The Clark Family's Amazing Adventures

I wake at 3am when Ben comes up to use the loo and have a chat, then at 5.30am when Zoe comes up to tell me we docked and people left and arrived and that they have a new hammock neighbour! We take pictures together of the almost full moon as it sets.

I had been thinking about the fact that the kids are free to wander the boat which is pretty small and well contained and I’m especially relieved that no-one abducted or murdered my kids as I slept soundly in my top deck suite and they shared the hammock deck with 150 locals!!

After breakfast, a lazy morning laying in hammocks, showering, snoozing back in the cabin, children running around busying themselves with friends, can crushing, making rope swings… It’s hotter today! Well we are less than 2 degrees south of the Equator. We reach a wider part of the river and after a lovely lunch of chicken meat rice and chips, need to lie in air con cabin – What a luxury! Visiting the public loos and showers briefly, I notice the hammock area near the public loos has been vacated and I consider how lucky we are to have the luxury of suite no 6!
It worked out an extra £160 for the suite for 7 days – best money we’ve spent in a while I think!

We’re now in the widest river I’ve seen, I’d guess its a few km across. It feels hotter and you can’t walk barefoot on the sunny part of the deck – it burns. The kids flag and complain of the heat but they shower in the cabin and feel better then soon after they put on the deck showers and everyone is happy again!!!

Supper is getting a bit boring – meat rice and spaghetti but perfectly adequate – we order two between us and eat the lot but have discovered that cheese and ham toasties are available all day in the bar – so topping up with those is a treat. Another brief stop at a small town sees more passengers leave and new ones hop on. Suddenly a new hammock is up, verging on uncomfortably-close to one of ours! But we can imagine the boat being alot busier and a lot more cramped having read of people stringing their hammocks above yours!! Can’t quite imagine that!

Zoe crashed out in the cabin tonight with Lara. We’ve spotted an odd raised line on Lara’s foot that seems to been part of a bite. Need to keep an eye on that as it looks a bit suspicious as if something could be burrowing around under her skin?! Can’t Google it without any signal which is frustrating.

I headed off with Ben to sleep my first night in a hammock, really not too bad, although hard to get a comfortable postion strategically placed so your head or elbow isn’t bumping with your neighbour and the end of your hammock isn’t bumping too much with the hammock in the overlapping next row! Fun to play a word game with Ben before sleep…. It’s quite bright as the lights stay on but draping a sleep sheet over the bar in the right place works, the air con works a bit too so quite a good sleep, disrupted only by a middle of the night stop for some to depart and others arrive and the occasional need for a reposition when some part of my body feels a bit numb!