The Amazon – March 9th – March 15th

We’ve now been cruising the Amazon for a week. We’ve gone from the beautiful blue Atlantic Ocean to the brown waters of the Amazon. There are times when the river is so wide that we can’t see the shore and other times when the shore is only a few feet from the ship. The water’s depth, the currents and Brazilian politics have all affected our schedule.
Our first stop along the Amazon was Santarem. It was sunny and 95 degrees. Here we saw a unique natural phenomenon called “the meeting of the waters”. The Amazon and Tapajos rivers run alongside one another for many miles, without mixing, and we could clearly see the muddy brown of the Amazon right next to the blue of the Tapajos. The six of us went into town on the shuttle bus and walked around and shopped until we were unbearably hot, so we stopped for a beer at a local restaurant. The Brazilian beer is delicious and that’s saying a lot for a non-beer drinker. But it was cold and very refreshing.
The next day we stopped at a teeny-tiny village called Boca de Valeria. We had to take a tender to the dock. There were only a handful of buildings in the village, including a school, a church, a bar/restaurant and a few houses. Oh, and the village outhouse. People came from miles around for our visit to sell their wares, take us on canoe rides and entertain us with their native Indian costumes and some of their animals, including a sloth, a stingray and the biggest rat in the world (I can’t remember what they called it). As we got off the tender, children came to us and took our hands to guide us around the area. It was cute and sweet but we knew that this is a way of begging; they expected to be given something at every turn. Again it was extremely hot and humid and we didn’t stay long. We bought a couple of souvenirs, had a beer, paid a couple of people for pictures and went back to the ship.
Below are pictures of both stops.