Manaus, Brazil Day 2

We stayed in Manaus overnight.   We got up early and were in the pool by 5:45am.  Swam for one hour with Bonnie and David.  We are glad no one else wants the pool at that time.  Gives us lots of room to do our thing.  Breakfast on La Veranda and then readied for our tour.  Today is "Meetings of the Waters."

Our cabin is on the dock side and it is quite interesting to watch the goings on here.  Manaus is not reachable by car from  the south of Brazil.  To get anywhere, you must go by boat.  And it takes any where from 5 to 7 days.  There are only a few cabins, most of the locals hang hammocks and sleep in the hammocks.  They do their own cooking etc, so not anywhere near the cruise experience that we enjoy.

Manaus dock

We were on boat #3.  This is a two level boat they use here on the Amazon.  They had plastic chairs on the upper deck which were not bolted down.  They were quite unstable.  Bob almost fell on the floor when he tried to move to another spot.  The chair when down but he stayed on his feet.

As we were riding out to the meetings of the water, we were stopped by the local police.  They need to check the paper work for the boats.

We continued on our ride out to where the Rio Negro meets the Amazon River.  The Amazon is brown water and the Rio Negro is a black river.  Because of the different speed of the currents and the acidity of the waters, they do not mix right away.  They continue this way for several miles.

Meeting of the waters

We then traveled along the other side of the island where we saw several homes.  These are floating homes as the river rises quite a bit during the rainy season.  Then you see homes on stilts and of course, children swimming in this water.  Not me.

Children swimming

Bathing

Floating home

We then transfers to smaller motorized canoes for a ride to see the large lilly pads and continues through the "jungle" to see some very large trees.  You can see how high the water gets by the coloring on the tree trunk.

Then back to our original boat and back to the ship.  We had lunch in La Veranda and then nap and I headed to needlepoint, tea and trivia.  We are getting better but still did not win.  

We dressed for dinner and while having our cocktails, we were asked if we wanted to dine in Prime 7 .  We agreed and this time we knew how to slow the pace of the service.  So dinner was very good.  I am surprised that the men do not wear jackets in the special restaurants. 

After dinner we returned to the cabin and read.  I did finish watching "The Artist" and what a disappointment it was to me.  No way it should have won any awards if you ask me.  Then lights out and bed.