Nov. 11
Anavilhanas, Brazil

About 60 miles up the Rio Negro from Manaus, this is the world’s largest river archipelago. We first anchored out in the river with nothing in site. When, by our tour’s departure time, the canoes hadn’t shown up, we were beginning to wonder. Then, about 15 minutes later, the Captain announced that he had been given the wrong coordinates, and the tour operator was about 3 miles further upstream! So we were told we had about an hour before he could raise the anchor, sail upstream, and drop anchor again . . .

Our tour did finally get off about an hour and a half late. Our “canoes” turned out to be small boats, holding about 10 people, with a canopy and benches with backs. Not bad at all for out in the middle of nowhere.

Our first stop was a small village. This one seemed real, no show or costumes or souvenir vendors like the previous one. We walked around; saw the school, a couple of churches, the library, and some houses, while our guide described life in a small village like this one.

Then we simply wandered around the waterways for a couple of hours, with the guide pointing out types of vegetation, birds, an iguana, etc. A fascinating close-up look at the Amazon Basin!

Back on the ship, I looked at the temperature, and thought, wow, it’s cooled down today. Only 115° F . . .