Amazon

Thursday, February 01, 2024
Belém, State of Pará, Brazil
Jan. 28. Mimosa day! Recife, Brazil. 102, sunny and hot.
Recife is as far east on South America as you can get, and fairly close, at 8 degrees south, to the equator. It’s a fairly large city; the 4th largest in Brazil, at 4 million inhabitants. Our tour was to spend 1 1/2 hours on a catamaran, with no shade, in a river delta, then a walk to old town and a visit to a puppet museum. At 88 degrees at 7am, we decided it was too hot to take on that challenge, so we bailed .  Usual afternoon/evening, skipping the show. 
Jan. 29. At Sea. 88, seas 6’. Mostly sunny
Today is the first of 2 days at sea. We went to the 10am lecture on the likelihood of aliens. Kind of interesting! We grabbed our pool grill table and spent most of the late morning, afternoon there , having a “loopy” day. There was a Tex-Mex buffet (finally!), so margaritas were required. They pre-made strawberry and hot mango ones, which we sampled, but quickly retreated to our  normal double, with a shot on the side variety. Lissy was good and did her gym thing, while the rest of us drank then napped so hard we all almost missed cocktails. We ordered water! We had reservations in Chartreuse, but Lissy liked the CR menu tonight so we bailed on Chartreuse. Still feeling the effects of the afternoon, we retired early!
Jan. 30. At Sea. 88, seas 6’. Cloudy with a passing shower.
Again at sea! We’ve been doing breakfast at Coffee Connection, as the coffee/cappuccino is the best there, and the continental breakfast is all we need. So, coffee, puzzles and 2 lectures in the morning. The lecturers are not that dynamic, but the topics are interesting to us. We all had a “dry” lunch at the pool grill, seeing as how we drank today’s margaritas yesterday.  I had some “housekeeping to do” beginning to think about all the preparations for returning home in 10 days. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon on the veranda listening and watching the ocean go by. We did cocktails an dinner in CR, as usual, but tonight instead of entertainment in the theater was the ABBA dance party in the forum. OMG we love ABBA music. We stayed til the end and I was a Dancing Queen!
Jan. 31. Belem, Brazil. 72-92, sunny, occasional tropical downpours.
This is our last port of call in Brazil. Yea! Rio was fabulous, but the rest of Brazil, not so much. We are almost exactly on the equator at the mouth of the Amazon River. They call this summer and say it rains every day in summer and in winter it rains all day every day. We anchored at a town on the outskirts of Belem, perhaps 20 miles from downtown. As we got off the tender and walked to busses there were police videotaping and taking pictures of us! Not sure if it was because they don’t get many tourists or some other security reason! Our tour was originally advertised as a 4 hour tour, but whoops, they forgot to include the 1+hour bus ride each way from the outskirts to the downtown pier. The tour was a boat ride through delta of the Amazon to a stop for a jungle walking tour, then the boat ride back to Belem. A police boat escorted us the whole way. The boat ride was nice, the bus ride was not so nice; very slow and very un-scenic, trash and graffiti everywhere. We didn’t do the hike in the jungle. My highlight of the day was making a local, who helped a partially disabled friend, very happy. All in all, we were “on tour” for 7 hours. When we finally got back to the ship we ran to the pool bar for a Margarita, just to cool and calm down. We luckily did not get caught in the tropical downpours that many of the other guests got caught in! The evening was the usual, lounge, CR, lounge. 
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Comments

Dep
2024-02-02

Enjoy your week and look forward to you coming home! It’s been great touring with you, as I know I’won’t be going to that part of the world…..

Debbie
2024-02-02

Still loving your commentary. Well done Dancing Queen. What a thrill to be on the Amazon River.

2025-02-15

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