Day 61 - 12/06/23 - Down River to Alter do Chão, Brazil

 At 3:45am, I was awakened by the whir, clank, clank, clank of the anchor chain being retracted.  This signaled to me that we were beginning our down river voyage towards Alter do Chão.  The previous day, Captain Smit had announced that we would be departing around 3am in order to time our passage over the shallowest part of the Amazon during daylight hours.  We also had to skip the port call at Boca de Valeria.  With that, I promptly fell back asleep until 7am when my alarm awakened me to another nice "sea" day on the river. We had already passed over the shallow area and by the tanker that was still stranded in the low river water.


Today was interesting in a couple of ways.  First, we were heading down river.  Second, we had a new lecturer for the remainder of the voyage, and third, we have a new group of entertainers in addition to the singers and dancers.  After our interdenominational bible study and a breakfast, Andy Fletcher presented the first of his talks on science.  The talk title was There's Nothing There, but Nothing is Really Something.  We've seen him before on the Volendam in 2017 in Asia, his talks are definitely for the thinking person.  He'll be covering items such as space, time, relativity, and the like.  He's an energetic speaker, but the subject matter is difficult.  Afterwards he did a 45 minute Q&A session in the Crow's Nest to probably 75 people.  It was equally challenging to follow along.  He posits that there is no such thing as intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and the universe is very, very, very, big.  It's so large that it will be impossible for we humans to explore it due to the distances involved.  It's stimulating material on one hand, but on the other hand it's so difficult to fully comprehend.








After lunch Jeremy gave a port talk on Devils Island and Scarborough. I worked on updating my blog while watching the banks of the Amazon pass by.  There were lots of sandy beaches and houses here and there as well as occasional small towns.  There was little river traffic.


Our evening entertainment was another new production by the singers and dancers called These Dreams.  It was really good and we stayed for the second show before doing our nightly bug walk on deck 3.

Tomorrow we're in Alter do Chão, and our plan is to explore the little city on our own.  There must be some hidden gems there.  

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