Boca Da Valeria, Brazil

December 23 – Boca De Valeria (AM) – Brazil

Here’s our Blog entry for the day:

Today – another tender port – was a visit to a small Brazilian settlement. Our tour information told us that less than 100 people live here and I think all 100 of them were mobbed at the dock landing to meet our tender! It was supposed to be an “authentic glimpse of the simple river life that the Amerindians have followed for centuries” but I’m not really sure how authentic it is…. the children were carrying cell phones, playing music, and we saw satellite dishes on several of the homes/shacks. It was still interesting though.

Several of the children had small Amazonian animals like sloths, camens, parrots, toucans, etc., and they wanted tips to hold and/or pet them. We walked around the village for a while and Cindy and Susan got to hold some critters- which was interesting but we’re a bit torn about contributing to the exploitation of wildlife. We headed back to the ship and caught up with Dave and Cindy over lunch on their experiences. Dave walked/explored much further than we did and ended up getting a boat ride back to the tender dock.

Good morning Amazon River!
Our daily newsletter from the Ship – telling us about Boca Da Valeria
First things first! A trip to our favorite Breakfast spot, the Coffee Connection. They started serving a yummy Holiday Hot Cocoa – we ordered a few over the holidays!
View of the village from our ship
  • Gangway sign
  • Electronic gangway sign
The building where our tenders dropped us off – had solar power and satellite communication!
The view from our tender as we are going ashore..
Our view as we were leaving the tender to go onshore. There were dozens of people trying to sell us boat rides and dozens of children who wanted to have their small animals photographed for tips. It was interesting but a bit sad and exploitive. We wondered how many of these folks actually live here – or if some are ‘actors’ brought in for the tourists?
A boy with a small sloth
Near the beginning of the village was this fellow dressed as a chief (maybe he was their chief?)
A lot of the children dressed in ‘native’ garb – and the passengers liked to take photos with them
  • More view of the village
  • Cindy looking around at the animals to pet
Adam in front of a tree with a termite nest
  • Cindy with a girl holding a baby armadillo
  • A strange duck-like bird we saw. We spent some time on Google trying to figure out what he was – we think he was a Shoebill.
  • A baby Capybara
  • Cindy with the Capybara
  • Cindy meeting with a Toucan – this and a sloth were her two ‘must see’ wildlife and she got to see/hold both!
  • Cindy and her Toucan friend!
  • Susan with a sloth.
  • Cindy with her sloth friend!
  • Cindy and friend
  • David with a baby sloth
  • Cindy visiting a baby monkey – he was cute! But we weren’t sure if he was just really young or not feeling well…
  • Susan took a photo of Cindy posing for David, taking a photo!
  • Cindy with another sloth!
  • The sloth seems to be posing!
  • David with a Camen – he was bummed that our Camen-spotting excursion was cancelled.
A close up of a termite nest
The many folks streaming on shore from our ship…
  • David walked much further than the rest of us…and got a boat ride back to the landing here’s his view as he was heading back
  • Another funky duck-bird (Shoebill?)
  • Some of the wildlife David saw on his boat ride
  • More wildlife
Starting to see some bigger bugs
Big yukky bug on our balcony!
  • Ship-board view of river scenery
  • After sail-away – some of the river scenery
Evening view from atop the ship

On to our next port city, Manaus (AM), Brazil.