For some reason, we both wake up simultaneously at 5:43am, look out our veranda window and see an awesome sunrise. We get up immediately take it all in. Steve takes this photo above. Not two minutes later, the sunrise has disappeared, and a partly cloudy sky appears. This is a phenomenon of being near the equator, where the earth beneath the sky is moving way quicker than it does farther north or south due to the earth being a globe.
Well, we are up, so Steve completes and publishes the post on San Juan, Puerto Rico. The internet service works far faster at this time of day, especially on intensive activities such as loading photos on a website. Cathy reads the Stephen King novel she has taken from the ship’s library, and then tunes into the Insignia Today show hosted by Cruise Director Gary, and then Fox News, which is broadcasting a special Thanksgiving show.
We’re off to breakfast at the GDR right at 8:00am. It’s very quiet. Seated on the port side, we are lucky enough to have Putu as our waiter, with Gede as his assistant. Putu is from Bali, and we met him a couple of cruises ago. He is an Oceania rock star, as far as we are concerned. Very upbeat, humous, outgoing and yet thoroughly professional. As mentioned before, having Putu wait on you at breakfast is a great way to start the day.
The sun is already super bright and the temperature in the high 80s. We are in the mouth of the Amazon River, and the color of the water is a light brown due to all the silt carried into the sea by the river. We have been told that so much water flows from the Amazon into the Atlantic Ocean that this silt condition can be seen 100 miles out to sea from the shore.
Cruise Director Gary comes on at 9am to reiterate one of the points in the letter we received about certain on-board conditions we will have while we are in the Amazon.
Specifically, the ship will not be taking on any water while we are in the Amazon River, so we are asked to do everything we can to conserve water.
Steve figures that this is because of all the silt in the water. Normally, the ship draws sea water into a desalinization plant and purifies it for all the many uses on the ship. There is so much silt being carried by the Amazon that it would foul this system bigtime. We also will not be taking on fuel for several days, a procedure called “bunkering” in the maritime industry. The name comes from the type of petroleum used by many ship power plants, a very thick fuel oil known as Bunker C, which is also used ashore in industrial boilers.
We head for Horizons, as usual, around 9:15. The place is jumping, A lively putting contest is taking place, and the participants are cheering each other on. At just about 9:45, we sight land, so we guess we are about to enter the Amazon basin. This is another Sea Day, but the “sea” will be the river.
Steve blogs and Cathy knits. By 10:30, we begin to see land on both sides of the ship. And the water is an even richer light brown. By shortly after 11am, Cathy heads for the room. Steve follows at noon. The captain gives his brief report, telling us that we will anchor in the river at Mapaca at 2:45pm to be boarded by Brazilian officials for customs clearance.
Speaking of Brazilian customs … Obviously, as soon as we entered the Amazon River delta, we were then in Brazil. At that time until we leave Brazil on December 1st, all drinks served at bars and restaurants on the ship, and all products purchased in the boutiques or the spa, will be subject to a 25% tax by the Brazilian government. Yes, you read that right: 25%. I guess that the government assumes all people on a cruise ship are millionaires ripe for the picking, and won’t be the slightest bit bothered by the tax.
But Oceania knows better, and for the previous two days, has been having a special sale on a large selection of bottles of wine. Seven for $47.50 each, including the 20% gratuity. This way, we had an opportunity to buy prior to being subject to the tax. Unless you really are a millionaire who doesn’t care, the savings – or should we say, avoidance of the Brazilian government plunder tax – is considerable.
Okay, lunch is over. We return to the room and watch short presentations of what the various shore excursions will be offering. Then we watch an excellent enrichment lecture on the Amazon Rainforest. The map that begins this post and the others below are just some of the excellent PowerPoint slides that accompany the lecture. We could add thousands of words to this post from what we learned, but let’s just say that this presentation is an excellent introduction to this most important ecological region on the planet Earth.
At the scheduled time, we have indeed arrived at Mapaca, because Insignia is anchored in the middle of the river, with a small container ship also anchored about 300 yards to her stern. Brazilian customs are reviewing the passport of every person on the ship. The passports were turned in to ship staff when we boarded in Miami, so we don’t have to make a personal appearance.
Such streamlined procedures were not always possible. When we last were last visiting, four years ago, a Brazilian visa was required. Oceania provided us with an organization that specialized in handling the paperwork and procedures needed to acquire visas from any country requiring them. If we had attempted to do so on our own, a personal appearance at a Brazilian consulate would have been required, and it might be months before we actually had the visas in our hands.
We had been told that this was the result of a bureaucratic dispute between the United States and Brazil. Brazil was annoyed that their citizens had to jump through hoops to get a U.S. visa, so they instituted pretty much the same procedures. Apparently, both governments had buried the hatchet, so to speak, and had come to their senses and streamlined procedures in their respective countries. A rare but welcome occurrence of government bureaucrats coming to their senses.
We have been at anchor for two hours now, and pilots that will guide us up the river arrive at 4:45pm. For the first time we have ever observed, luggage accompanies the pilots, so we know that they will be on board for a while.
By 5:00 we are underway again, and, if you judge the speed by how fast we are moving through the water, we are moving along quite smartly. Steve goes on to the channel that has a map of our location. It also gives the ship’s speed, and it indicates that we are clipping along at 20 knots per hour. This an illusion, however. The ship’s instruments measure ship speed through the water, and, of course, we are traveling upstream and the river is rushing past the hull. So we aren’t actually moving at 20 knots. We are moving at 20 knots less the speed of the river current. Only a transportation geek would care, but, of course, Steve finds it interesting.
The rest of the day is routine. We are excited to actually be on the legendary Amazon River. Another bucket list dream has come true. We look forward with great anticipation to the whole next week. All of our lives, we have heard about the vast, practically unexplored Amazon. While we won’t exactly be explorers, we will have an opportunity to see the river and some of its cities, villages and, most important, its inhabitants, for ourselves. As the inevitable climate change takes hold, the economy and its ecological health of this part of the world will become perhaps the most critical climate element of all.
