The days on the boat pass lazily, "go with the flow" has a true meaning here. There's nothing much to do besides stare at the horizon and the mix of jungle and tiny villages on the banks of the river, sleep in the hammock, read, ponder and talk to your neighbors if you speak a bit of Spanish. There's nothing to decide as there are no choices to make and there's not much you can do about anything that's happening - be it knee deep water puddles in the toilets or a newly boarded passenger trying to tie up their hammock right above you or in the gap between you and your neighbor which you already thought is too damn small to even breathe without touching each other. You just go with the flow.

The time when we boarded the boat in Leticia and all the chaos with departure schedules, passport stamps and figuring out the technicalities behind boarding a cargo boat seemed very far away after only several days on the boat. Passengers came and went with the boat making stops every 4-6 hours in larger communities along the river, and besides the breakfast, lunch and dinner, onboarding and offloading of the cargo are the biggest events throughout the journey.

By the time we reach Iquitos in Peru we familiarized ourselves with the major players on the boat - the family of eight that can help figuring something out, the guy who is famous for stealing unattended things, the grandma who you want to be friends with so that she collaborates with you to protect the hammock space when the new passengers arrive, the cooks who treat you nicely because you laugh at their jokes. The boat has its own temporary social structure and figuring it out is a fun challenge to undertake, especially if you're new to the South American ways of doing things.

People traveling on cargo boats are mostly villagers from remote places and traveling as far as from the East of Brazil to the West of Peru on cargo boats (2-3 weeks just to visit family in another country) Most of them are very simple people and a lot of them have never seen a white person before - so be sure, you'll be quite an attraction on the boat.