Wednesday 20th March – Day at Sea.
Arrived at Macapa Pilot
Station at just after 7am but were delayed by Brazilian immigration until 2pm –
what a surprise!
Spent a lovely afternoon
sitting on our balcony looking at the bank of the Amazon through our
binoculars. Apparently the authorities have banned any live lectures during our
time here – why? – We have lent our laptop to Sandy so that she can show one of
Bernard Magee’s lectures to the bridge players instead of her doing her planned
seminar.
Received a letter from Alex
(cruise director) asking us to see her… She gave us two bottles of Malbec even
though Dindo is still insisting we had drunk all ten bottles. With these two
and the bottle the captain gave Nesta for her birthday, we are happy now!
Also had a letter reminding
us that we are moving back to 3110 on 24th…
The Amazon has not been as
hot/humid or buggy yet as we had feared.
There's a nice Jaguar!!
The real thing
Thursday 21st March – Santarem, Brazil.
Sailed through the wedding of
the waters, on our way to Santarem. We went ashore at about 3pm when the
weather had cooled a little (well, there was a bit of a breeze anyway!)
We walked past houseboats
with families living in them and riverboats loading and unloading their wares –
really interesting.
We stopped at the fish market
and some of the locals were tying unwanted fish onto ropes and throwing them in
the water to encourage the pink river dolphins to come and feed. We saw a pair
of them – and they really are pink! Not sure if our photos will do them justice
though…
On the way back we were given
“gifts” of Amethyst crystals to encourage us to visit the Amsterdam Sauer
jewellery factory in Manaus… We might just do it!
In the evening we entered the
pub quiz – but, true to form, we didn’t win it!
Excellent choice! Dannillo shows us how to make cocktails
The wedding of the waters - the Amazon and Rio Negro
Farming, Amazonian style!
A pink turtle (honest, it is!!)
Santarem
The Brazilian three men in a boat
A village on the banks of the Amazon
A sloth - the animal, not the woman!
My job is to look after the parrots!
No wonder they build houses on stilts here
The church in Boca de Valeria
Friday 22nd March – Boca de Valeria,
Brazil.
This was billed as visiting an authentic
Indian village on the banks of the Amazon. Our experience was that it was a bit
of a tourist trap. Don’t actually know who was exploiting whom the most. Kids
from surrounding villages were “boated in” to show people around and have their
photos taken at $1 a go. The trip was quite interesting and at least it wasn’t
raining because we would have all got very muddy!
The announcements on the ship
were almost persuading passengers not to go ashore – but this could have been
because there is still only one tender that works!
Saturday 23rd March – Manaus, Brazil.
We arrived at 9am to an
unusual sight…very few tower blocks!
The ship has parked next to
lots of riverboats and within walking distance of the main street.
We had no booked trips today –
which was just as well as there was a huge thunderstorm with torrential rain
around lunchtime. We did venture as far as the port terminal and availed
ourselves of the free Wi-Fi. We did manage to Skype the girls, but David was
away for the weekend and no matter how much we tried, we couldn’t get it to
work well enough to speak to Martin. (Had to communicate the old-fashioned way
– by text!)
We invited our new Antipodean
friends, Andrew and Alison, for drinks and to play cards on what was our last
night in a balcony cabin.
Nesta and Alison retired to
bed at about 11pm whilst Ian and Andrew sat up drinking whiskey and putting the
world to rights until 1-30am.
Sunday 24th March – Manaus, Brazil.
It was still raining this
morning, but not as hard. Packed up all our stuff and moved back down to cabin
3110 again. Joel had cleaned it and moved the furniture round just as we like
it and it was almost like “coming home” as we put up our postcards to decorate
it again!
We will, though, miss the
extra space from the cabin upstairs and the fridge to keep the drinks cold!
As we found out in Santarem,
there is an Amsterdam Sauer jewellery factory in Manaus - so we took the free
shuttle from the port 20 minutes up the coast to the Hotel Tropical in Ponto Negro
where they have a shop. As none of the various items of jewellery had a price
tag on, we didn’t buy any but the hotel has a zoo… We spent a pleasant
afternoon looking at a Jaguar, some monkeys, parrots and of course the capybara
(we all know what they look like, don’t we)
There was also a path down to
a beautiful white sandy beach (Manaus is situated on the River Negro, just
before it joins the Amazon) but it wasn’t swimming weather unfortunately.
We made it safely back to the
ship in time for afternoon tea and have decided to eat in the Discovery
restaurant this evening for two reasons… Firstly we didn’t fancy the menu much
so we can have steak and chips in the restaurant and secondly we may meet some
“like-minded passengers” at their first meal aboard.
It’s hard to credit that we
are now at the end of the seventh leg of our journey but we are still looking
forward to number eight which starts tomorrow!
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