Day 56 - 12/01/23 - The Amazon River to Santarem

December 01, 2023

We've finally entered the Amazon River and made a brief mandatory port stop at Macapa to pick up the two river pilots and take care of administrative paperwork. Even in the "ocean" it was muddy from the silt carried down the Amazon and the river continued to be muddy throughout the day until we got into a side channel and it was a dark brown color for a brief amount of time before resuming the muddy brown color. At Macapa there were a number of cargo ships at anchor in a line stretching up the river for at least a mile. Most appeared to be empty with the waterlines, bulbus bows. and rudders clearly showing as we sailed by.

Overnight I noticed a faint smokey smell and it came from all of the wood fires that are used to cooking purposes here. We could see no instances of smoke from the burning of trees. The Captain also reported that we've had as little as 3 feet of clearance under the ship's keel as we've traveled up the river. As i write this at 10:45pm, we're about 50 miles east of the location that the Zaandam's sister ship, Volendam, went aground in November, 2019 while doing this same Amazon river cruise.We've also dropped slightly south of the equator. We'll cross it northbound when we come back down river.

Program wise, Debbie, Shore Excursions Manager, gave a presentation on the shore excursion for the remaining Brazilian ports here on the Amazon. Bosco then gave his final talk on the history of the Bossa Nova (think of the song, The Girl from Ipanema). It was an impressive presentation. In the afternoon Jeremy presented his Port talk on Manaus and Alter do Chao. The important thing I learned was that tendering in Manaus will go quite late, perhaps until 2am on the night of our arrival on 12/4 and midnight the next night. This works well with my planned excursions, particularly the first one on 12/4.

It was dressy night and they served lobster and filet mignon in the LIDO market. The evening entertainment was DUO RIO a terrific young Brazilian couple who did a show featuring love songs. We went to both performances.

One piece of sad news from today was that I had to cancel a proposed night alligator tour as I didn't reach a minimum quota of participants. That's probably okay since we have a full day of touring on the river on 12/5 at Manaus.

Just before returning to our stateroom, we walked around the lower promenade deck and observed the first of many giant insects that we'll see each night while we are in the Amazon. One butterfly was nearly 3" in wingspan. I'm sure there will be more both physically larger and more colorful. It's a major morning task for the deck crew to clean them off the ship.