After departing Barbados, we had two days at sea to take
part in the many ship activities, look over our Caribbean pictures, and to
prepare for Brazil. By now we are
settling into the routine of life at sea as well as meeting our new neighbors
on the Amsterdam.
We are all finding our things we enjoy doing individually
as well as those we enjoy doing together.
I tend to get up early and go out do laps around the deck, usually
walking at least three miles before breakfast while Barb prefers to do her laps
in the early afternoon. We’re all
enjoying attending the cultural and scientific lectures whenever we can. They enrich our visits to the ports of call,
giving us a better understanding of the cultures, history, geography, and
weather conditions. Barb has gotten involved
with the HAL (Holland America Line) Chorale, directed by our cruise director,
Bruce Scudder. They will put on at least
a couple and maybe more, concerts for the ship later in the cruise. Pam is finding the light exercise program, Qi
Gong, to be refreshing. She is trying
her hand at watercolor, plans to attend Digital Workshops to help her download
and sort her pictures on the computer, and occasionally attends team trivia
events as well. Al, an avid golfer at
home, is enjoying playing bridge in the afternoon and poker after the evening
performances. And of course, both Barb
and I are spending time working on our blog and applying a sampling of pictures
to be included in them.
Barb, Pam, and I attend the Good Morning Amsterdam
sessions each morning. It’s a light
audience participation interview program that goes off in different
directions. On Wednesday, they asked how
many were teachers. Of course, the three
of us raised our hands. When Pam said
she had taught freshman English in high school, Bruce wanted to talk to her
about what it was like teaching freshmen.
That gave her a chance to acknowledge Lincoln-Way High Schools, by name
and to indicate her enjoyment of that age group of students. Barb and I liked how she credited the
students at Lincoln-Way in such a positive light. For those that don’t know, Barb and I do a
lot of subbing at Lincoln-Way as well.
Thursday, the 12th was Pam’s birthday, so she
found some balloons and a greeting posted on our door from the Neptune Lounge
staff and our cabin stewards and she has been received birthday wishes
throughout the day. To celebrate Pam’s
birthday on the ship, the four of us enjoyed dinner in the Pinnacle Grill. It
has been quite a different birthday for her, needless to say.
We continue to enjoy the lectures on various topics and
found the meteorological expert’s lecture on tropical cyclones to be quite
fascinating. Our friends who teach
meteorology, (long time high school classmate) Dr. Merlin Lawson (University of
Nebraska) and Steve Miller (Lincoln-Way East HS), will be interested to know
that these lectures have been well attended and given in sufficient laymen’s
language that many guests are attending.
As two examples, I never realized that where we are now sailing off the
coast of Brazil, cyclones are rare to non-existent but we are hoping to avoid
one of the potentially two-week cyclones that can occur off the east coast of Australia
when we are in those waters.
Belem, Brazil, a city of 1.9 million people is near the
mouth of the Amazon River. A lecture by
Dr. Tommie Sue Montgomery introduced us to the ecology and importance to South
America of the Amazon. While the Nile is
longer, the water outflow into the Atlantic Ocean is greater and in some
places, the Amazon is actually so wide that one can’t see either shore! Unfortunately we were required to anchor near
Icoaracy which is a half hour tender ride from the ship followed by an hour’s
drive by shuttle into Belem. That’s the longest transfer ever for us.
Pam had a different shore excursion, but Barb,
Al, and I had chosen to do The Amazon
River System Adventure by Riverboat excursion in the afternoon. Because the logistics were complicated, we
were to meet on shore after tendering from the ship. The port used large tenders rather than the
ship’s smaller ones, so we went down to get on a tender at about 11 AM. As we stepped from the elevator, the area in
front of the elevator was mobbed with people waiting to get on the tender. As more and more elevators arrived, it became
a crush of people. I felt a lady behind
me pushing against my back. It made me
wonder why this lady was in such a hurry and really so rude as to be pushing me.
As I tried to move forward a bit, she still pushed against me almost making me
fall on top of the person ahead of me.
Barb was nearby when I noticed the woman almost unresponsive, so I asked
if she was OK, to which she shook her head “no”. Barb commented that she had a cane and I
could feel her falling toward me, so I yelled in my best schoolteacher voice
that we needed help back here and hoped someone from the staff would
respond. Quickly someone came from one
direction while someone brought a chair from the crew’s quarters. We could feel the lady sinking before the
chair arrived and we eased her to the floor and left it to the staff to help.
Our assumption was that she was overcome by the oppressive heat and was passing
out. At that point, the tender arrived
and we could leave her with the staff in a much less confined area.
We boarded a tour bus with spacious seat
and legroom (close to the best tour bus I have ever been on for the
comfortable ride to Belem. The area we rode through was filled with people on
the streets. What was noticeable to
someone (me) who has never been in Brazil before was that there were homes and
side streets with homes that belonged to very poor people, yet the people
themselves seem to be quite well dressed.
When we arrived in Belem, we
immediately transferred to a riverboat for our ride on the delta of the Amazon
River. As the channel narrowed, we
observed houses built on stilts over the water, clothes drying on porch rails
of the houses, lots of boats, a few satellite dishes near the homes, and lots
of small kids out on their porches waving at us. As we looked out from the back of the boat,
we could see skyline of Belem with its tall buildings in the distance. Quite a contrast between the parts of a
modern city and the still fairly primitive homes along the creek! We disembarked the riverboat at Combu Island
(Palm Tree Island) for an approximate hour long rainforest walk. We saw lots of foliage and large leafy
plants. We saw everything from Brazil
nut trees, cacao beans, mango trees, kapok trees, mahogany trees, palms,
etc. A few people complained about the
insects and some insect bites but they were foolishly wearing shorts and thin
short sleeve shirts. Wonder if they
expected anything different in a tropical rainforest! Some complained that they had to walk for
about an hour, saying the description was misleading. Yet the description clearly had said there
would be a walk of 45 minutes. Our
excellent Brazilian tour guide, Edison, whose English enunciation was
excellent, paused frequently to explain some of the foliage we observed. Along
the trail, two young boys were waiting to provide us with a demonstration of
how they could quickly climb a tall tree to retrieve fruit from the
treetops. At one point along the trail,
a “helpful” tourist grabbed a nearly dead palm frond that was hitting everyone
as they brushed by it. What he didn’t
realize was that it was much bigger than expected and the other end was a
branch that came down and hit Barb in the head, raising a bump and giving her a
headache. Following our walk, we boarded
the bus for the tender back to the ship.
As a basis for comparison, the Fiji rainforest walk was much
more difficult; at least our Brazilian walk was much more level ground. Having done a Peruvian rainforest ride and
walk when the Lincoln-Way travel group took that trip nearly four years ago,
Pam asked how they compared. The
Peruvian one was in a much more desolate area of a tributary of the Amazon,
views along the shore weren’t as close as the one in Brazil, and the Peruvian
rainforest walk was through an area much denser. The one we did in Brazil was clearly easier.
After departing Belem (Portuguese for “Bethlehem” by the
way), we continue along the coast of Brazil toward Recife three days from now.
Now we are three hour ahead of Chicago and two ahead of New
York. We hear Chicago is having its
first significant snow of the season! It
has been in the 80’s and humid here but Belem is one degree south of the
equator so we are pleased that it isn’t even hotter or more humid!
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