Winter 2022 - The Amazon Expedition: Barbados

 

Rum Cocktails!

Barbados

Since crossing the equator in the mouth of the Amazon, the Insignia had been three days steaming north on the Atlantic. Beautiful Bridgetown, Barbados would be the next port of call. 

The Barbados is different than the other islands of the Lesser Antilles. It is not a volcanic island. It is formed by the build-up of coral reefs on the continental shelf of South America. It is about 160 kilometres east of the chain of volcanic islands that line up along the subduction zone of the Atlantic plate, that slides under the Caribbean plate.

Gym always likes to sign up for at least a half-day tour on these stops, to try to discern whether he might make a return trip someday. Almost immediately, he began to develop a warm feeling for this place because this tour began with several generous tots of rum! Wham, right at the first stop, a lesson was conducted on what great cocktails you can make with delicious Mount Gay rum. Gym remembers the first recipe quite clearly, it was 3 portions of Mount Gay dark rum mixed with 2 portions of Mount Gay light rum in a jug of ice. No fruit juice, no soda, no bitters  but it really is quite tasty.  Gym who has never been a rum guy, started to become a believer. From there, a traditional Mount Gay Rum Punch was served, a more complex mix of ingredients  and presto, Gym had had the perfect start to a tour of the Barbados.

Incidentally, Mount Gay has been producing rum since 1703 and has won many awards around the world. They are a big sponsor of the chi-chi sailing crowd and their ads are noticeable at major regattas everywhere. One of of the biggest advertising coups ever was when Daniel Craig shunned a vodka martini in the 2006 movie, Casino Royale, for a Mount Gay Rum with soda.

They same guy that mixed the cocktails led us on a guided tour through the Sunbury Plantation House. It is a well-maintained planter’s estate from the 17th Century. This 350-year old house is furnished with period furniture and artwork and is said to be the finest example of a well-maintained planter’s estate from the peak of the sugar cane producing era. At the end of the tour a third Mount Gay cocktail awaited us before we had to get back on the bus.

The next stop was Tropical Garden Barbados, a well laid out garden of winding paths that was bordered by sugar cane fields. Mrs Gym added dozens of pictures of flowers to her enormous collection that takes up fully half of the iCloud.

The final stop was on Gun Hill Station. This viewpoint has a spectacular panoramic view from the top of the tower. Way before the internet, British soldiers used flags and cannons to signal each other, at different high points on the island, of approaching enemies and sales at Costco.

Gym really got a good feeling about Barbados from this short tour. It was clean, green and welcoming. Maybe next time he and his dear wife want some time at the beach, they will spend a couple of weeks back in the Barbados.

Next stop would be St. Vincent, 200 kilometres to the northwest. It is interesting to note that in April, 2021, Mount La Soufriere on St. Vincent erupted and the wind blew the plume of ash right over the Barbados. The natives had to shelter for a few days to protect their lungs. The upside was that the ash fertilized the soil in Barbados and the locals say they could tell the difference in 2022.

Governors of Barbados

Mixologist and Guide

The planter had place setting for 28. That is big enough 
for Gym's family.

Sunbury Plantation Estate

Orchid at Botanical Garden

Colourful vista

Tropical water feature

really stunning gardens

Calabash Tree

Mrs. Gym

Gun Hill Station

View from Gun Hill Station

Signal Tower

Gym would get Bonvoy points on this Ritz
Carlton boat

Adios to Barbados

Winter 2022 - The Amazon Expedition: Last Day on the River

The future of Brazil

Amazon Concluding Remarks

We sailed out of the mouth of the Amazon on December 1, 2022. All-in-all the ship spent a week on the river and it was a fantastic learning experience. The mightiest river in the world is something to behold. But the question is, can Brazil protect the basin from further degradation? Gym thinks not. Brazil is not a wealthy enough country to do it on its own. Brazil can’t even provide secondary education to the villagers along the river. And if you can’t educate your citizens past their 13th birthday how can you make them understand how vital their rainforests are to the rest of the world. 

Gym and his lovely sidekick, visited a few small villages that haven’t been covered in the blog. They all had a Catholic church and a primary school. They all tried to sell the travellers, the same cheap trinkets at inflated prices. They all had young teenagers that were trapped in these settlements with no real future. Gym saw one girl that was no older than 14 and she was at least 7-months pregnant. A learned, local guide named Renaldo, told Gym that this is common and that the girls protect the identity of the fathers by telling their parents that it was the dolphins that got them pregnant. No kidding, it is a commonly used explanation.

So what is going to work in Brazil? You can open up these villages to the outside world by building expensive roads and that will make secondary education more accessible. However, that means knocking down more trees. The reality is that these uneducated teenagers will find that the only future they may have, is in harvesting rare amazonian hardwood and farming the cleared land to feed their families. 

The only solution is for Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Trudeau to adopt a bunch of these kids and take them out of the basin, so they can go to school in Malibou and downtown Toronto.

The Insignia turned north and headed back towards the Caribbean. The next stop would be Bridgetown, Barbados on December 4th, 2022.

 

Gym wanted to stop at the Bar Titanic but he wasn't allowed

Amazon 7-11

Igreja Matriz, Alter do Chao

Lots of beans and rice, all you need is a chicken in the pot

Boca da Valeria - there are no roads into this village

Catholic church in Boca de Valeria. It is on the 
highest point in the village

Boca de Valeria Bar and Grill

Boca de Valeria from the Amazon

Would stand out at any party

Winter 2022 - The Amazon Expedition: Amazonians

Parentins 

The Insignia anchored off of Parentins, Brazil on November 29, 2022. It was here that Gym and his dear wife were treated to a very colourful performance of Bumba Meu Boi. It was a totally unexpected treat. About half the ship’s 600 passengers bought tickets to the show and many of the crew came to see it as well. 

Bumba Meu Boi is a legend that celebrates a resurrected bull ox. There are dance groups throughout Brazil that perform different versions of this deeply routed musical show but it is said that the Parentins area may be the epicentre of the tradition. There is an annual festival in late June that celebrates Bumba Meu Boi and people from all over the country come to this area. This festival rivals Carnival, in Rio de Janeiro. The show we saw was a special one-hour presentation, put on in a local auditorium, for cruise ships. There hadn’t been any cruise ships for a while but Gym thought the performance was well practised, very professional and the costumes were on par or better than anything in Las Vegas. This is one of the must-see attractions when you take your next cruise up the Amazon.

It is hoped you will see from the following pictures some of what Gym witnessed that afternoon.

Winter 2022 - The Amazon Expedition: Manaus and the Pink Dolphins

Manaus from the anchored Insignia on the evening of
November 27, 2022

Manaus and the Pink Dolphins

On the morning of the November 27th, the Insignia was just a couple of miles from the furthest western point it would reach. The ship had turned into the Rio Negro river and was moving upstream from where it flowed into the Amazon. These two rivers couldn’t be any more different. Where the rivers meet, the dark coca-cola waters of the Rio Negro collide against the brownish, silt laden Amazon. Their relative water temperatures, the pH levels and the relative densities are completely dissimilar. There is a clear line in the water where they come together and they have trouble mixing for many miles downstream. The ship anchored in the Rio Negro and would stay there off Manaus for 36 hours. 

Manaus and its metro area, have 2.5 million inhabitants today and is the largest city in the Amazon basin.  It is an economic free zone and an important industrial centre which produces chemical products, soaps, electronics, ships, motorcycles, liquor, jute, rosewood oil and rubber. Rubber, is what made Manaus famous. In the late 1800s many Europeans and rich American industrialists were drawn to the city during the Rubber Boom. The great wealth brought with the rubber industry was responsible for making Manaus the first electrified city in South America and a sophisticated cultural hub. 

Gym and his lovely boss were on a tender later that morning to begin to explore the city. They jumped into a tour bus and started by driving up the hill from the docks, to the Teatro Amazonas,  also known as the Manaus Opera House. This building is quite stunning both inside and out, built of materials brought from half a dozen European countries in ships that would return home laden with rubber. Today, it is home to a the Manaus Philharmonic. It sits on St. Sabastian Square that was being decorated for Christmas, when Gym was there. 

Next, our travellers visited a natural history museum that was surrounded by one square block of jungle habitat, right in the middle of the city. MUSA is kind of an indoor-outdoor museum of the Amazon. Smaller museum buildings are surrounded by rain forest that is somewhat thick. Up in the canopy there are monkeys and birds which roam freely. Sidewalks connect the museum  buildings and ponds containing various aquatic fish, reptiles and mammals are spread throughout the park. They need to upgrade the enclosures for the Amazonian River Otters and the Manatees, and fix a few sidewalks, but other than those complaints, it was a pretty cool place.

The tour continued with a visit to the CIGS Zoo. It is a small zoo run by the Jungle Warfare School of the Brazilian Army. The special operations jungle troops bring injured animals to rehabilitate them there. The monkey exhibits are great and so is the Jaguar/Panther enclosure. The animals are well cared for and the habitats are well designed. 

Manaus itself is a little dilapidated. Some of the older districts looked like war zones. To be fair, Gym did not check out the high rent districts on Rio Negro's sand beaches. These high-end suburbs boast expensive condos, wide streets and nice restaurants. All-in-all, it is a vibrant city with an abundance of pretty interesting highlights. Let’s face it, it is kind of isolated, being in the middle of the Amazon Basin. That evening our travellers returned to the ship which would remain anchored in the Rio Negro overnight.

In the morning, Gym and Mrs. Gym went looking for pink dolphins! They boarded a long and narrow speed boat for a 60-kilometre trip up the Rio Negro. It was an odd sort of craft that was kind of like a floating tour bus with a large and powerful engine strapped to the aft. It made the 60 kilometre trip in 90 minutes.

The guys who set up the Pink Dolphin experience worked hard to get to where they are today. They built a safe floating platform at the end of a bay, off the main river channel.  Then they  ‘recruited’ some dolphins to come and be a part of their experience. This probably took some time getting friendly with a clan of these amazing animals and training them to come in close to a bunch of strangers every day to get paid in free lunch. The visitors, descended down into the black river on a platform that left them in water up to the chest. Even before the feeding started, the dolphins were there, checking out the 'new people', sometimes even probing with their long snouts. Then the treats came out and the attendants worked with each guest to bring a dolphin up out of the water, so that the guest could administer a belly rub or two. The guide and all those involved made it a fantastic experience.

That afternoon after the ‘rocket boat’ transferred us back to the ship, the guests enjoyed a late lunch as the captain prepared the ship to pull up anchor. This was the turnaround point. They were going to head back to the Atlantic. The ship was going to retrace the 1600 kilometre journey down the Amazon.

City workers decorating San Sabastian
Square for Christmas

This is apparently where Guns and Roses
stayed when they played Manaus a few weeks before

The Manaus Opera House

Inside one of the reception rooms

The stage from a first tier balcony

The stage from a seat under the dome

The Dome

A lego version of the Opera House on display

The CIGS Zoo

A relative of Gym’s

River Otters need a better enclosure

A few of the tropical insects that are
found in the Amazon

A real anaconda at CIGS

This monkey is imitating Gym's guide

A healthy jaguar at CIGS Zoo

A speedy tour boat that was built in Manaus

Mrs. Gym meets a Pink Dolphin

Administering a belly rub