spelling/sentence structure in all of my posts)
So every Semester at Sea voyage gets a little stricter as the kids do
something stupid with the privileges we have. For example, you use to
be able to drink/easily smuggle alcohol onto the boat (until the kid
fell overboard). Now there is no way. We also use to stay overnight
in Mauritius (more-ish-us) (Mauritius is to India as the Cayman
Islands are to the US…tax haven for off-shore accounts) but now we
only make a 12-hour stop. The big thing was to rent a beach house for
the night and just have fun but one voyage burned down one of these
beach houses and now we get to endure the consequences. Well in
Brazil, the privilege we lost is the monkey reserve. Last spring
voyage some kids decided to pet the monkeys and ended up getting bit.
I guess multiple rabies shot sequences were involved.
Anyways, on to Brazil…So the first day (Tuesday) I went on a SAS
trip. We river boated up to where the Rio Negro meets the Amazon
River. Everyone should go to yahoo.com, click images, and type "Rio
Negro and Amazon" into the search box. (I'm not quite sure what's
going to pop up but I have a feeling it's similar to what I saw).
It's crazy. From red/brown mud to dark tea. The rivers don't mix;
they only meet. A very distinct separation exists.
After, we boated over to a restaurant off a side stream. The water
levels change so dramatically. A lot of the houses are on stilts
randomly off the river. Most of the houses' front door actually leads
straight to the water (during this season). As in the house is
floating on the water. I guess it has been an unusually dry rainy
season. The side stream we took was around 30 feet deep but by
looking at the water marks on the trees it appeared it is usually 30
feet deeper. Our guide said the water completely dries up in the dry
season. They stop using their boats and walk everywhere.
Every house is literally it's own island (during this season). I wish
I could post pictures because it's very hard to describe. We ate TONS
of food, most of which I had no idea what it was. (I'm pretty sure
they tell us not to eat food if we don't know what it is but it was a
SAS sponsored trip so I ate everything). We took a hike through the
rainforest to this place with HUGE lily pads. We saw an alligator.
It kind of freaked me out though because although we were elevated on
a sketchy wooden walking bridge like 100 meters away we were not
elevated.
After our stroll, we got into smaller motorized canoe/boats and went
piranha fishing!
Piranhas live in the Amazon but not in the Rio Negro (it's too acidic…
this is also why it's black) so you can swim on one side of the river
but not on the other (you'd want to swim in the Rio Negro because you
wouldn't get bit). I realized after six minutes of having my pole
that it would never matter where I'm fishing or what I'm fishing for I
will NEVER enjoy it. I could be fishing for great white sharks in
Antarctica and still not love it (I realize there are SOO many things
wrong with that sentence).
Note: Because the ship is small the rumor mill is CRAZY! All of the
fore mentioned privileges/stories I most likely heard through the
rumor mill.
Fun Fact: All of the boats look like they are going to sink. It was
sooooo great when we realized halfway through our piranha fishing
adventure that the guy in the back steering was also using a bucket to
get rid of the rising (?? I'm not actually sure if it was increasing)
water in our boat.
Ok. That's all.
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