Boca da Valeria, Brazil

Sunday, November 6th
Amazing Amazon
Day 13
M/S Regatta
Boca da Valeria, Brazil
The Amazon River
Arriving: 8:00 AM
Departing: 1:00 PM
60% Chance of Rain - 87 Degrees

Boca da Valeria translates to "Mouth of the Valeria" River. We anchored this morning where the Valeria meets the Amazon.

There are more than 200 Indio tribes in the Amazon. During the years of the rubber boom in the late 1800s and early 1900s, these indigenous tribes were decimated as they have been all over the new world between first contact, and total exploitation, by European explorers and settlers. Numbering more than 1,000,000, there were fewer than 200,000 Indios left by 1915. One hundred years later, their numbers are rebounding, even in the face of new threats from deforestation and development. Still, there are more than 50 tribes in this region that do not have regular contact with the outside world.

The people of Boca da Valeria are most certainly not among them. This is a small settlement of 75 - 100 people, a tiny fishing village 400 feet up the hill from the river. Actually, these people, the Caboclos, descend from both natives and Portuguese settlers.

While the ship turned on its anchor, for most of the day our veranda looked out over the 200 yards of channel between ship and shore. A floating dock was set into the mud on the other side. The trail that led up the hill and into the village from the dock was lined with villagers waiting for our arrival. Some particularly enterprising locals didn't wait for passengers to come to the village, they came to the ship. They piled into leaky canoes along with their best ambassadors (cute kids) and anything that they had to sell or trade, or show and tell, and motored and paddled toward Regatta. They surrounded the tender dock two or three canoes deep and climbed over one another to reach the passengers boarding the tender. They posed Three-Toed Sloths for pictures, but didn't appear to treat the animals very well. We heard this was true for other wildlife on shore as well.

This stop is not about the natural wonders of the Amazon, but a chance to meet and mingle with the Caboclos, to see their way of life, and support their barter economy. As the Oceania port guide noted, "It is customary to bring some small items such as pencils, pens, cosmetics, baseball caps, or t-shirts as gifts." In this regard, Oceania leads by example. The crew loaded several tenders with donated supplies for the village. Some passengers have been hoarding soap and shampoo for the Caboclos. That's nice, but are we saying that they are unclean? By whose standards? These are not primitive people. Boca da Valeria is wired for electricity. They have street lights. Their homes are better constructed than many we have seen along the river. We can see a satellite dish.

We are conflicted about this kind of experience. This region is not abundant with economic opportunity. Tourism is a large, growing, and sustainable business, but this feels like a visit to the people zoo. People of privilege on tour to point and stare at people of poverty in their natural environment. Not to mock maybe, but certainly to condescend.

In the end, we decided to skip the heat, humidity, and the bugs, avoid the hard sell and the sob story, keep our guilt and pity to ourselves, and stay on board the ship.

Santarem, Brazil

Saturday, November 5th
Amazing Amazon
Day 12
M/S Regatta
Santarem, Brazil
The Amazon River
Arriving: 10:00 AM
Departing: 6:00 PM
50% Chance of Showers - 88 Degrees

Santarem is a working port city of 250,000 at the junction of the Rio Tapajos and the Amazon River, half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and Manaus. It was founded in 1661 as a fort to prevent foreign interests from penetrating further up the Amazon. Historically a trading center, Santarem is a transit point for the mining and agricultural production of the region. Regatta is docked at a pier just down from the grain terminal.

We walked off the ship, across the pier, and onto a riverboat for a Maica Lake Cruise.

Where the Tapajós and Amazon rivers come together, there is a "meeting of the waters." The rivers are different temperatures and flow at different speeds. Like oil and vinegar poured into a jar, the two rivers stay separated and distinct from one another within the same channel for several miles until they get shaken up into vinaigrette. The murky muddy brown Amazon flows side-by-side with the clear blue Tapajós. This zone makes for prime fishing. Each river is host to different species of fish, any one of which could take the bait from a line dropped at the "meeting of the waters."

When the 50% chance of rain turned into a 100% chance of a torrential downpour driving from left to right across our path, the crew lowered rolled-up tarps hung from the port side of the open-sided boat.

Maica Lake, which is really a river, is home to all sorts of native life. Kingfishers, Egrets, and Snake Birds fill the skies and perch along the shore, rain forest meets pasture land where farm animals graze, Indio homes on stilts cling to bluffs just out of reach of the water, pink river dolphins break the surface then disappear leaving only a ripple in their wake, and the river is alive with fish, including killer piranha.

After floating up and down the river looking for wildlife, we tied up to a muddy bank below a foul farmyard to fish for piranha with the crudest of implements: fishing line, wound around a piece of wood, a hook at the end baited with a hunk of water buffalo. I dropped a line in the water and bobbed it up and down in this cute farce of a fishing trip, not expecting a bite, but...I CAUGHT A PIRANHA!!!

Amazing Amazon

Friday, November 4th
Amazing Amazon
Day 11
M/S Regatta
Cruising the Amazon River
Mostly Sunny
Air Temperature: 87 Degrees
River Temperature: 88 Degrees

We have had two relaxing days at sea, catching up on our sleep and our reading. In addition to pertinent parts of four guidebooks, we have prepared for this leg of the journey with works of fiction and nonfiction. "State of Wonder" by Ann Patchett is a New York Times bestselling novel about a team of medical researchers from Minnesota who venture into the deepest reaches of the Amazon in search of a tree that could be the source of everlasting fertility. "The River of Doubt" by Candice Millard is a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year that chronicles Theodore Roosevelt's dangerous and challenging descent of an uncharted tributary of the Amazon in 1914 and 1915. The better book of the two, this work of history is a fast and fascinating read, thoughtful and well-researched, an inside look at the self-made mind and body behind the legend of Teddy Roosevelt. "After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil's most famous explorer, Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the Western Hemisphere forever. Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide." Together, these two books paint a vivid, visceral, romantic, and terrifying picture of life and adventure in the most lush and foreboding natural environment on Earth. They have entertained and informed our own journey.

Today, we began our ascent of the Amazon River.

Very early this morning, we made the turn from the Atlantic Ocean into the Amazon. The water is brown, the air is dank and hot, and the insects have already formed a welcoming party. Just before noon, Regatta marked another transition as she crossed the equator from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern. In a brand new cruisefaring rendition of a grand old seafaring tradition, we have been presented with certificates commemorating the crossing of this imaginary line.

The Amazons, fierce women warriors of Greek mythology, were a legend long before "discovery" of South America. So dedicated to their pursuit, they removed their right breasts to better allow them to draw their bows and aim their arrows. Their name is derived from the Greek word "a-mazos," which means "no breast." As Francisco de Orellana led the first recorded descent of the great river by a European in 1542, in search of the lost city of gold, El Dorado, he encountered warring indigenous tribes with bare-breasted women "doing as much fighting as ten Indian men." And thus, in their honor, the river was christened "The Amazon."

"Amazing Amazon" is not our term, it is the theme of the cruise. Is it justified?

The Amazon River Basin is the world's largest network of freshwater rivers and lakes, draining an area of 2,720,000 square miles comprising 40% of the landmass of South America, everything East of the Andes, which form the Continental Divide. The Amazon is the second longest river in the world, just 60 miles short of the Nile. The Amazon is, indisputably, and by far, the largest river in the world by volume, with an average discharge greater than the next seven largest rivers combined. This volume accounts for approximately one-fifth of the world's total river flow. The Amazon rushes into the Atlantic Ocean at 11,000,000 cubic feet per second, enough to provide New York City with a one-year supply of water in just two hours. The mouth of the river forms an estuary 150 miles wide, encompassing an island the size of Switzerland, and it empties into the Atlantic with such force that the plume of fresh water extends 250 miles into the ocean. In the wet season, from December through June, the banks of the river can't contain it. Ranging from a mile wide to more than 6 miles wide in the dry season, the river can rise as much as 45 feet and swell to 30 miles wide in the height of the rainy season, flooding the surrounding forests. The várzea (flooded forests) of the Amazon represent the largest such habitat in the world. When the river is low, it covers 42,000 square miles. By the time the Amazon reaches its highest point of the year, it will have swallowed a total of 140,000 square miles of land.

Pretty Amazing!!!

All of this water is rife with life. More than 2,100 species of fish have been identified in the Amazon Basin. The smartest dolphin in the world can be found here, the Amazon River Dolphin, locally known as Boto, and to visitors as the Pink River Dolphin. Boto is born gray, and matures pink. It is also the largest species of river dolphin, reaching 8.5 feet in length. Boto is a mythical creature to the Indios. Dolphin by day, he morphs into a man in the dark and emerges from the river to seduce the women of the village. The Amazonian Manatee, or Seacow, is just as lovable and even bigger. The Giant Otter of the Amazon is the largest member of his family too. Anaconda Snakes slither through the water with just nostrils above the surface, up to nine feet of snake, as thick as a tree trunk, nostrils to tail. Worse still is the notorious Piranha, a carnivorous fish that swims in voracious packs and attacks everything and everyone it can with razor-sharp teeth. There are as many as 60 species of piranha, but only a few are known to attack humans. Most feared is the Pygocentrus nattereri, the Red-Bellied Piranha. In the Amazon, it's eat or be eaten, and they are good eating.

Another true story, this one courtesy of "The River of Doubt," not from Teddy Roosevelt's expedition, but a previous one. "The rivers teemed with piranha, but they sliced through the men's fishing line and hooks with knife-blade teeth. So difficult were they to catch that, out of desperation, a lieutenant, a man named Pyrineus, finally threw dynamite into a pond above a waterfall. As he splashed through the water below, eagerly gathering his spoils, he made the mistake of holding a piranha in his mouth while his hands were busy scooping up the others. The fish had at first been stunned by the dynamite and so lay slack between his teeth, but as soon as it recovered, it attacked. Before Pyrineus had time to react, the piranha had taken a bite out of his tongue. He would have bled to death had the expedition's doctor not stanched the wound with moss."

And then, there is the Candirú. I won't even tell you the one about the Candirú. I will say this: Men, don't ever pee in the river. Don't even pee into the river.

The Amazon River is 4,000 miles long from the headwaters in the Peruvian Andes to the Atlantic Ocean. Of that, 3,000 miles is navigable by ocean-going vessels. Over the next week, we will travel 1,000 miles up the greatest river on Earth to Manaus, with stops at Santarem and Boca da Valeria on the way, and Parintins on the way back. Manaus is the hub of the region, the ending point for most major cruises of the Amazon, and the launching point for smaller expeditions up the river and into the jungle. It is the center of life on the Amazon and center mass of the South American continent. It is the furthest point on our journey and our ultimate destination.

Trinidad

Tuesday, November 1st
Amazing Amazon
Day 8
M/S Regatta
Port of Spain, Trinidad
Trinidad & Tobago
Arriving: 9:00 AM
Departing: 4:00 PM
Scattered T-Storms - 86 Degrees

Port of Spain, on the Gulf of Paria, is the capital and financial center of Trinidad and Tobago, but only its third most populous city. Columbus "discovered" Trinidad in 1498 and christened it "La Isla de la Trinidad," The Island of the Holy Trinity. A crown colony of the United Kingdom for nearly 100 years, Trinidad and Tobago became an independent republic of the Commonwealth in 1976. The island of Trinidad was once connected to the South American continent, part of what is today Venezuela. In fact, Trinidad is closer to the coast of Venezuela, seven miles offshore, than it is to its sister island of Tobago. In addition to proximity, Trinidad and Venezuela also share similar geology. Oil was discovered here in 1976, followed by the discovery of vast additional stores of oil and gas in the late 1990s.

The guidebook quotes a popular sentiment about Port of Spain, "leave as fast as possible." The natural bounty of Trinidad well exceeds the urban charms of Port of Spain. In fact, Trinidad has the widest variety of flora and fauna in the Caribbean.

• 600 Species of Butterflies
• 430 Species of Birds
• 100 Species of Mammals
• 70 Species of Reptiles 
• 1600 Species of Flowering Plants
• 700 Species of Orchids

In a tropical rain forest high in the hills of the Northern Range, the Asa Wright Nature Centre is a world renowned ecological reserve. Founded in 1967 on a 200 acre cocoa and coffee plantation, Asa Wright is an award-winning destination for ecotourism, noted as "one of the world's ultimate outposts." Naturalists, ornithologists, and amateur birders reserve years in advance to make a pilgrimage to this Mecca of nature.



We joined our guide David on the pier in Port of Spain for a drive up the Blanchisseuse North Coast Road and a hiking tour of the Asa Wright Nature Centre. It was a long drive and David provided a running commentary. Oil and gas money has given Trinidad opportunity that is the envy of the Caribbean, but there is considerable conflict as to how that money should be invested and distributed. Changes in government have stalled some projects and reversed course entirely on others. Controversy over a major campaign to develop Port of Spain with high rise office buildings toppled the previous government. The new government has pledged to invest in people rather than vanity projects. They mothballed infrastructure already completed toward a four billion dollar transportation network, ensuring continuing gridlock. Unrest led to the declaration of a state of emergency, and the establishment of a 10:00 PM curfew. David dismissed these measures as trivial and loosely enforced. Bars openly advertise curfew parties in defiance of the policies, which are due to expire after the holidays. We can't imagine such drastic measures in any but the most extreme circumstances, but David and his countrymen seem unfazed.

The traffic coming into the city was brutal, but mostly free-flowing heading out of town, the stop and go the result of traffic lights rather than congestion. We left the shantytowns, malls, and billboards behind when we turned onto the Blanchisseuse. As we gained elevation, the winding road narrowed and the switchbacks became more severe. The foothills of the Northern Range are being quarried at an alarming rate. Giant dump trucks fully loaded with stone barreled down the mountain. David had to pull off the road to let them pass with the slightest clearance. The rain had been falling off and on all morning and the quarries have left the hillsides vulnerable to erosion, mudslides, and flooding. We rounded a corner to find cars and trucks pulled off to the side, and the road in front of us flooded with a torrent of muddy water. Truck drivers had removed their shoes, picked up sticks, and waded into the water several feet deep to poke and prod in an attempt to clear the blockage.

The obstruction eventually gave way and the flood abated, the culverts under the road again able to handle the volume, and the water receded revealing the road. Back in the van, our journey continued.

The lodge at Asa Wright, the plantation house, is more than 100 years old. We came through a hallway of bedrooms and sitting rooms and emerged onto a wide open-air porch with an incredible view over the hills and valleys of of the rain forest.

Screened-in on the sides, but open to the front save for a half-wall, a row of stools provided the perfect perch to take it all in with cameras, binoculars, and the naked eye. In the garden just below, several metal tables had been set with scraps of fruit, papaya, banana, and citrus, and secured with screens over the top. Little birds by the hundreds fed on the bounty. Bigger birds followed the smaller ones. The air was alive with the flutter of their wings and the sound of their calls.

Hummingbirds, and others, hovered at their feeders.

Butterflies and bees floated by. A tarantula spider as big as your palm clung to the screen on the far wall. When the staff refreshed the fruit and tossed what was left to the ground, rodents and lizards appeared.

The richness and diversity of life was overwhelming.

Twenty to thirty species of birds could be identified without even leaving the porch, but we had come for a hike through the rain forest. And rain it did. We applied a thick fog of insect repellent, covered up with hats and coats, sweating in 80 degree heat in spite of the rain, and went down the stairs and into the jungle. The sheer abundance of organic material, living and dead, all around in three dimensions, was staggering. Layer upon layer of every stage of rot covered the ground. Nothing in the rain forest lives in isolation. Every living thing supports many others. A tree is covered with moss and draped with vines, a branch laden with a termite mound. A plant grows out of an exposed root of the tree and its leaves trap pools of rainwater for the benefit of both. A freshwater fish finds a happy home in a pool created by the plant. True story. They just can't figure out how the fish got there.

Our naturalist guide leading the way, we followed the trail downhill from the lodge, stopping every few feet to marvel at something new.

The path cut through the forest floor exposed the same stone being quarried down the hill. And it was slick. Super slick. Dangerously slick. As first one, then another, of our fellow travelers took a nasty fall, many others losing their footing, we decided the view was really better from the lodge anyway. We turned back up the trail, carefully executing every footfall. Back in the lodge, we took a front row stool on the porch, ordered a locally brewed Carib beer, and continued to watch the show.

St. Lucia

Monday, October 31st
Happy Halloween!!!
Amazing Amazon
Day 7
M/S Regatta
Castries, St. Lucia
Windward Islands
Lesser Antilles
West Indies
Arriving: 9:00 AM
Departing: 5:00 PM
50% Chance of Rain - 85 Degrees

St. Lucia is the "Helen of the West Indies." It is dripping wet deep green, lush with rain forests and banana plantations. The topography is closer to vertical than horizontal. An independent member of the Commonwealth since 1979, the island is part of the British Realm, but it's roots are French Creole. We are docked at Pointe Seraphine in Castries, the capital and commercial hub of the island. The city wraps around the harbor and boasts two buildings exceeding five stories.

Disembarking the ship, we stopped for beach towels and cold bottles of water for a day of fun and sun. We joined our guide, birthday girl Natasha, and boarded the 65 foot catamaran Jus Tango just down the pier from Regatta. Plenty of room, covered seats and open deck, restrooms, a bar, and trampoline nets spanning the pontoons up front for riding the waves. It's a 50-50 day, pockets of mist and peaks at the sun, but it's already a scorcher. We lathered on the sunscreen and donned our sunhats. We were a sight, looking the part of the pale tourist. I glistened in my black and bejeweled "High Maintenance" cap and Tres was strapped into his Discovery Chanel safari hat with the sunshade lowered in the back. High style. The crew raised the main sail, but Jus Tango puttered down the coast of the island on motor power. Tres was the first to venture out onto the bow and into the nets. The view up and out was pretty cool, the breeze and the spray both above and below. I struck a pose on the fantail.

Down island, a sharp turn to port reveals the picturesque hidden sapphire gem, Marigot Bay. The movie "Doctor Doolittle" was shot on location here. Well protected from land and sea, with boat rentals and a swimming beach, it's a water sports playground.

Our own marine sanctuary awaited, the tranquil cove of Anse Cochon. Jus Tango tied up a few feet from the beach and lowered her treacherous swim step into the water.

Time to get wet. The beach, not white, but soft and sandy, was deserted. There was a small "resort" at the far end that was "off limits" to us, but the bay was ours to explore. Not exactly crystal clear and shimmering blue, the water was warm while still refreshing and salty buoyant. I floated along just off the beach and Tres took off to swim laps. With goggles on, breath held, and looking down, it was pretty dead. Not a sign of life to be seen. On the other side of the boat, where a rocky hillside met the water, Tres found some coral and swam with the fishes. Not the Great Barrier Reef, but always nice to have company.

The US has the Grand Tetons, St. Lucia has the Grand Pitons, the symbols of the island. Rising more than 2,500 feet above sea level, the taller Petit Piton and the wider Gros Piton guard the entrance to the harbor at Soufriere.

After one last bow ride, with the cruise almost over, Tres turned to return to the stern. The wind at his back, the strap of his hat at the front, he made a gallant grab, but the hat was gone. Floating, top up, a gift to the gods. Embarrassed and dejected, hapless and hatless, he looked around for witnesses. "Oh well, at least no one saw." But the Captain sees all. The Jus Tango slowed and reversed course, a deckhand at the ready with a long-handled broom, the hat was plucked from the sea. He rinsed it off and gave it back to its grateful owner. Tres gave him a hearty thanks, and a tip, and came back to his seat to dab the hat dry. The Oceania beach towels are over-sized, soft and plush. When the deckhand came by to check on the hat, he asked if he might have the towel for a souvenir. Seriously, he asked for the towel. "Of course. Absolutely. No problem. The least I can do." So, we would return to the ship that afternoon one towel short, but two hats strong. Added bonus: the wet hat was a cool washcloth to the forehead, a refreshing reminder of good fortune. We have been shaken down for tips by Gypsies in Florence and by a cop in Egypt, and now, for a towel, by a deckhand in St. Lucia. How cool is that???

Docked at Soufriere, we transferred to ground transportation for the remainder of the day, a Toyota mini-bus-van considerably less ship shape, fresh, and roomy than the catamaran had been. Out of town and up the hill, lunch was served at an "historic estate...where you will dine on Caribbean delicacies in old plantation ambiance." Maybe a quibble here or there with the tour description, but Morne Coubaril Estate is certainly historic. Three large, open-sided dining huts were set with rustic, handmade tables and chairs, cats lurking underfoot, termites eating through the roof above. The buffet was very nice: banana salad, breadfruit, red beans, rice, barbecued chicken, and fried jackfish. For dessert, carrot cake that was far more cake than carrot. A taste of the islands and we didn't get sick.

Full from lunch, time for some aroma therapy. "Sulphur Springs, the world's only drive-in volcano, where you can drive right into the crater and see the pools of bubbling mud." Rotten eggs, they say, but it was more than that. Salt in the wound of the rotting flesh. Something savory. Maybe we were just thinking of lunch, but it called to mind red beans and rice. Rotten eggs, red beans and rice. Interesting, but not exactly nice to look at, down several flights of stairs, and back up several more, we arrived at the top of the mountain and thought, "This is it?" The Sulphur Springs tour guide took a survey of home states in the crowd. When we called out Washington, he said, "Ah, yes, Washington State. Mt. St. Helens." A connection made, a volcanic bond forged.

Last stop, the Diamond Botanical Gardens and Waterfall. Just inside the gates, the clouds opened up, not the mist of the morning, but gallon buckets of crocodile tears. We took refuge in a shelter to wait out the worst of it. A meandering path led up the hill through wilderness groomed and tamed. Still more jungle than garden, but no less lovely. At the top, the waterfall.

The drive back to Castries, up and down the winding coastal road, took us by the Cul de Sac and Roseau banana plantations and the fishing villages of Canaries and Anse-La-Raye. Looking forward to birthday drinks with her girlfriends, Natasha skipped two photo stops, driving around the other two vans on our tour as they stopped for pictures. Tres was fuming, camera at the ready with no pictures to take. Still, it was one of the best tours we have taken.

Admittedly the sample size is small, but it seems to us that island poverty in the Caribbean follows a Southerly course. The closer we come to the equator, the more desperate the conditions. And we still have a long way to go.