fault of course). Eliene was nice but very jealous of myself or Simon talking to Catarina. Tamiris is one of the nicest girls I have ever met, next only to Ladrianna.

For our last night on the boat, myself and Simon broke out our reserve bottle of whiskey. After sincere apologies he finally agreed to join us again. Tonight there was a lot of dancing. I even showed off my forro skills. I can tell you that the locals were very very entertained by the quality of my dancing. Not as many girls were impressed as I might have hoped. I think laughing in a persons facing while pointing at them is an old Amazonian sign of affection. It was a brillaint night.

Unfortunately, Adam soon became very very drunk and started many heated discussions with Catarina, criticising the history of the Portuguese and the education of european schools as he knew the truth about every nations history. Incidently, he didnt believe me that there was no war going on in Ireland, a state of England apparently. Originally, myself, Simon and Adam had made plans to trek the jungle together but when we saw this, we decided we made a lucky mistake.

While all this was going on, I had to take Thalywan down to his hammock cause he kept coming back up to see what was interesting upstairs with us but I soon fell asleep myself. While I was asleep things grew more aggressive upstairs and before long he came down to vent his anger out on me. His violent temper continued throughtout the night shouting abuse at people calling them really disgusting things and threathening to kill us.

The little shy girl in the next hammock, Laidrianna, kept trying to protect me from him. It was one of the cutest things ever. The poor girl was so worried about me that she couldnt sleep, she even offered me her favourite teddy bear, Puffy (she would give out if not said in a really deep voice), that was officially the cutest thing ever!

By the time she finally fell asleep it was morning and myself and Simon were just about set to embark on our real amazonian adventure. First, we had to get through a very emotional goodbye with many of the friends we met on board. Thalywan had drawn a load of drawings of the two of us in my travel journal (where this blog mostly come from) and a letter despite the fact that he cant read. the most emotional was little Laidrianna who kept crying so I gave her a little gift that was originally intended for my neice back home.

All in all, the journey may have taken 6 days but is half the excitement of a trip in the adventures you have on the way to your destination.