Monday – Sailing Downriver

Last night, in a packed Scotts Bar, Burns Night was celebrated in style. Jonathon, the Cruise Director began by addressing the haggis and ceremoniously plunging a large dagger into it. Traditionally, the address has to be made by a scotsman (apparently), but since there are no males hailing from that part of the world, on the entertainments team, it fell to Jonathon to do it himself. Bless him; getting his tongue around the language proved difficult, but highly entertaining… he received an enormous cheer, and round of applause, when he reached the end of it, as a reward.

Next up was Claire, who is Scottish, and is one half of the duo who plays in Scotts Bar. She read out a Robert Burns poem in her broad Scottish accent, with an amusing running English translation provided by Jonathon. Again; this proved highly popular, and was greeted with loud cheers and a well-earned round of applause.

To complete the celebrations, Emily, the Assistant Cruise Director, exhibited some fine, and unexpected, calling skills, as she led a ceileidh of four Sottish dances. This was as much fun for the passengers watching as those taking part… I haven’t seen so many people enjoying themselves together in one place since we left Tilbury… the evening concluded with a short set of songs from the entertainments team…a fine, fitting tribute to ol’ Rabi…

Today, we’re sailing downriver, heading towards Santana / Macapa, on our final leg of the Amazon bit of the cruise. After breakfast, I took a walk around the deck, and was amazed at just how windy it is. It’s was also very overcast (although it did brighten up later in the day); Neil Bonner made the observation that we haven’t had a single ‘blue sky’ day for the whole time we’ve been here, which is unusual (or is it? As veterans of the trip, both Neil and myself admitted that it’s quite possible we’ve just been lucky before).

The rest of the morning was spent finishing off another painting in the cabin, of a boat yard seen on the Boca Do Valeria boat trip:

One thing I did get ridiculously excited about, was spotting that the Brazilian Heavies had vacated the Craft Room a day early. So, this afternoon, after listening to Louise Bonner’s lecture on the future of the Amazon Rainforest (there IS still hope…), I went along to the Entertainments Office to enquire as to whether or not we’d got the Craft Room back, and was handed the key! Oh yesssss! The rest of the afternoon was spent moving all my stuff back in there, and re-arranging the tables back into their poper positions (how DARE they move my tables around!…).

There’s a show on in the Marco Polo Show Lounge tonight (the first for eight days!), so I’ll be going along to that, and spending the evening relaxing with some John Smiths. We’re in Santana tomorrow, where we’ll be spending two days (heaven knows why), and then it’ll be back to work.