First weekly update with no pictures yet—my wi is photographer and h photos are now on my phone or iPad so I may transfer them to the MacBook and start posting from there. If I on a cruise ship is never great, even ith expensive upgrade just speedchecked it at about 8 Mbps download and 3 upload o most pictures I’ll wait. My wife is doing a Journi blog that she has invited our friends to follow, so I guess she is uploading some of the pictures.
Thus far we had 2 sea days getting to the Antilles with stops on St. Maartin and St. Lucia. We didn’t take any excursions on those two islands as we had been before but did give my folding power wheelchair a whirl on each of them, just to see how much hassle it would be. Turns out to too bad since I am still otherwise ambulatory and can get out and walk as needed. I was taking the “conserve energy “ seriously by getting the chair. We followed with 4 sea days getting down to Brazil and the equator at the mouth of the Amazon river where we celebrated Christmas and our ship grounded itself in mud entering the river. Slowed us down for an hour or so. It was one of several areas that have the phenomenon of muddy water from the Amazon not mixing with the Atlantic Ocean water for quite a while.same occurred today at our first Amazon port of Santerém. There we had a very distinct area where the Amazon and a major tributary merge and the clear blue water runs along side the muddy Amazon for several miles.
Here we did an excursion that lasted about 4 hours and since we were tendering, it didn’t make sense to bother with the chair and I just walked, using my hiking stick to keep me steady. My watch clocked me at over 3 miles today and so far feel great. We will see how it goes tomorrow. We have an easy port tomorrow in Paritins where I only have to walk a quarter mile from the dock to the auditorium . Seeing the Boi Bumba folklore show the the next 2 days are in Manaus in the middle of the country.
usually when we cruise, we skip the elevators and use the stairs but this time I have been using them a lot more but still try to use the stairs if it is less than 3 flight’s especially down. I know the time will come when I can’t do these things so I’m trying as long as I can.
Photos will follow eventually. Sorry for the long post. It must be a “Steve” thing. Steve
