Parintins, Brazil (2024)
January 15 found us anchored in the Amazon River farther upriver from the tender dock than in the past. Perhaps this more distant anchorage had to do with the water level in the river. The water level this trip is noticeably lower than on past trips, but it is much better than a couple of months ago when several cruise ships had to abandon sailing up the river. We understand that the navigation has been more challenging than normal, but we have had no incidents interfering with our itinerary.
Founded more than 200 years ago, Parintins is a river town of something over 110,000 people located on a large island in the Amazon river. There are no roads to this town so transportation in and out is limited, we understand, to river traffic. The town is named for the indigenous people who lived here before the coming of Europeans and this heritage of Amerindian culture is still evident today.
More than anything else, this town is renowned for its Boi Bumba festival every June, which draws more than 35,000 visitors, many sleeping on the river boats on which they arrived. The festival centers on performances of a musical show about the resurrection of a bull killed by a local, based on an old story that we were told originated in Portugal. The whole town is divided into rival groups (gangs?) who stage competing performances in the Bumbodromo, a 35,000 seat stadium purpose built for the festival (although other events may take place there in other parts of the year). The Garantido group is represented by a red bull (really, white with red or pink highlights) and the Caprichoso group is represented by a blue bull. It sounds like Romeo & Juliet, right? Competition between these rival color groupings is so intense that blue group people avoid products that are red and red group people avoid products that are blue. Apparently Coca-Cola has marketed special blue cans of Coke only sold here so that the blue group people would buy their product.
Obviously we were not here for the festival, which was some 5 months away. But when a cruise ship is in town the group that won the previous competition puts on a scaled down version of the show in an auditorium near the tender boat pier. We have seen it twice and it is a marvelous show, but since the tickets are $100 per person we decided we didn’t need to see it a third time. If you would like to see pictures of this rousing performance from 2019 you can look here (worth seeing):
https://baderjournal.com/2019/11/18/parintins-brazil-2/
Instead we decided to walk through the town, looking particularly for what appeared to be the red group’s headquarters and workshop where we hoped to see preparations for the festival in progress. So we tendered ashore, but not in a Zuiderdam tender boat. It appears that local regulations require tendering to shore in local river boats, so that is what we did. It was actually a more pleasant and interesting ride than a normal tender, although it was much longer than last time we were here when the ship was anchored quite close to the tender pier.
After reaching shore we began walking up river toward the Red part of town. It was very hot and humid but it was nice walking in town near the river. We walked past the busy Municipal Market which had vendors inside and out. We saw a very tall sculpture of an indigenous man, possibly part of the sign for a business, and a number of people having lunch at tables near the river served by cafes across the street. As you might surmise from these pictures, the predominant forms of local transportation appeared to be of the two wheel variety, bicycles and motorcycles.
We continued walking further into Red territory. Not many people were on the streets, which were lined with small businesses and shops, many with the red bull incorporated into their signs. We walked quite a way, at least it seemed so with the heat and humidity, but we didn’t find our objective. What we found was a red and white painted facility that looked like a small arena, probably a practice area. We didn’t see anyone there and it was fenced, so we took a few pictures and headed back toward town.
We saw many nice flowers during this walk and some wildlife too, notably a red topped bird and a long bright green iguana crossing the street (traffic stopped for him). One tree, we noticed, had air plants growing on its trunk.
We walked past the local cathedral, which we had been able to enter on a previous visit. Nearing the tender port we came to what seems to be the no man’s land between the red territory and the blue territory. The crosswalk here had blue stripes on one side of the street and red on the other. These folks seem to be really serious about their rivalry. At the tender port we took a regular HAL tender back to the ship, but to reach it we had to walk through one of the local boats like the one on which we rode into town. Apparently, they wouldn’t allow the HAL tenders to dock at the actual pier. We think it must be some kind of local regulation to generate business for the river boats. Presumably the local boat owner was paid to allow us to walk through their boat to the HAL tender.
Thus ends our third visit to Parentins. The clouds in the sky over the city were a pretty pink as we departed downstream, with one more stop in the Amazon remaining.
Manaus, Brazil (2024)
We spent January 14 in Manaus, a city of some 2 million residents located about 1,000 miles up the Amazon River in the Brazilian rainforest, where the Rio Negro and Rio Solimoes come together to form the Amazon. Because the Amazon rises and falls about 40 feet every year we were docked at a floating pier that rises and falls with the water. With the water so low right now there was a steep ramp from the pier to the mainland part of the dock area. These are new piers and mostly for cargo, so ship passengers are not permitted to walk out of the dock area on their own. A shuttle bus was provided to take us from the ship to the cruise terminal a few blocks away on the mainland.
We had been to Manaus twice before, both overnight stays. The first time, in 2012, we explored the city by ourselves on foot and had a boat trip into the rain forest. The second time, in 2019, we had an overnight excursion at a camp in the forest, seeing dancing in an indigenous village, hunting baby caimens by boat at night and hiking through the forest, among other things. If you want to read more about Manaus & see more pictures, you can do that here (the pictures are much better in 2019):
https://baderjournal.com/2012/03/05/manaus-brazil-day-1/
https://baderjournal.com/2012/03/05/201204manaus-brazil-day-2/
https://baderjournal.com/2019/11/11/manaus-brazil-day-1-2019/
https://baderjournal.com/2019/11/15/manaus-brazil-day-2-2019/
This time we had only one day and decided to spend it walking through the city seeing the sights we had missed before. Our first stop was the Municipal Cathedral, first built in 1695. It was Sunday so Mass was in progress but we were permitted to come in and sit in the back seats. The people were not dressed up for the most part, but a little dog with its hair made up for a Sunday visit came in with its mistress and sat in front of us. The church was set in a large green park and in the street next to it was the Relógio Municipal de Manaus (sounds much grander than “Municipal Clock Tower,” doesn’t it).
One place we had not been able to walk through when we were here before was the Mercado Municipal Adolfo Lisboa. The masonry portion of this large market was opened in 1883 and the additional iron Art Nouveau structures opened about 30 years later. All of the materials for these buildings were prefabricated in Europe and shipped up the Amazon to Manaus. The market is supposed to have been modeled on Les Halles in Paris. We entered the tourist market building through the masonry facade on one of the streets running up from the river.
Running parallel to the river are several long iron buildings that house produce, meat and fish markets. Under the roof in each end wall is a large stained glass window. The complex has restaurants, iron gates, flowers and bushes aplenty.
We had toured the Teatro Amazonas, the opera house that is the city’s most famous building, on both of our prior visits, so we didn’t need to do that again. But we decided to walk up there again because Mary wanted to get an opera house T-shirt. We walked up a couple of very long blocks lined on both sides with closed up vendors’ carts; it was a bit eerie because almost no one else was in this street that looked like it would be very busy on any day but Sunday. We walked past a very large mural of an indigenous woman covering the side of a multi-story building and then through a park with an iron pavilion, some dry ponds and a good bit of nice flora. Again, hardly anybody there other than us on a Sunday.
We finally arrived at the Teatro Amazonas, a large pink building with a dome tiled in the colors of the Brazilian flag. Opened in 1896, it was financed by the huge fortunes accumulated by the rubber barons during the period when this part of Brazil had a world monopoly on rubber, just as the auto industry was beginning to need large amounts of it. Everything here, from tiles to marble for the stairs and columns, to the 32 Murano chandeliers, was made in Europe and shipped up the Amazon by boat. This imposing building, which would have looked more at home in a large European city, must have been quite a sight when it was opened here in the middle of a rainforest!
It was disappointing after the long walk in the high heat and humidity to find that the Teatro was closed on Sunday, including its gift store. So no T-shirt for Mary after all! We started walking back downhill toward the port, or so we thought. We were using a smartphone navigation program called Maps.me (which we had already decided to abandon for a newer, and still free, program but we had one more map already downloaded so we used it here). It let us down completely, guiding us off in the wrong direction (up river) and changing its walking directions multiple times. One time before, in Barbados a couple of years ago, it guided us in a complete circle back to our starting point instead of to the Synagogue, so we probably should have known better.
Anyway, we spent several hours wandering around the more western part of town trying to find our way back to the port, in neighborhoods where nobody spoke English and, of course, we couldn’t speak Portuguese. We didn’t feel much like taking pictures as we concentrated on figuring out where we were, and really there was little worth photographing. We saw a few interesting wall paintings and passed a neighborhood that looked like one of the favelas in Rio.
It was getting late, only about an hour before all-aboard time, and we had no idea where we were or how far it was to the port terminal. One man in a car stopped to give us directions, but he only spoke Portuguese. It seemed he was telling us to walk up three blocks then to the right. We started to do that, but then another man in a car stopped. He only spoke Portuguese too, but he motioned us to get in the car. Somewhat suspiciously, we did so and Mary saw a taxi license posted in the car. A woman nearby was shaking her head no as we approached the car, but we really had no alternative at that point. The driver was very talkative (in Portuguese, of course), but in the end he dropped us off right across from the shuttle bus waiting at the terminal. It turned out we really hadn’t been that far from the terminal after all and could have walked it, but we didn’t know that. We are pretty sure the driver charged us well over the usual price, but we were so happy to be back at the ship on time that we really didn’t care.
Back on the ship we went up to the top floor for picture taking. We had a view from the ship of the mural of the indigenous woman we had passed, along with the 19th century Customs House we had wanted to visit (closed Sundays) below it and, below that, the top of the green port terminal building. We could see the towers of the Cathedral and also a neighborhood up river that looked like it might have been near where we were lost. Notice in the last picture how far the water is from the sea wall on the lower hillside.
That evening we had a reservation for a special Brazilian dinner in the Pinnacle Restaurant, along with our table mates Bob, Judy, Robert and Bill. But for the reservations we probably would have eaten in our room because we were so worn out from all that walking on the hot, humid and irregular streets of Manaus. But we were glad we went because it was quite a delicious dinner, accompanied by Brazilian dancing among the tables by the Oi Brazil cultural group on board. The highlight of the meal was thick ribeye steak sliced near our table, but everything was quite delicious.
So that is the end for our day in Manaus. We were very happy to get to bed since there was yet another port day ahead. So we will end now with a picture of six happy diners.
Alter do Chao & Boca da Valeria, Brazil (2024)
Alter do Chao
Located just a few miles up from where the Rio Tapajos flows into the Amazon, Alter do Chao is a beach town of about 3,500. Because of the very low level of the rivers here we anchored early on January 12 a good bit away and had to tender into town. Although not particularly well known outside Brazil the town has been here for almost 400 years, founded in 1626 and named after a Portuguese city of the same name. It is well known to people in this part of Brazil as a vacation destination, however, because of its beaches, said to be the best freshwater beaches in Brazil, if not the world. They give the town its nickname: “Caribbean in Brazil.” We were warned that stingrays of all sizes live in these waters, so that if you enter the water you should shuffle your feet rather than chance stepping on one of them.
We tendered ashore with our friend Bill. The water was so low in the river that we had to disembark onto a floating platform and walk across a board to the beach, then a good way up the beach to reach the town. We had visited this town in 2019 (look at the beginning and especially at the end of this post):
https://baderjournal.com/2019/11/27/alter-do-cho-brazil/
At that time we disembarked from the tender at a platform in the water near the small port building and walked up a boardwalk with blue and white railings over a wet, marshy area to reach the town. This time the marshy areas were completely dry and there was a very tall platform rising from the sand near the port building. That may be the platform where we disembarked last time or perhaps a new embarkation platform built since we were here. Either way, it appears that the water level when the river is high is normally near the top of this platform, so it gives an idea of how really low the river water is right now.
There is a square just in front of the port that is surrounded by vendors’ carts (and, when we arrived, by tour buses). After looking at some of their wares we walked into town along what is probably a waterfront walk when the water is high. A very sandy island sits just off shore extending to just a few yards from the town, called Ilha do Amor (Island of Love). When the water is low it is possible to walk to the island through chest high water, which we saw a few people doing. There were many boats in this area and it looked like a nice place to spend a free day.
We walked into the town and came to the central square, where we saw the town’s yellow church, Igreja Nossa Senhora da Saude (Our Lady of Health). On the other side of the square was a park with statues of two dolphins, one gray and one pink. Pink dolphins are found mostly in the Amazon and neighboring rivers in this part of South America. They can only live in fresh water and are an endangered species. A few months ago it was reported that because of the drought in the Amazon basin more than a hundred bodies of pink dolphins had washed ashore further up the river. We saw some of them (not the dead ones) on our last Amazon visit in 2019, but this statue was the only one we saw on this trip.
Our main objective for this visit was a store called Arariba Cultura Indigena. This is a store well known for having one of the best collections of art and crafts made by indigenous people of Amazonia. We visited it last time we were here and really enjoyed perusing their goods, some of which are inexpensive and many of which cost hundreds of dollars. We did buy a few things, but when you see things so heavily crowded together in a store it is difficult to envision what any one item will look like by itself when you get home. I would show pictures, but a sign was posted asking that pictures not be taken so we respected that.
Leaving the store, we walked around the town on our way back to the tender pier. This is a quiet, pleasant town to walk through. We passed some animal sculptures on the sidewalk outside businesses and a number of wall paintings, many of which are actually signs for the businesses within the buildings. We also saw the local cemetery, complete with a model of the church facade and mostly above ground graves.
Back at the ship we had a late lunch and went up to the Aft pool deck to watch the sail away. Among other things we watched some people in boats that looked like jet skis speed out to the ship and then around it. We also watched as they lifted the last tender boat into its position outside deck 4. Then we sailed away to our next stop tomorrow.
Boca Da Valeria
On January 13 we anchored in the Amazon just upriver from where it intersects with a tributary called Rio Valeria. The village of Boca de Valeria is located in the rainforest on the Rio Valeria within walking distance of the Amazon confluence. This tiny village (75 to 100 residents) was once just a typical Amazon fishing and trading village. Then, we are told, a number of years ago a ship sailing up the Amazon had engine trouble at this spot and tendered passengers to shore to occupy them while repairs were completed The inhabitants thought they were being invaded and fled into the forest, returning only after the ship passengers were gone.
Since then it has become a regular stop on the Amazon cruise route. The income from cruise ship visits has provided the village with electricity, satellite dish TV, computers and refrigerators, and on cruise ship days people come from miles around and dress up in costumes to pose for pictures at $1 per picture. The locals also sell arts and crafts and provide canoe rides for about $10 per person. It is worth visiting because it is the only place you are likely to see anything like the indigenous villages in this area, but in our opinion it is only worth visiting once since it is so small and there is so little to see.
We went ashore on our first visit here in 2012 and you can see pictures of the village and read about it here:
https://baderjournal.com/2012/03/01/boca-de-valeria-brazil/
On our second visit we stayed on the ship, but the ship’s location and the sunny weather enabled us to take some pretty good pictures of the town and the surrounding area, as well as the folks in canoes who came out to the ship to try to sell things or just get a look at it. You can see that here:
https://baderjournal.com/2019/11/07/boca-da-valeria-brazil-2019/
This time we were anchored a little up river from the Rio Valeria (perhaps because of the low water), so we could not see the village locate around the bend behind the mountain. In the past the ship’s tenders always dropped folks off at a pier in the center of town near the church, but this time a new, apparently floating, pier had been built right on the corner where the two rivers meet and passengers had to alight there and walk to the town. The river beyond the new pier looked too small, because of the low water, for a ship tender to sail through. And no canoes came out to the ship on this visit, perhaps because there was a sign at the pier forbidding it (we didn’t see one but have heard one was there). So here is what we saw from the ship . . . people walking toward the village from the new covered pier. Note that on our last visit all of the land around the new pier, on both sides of the small river behind it, was completely under water.
After we left Boca da Valeria in early afternoon there were two notable events on board. First was a cake extravaganza in the Lido buffet called “For Cakes’ Sake.” Dozens of different cakes had been baked by the kitchen staff and you could walk around and get a slice of as many as you liked, for as long as they lasted. We have been to similar events in the past and the desserts always look fabulous, but often don’t live up to their appearance in the taste test. This time was different; each of us had slices of two different cakes and all were quite delicious. Our friend Robert had a slice of a rainbow cake he said was quite good; we had never seen anything quite like that. Then dinner was a dressy night and we received a towel animal. We used to get these every night but we guess that was a lot of work and now they only come on formal and dressy nights. (You ask what the difference is between a formal and a dressy night? As far as we can tell, on formal nights pillow gifts are sometimes left on our bed when we return from dinner while on dressy nights there are none.)
Scarborough, Tobago – Devil’s Island, French Guiana – Macapa, Brazil (2024)
Scarborough, Tobago
Located about 23 miles from Trinidad, Tobago is the much smaller second island in the nation of Trinidad And Tobago, sometimes called TT locally. We arrived at Scarborough, the capital and largest city on Tobago, on the morning of January 7. This was our first visit, never having been to Trinidad either.
Tobago was inhabited by Carib people when Columbus became the first European to sight it in 1498 (although he didn’t land there). Over the years the indigenous people adamantly resisted colonization, although the Spanish began raiding it for slaves in the early 16th century. The island was constantly fought over by the British, Dutch and French, changing hands 31 times before it was finally awarded to the British in 1814 (presumably in the settlement of the Napoleonic Wars). A destructive hurricane and the end of slavery in 1834 doomed the island’s productive sugar industry and in 1889 Tobago became a ward of Trinidad. The two-island nation achieved independence from Britain in 1962 and in 1976 became a republic. Today Tobago has a legislature and some internal home rule, but is otherwise dominated by Trinidad. Tourism is its largest industry.
Scarborough is the largest town on Tobago with only about 18,000 people, whose homes are spread out over the beautiful green hills surrounding the town. It was very hot and humid when we were there and it was also Sunday, so not much was happening and most businesses were closed.
After a delicious breakfast (the food on this voyage has been really good so far) we left the ship and walked down the dock into the town. If you have read this blog before you won’t be surprised that our first objective was the library. Unlike in most cities, the library here is one of the largest buildings in town and it is located just a block across from the dock.
We walked around it until we found the main entrance. It was completely dark inside but we walked up the stairs to see if there was a listing of hours. There wasn’t but we tried looking through the glass door to see the inside (too dark to see anything). Then a nice young guard came over and opened the door to inform us that the library was closed on Sundays. We were disappointed but at least we got to see the outside of the building, which seemed to us rather large and imposing for a town of 18,000 people. It probably serves the whole island, which is rather sparsely populated.
We decided to visit the Botanical Gardens, located on the hills behind the library. The gardens cover some 18 acres that the British requisitioned for this purpose in the late 19th century from what was once a couple of sugar plantations. They are quite beautiful but mostly up a steep hill that left us rather worn out by the time we reached the top. Extensive Christmas lights were still in evidence on the buildings and trees but were not lit in the daytime (of course).
Thereafter we looked for the fort the British built here in the 18th century, but we didn’t find it before we were pretty worn out. Mary had a knee replaced in July & neither of us is as young as we once were, and did we mention it was hilly and hot and very humid? So we returned to the ship after what turned out to be a brief look at this town. We tried to spot the fort as we sailed away but never saw it (or perhaps we just failed to recognize it). We backed well away from the pier before turning around to sail into the ocean. As we did so a colorful kite came flying over, apparently from shore, and after a while sank slowly into the water. A boat came speeding up looking for it, but the kite had submerged by the time it arrived. Later, after the boat had gone, the kite bobbed back to the surface, where we last saw it.
Devil’s Island, French Guiana
We were awoken very early on January 9 by the noise of the tender boat hanging just outside our stateroom veranda being lowered into the water. This was our announcement that we were anchored off this three island archipelago (called Iles de Salut) about 9 miles from the shore of French Guiana. Thanks a lot; wasn’t this supposed to be a vacation?
Devil’s Island was, of course, a notorious French prison for about 100 years, ending in 1953. If you have seen the movie Papillion, you should know a lot about it, although the book on which the movie is based has been debunked as fictional rather than the memoir it purported to be. The author had actually been imprisoned on the mainland and had never even visited Devil’s Island, much less escaped from it. Still, the prison was pretty horrible. Its most famous inmate was Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army who in the late 19th century was framed and convicted of treason, spending about 5 years in seclusion on Devil’s Island before his conviction was overturned and he was returned to France. Today you can see a restoration of his stone hut from the nearby island of Ile Royale, although no one can actually visit the true Ile Diablo because the waters are too dangerous.
From our anchorage we could see two of the three islands: Ile Royale (at left in picture below) and Ile St Joseph (at right). Ile Royale was the main prison installation, housing most of the prisoners and administration of the prison. Ile St Joseph housed problem prisoners, often held in harsher conditions such as solitary confinement, darkness and enforced silence. Ile Diablo (Devil’s Island) was for political prisoners, which included Dreyfus and more than twenty republicans who resisted the coup d’etat of Louis Bonaparte, among others. Devil’s island was on the other side of Ile Royale from where we anchored, so we couldn’t see it from the ship, although you can see it from the other side of Ile Royale.
This was our third visit to this archipelago and Ile Royale is not, for all of its beauty and interest, a metropolis like Paris or Rome where there is always something new to do or see on return visits. So we stayed on board rather than tendering to the small dock on Ile Royale.
But if you want to know what we did and saw on previous visits, as well as see and read much more about these islands and the prison and its ruins, you can look at our previous Devil’s Island blog posts, from 2012 and 2019:
https://baderjournal.com/2012/03/07/devils-island-french-guyana/
https://baderjournal.com/2019/12/12/devils-island-french-guiana-2019/
We were told by some who did go ashore that the restaurant and gift shop were closed as was the church, possibly for additional restoration. So we weren’t too sorry to miss it. If it had been our first visit it would have been a very different story. From the ship we were able to see the top of the modern lighthouse above the trees and another ruins we couldn’t identify visible through an opening in the foliage. In the opposite direction we could see the shore of French Guiana about 9 miles away. You can see why few attempted to escape through this long stretch of shark infested waters.
As an aside, because our veranda was smack up against tender/life boat #11 we had in interesting view of the lowering and raising of the tenders. Below is a picture of the opened tender cranes after the boats are in the water, taken through the rain spotted glass under the rail across our veranda. Below that is a view of the tender boats stored in their raised position along the ship and the same view after they are lowered into the sea, showing the walking deck below. We had never been in quite that position before.
Macapa, Brazil
The morning of January 11 found us anchored in the Amazon near Macapa, Brazil. We had crossed the Amazon Bar (where the river meets the ocean) the day before. There is a dispute whether the Amazon or the Nile is the longest river in the world, but there is no dispute that the Amazon is the biggest in every other way, particularly volume of water. The river is spectacularly wide; in fact there is an island the size of Switzerland situated near its mouth. Sailing this river is quite beautiful and varied, with wonderful cloud formations and many different looking villages and isolated houses along its shores. Mary noted that whoever christened the Mississippi “The Big Muddy” must not have been here, because the Amazon is much bigger and much muddier than the Mississippi.
The water in the Amazon is historically low this year because of drought throughout the Amazon basin. This has killed many wildlife, including more than a hundred of the endangered pink dolphins that live here, whose bodies have washed up on shore. It has also made navigating the river, always a challenge for ocean going ships, much more perilous and a number of them have cancelled Amazon trips. Although it has double the passenger capacity of the Prinsendam, in which we have cruised the Amazon before, we are told that Zuiderdam has a shallow enough draft to make it through the river with an expert pilot on board. We picked up three pilots in Macapa, we understand, and will have replacements come aboard several times, kind of like the old Pony Express I guess. The captain said that the most valuable thing on board the ship right now is the pilots’ paper charts, which show which areas are too shallow and which are still deep enough for Zuiderdam to sail through.
Although Macapa is a large city of more than 500,000 people, this was not actually a port stop. No one was allowed off the ship to explore the city. This stop, only a few hours long, was designated a “service stop” to enable the ship to complete Brazilian paperwork (we know a little about how that can be from our visa fiasco), be inspected by Brazilian officials, and board the pilots. You would never know this was a big city from the ship’s anchorage, however, because all of it but a small dock was obscured by forest. In addition to the dock we saw the pilot boats that brought the Brazilian officials and the pilots, one with scaffolding an a raised platform for a pilot to safely jump from the ship.
It was too bad we couldn’t go ashore because this is one of a handful of cities in the world that the Equator runs through. There is a tall monument marking the spot, called “Marco Zero,” with a line from the monument to the local soccer stadium where it becomes the center line on the field. When we had a service stop here in 2019 we couldn’t see Marco Zero from the ship but we were anchored much closer to the center of town so that it actually looked like a city. The different anchorage is probably attributable to the much lower water level. You can see our 2019 stop here:
https://baderjournal.com/2019/12/02/three-days-at-sea-2019/
The rest of the day was basically a sea day (or river day) as we continued our journey up the scenic but muddy Amazon.
Third Voyage Around The World, in 2024
On January 3, 2024, we set sail from Ft Lauderdale on an epic 128 day voyage around the world, scheduled to return to Ft Lauderdale on May 11. We are sailing on the Holland America ship Zuiderdam which has a passenger capacity of more than 1900. This is much larger than any ship on which we have taken a long voyage before, but we are told that only a little more than 1200 passengers are actually on board. This will certainly make the ship less crowded but it’s still pretty big for our tastes and we are still trying to remember where everything is located two days later as I write this.
We joined this voyage primarily because its itinerary was so good for us, sailing to a number of interesting places we have never been, including Japan, China, India & Hawaii. So far we have had two itinerary changes before sailing, with three Israeli ports cancelled after war broke out there on October 7, and a reversal of our port stops in China that would enable many of us to visit those cities without obtaining a Chinese visa. As of today, here is our scheduled itinerary, first a map and then a list of port stops (the flaming round map icons denote overnight stops and the moon icons denote late night departures):
Day Date Itinerary Arrival Departure
WED 03JAN24 Sail from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, US 5:00pm
SUN 07JAN24 Scarborough, Trinidad and Tobago 8:00am 5:00pm
TUE 09JAN24 Devils Island, French Guiana 8:00am 5:00pm
THU 11JAN24 Macapa, Brazil 6:00am 11:00am
FRI 12JAN24 Alter Do Chao, Brazil 11:00am 6:00pm
SAT 13JAN24 Boca da Valeria, Brazil 7:00am 2:00pm
SUN 14JAN24 Manaus, Brazil 8:00am 5:00pm
MON 15JAN24 Parintins, Brazil 10:00am 6:00pm
TUE 16JAN24 Santarem, Brazil 8:00am 5:00pm
SAT 20JAN24 Saint Georges, Grenada 8:00am 5:00pm
MON 22JAN24 Willemstad, Curacao 8:00am 6:00pm
WED 24JAN24 Panama Canal 5:00am 5:00pm
FRI 26JAN24 Quepos, Costa Rica 7:00am 4:00pm
MON 29JAN24 Manzanillo, Mexico 12:00n 9:00pm
TUE 30JAN24 Puerto Vallarta, Mexico 8:00am 5:00pm
TUE 06FEB24 Kona, Hawaii, US 10:00am 8:00pm
WED 07FEB24 Hilo, Hawaii, US 8:00am 5:00pm
THU 08FEB24 Honolulu, Hawaii, US 7:00am 11:00pm
SUN 18FEB24 Guam (US Territory), Guam 8:00am 5:00pm
MON 19FEB24 Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands 8:00am 5:00pm
FRI 23FEB24 Ishigaki Island, Japan 7:00am 5:00pm
SAT 24FEB24 Naha, Japan 7:00am
SUN 25FEB24 Naha, Japan 11:00pm
WED 28FEB24 Tokyo, Japan 8:00am
THU 29FEB24 Tokyo, Japan 6:00pm
FRI 01MAR24 Omaezaki, Japan 7:00am 5:00pm
SAT 02MAR24 Kobe, Japan 9:00am
SUN 03MAR24 Kobe, Japan 5:00pm
MON 04MAR24 Scenic Cruising Kanmon Strait
TUE 05MAR24 Fukuoka (Hakata), Japan 7:00am 4:00pm
THU 07MAR24 Shanghai, China 8:00am
FRI 08MAR24 Shanghai, China 5:00pm
SUN 10MAR24 Dalian, China 8:00am 5:00pm
MON 11MAR24 Tianjin (Beijing), China 8:00am
TUE 12MAR24 Tianjin (Beijing), China 6:00pm
SAT 16MAR24 Hong Kong, China 8:00am
SUN 17MAR24 Hong Kong, China 3:30pm
TUE 19MAR24 Da Nang (Hue), Vietnam 8:00am 11:00pm
THU 21MAR24 Phu My, Vietnam 6:00am 6:00pm
SAT 23MAR24 Singapore 8:00am
SUN 24MAR24 Singapore 5:00pm
THU 28MAR24 Colombo, Sri Lanka 8:00am 11:00pm
SUN 31MAR24 Mumbai (Bombay), India 6:00am
MON 01APR24 Mumbai (Bombay), India 5:00pm
THU 04APR24 Fujairah, United Arab Emirates 8:00am 6:00pm
FRI 05APR24 Dubai, United Arab Emirates 7:00am 11:00pm
SAT 06APR24 Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 8:00am 11:00pm
MON 08APR24 Muscat, Oman 8:00am 6:00pm
WED 10APR24 Salalah, Oman 8:00am 5:00pm
MON 15APR24 Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt 7:00am 8:00pm
TUE 16APR24 Aqaba (for Petra), Jordan 6:00am 8:00pm
THU 18APR24 Suez Canal 6:00am 6:00pm
SAT 20APR24 Rhodes, Greece 8:00am 9:00pm
SUN 21APR24 Bodrum, Turkey 8:00am 6:00pm
MON 22APR24 Kusadasi (Ephesus), Turkey 8:00am 6:00pm
TUE 23APR24 Cruising The Dardanelles
TUE 23APR24 Istanbul, Turkey 4:00pm
WED 24APR24 Istanbul, Turkey 4:00pm
THU 25APR24 Mykonos, Greece 11:00am 11:00pm
FRI 26APR24 Piraeus (Athens), Greece 7:00am 5:00pm
SUN 28APR24 Naples (Pompeii/Amalfi), Italy 8:00am 7:00pm
WED 01MAY24 Malaga, Spain 7:00am 5:00pm
SAT 04MAY24 Ponta Delgada, Sao Miguel, Azores, 8:00am 5:00pm
SAT 11MAY24 Debark Ship Fort Lauderdale 7:00am
The itinerary for this voyage has been uncertain from the beginning and we are still not sure how it will turn out. Notably:
Brazil: When we first visited Brazil in 2012 we purchased a visa that lasted 10 years. We visited again in 2019, when our visa would still have been good but Brazil had eliminated visas for US citizens. Earlier this year they announced they were reinstating a visa requirement for Americans at the beginning of 2014, about a year after our old visa, unused since 2012, ran out. The new visa requirement was to start for people entering Brazil on January 11, 2024 . . . the day we would arrive (coincidence? We wonder).
The date on which they would accept visa applications was delayed from early October until about a week into December, less than a month before we were to depart. This created a lot of pressure on passengers because we were told, repeatedly, that no one would be permitted to board the ship on January 3 without a Brazilian visa, thus putting the entire voyage in doubt for anyone who didn’t obtain a visa by then. And, of course, obtaining a visa turned out to be excruciatingly difficult. After filling out their form each of us had to upload a picture of ourself and of our picture passport page, in specified format with vague sizing requirements. We had to upload a copy of our Airline itinerary to and from Brazil (they later agreed to accept our ship itinerary) and a bank statement showing the names of the bank and the account holder and transactions for the last month demonstrating that we have at least $2,000 (ie. enough to get home again). The reviewing process was very slow (sometimes more than a week or even two) and arbitrary, since different demands for reuploading unaccepted documents were issued. Often no explanation was given about what was wrong with the initial document provided and there was no one you could contact for explanation or assistance. And remember, with the departure date fast approaching, the entire cruise was in jeopardy.
Was anybody nervous? You bet! Shortly before Christmas Holland America announced that no one would be denied boarding for lack of a visa after all and if Brazil wouldn’t accommodate us they would change the itinerary to skip Brazil. Then about a week later, as we were preparing to leave, HAL announced that Brazil had agreed that the ship could sail up the Amazon so long as passengers without a visa did not leave the ship. So at least no one was going to miss the entire cruise. Rick’s evisa finally arrived in his inbox the day before we sailed and Mary’s came today, three days into the voyage. We understand that about half the passengers hadn’t received visas by the time we sailed. Then yesterday Brazil announced that they were postponing the visa requirement for three months (what they should have done in the first place). So now everyone is free to visit the Brazilian ports (assuming we will be able to sail up the Amazon, which is suffering from a historic drought that kept some ships from visiting it a month or so ago). All we are out, therefore, is the $160 we paid for a Brazilian visa we probably will never need (no refunds, at least so far). That is not counting any health effects of a month of unnecessary tension for a bunch of people who are no longer as young as they once were.
The Red Sea: As I mentioned above, we originally had three stops in Israel that were changed in October. But we have no idea what may happen when we arrive at the southern entry to the Red Sea in April. The war in Israel continues, ships are avoiding the Red Sea and Suez Canal because some are being attacked with missiles and drones from Yemen, the US is threatening the Houthis in Yemen with military force if they don’t stop doing that, and Iran has reportedly sent war ships to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. By April this may all be over, or it may have spread into a wider conflict shutting down the Red Sea. If the Red Sea is not open for cruise ships it seems we will have to be redirected around Africa, missing the Mediterranean portion of this itinerary. That would be pretty drastic and disappointing to us, first because it would mean more and wider suffering for the people in the region, but also because we visited most of the ports in Africa last year and were looking forward to some of the stops in the Mediterranean. Still, such a drastic alteration of a world cruise is not unprecedented: in 2020 HAL’s world cruise was aborted in Australia at the beginning of the COVID pandemic and passengers had to leave the ship in Perth and find a flight home from there. It was more than half a year before they saw their luggage again. So detouring around Africa wouldn’t be the worst that can happen (while being hit by a missile in the Red Sea would be). Obviously, we are hoping it doesn’t come to that.
Anyway, however it goes we intend to enjoy this voyage. We have a lot of great experiences planned and life aboard the ship is also enjoyable (unless you really enjoy washing dishes, making beds and doing laundry, which is all done for us here). Some people post to their blogs every day, it seems, but we don’t know how they do it. Blog writing can only be done on sea days and each episode seems to take us a long time to compose. Our main goal in this blog is to create a record of what we have done and seen on our travels that will serve as a diary/photo album, allowing us to look back on them and remember what we have experienced. So the permanent product is more important to us than keeping up with daily events. The result is that our postings will fall further and further behind the ship’s actual progress and we will not finish blogging this journey until months after we return.
If you are interested in following where we and the Zuiderdam are at any particular time you can see it on this page:
https://www.seascanner.com/ships-position-zuiderdamr
If you would like to receive an email when a new episode is posted to this blog there is a link where you can subscribe at the very bottom of this page. Because episodes will, at best, be posted intermittently on fairly random dates (on Grand Africa nothing was posted before we returned), and this blog is old-fashioned and not well indexed, subscribing is probably the easiest way to follow it. If you have subscribed in the past I don’t think you have to do it again (unless your email has changed).
If you click the “About” button at the top of this page you will learn more about this blog than you probably want to, including past voyages that are included here.
So that’s it for now. If you see this you will know that we were able to upload to our blog site (this didn’t work at all on our Grand Africa voyage last year). If you don’t, then nothing I say here will matter. We will leave you with two pictures. The first is us (on the left) with our friends Bill, Robert, Judy and Bob at dinner on the first night of the cruise. We all met during our first world cruise in 2016 when HAL threw us together to share a dining table, along with our friend Lee. All seven of us travelled together again on a world cruise in 2018. Only six of us are together this time, but only because Lee died during the 2018 voyage; otherwise we are sure he would have been here. The second picture is our first glorious Caribbean sunset. See you next time.
BADER JOURNAL 
