There and back again…

Today was my parents wedding anniversary, but because there was no mobile signal I couln’t send a text or phone them.

It was so cold during the night. The temperature had dropped right down and it had not stopped raining all night. Apparently this was really unseasonal weather as it should be the dry season. There was a real risk that we would not be able to get the truck out along the roads we had driven along. The first plan for today was to go on a dawn walk. We got up at 5:30am to meet. It was surprising to see just how many people from the group will get up at a stupid early time in the morning, even when it is rainy and cold. I guess this is why I like travelling with groups like this as they are generally the sort of likeminded people that enjoy similar activities to me. Unfortunately though it was still raining and basically hadn’t stopped all night. There was little point going for a walk so we went back to bed for an hour before breakfast.

Mid morning the rain had stopped and we could split into our activity groups. I was doing the horseriding first up. In this group was Fi, Maartje, Charlotte, Mirkka, Eugene, Renee, Webster, Maxine and our guide Diceasar. As we got onto the horses Diceasar’s got spooked and tore off through the others. As he wasn’t properly seated when the horse stopped dead Diceasar was thrown from the saddle, over the horses head to land on his back. He was pretty winded but other than that fine. However he had a really badly bruised ego! He could laugh about it afterwards, but he felt a bit embarrassed in front of the group. The other guides though found it highly hilarious.

Apart from being a bit chilly the horse ride was nice though with the paths being very muddy it wasn’t possible to go fast at all. We rode through some of the forested area where previously tapiers had been spotted, but we saw nothing except for a single deer out in the marsh. I guess any animal with half a brain would be curled up keeping warm. This probably doesn’t say a great deal for us humans who were out there regardless of the weather. After trailing through the forests and across some of the tracks we then made our way straight through one of the swamp areas that gives the Pantanal its name.

Webster’s horse was very amusing. Apart from refusing to move at anything but the slowest speed it was also fairly averse to getting any mud onto its legs so tried to find the driest route through the swamp. Towards the end of the ride and back onto the roads we managed to get some of the horses to trot. Back at the ranch we got started getting off the horses. Fi dismounted like she would back home pretty much jumping from the horse. However I don’t think these horses are used to this and it spooked the horse which tried to bolt. However fo had hold of the reins and managed to control it. It was pretty impressive to see the way she was able to control the horse. Whilst we were helping to get the kit off the horses Webster eventually arrived. Not exactly high planes drifter, but considering the last time he had ridden he’d been thrown I think he was pleased to make it one piece.

After lunch we met up again for a boat ride. It was still pretty cold and the first time I have been glad that I had brought at least some cold weather gear. Maartje and Charlotte warmed up with some aerobic exercises, which was very funny to watch; made even more so as I had it recorded as a video. I think I’ll set it to “flash dance” or something when I get back before posting it to facebook! We split into two boats with Maxine, Mirkka, Webster and me in one boat.

From the dock we made our way downsteam stopping occasionally to see the various birdlife. A pair of Jabaru storks live on the banks of the river close to the Posada. In the boat we were able to get much nearer that we would on land. They are very ungainly birds, and though look quite attractive from a distance with the black head and white body, they actually look malevolent close up.

We probably spent close to half an hour looking for wildlife and we saw plenty of egrets, herons and even some howler monkeys in one of the trees close to the river. My batteries decided to give out at this time. I was sat on the side of the left hand side of the boat with my spare batteries in my left hand pocket. Unfortunately I was wearing gloves and as I was pulling the batteries out of my pocket I lost my grip on them. They dropped over the edge and quickly disappeared underneath the water. I was so angry with myself. Firstly because it meant I was out of batteries for the rest of the trip and secondly for being such a complete numbskull!

After a while in looking for wildlife we headed to a read bank and got the fishing poles out for a spot of Piranha fishing. The rods were pretty basic, only a cane rod with some fishing line and a hook. The bait was chicken. Unlike the two previous times I’d tried, in the Amazon and in Venezuela, as soon as the bait was in the water you could feel the fish biting. We heard a cheer from the other boat as Renee pulled out the first fish. Maxine was the first to catch one from out boat. In the end I was able to catch 3. The winner was Maartje with 5 closely followed by Charlotte with 4.

After we’d run out of bait we continued down the river for a bit. Our driver then spotted a black collared hawk in the tree and called out to it. He took one of the fish from the bucket and threw it into the river. The hawk circled before diving into the water to pick up the fish. It was amazing to see this so close up. I remember as a kid going to Loch Garton, in Scotland, to watch the Osprey’s fishing. The Ospreys are the only fish hawks we have on the mainland in the UK. But I’ve never been as close as these back collared hawks.

I found that by taking the batteries from my camera and switching their order I could squeeze a few more photos. After watching the hawks fish for a while we then sort out one of the cayman. By placing one of the fish on a stick the guide was able to tempt the cayman to jump out of the water. It was amazing to see just how far they can launch themselves out of the water. I don’t think you would do this with crocs in Africa or Aus, but these cayman are much smaller. Our boat driver/guide only was missing a few fingers from his right hand. It could be that he wasn’t too good with knifes or that something had bitten him. I never asked him why but I wasn’t going to put my hand in the water either!

By the time we got back to the Posada we were all pretty cold and it was great to get back and have a hot shower. The evening was pretty much similar to the previous evening; playing some card and dice games along with a few beers and caprioskis. In theory this would be our last night at the Posada and we would be making our way out of the Pantanal tomorrow. Realistically no one expected this to happen. There had been too much rain, making the roads inpassible for the truck.

The Pantanal is a huge wetland that covers most of the west side of Brazil below the Amazon. It stretches from Pocane in the north down to Campo Grande in the south. There are three ecosystems that make up the Pantanal; the wetlands which give the name to the area, a beach/lake ecosystem and higher savannah.

We drove in along an elevated dirt road and passed into the parkland. We started of actually walking along the road as it was much easier to see the cayman in the water and birds in the trees. We saw many of the same species we had seen in los llanos, but the cayman here were not the spectical cayman and also we saw wood storks and a snail hawk. This feeds on the freshwater crabs and snails.

It started to rain so we got back in the truck and drovc on for a bit. The shower passed and we were able to put up the roof seats again so that we could see the birds from the roof. As we were doing this two blue macaw flew past. These are the biggest of the parrot species and very rare outside of the Pantanal, but no one was fast enough to get a shot of them. Last time we had the roof seats up was los llanos in Venezuela, then there was only the eight of us so we could all sit up in the seats. This time there were many more so we had to rotate the seats. We got about half an hour each but towards the end of our turn it started to rain again.

We turned of the main road towards the posada we would be staying in. The route to the Posada was another dirt track with some small bridges, but the truck couldn’t drive over the bridges so we had to descend into the dried stream beds to continue. The last time the group had been in the wet season they had left the truck at the police station by the gatehouse and then got a smaller truck. In hindsight this should have been standard procedure as the rain that had started as a shower on the way into the pantanal just continued all afternoon. We got our rooms sorted and I was sharing with Kent and Webster. Webster is only seventeen and travelling with his father, Kent. Its difficult most of the time to appreciate that he is only seventeen as he looks and behaves older. It must be pretty cool to travel so much of the world when you’re young. At seventeen I took my first vacation out of the UK, camping in France with my parent and friends. It was a great holiday, but before this I had never travelled outside the UK and didn’t even own a passport. That said, I’ve more than made up for it since then.

We had originally planned to do a jeep safari that evening but it was too wet. Our guide, Diceasar, said that no animal in its right mind would be out in this weather. So there was little point in doing the jeep tour. I finally managed to put up my hammock that I had been dragging around with me since Belize and spent part of the afternoon chilling out. Later on we managed to get out for a short walk around the grounds of the posada and down to the river. There were several cayman hanging out by the jetty, and little wonder as they got fed from the people doing fishing from the jetty.

From the jetty we had a short walk through the woods and saw some capybara in the bush. We were able to get very close to these capybara, and although they still look incredibly tasty, they are also sort of cute, but then so is a lamb!

The food at the posada was a buffet style, eat as much as you want. The food was really nice. I also discovered caprivodkas. Basically a caprinha but with vodka instead of cachasa (aquadente). After the meal some of the locals from the posada played some Brazilian country and western and local pantanal cowboy songs. But for the most part we played the dice game “ambition” and listened to the rain pouring down.

The next day we were up really early. I was up just after 5:15am to grab a shower before striking camp. The shower was cold, which was no surprise. I’m getting used to cold showers now! The tents were down and packed away super quick and we were on the road for 6:00am. The plan was to drive for about two hours before stopping for lunch. As we drove along the sun came up and the sky was on fire for about 20 minutes. It was a very surreal experience to be driving along with such an amazing sunrise. I would say that the colours would perhaps bring this sunrise into the top ten, though it was a shame that we couldn’t stop to take any photos. Playing around with the settings on the camera, I was able to capture something. Considering that we were travelling at around 50kph on a bumpy road in low light, its not a bad photo.

The interesting thing about mornings is that there are definitely “morning people” and “not morning people”. At home I would say that I am against early mornings, but here travelling I don’t mind being up at all.

We arrived at the truck stop and set up the tables for breakfast. We always get funny looks from people when the drago truck rolls in an then suddenly all these tables, chairs and cooking equipment appears. I made a huge mistake with my morning drink. For some reason I thought it would be nice to try and make a moca using drinking chocolate and coffee. Unfortunately the coffee was bitter and the drinking chocolate was actually coco which was also really strong and bitter. Not a great combination! I’ll stick to tea in future.

At lunch there was no assigned cook group so we all mucked in to get the lunch together. It was the usual affair of salad and sandwiches. The bread was unsliced though and it was my job to try and slice the bread to give everyone 4 slices. Worked out quite well, but definitely not the best thing since sliced bread!

We arrived at the hotel in Pocane mid afternoon. I went for a walk with the girls and we found an internet place. However they would not let me connect my laptop so I asked for my money back. I thought I should try and get my hair cut and wandered round town to find a hairdresser. Getting a hair cut is an easy business I just indicate shave and then say dois (two). However in this town none of the salons seem to have the dubbers. I walked into four “ladies” hair salons before the last one directed me to a barber. Once there it took about ten minutes at the most. Feeling lighter and more streamlined I made my way back to the hotel to meet up for dinner.

As a group we started walking together to a restaurant that Donna and Dion had recommended up the road. However it was expensive so a group of us split of. The then got smaller as Maartje, Charlotte, Jesper and Sarah were happy to eat burgers at the roadside. I wanted somewhere cheap but didn’t want to eat burgers again. The rest of us then decided to head back to the hotel and this group then split further into another group who didn’t want to eat at the hotel. What started with the full group eventually ended up with several groups of four or five people. Ian, Annie, Fi, Maxine and Lisa ended up at the hotel with me. The food was amazing and well priced, but the portions where too big. I just had a plain steak but it was almost too big to eat. I say almost because I did manage it, but only just!

After the meal Mirkka, Fi and I wandered back to the burger place where the others had eaten and the tried to find the pool hall to play some pool. Unfortunately this had closed by the time we got there, which was surprising early so we walked back to the burger bar and grabbed a few beers with one of the guides from the Pantanal. He was telling us that a few days ago they had to move a huge Anaconda from the road so they could pass with the truck. It was about 20cm in diameter. In the end we all drifted back to the hotel. The guide insisted on buying all our beers. We found out later that he had been involved in a car accident on the way back from the Pantanal.

For a long truck day we left pretty late in the morning to have a more relaxing start to the day so it was around 8am when we left. Back on the road for another pretty long day of driving. We had lunch at a road side which Ian, Annie, Maartje and Charlotte prepared. Although in order to get out of her chores Charlotte slice into the top of her finger of. Luckily, being a medic and having another medic to help her they were able to put it back together with plasters. I guess some people will do anything to get out of cooking!

Eugene was making the guacamole for the avocado; it would have just been avocado paste but we found the garlic and I had bought some limes for the drinks on the barge so we added those in. In the end it was a very good lunch.

The previous night Ian had been caught with the “game of life” but said “mine” not “its mine”. We needed a clarification of the rules and the rule was that it’s an expression of possession in the first person – “it’s mine” is the same as “mine”. Ian had to get down and do his pressups.

The afternoon was pretty much playing cards until it go too dark and then most people started to sleep. We arrived at a roadside truck stop which would be our “wild camp”. Ian’s group was cooking again so I put up their tent whilst Ian and Annie started getting the food ready. The meal was a risotto type of dish with sausage. Very nice again and the bar was being set high for the food that our group would have to cook later in the trip. It was about 11pm by the time we had cleared up though and we were in for a really early start the next day.

Happy birthday me! 34 today! I phoned my parent this morning who were on a bus in the lake district and it was crazy to think of the technology that enables me to do this from a computer on a port town on the Amazon. Then I did a proper skype call to me sister and niece. I’d just finished these when we heard the truck pull up. Dion jumped down and it was great to see him again as it meant we could get back on the road. What a great birthday present!

It didn’t take long to assemble everyone’s bags, pack up the truck and leave Porto Vehlo, hopefully for the first and last time. Everyone had signed a card for me, that was really nice and some had chipped in for another bottle of vodka. Though if they were hoping for a repeat of the boat journey debauchery then they would be disappointed. Anyway I had the bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label whisky that I bought in Miami and was saving for my birthday.

The journey itself wasn’t particularly unexciting and uneventful, but after several days of doing nothing it was just great to be on the road. As the barman I collected a float from those who wanted to join in with the bar and then we stopped en route to stock up with beer, soft drinks and ice.

We arrived around 4pm at the wild camp spot, close to the town of YYY. To call this a wild camp was pretty unfair. Most of the wild camps we do are pretty much next to the road with no facilities. In contrast this was someone’s back yard, and what a backyard it was. The house and land is owned by a doctor who lives in the nearby town and it converting it into chalets and holiday homes. So not only was there nice manicured grass to pitch the tents on, but there was also a gazebo to cook under and sit but most importantly there was a pool…. I kid you not!!!

It was Eugene and Renee cooking for the first time on this leg. They prepared a meal of pasta with a Brazilian sausage (Calabrasia) and cream sauce. It reminded me very much of the meal that Antonio had made for us on the top of Roraima. Donna had managed to find a birthday cake and then I finally was able to open my whisky and pass it round for a wee dram. It was so nice to spend my birthday with such great people. As my sister had said earlier in the day I always managed to spend my birthday in really interesting places.

Had a really bad night sleep. The room was poky with no natural ventilation so we had the air-conditioning on. This meant that the room was continually switching from freezing and noisy to uncomfortably hot.

Fi also had a pretty bad night; the room she was sharing with Maxine and Lisa was even worse than ours, with plaster falling from the ceiling, no air conditioning and generally uncomfortable beds. She actually slept most of the morning on John’s bed trying to get some rest.

This was a pretty frustrating day. It wasn’t that fact that we were waiting for truck. It was that we didn’t know where the truck was. It could be that the truck would arrive that afternoon, the following morning of even the day after. The fact that I had a laptop that could connect to wi-fi was handy as I other member of the group could us it as well as me. Charlotte needed to sign up to her university course, Maxine used it to skype call her mum and her friend, Donna used it to contact Dragoman and almost everyone else used it at some point to check their email.

The day passed slowly and without sight of the truck. I was pretty anxious to leave though as I really didn’t want to spend my birthday in a dull place like Porto Velho. Whilst wandering the town Mirkka, Charlotte and Maartje had found a cinema close to our hotel which was showing the new Transformers movie. They thought that it was the English version and that it started at 9pm but they weren’t sure. It sounded like the start of a good plan though. We went as a group in the evening to a pizza restaurant up the street from the hotel. It was really great value – 16R for as much as you could eat. They kept bring slices of pizza, lasagnes, cannelloni, spaghetti. Unfortunately I think the chicken burger from the previous night had knocked me off so I just wanted some fries. Ironically it took almost the entire length of the meal for me to get this simplest of dishes. It was made worse by the fact that the fact that the waiters kept bring out big plates of fries to other tables as part of the “as much as you can eat deal”. I must have asked about five times for my fries. Eventually they came and I could tuck in.

In the end only Maartje, Charlotte, John, Jasper, Sarah and I went to the cinema. The movie was in English, but I can’t say that it was a great movie. The CGI was amazing, but there was too much action. The first half of the movie was too fragmented and it really only got going in the second half. That said it was a good was to spend an evening in a dull river town.

The previous day when we had got off the boat at XXX village we had locked all our belongings in the cabin whilst we went ashore. Fi had not lifted her sleeping back out and didn’t want to wake John who was the “keeper of the keys” at the time. I gave her my sleeping back as I thought I would be warm enough with the liner. Which to be honest I was for most of the night. However by the morning I was pretty cold and woke at 5:30am. This actually worked out well as I could get up and watch the sunrise which was amazing.

I was glad that I had got at least one sunrise in the boat trip. John also woke slightly later and I was able to get the key along with Fi’s sleeping bag out of the cabin. Then I could get back to sleep for a bit.

The final day was just as slow as the others but there was a bit of a buzz on the boat as we started passing docks and the suburbs of Porto Velho. As we were coming to dock there was a Pink River Dolphin swimming around the boat. It took a while for the boat to actually dock though as it had no side thrusts so it was pushed sideways into the dock by a guy in a speed boat. A gangplank was set up and we could finally get of the boat.

I’m not saying that the experience of the river trip was unpleasant, in fact it was nice to sit and relax, but I’m not the sort of person who can do that for four days. Even writing my diary, reading and playing card games was starting to wear thin by the end and I’m glad it finished when it did. We split into groups and caught taxis to the hotel and I think all of us were hoping, but not really expecting, that the truck would be there to meet us. We needn’t of even got any illusions that the truck would be there though. It wasn’t!

The hotel was overpriced and a bit of a dump but, the one saving grace was that it did have wi-fi. This meant that I could sit, chill and continue to catch up, not that I hadn’t done enough of this already. There was little chance that the truck would come later so a few people wandered for a bit. We then met up around 7pm to go for a meal together. In the end we ate next do at a fast food place. The food wasn’t great but at least it was cheap. A few of the girls then headed of to find a bar and I suppose I would have liked to go along but felt at that time that it for a “girls night out” so I didn’t push it. In fact it gave me time to finish my book “The Tyrant” about Dionysis of Sicily.

Today was Japser’s birthday. His girlfried Sarah had bought him some chocolate cocopops and a pair of Hulk boxers. The group had bought him a card, but no one had bothered to either tell me about it or find out whether everyone had signd the card. So when they gave it him I hadn’t signed it. I was really pissed about this actually but in the larger scheme of things it wasn’t a big deal.

The boat only makes one scheduled stop before Porto Velho at the village of XXX. This proved a nice break for us to get of the boat and wander around. Probably half the boat got of here as it is possible to get a bus from XXX to Porto Velho in a fraction of the time the remaining journey takes. The village itself was very simple with a main street and another parallel. Fi, Mirkka, Charlotte, Maartje and I wandered around. Though it was nice to walk around, the village soon lost its excitement of being different from the ship.

The only slight punctuation to this was getting talking to a local Brazilian from the village. He was overjoyed to be able to talk English and it felt as though us turning up and wandering round the village was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in recent memory. His mother was an English teacher at a local school but he was out of practise himself. It was impression to watch the boat being unloaded. Pretty much everything is shipped up the river on boats like ours. So as well as food and drinks we also saw them unloading a few tonnes of steel reinforcement and also an engine block. Everything was carried to and from the boat by hand.

We could have stayed on land much longer, but most of our group were back on the boat within an hour or so. The boat actually took over four hours to unload before we were ready to set sail again.

After the usual meal of noodles, rice, tomato and meat we went up to the top deck to celebrate Japser’s birthday. Donna had managed to find a large box of small cake like things. I’m not quite sure what you would call them but they were like chocolate covered marshmallows. But without access to a cake they were great. Donna had even found birthday candles.

After Jasper had blown out the candles he had to strip of and show of his new “hulk” boxers.

We started of playing a dice game called ambition. It’s a really simple game played with five dice, were you score point based on what you roll. After a few rounds of this we then started the card games. This time we played the “rule game”. Each card has a rule assigned to it. For example red 2 means drink 2 sips, jack means all the boys drink, queens all the girls drink. It was great fun. I finally managed to get rid of the Southern Comfort bottle I had been carrying since Miami airport. During the game Donna introduced us to the “game of life”. This is a fun game where once you’re in then you’re in for the duration of the journey, ie till Rio. The idea is to bait people to say “it’s mine”. Ironically Donna was the first to be got when someone asked who’s bottle of Baccardi is this. Donna responded “It’s mine” and then had to do the punishment which is ten pressups. This can be done anywhere and once you get caught you have to drop down and do ten.

Then night was pretty good fun and some of the girls stayed up dancing on the top deck. The music was going till about 1am. The girls came down and Maartje was convinced that my hammock was hers. I couldn’t have been asleep for very long but I was oblivious to it. Eventually Fi finally convinced her it wasn’t her hammock. I haven’t forgiven Fi for that yet!

Not much after that, probably around 2am I moved in my hammock in my sleep and the next thing I suddenly woke up as the knot tying my hammock to the boat undid and I come crashing to the floor. It was crazy. I was asleep but full awake by the time I hit the deck, literally. Luckily it was the knot at my feet and not the one near my head or it could have been serious. I’m not sure how this happened but I reckon that it must have been disturbed as people moved their hammocks getting of the boat at XXX village.

I’m not quite sure what time I woke up, but I was surprised that I didn’t have a hangover. I guess the vomiting, fresh air from the river and the fact that we were mostly drinking clear spirits helped. This day was very quiet though and not many people wanted to repeat the previous days activities.

The only really interesting thing that happened today was seeing the localised thunder storms along the bank in the evening. Annie and I also spotted some river dolphins from the top deck. These were the pink river dolphin and were quiet common on our journey. If you were stood on the deck for about an hour you would usually see at least one. Considering that that was all some people did they saw a few. It was nothing like the experience of los llanos though.

At lunch I got chatting to Emily, a girl from the group who had their hammocks in the next row to mine. She was a gap student between college and university and the program she was in takes gap students and trains them to be students in developing countries around the world. She had originally wanted to go to Cambodia but was assigned Gayana

The next day I woke around 7:30am , I missed breakfast and in fact missed breakfast for the entire trip. Not that ite was much to miss; basically dried crackers and sweet black coffee. Luckily I’d bought fruit and cereal bars from Manaus so this provided breakfast for most days.

During the night we had sailed down the Amazon and turned onto the Rio XX. In itself this is the seventh biggest river in the world and it is only a tributary of the Amazon. I guess the thing with the boat journey is that after the first few miles the river starts to look the same. We sailed past villages, plantations and jungles.

I was really glad that I had the laptop as it enabled me to catch up considerably with the journey through Venezuela. Most of the group spent their time playing cards, or dice games, or reading on the top deck. I spent most of the time in my hammock catching up with organising photos and the blog. In some ways I have a slight regret about not spending more time playing cards with some of the group and watching the river go by, but it was worth it. What surprised me though is that most of the Brazilians who were on the ferry with us spent almost all their time in the hammocks. They rarely went onto the top deck and most of them did not have books to read or music to listen to. After a few days you would walk round and see people staring catatonic at the ceiling or watching the river go by. So although there was general monotony punched by monotonous meals that isn’t to say that there wasn’t interesting stories.

The first of which is the drinking game that was played in the evening of the 15th July. After the evening meal we went onto the top deck and started playing the card game uno. About an hour or so into the game we decided to make this into a drinking game. Thus proving that even the most innocent of childrens games can be converted into a full on drinking game. I’ve actually played a drinking game similar to uno using playing cards, but this was the first time using the actual official uno game. We started with the vodka I had bought in Manaus. People threw in a kitty to buy soft drinks from the bar to make up the mixers and then the fun began. Or rather the slow slide into oblivion began. For the first few rounds everything was going well but if you won twice you were able to make up a new rule. I think that I was one of the first to win twice and brought in the “only pointing with you elbow” rule. This is a great rule to start the drinks flowing.

Ian then brought in a rule that if you had to be reminded of your turn then you had to drink. This wasn’t great for me as I was acting as barman and as a result was pretty much reminded it was my turn on every round. I must have had a good quarter of the bottle to myself. We quickly ran out of the vodka and then turned to the rum that the dutch girls had bought and the sugar cane drink that was still on the truck.

I honestly can say I remember much about the night except for vomiting over the back of the boat into the river. This was probably a good move though as it got alcohol out of my system. I wasn’t the only person vomiting into the river as Eugene joined me. There are a few things though that I have been reminded of since. Apparently I jokingly grabbed Donna, our tour leader, round the waste and lifted her up as if to throw her over. I don’t think she found it too funny though but I can’t have been serious as she was holding the book I was reading and as I hadn’t finished it yet there is no way I would have thrown that into the river. Later one of the crew came to wake up Eugene from his hammock. Eugene couldn’t understand what he was after but followed him up to the top deck. The top deck was deserted and in total darkness. The guy switched on the light illuminating me fast asleep in one of the deckchairs. Eugene woke me up and I do have a slight memory of walking back through the deck and getting into my hammock. I was soon fast asleep though and woke up bright and breezy the following day. The events of that night though, beyond the card game, are hazy to say the least. Its been a long time since I’ve had memory loss from alcohol though and not one I’m hoping to repeat in the near future.