Boca de Valeria is a small village along the Amazon that has a about 150 people. A cruise ship broke down nearby a number of years ago and took folks over to visit while it was repaired. The locals fled at that time, thinking they were being invaded. Now they come from surrounding villages bringing their exotic pets to photograph for $1 and small boats to take you on a tour.

Manaus is a city of over a million people almost 800 miles up the Amazon in the middle of the Amazon rain forest. It’s 300 ft above sea level, our ship has been sailing uphill as we go up the river. We spent a day and a half in Manaus, arriving Friday just before noon and leaving Sunday morning at 8:00 am.

Parintins is known for its folklore festival. The town put on a special showing of the show as an optional shore excursion. It was quite expensive to go, so we chose to walk around instead.

Alter de Chao is a small city twenty miles from Santarém. It’s not really on the Amazon, but on the Rio Tapajós, a tributary that dumps into the Amazon.

Santarém is close to our halfway point going up the Amazon.

We had to leave Devil’s Island on time, because there is a wide sandbar to cross entering the Amazon River. The Volendam can only cross it at high tide. It also has to cross slowly, as going faster causes the ship to sink slightly deeper into the water. The additional sink can be several meters depending on how fast the ship goes.

Devil’s Island is a small group of islands off the coast of French Guiana that was used as a penal colony until 1953.

The islands have strong currents in the area and sharks, making escape difficult. The book and movie Papillon is about an escape from the island. They used to show the movie on this cruise, but people complained it wasn’t filmed on the actual island, so they stopped showing it.

Saint Lucia was the site of a long war between the British and the French, with the island changing hands fourteen times. The British ended up with the island, but it became independent in February 1979 and is part of the British Commonwealth. So you will see both English and French names for towns.

We had two sea days on our way to Phillipsburg, St. Maarten. The ship left two hours late, because it took a long time to load all the provisions for our voyage and the ship, having just arrived in the US, had to undergo a series of inspections before the loading could commence. The captain went a little faster the first night and morning to make it up. A few small whitecaps and partly cloudy over the next two days made for a pleasant start to the trip.

We flew to Ft. Lauderdale two days before the cruise departed because airfares were much cheaper, saving more than the cost of an extra hotel night.