Peter's Travel Blog

Today, we arrived in Santana. Tracey called it ‘The Armpit of the Amazon’, which is a great description. I’ve always said if the Amazon had piles, Santana is where they’d be. It’s a festering hole of a place that has almost no endearing qualities whatsoever. It doesn’t help that the quayside where the Marco Polo is parked is in what...

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...

Today, we arrived at Parintins, or to be more precise; we dropped anchor in the river, alongside Parintins. Because the place doesn’t have a quayside big enough to take cruise ships (or it might be because the river is too shallow there), folks had to be taken across to the town in tender boats. Parintins isn’t a very big place,...

Today, I was escorting a tour, entitled ‘Manaus – Capital of Amazonas’. It was a city tour that I’ve done before, and was slightly disappointed not to have been given the all-day ‘Amazonian Experience’ to Lake January, but hey… you win some, you lose some. Actually, with the torrential rain we awoke to this morning, there was a small part...

This morning was spent sailing towards Manaus, the Capital city of Amazonus, where we will be spending the next two days. Unfortunately, the rain was so heavy and persistent that you could barely see the riverbank on either side. A knock-on effect of this, of course, is that everybody stays inside. I spent the morning happily working in my cabin,...