¨A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on his destination¨ Lao Tzu

It has been hot today. I went to get my entrance to Columbia stamp then went to Tabatinga, Brasil to try to get the layout of the land and find out wht was possible... it was a bit more difficult than I thought. I am trying to ge to a quite out of the way place in the nothern part of the Amazon. It seems that one way to get there would be to rent a small plane but that would be almost 2 K and that is just too much. Apparently there are scheduled flights there but only once a week and that would be tomorrow but I would need to be in a city called Manaus about 1800 kilometers from here and I could have flown there but I didnt have enough cash on me and they wont take visa and the nearest bank wouldnt take my bank card and did I mention its really hot out? so back to the hotel went for a swim to rest and cool off in the hotest part of the day before I realized ahh go straight to the airport and buy your ticket for tomorrow to make sure you get out of here. So off the the airport I went, must come back tomorrow. after exiting columbia and officially entering brazil. then to the airport to take a flight to Manaus where I have sent a request for a room in a hostel. Hopefully I get that one because they actually might be helpful getting to the place in Sao Gabriel that I really want to get to. So If my plan works out... BIG IF... tomorrow I leave Columbia, enter Brazil officially then buy a ticket to Manaus get to the hostel there and find out there is another way to Sao Gabriel...IF I manage to do that my plan will be to take a river boat back down the Rio Negri and eventually fly to Rio... We will see. Fortunately if this doesnt work and I am in Manaus that is a pretty central place to go elsewhere. A good traveler... My patience with the internet and how slow it is just about everywhere is another matter however. So just to fill in some details I was in Pevas a couple days ago. I left on what was called a fast boat which really was pretty fast we went down the Amazon from Pevas, Peru to the trifrontier boarder got off in Peru went to Columbia, Leticia where I ran into a teacher from the Boston area she had a hotel in Leticia and I read that Leticia was more of a city than Tabatinga and so decided to see if there was a room a the same hotel. the Hotel San Helena. There was so there I stayed. The room is decent the pool is nice. The room has airconditioning... the first time on this trip a nice break but I found mysel getting too cold not used to a/c. We went to diner and walked around a bit last night she was off first thing today to northern Columbia. Leticia is the most middle class place I have been so far on this trip and it is an interesting contrast with Tabatinga that is quite a bit more raw. I really like these border towns. Here with Peru/Brazil/ Columbia beside eachother one can literally wander between places without being checked. For those of you who watch Firefly think of those border worlds where the regulations are kinda there but quite loose or those of you who know Star wars think of tatoee where they meet Han Solo Iquitos and this border town remind me of those places while Pevas is a beautiful little village lost in the middñe of the Amazon. For this in one respect I really did think of the Shire from Lord of the rings, a place where everyone is happy and doing the things that make up life. I could really be happy in a place like that far far away from the Alliance of Fire Fly but where every now and then I could get to those boarder places where the chaos meets the order and the chaos is still dominant. Iquiotos (and Pevas) are both places where indigineous people literally row in on their dugout canoes from time to time to trade or get supplies where they are as or more familiar a sight as a gringo like me. I still want to write more about the Kuraka and the social/relationship life he embodied. I dont think I could do it justice just now but I will try soon. But I think its time to find a bar with some rum, tequilla or at least beer. What do you think? Oh for those of you who made requests re visiting the tibal people I did make some headway on that. I have some recordings of the anaconda dance of the Okina tribe and I have some pictures where I tried to focus on the design element of their Maloca big house and thier tribal symbol. There wasnt much in the way of art ir artifacts. I did try some fermented yucca and a mildly sweet thick syrup that they said was non fermented yucca and was medicinally used to clean the kidneys. So If I do not get to go as far north as I would like to meet the Yanomami people I will have a few other options and I am thinking about soliciting crowd sourced opinion of which I should do. One would involve going to a place called Santerem on the Amazon and taking a slow boat to Beleum where I would then head to the jungle again. another would from manaus back track to Tefe try to get to a protected part of the amazon. Another would be to head up the Rio Negri and do the same via slow boat and probably return to Manus before heading to Rio. Input is gladly welcomed!