A balsa (riverbarge) pushed by tug-boat, loaded with large trucks on their way to Manaus. Due to large-scale flooding at the end of the rainy season, we had to travel on one of these balsas from Manaus to Boa Vista, up the Rios Branco and Negro. We spent 10 days sleeping in hammocks slung beneath the trucks, washing with riverwater, and eating rice served with a diminishing supply of chickens that lived in cardboard boxes. One day the crew spied an exhausted deer swimming in midstream; it was captured, and provided us meat for the next two days.