It’s nice to be back online. Apparently, we were not geographically positioned to reach the communications satellite when we were in the Amazon. We are now cruising southeast toward the east most coast of Brazil.
On the Amazon River
Picture a vat of butterscotch ice cream topping several miles wide and a thousand miles long. Now imagine yourself floating on it. The vision is sweet enough to rot your teeth. At this time of year the Amazon is exactly the colour of butterscotch. Its roiling surface even has that butterscotch gloss.
Off the coast of Brazil, heading southeast
South of Barbados, approaching the northeast bulge of Brazil
Barbados
Let’s say you want to have a wildlife reserve, but you don’t have any wildlife. Barbados faced just that problem.
The only mammals here were rats brought by ships, so they imported mongooses from India to get rid of the rats. Mongooses are diurnal. Rats are nocturnal. System failure. The local snakes ate the rats, but the mongooses ate the snakes. Sometimes you can’t win for losing.
Nearing Barbados
I come from Port Townsend, Washington, a small, laid-back, casual enclave of rather eccentric artists. There, “formal attire” means putting a fresh rubber band in your pony tail. Too, I am a paleontologist. Paleontologists fancy themselves well dressed if they’re wearing clean cargo shorts. So when I bought this cruise around South America on Cunard’s Queen Victoria, I was coming from seriously behind.
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Southeast of Cuba, Heading for Puerto Rico
Foolishness persists when wisdom fails. It’s the same as back home: people ride the elevator up to the gym on the ninth deck, then get on the stairclimber to work out. Yesterday I explored around the vessel, finding where everything is. The gym facilities are on the ninth deck, with all the apparatus you find in a gym.
Embarkation Day
Somewhere many years ago, I think I read that Disney invented the turkey chute at Disneyland. They put it to good use boarding the QV passengers. We went through security similar to airports’ but it was faster and more sensible and they didn’t care if you carry a knife. Don’t get caught with a bottle of Pepsi, though. Then we snaked back and forth in the chute to reach a bank of folks who took our pictures and issued us cards. Through the tunnel and aboard.
Of Lighthouses and Light Towers
Getting There
Cunard sure doesn’t do things by halves. They booked my flight, the red-eye from SeaTac to Fort Lauderdale. First class. They booked me a hotel. Marriott on the beach. A modest limo took me from the airport to a comfortable bed. Tomorrow they will transport me to the Queen Victoria. All I have to do is stand there and it all happens. I could get used to this.
Off to South America
So I was sitting with my travel agent, Leilani Burns of Susan Parr Travel in Port Angeles, to set up the trip to Iceland about which you just read. I casually mentioned that someday I’d like to go around the world before I go into a nursing home. One brief mention. She jumped on it like a Cossack on his horse and sent me around-the-world cruise lit.
Weathering the Weather
Food, Glorious Food*
Bill was close friends with Ev Woodward, a prince of a fellow who owned a rustic lodge just outside Mount Rainier National Park where Bill was Chief Naturalist. Ev, a master canoeist, occasionally led canoe trips to remote and difficult places, such as from Great Slave Lake in Canada down the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean.
