Just a little river in Brazil

Further into the Amazon, we began to see why it’s the largest river basin in the world. It is so large you can be on one side of the river and the other side of the river is past the horizon. It is a murky brown colour, except in spots where two of the rivers meet and then you see a clear definition of blue to brown. It is as hot and sweaty as everyone claims it to be. Every night on deck, you can go on a nature walk. Very large and weird-looking bugs end up all over the decks and the deck hands have to hose it off every few hours to rid us of the crunchy critters. Each night there would be a different type of bug or giant moth. It was quite a sight. My least favorite were the cockroach-like ones with pincers. Don’t know what they pince, but I didn’t stay around long enough to find out.

I went for a walk around Santarem, but it was such a hot day and you’d be burnt in minutes. Boca da Valeria was very different. In my opinion, it’s a spot set up for tourists, but there are 15 families that actually live there. It’s a tiny village alongside the river and would be the typical thing you might picture an amazon village to be like. The houses are on stilts for when the water is higher during the wet season and the “dock” (or what passed for a dock) looked like it might collapse at any moment. The ship donated a large globe to the schoolhouse, in return for some “look how giving our company is and how we contribute” pictures with Amazonian children. I, as the Hostess must be included in this sort of thing. So, here are a couple photos with the kids and the school. The kids (as much as I don’t like them usually) are pretty cute and I wouldn’t mind keeping one or two. Of course they would stay in a soundproof room and someone else would have to look after them.

I got to see a Toucan up close; it was their town pet. The toucan did keep me fairly happy though, because it had been weeks since I’ve seen penguins! On our way back, we took the last tender and as we pulled away from the Boca da Valeria’s Maritime Terminal, we lost the Starboard engine in the tender and it sent us spiraling out of control. The tender smashed into the dock, crushing their tiny tire-and-plank floating facility. The children and a couple of drunks from the town seemed to think it was all quite hilarious. We finally stopped spinning and an engineer fixed the engine. Nothing was fixed or offered as far as the dock went though, so I wonder how hilarious that really was in the end.