Amazon Cruise 4

Tuesday, November 20  --  Santarem, Brazil

Okay, okay. I finally got off the ship! So my tour group immediately got on another boat and set off for Maica Lake. The regional boat is a typical river boat, small and maneuverable, several decks high, has mostly open decks with railings. These boats are the trucks and buses of the river hauling people and freight and serving as the only access to villages and even some larger towns that do not have an airport.

At first we followed the line in the water where the Tapajos meets the Amazon. The Tapajos is a 1,000 km very old river that comes up from the south. It has dark, clear water and carries no silt, so when it meets the silty Amazon, it takes about 5 km before they get mixed together. Here at Santarem the Amazon is so wide that a ferry takes 3.5 hours to cross it. All these numbers are just mind boggling!

We saw a number of river dolphins and some were pink! Usually, if there's wildlife to be seen, I'm on the other side of the boat/ship/bus/etc., but this time I saw them!

Once we got to Maica Lake (which was more like a side channel of the river), our boat nosed into the bank and spools of fishing line with baited hooks were available to any who wanted to fish for piranha. I did not catch one. For our boatload of around 30 people, one man caught a red piranha. I thought the poor little thing would expire before everyone finished taking pictures of it, but they're tough little fish. Several other people caught slender silvery fish of various sizes that the guide called sardines. Several people managed to pull a piranha out of the water but unhooked so it got away. Most of us simply fed their bait to whatever was down in the opaque water that was good at stealing bait. Still, it was a fun excursion.

Margaret went off on a tour of both primary and secondary growth rainforest. The Brazilian state of Para has enacted very strict laws protecting the rainforest. The neighboring state (Matagrosso?) hasn't done that, so great tracts of forest have been destroyed to make room for things like cattle or soybeans. The guide on her tour was full of information about the native plants and their uses, so she was a happy camper.

In my book, one of the Heroes of the Prinsendam is the little man who dips ice cream up on the Lido deck. Standing in a space about the size of a phone booth, he dips and dips and dips for a never ending line of passengers.

We had a pleasant dinner with our former table mates Stew and Sandy and the Canadian couple from 2 nights ago Dave and Linda. After dinner we crashed pretty early as it had been a long day.

Wednesday, November 21  --  Boca da Valeria, Brazil

This is truly a wide spot at the mouth of a small tributary. When we stopped here 12 years ago, it was one woman's house where you could tender ashore and maybe see a few of her relatives who lived back in the rainforest and had come out selling handcrafts. Now it's a much bigger place with 3 real buildings (a bar, a church, and a school) plus more houses and relatives with more handcrafts for sale. Now it's a real indigenous village. Since it's a tender port again plus probably muddy ground ashore, I gave it a miss.

Margaret went ashore and, sure enough, she and everyone else got thoroughly rained on, albeit briefly. She said she enjoyed seeing the place. Evidently one of the main features these days is a horde of very young kids one of which attaches itself to each passenger to steer their purchase power to particular vendors. Margaret's tagalong attachment was of the 3 or 4 year old tot size who merely followed her around.

About 2:00 p.m. we hoisted anchor, made a u-turn, and headed upstream again. At one point we passed the Silverseas Silver Whisper out in the middle of the river with tender service to a city on the south bank that was probably Parantin.

This evening we had a leisurely dinner in the Pinnacle Grill which is always nice. There is a Pinnacle Grill on each Holland America ship, but I think the one here on the Prinsendam feels the most special.

Hard to believe that tomorrow we are halfway through this trip!