Day 9, Sun, Jan 10, 2010: At Sea Entering Mouth of Amazon

Up at 7:30.  We had breakfast at the panorama buffet as usual.  On return to our room, I did genealogy until 9:30, when we both attended a lecture by Dr. Richard Detrich, the former preacher and current cruise lecturer and coffee grower. 

Some Notes:

Amazon

• Largest drainage area in the world.  This year rain is late rain… So river is low.  June, July is peak.. 
• Amazon is 120 mi wide in some places  Length 4222 miles.  Longer than Nile by 65 miles
• Amazon’s origin is Peru
• 1.4 billion acres of rainforest.  40% in brazil.  Represents over half of all rainforest in world
• Sq kilo contains 75K trees and 150K species of plants
• 300,000m3 of fresh water enter the Atlantic Ocean each second
• Theodore Roosevelt… Read “The River of Doubt” 
• People plant gardens in boats raised up 10 ft or so.   This is because they will be flooded up to that boat.  This is to cover their food needs during the rainy season floods.
• Francisco de Orellana 1511 1546  1433 jointed Pizarro. 
  • On Rio Negro
  • Saw people don’t have hair… fierce fighters… etc men looked like women… so recalled myth of Amazon and called the river that.

Brazil

• Pop 193.7 million Avg age 28.6 slightly smaller than US
• 74% catholic and 16% prot, but pentacostal and evengelical; expect 60% is prot
• Was a disagreement bet RCs and Prot over use of cross on buildings.  Evang have to use dove on outside to resolve issue.
• Economy is good
• Currency 1 real = approx 68 cents

Does and Don’ts

• Keep hands, fingers, and toes in boat.  A piranha bit is considered more an act of carelessness
• Don’t pee in river.  Small fish will swim up your stream and plant spines in you.
• Be aware of ship restrictions on crafts:  can’t bring onto ship anything that is wood.
  • Hot and humid; dress accordingly
  • take toilet paper
  • buses are best available, but that doesn’t mean great
  • Respect the activity level notifications; ie, if the tour says active that means active
  • Watch where you walk:  pavement uneven
  • It’s an adventure.  It will rain; tours run rain or shine
  • Be a traveler, not a tourist.

He discussed ports of call.  I’ll move that discussion to the appropriate blog day. 

After the lecture we attended the church service.  This got us to about noon. 

After that, I did a lot of housekeeping and worked on these notes. 

Dr. Detrich said he doesn’t take malaria meds.  He says not many mosquitoes because of the river.  Well, we paid a lot for our med, so I guess I’ll go ahead and start taking it.  Today is the first day.  We are taking Malarone 250/100, whatever that means.  I’ll take it at lunch.  (I ended up taking it for 3 days, but it made me feel so bad I stopped taking it.  I writing this at Manaus, and to this point I have yet to see a mosquito! )

I don’t remember anything else about this particular day.