saltwatersteve.com/travel

Got up for breakfast on the boat for the first time (it’s damn early - especially since we keep changing time zones and losing hours) while Meggie slept. Snagged some watermelon and made two butter sandwiches (an Amazon invention of mine) and brought it back to the suite. Slept until we heard the whistles for lunch.

Lunch is the big meal here in Brazil - they had spaghetti, rice, red bean stew, beef, chicken, juice, and - get this - dessert! (I later found out this was reserved for the aristocracy). Ricardo later told me that the milky yellow juice we had is from the Açai fruit that, although available in frozen concentrate all over Brazil, it comes from the local area (specific to one side of the river) which I have again taken coordinates for. This area produces the “gold standard” of Açai fruit. I got a picture of some of the trees. Apparently, as we had slept, a boat had pulled alongside our boat and sold the kitchen crew some of the fruit, which they then made into juice for us.

Ricardo also explained how boats (canoes really) will row up to the boat begging for handouts. Keep in mind our boat never checks its speed and is chugging away down the river at (my estimate) at least 20 mph. We watched as a canoe with two young boys rowed up, threw a rope in (which someone must have caught on the lower deck), and when the rope whent taut, their canoe was jerked forwards, causing the younger (probably 5 or 6 years old) boy to tumble out the back, ass-over-tincans. Luckily he swam away from our boat fairly unscathed. The older boy had quite a ride as his canoe was being tossed about by the wake of our much bigger boat, until someone finally released his rope and he floated away, hopefully to retrieve his little brother.