In the Amazon River

Today is our wedding anniversary, and Brian gave me a wonderful book on Cunard. Very appropriate, and something to always treasure. He is a good man.

This is our last day on the mighty river. At times we have been quite close to the shore, but at others the trees are far in the distance. There have been a few fishermen in canoes and some freighters, but for the most part it has been quiet.

We stopped in Macapa at 1:00. The pilots who had so skillfully taken us up and down the Amazon were disembarking, and our regular crew was once more guiding us. We were also surprised to hear that Brazilian immigration officers had been on board since our last stop in Macapa, and were also disembarking. The pilots headed off on a rather snazzy pilot boat, but the immigration officers left in a very tatty looking cabin cruiser.

The weather was very changeable, and just when we thought it was safe to sit on deck, there were torrential downpours. So we retreated to the cabin for scientific experiments. Water is meant to drain out of the sink in different directions in the northern and southern hemispheres. We were just north of the equator, so we wanted to see which way things would go. We had watched children use matchsticks to demonstrate this effect on the equator in Kenya, but not having any matchstick we shortened a Q-tip, and it seemed to do the job. We took readings of our position from the navigation channel on the TV, and then documented which way the Q-tip went on film. Our findings were pretty equivocal, but our general consensus is that it went counter clockwise. We will repeat the experiment tomorrow when we are safely in the southern hemisphere. When I went to the laundry room later in the afternoon there were two gentlemen there having a chuckle. Apparently a woman had just asked them which way the washing machine spins in the southern hemisphere. They thought she was joking, but no, she was very serious.

By the time we did our late afternoon walk around the promenade deck we could still see trees in the distance on the port side, but there was no shoreline to be seen on the starboard side, the river was that wide. We are scheduled to sail out of the river at 8:30 tonight.

To celebrate our anniversary we ordered a bottle of VC for our table, which went down very well. We had thought of going to the Verandah Restaurant, but with their new pricing for dinner ($49.95 each), and crème brulee on the Britannia menu, we decided that it would be totally acceptable to dine in the dining room as long as there was champagne.

As usual we were almost the last people to leave the dining room, but there were still plenty of seats for the show. Tonight it was vocalist Ben Mills, who was excellent, and I would recommend watching him if he is appearing on a cruise near you. He has a sort of gravelly Joe Cocker/Rod Stewart voice, and is a superb pianist and guitar player – playing my favourite Bruce Springsteen and Rod Stewart songs, not to mention ending with a good rendition of “Hey Jude”.

When we got back to the cabin, there was no more Amazon River below us, just the dark ocean water. We are certainly back in the Atlantic, and on our way to Rio.