Friday, March 2


Another superior tour today! I was really exhausted this morning, but determined to go on the second river tour anyway. I actually felt better at the end of it than at the beginning.


It was most interesting to see the area in daylight. The canoe ride was a lot longer, and we saw a lot of fascinating stuff: monkeys jumping in the trees, a black ring-neck hawk, a blue-capped heron, egrets, an Amazonian kingfisher, one of those bright blue and black butterflies (I forget the name...starts with "M"), lots of different kinds of vegetation. Then there were the kids in canoes offering to let you hold various sorts of wild life like good-sized caimans, three-toed sloths, and an anaconda that was about 9 feet long. I petted the caimans and had my picture taken wearing the anaconda. It was pretty big...my hand just managed to go around its neck...and it was very strong. That was fun, but showing the photos around back on board was even more fun. I declined to hold the sloth as I was quite aware of its microflora and didn’t wish to discover its microfauna, but as I was sitting right next to the guide, I got several good photos of it also.

Antarctica was interesting, but the Amazon has really been the highlight of this trip for me.


Saturday, March 3


Half the day at Parantins, Brazil, the fourth largest city on the Amazon. We were greeted at docking by fireworks and again at sailing. There was also a charming troop of young boy scouts directing traffic and tourists on the dock.


I attended the Boi Bumba show which was most spectacular. It’s a piece of an annual festival that lasts 3 days and celebrates a local legend with lots of drums, music dancing, fabulous costumes and enormous set pieces as you can see. There were also a horde of local girls wearing not much who continuously circulated serving strong rum drinks and (fortunately for me) cold water.


Getting back to the ship, I was finally able to break my lifelong streak of never seeing a dolphin from a ship. I wasn’t able to catch them on camera, but I did actually see both species of freshwater Amazon dolphins, the grey and the pink.