Day 63 - 12/08/23 - Exiting the Amazon River - Day 1

 We're now in our final two days on the Amazon.  It's a bucket list type of itinerary and we've totally enjoyed it with the variety of stops and nice excursions.  And the very good news was that we were actually able to reach Manaus despite the record low water conditions.  The river was muddy all day and we had sun with broken clouds.  In his noon announcement, Captain Smit said, "This is the Captain speaking from the bridge with the latest nautical information and weather.  We are on the Amazon and it is HOT!"  The latter was said half jokingly, but all too true.

Our morning had a shore excursion presentation for Devils Island (none there but Debbie had lots of photos and information about the place) and the next few ports.  Jeremy followed up with his Port Essentials talk about several upcoming ports.

Andy Fletcher was back in the afternoon for his World Stage presentation on Albert Einstein, Special Relativity, Space Time and Weirdness.  Even though I've seen it before, it was still challenging to follow along, and I'm still uncertain about the practical application of it.

The Officer dinner in the Main Dining Room was wonderful.  Florian was a terrific host and he was accompanied by Gloria, Finance Manager, and another high sailing days couple.  Florin told me that we were in the top ten of sailing days on this voyage.  It's certainly nothing we ever strived for.  It's just happened. 

We then went to the World Stage performance by Naki Ataman, pianist, who played an original composition that covered 19 countries in 45 minutes and accompanied by Miguel, guitarist, and Shawn, drummer, bot of whom were from the Ocean Bar Band.  While we've seen it before, it was still really good. Afterwards, we listened a bit of the music set in the Ocean Bar before doing our nightly bug walk.  The sheer quantity of bugs was down as we are at the mouth of the Amazon River.  But there were some interesting ones.