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AMAZON TRIP PAGE TWO

AMAZON TRIP-LOG THREE: 10:25AM Monday, April 24: Just finishing now, to get to the lecture and possibly complain to someone official about the talking and ROARING on the zodiacs. The ship is barreling off somewhere as I type. First notebook had a few lines in the eleventh page, the second notebook was one line short of a full ten pages. 11:20AM: Passed Brad on the way to the lecture, said that "This is obviously a constant problem," and he listened sympathetically and AGREED there was no solution to the problem because "They don't like you if you tell them to shut up." Well, maybe I'll not be liked anymore. Gil is the small fast-talking one, particularly talking about parrots where the common and scientific names just roll off in a Portuguese smear. He was born south of the main Amazon on the banks of a clear-water river (something like Tapajao) that doesn't appear to be on our itinerary. He talks of the camp in Peru, a short flight from Lima, where you can watch the parrots at a clay outcropping where they gather to eat minerals from the clay. He also shows a video (with no sound) that shows Charlie, who's given thousands for land and studies and attempts to breed endangered parrots and macaws (which were called such because people thought they came from Macau). He's charmingly enthusiastic, but not really an effective presenter because of the speed with which he slides over the names that are so familiar to him but unfamiliar to us. Wait a moment upstairs, and then again at the door, as she finishes cleaning my room, taking the towels and leaving me fresh ones. My black pants are RIPPED in the back again; why didn't I buy new ones in Leticia? Thursday we're at Manaus, so I guess my black pants can last until then. They're still announcing the Tae Bo sessions, but I'll bet even fewer than eight are showing up. Now 11:30, and I'll try the observation deck for Cassio's wildlife watch. Note: those were KINKAJOUS we saw last night on the night-run, scrambling down the branches which were clearly not monkeys or birds. 2:10PM: On the board it said that the Observation Deck was Deck 7, but there was no one there (well, now that I think of it, I only looked at the FRONT of that deck, which is also the Bridge, and didn't look at the BACK, though that would be behind the stack and a noisy and smelly place to be), so I climbed up to "the top of the house" to Deck 8 and saw a number of people in chairs (which devolved into 4 VERY loud men, including the "professional helper" from day 1, the Portuguese, and two other obnoxious ones), so I sat and immediately Nancy came and sat next to me and wondered where the Wildlife Watch was, and then we moaned about the poor quality of passengers after she told me of her early married days living in Virginia without hot water, a solidly built outhouse that started sinking in one corner because it was so heavily constructed, and knotty-pine floors from which the knots had dropped so that they could see the sand below. Her "hippie" days, as she called them. And almost repeated the tale that to get the Brazilian visas for her children, she had to get her ex-husband's signature, probably to certify that she wasn't trying to spirit them away from him? Watch the river slide past until we begin to turn, clearly stopping, and the anchor goes down just before we go down for lunch at 12:30. Pizza, pizza, and pizza, with vegetables, chili, mushrooms, onions, actually rather good, with melon for dessert and another Guarana for a drink at $1. Sit with the Grundens and the Replins (they sound like CRITTERS!) and the single woman, and joke a lot, and then take another Clindamicin PRECISELY at 1:01, six hours after the last one. How I'm going to take the ibuprofen at 5:45 I know not. Then file back to the Lecture Hall for Rob and his Eco-tourism. He's SUCH a sweet, earnest kid with endearing blue eyes, but one WONDERS who the other two are with whom he lives on this little island north of Vancouver Island, who finances these "nonprofit organizations" he founds to discover that killer whales really DO avoid tour boats more the nearer they get, and how he's going to work the rest of his life. That's over at 2:05 and I'm down to the room to change clothes, dose myself with sunscreen now that we're going to be out from 3-4:30 under a sky without too many clouds, and put two safety pins in the back of my black pants. And try to figure out how to avoid the AWFUL people I'm always getting on my zodiac! Got into the SECOND zodiac with Kirstie driving and Gil as guide, which she didn't seem to like because she tried to push him off onto Rob and Simon, neither of whom seemed to want to transfer him, and HE just wanted to be on the river! THEN she jumped into the water to cool off and comfort what she said was a wasp-sting in her foot and HE had to drive! Beautiful clouds, some bird life, and he kept talking to people to find where the piranhas were, but though he dropped in a line, he then said the waters were too acidic for fish AND mosquitoes. Others took off their shoes and dangled their feet in the water, but someone ELSE said that Cassio caught FOUR piranhas and these people in the water had been in DANGER. Some birds in trees, but kids swimming were a kick, as was the final visit to an ENORMOUS coconut-size Brazil-nut tree-fruit which CONTAINS the Brazil nuts as SEEDS. Took pictures of a raincloud, and then it STARTED raining, and I got out my umbrella, which actually worked quite well until we got back on the boat, having a long trip from 3PM to 4:50PM. Back to find my laundry back and the safety pins quite ripped through the fabric of the back of my pants. Up for the snack, which turned out to be vanilla wafers and those packaged chocolate cookies, and then back to try working the "Guardian" puzzle without success, finishing the New York Magazine while eating an orange I brought from the snack-room, and then lay down a bit before going up for the Happy Hour, ordering the red house wine in a SMALL quantity for the $2 special, and sat and talked with people until the 7:30 dinner, which was so loud that Seymour had to leave, after I had invited them to watch my videotape after dinner. But the day was so tiring, and my lower lip hurt so badly when I ate anything (I'm sure this added to my fatigue), that I just didn't feel like spending ANOTHER hour watching the film in ADDITION to the hour-forward we're leaping this evening, so that as I type this it's 9:47PM. Tried calling their room to tell them the viewing was off, but with no answer I had to go upstairs to find Shiela dutifully waiting in the Lecture Room, saying Seymour had gone out on the deck with his radio so there was no one in the room. She understood my fatigue and I came down to finish this up. Really so TIRED!! Now 9:50PM. Bed at 10PM, conscious that I'll be tired getting up for (former) 6AM breakfast.

Tuesday, April 25: Wake at 1:05AM to pee, and again at 5AM. Woke fairly erect and decided to jerk off, which I did with VERY little orgasmic feeling until 5:30, when I went back to sleep. 6:30 announcement gets me out of bed, feeling tired, and I shit fairly copiously and dress in good clothes for the village despite the fact that the lowering clouds really promise rain AND the landing is supposed to be muddy. No other choice: can't go village-wandering with my ass hanging out! Up to the still-closed dining-room enormous line at 7AM, and back to type this. Leg seems to be healing so well I don't use Bacitracin this morning, but the point of the lower lip is still the area of soreness and concern. Stop typing at 7:07AM for breakfast. 7:40AM: What a disaster THAT was, with everyone somber under the hour's difference, my typical "You can't tell me it's not 6AM!" seemingly echoed by everyone. Scrambled eggs and ham, but with the difference that the silverware was on the table (rather than just before the main course on the buffet table) and the napkins were on the oatmeal table, rather than on the dining tables. Just to keep us on our toes. Someone actually draws back the curtains in the dining room to enable a view out, and for a bit it looks like it's actually raining, but it's not, yet. Nothing more to say here at 7:43AM, so I guess I'll brush my teeth. 10:30AM: Had to try shutting this on and off three times before it worked. Turned out the ULTRA-fine interdental brushes are smaller than mine, and actually get easily between the toughest upper-left space. Up to the small line at 8:05, and the Austrian (who was the helper the first day, but what I took to be an AustRALian look turned out to be an AustRian look) steps in front of me. "I though I was behind them," I say. "Well, I'm in group 2 and didn't want to wait on the long line, but I guess I won't be going at all." Well, tush TUSH! He goes inside, and I don't remember seeing him ashore, but I can't imagine I insulted him THAT much. Quick ride in, logs out to step onto the muddy shore, and logs are placed to help at other places, so there's really no mud, and thankfully no rain, very little direct sun, and in some places it seemed actually PLEASANT, though my shirt was totally drenched when I got back to the room at 10:30. Untucked my pants from my socks, as recommended against chiggers, but I wondered what might happen if any happened to be clinging to my bloused trouser-bottoms, got shaken to the floor, and then lay in ambush until I passed by again. Luckily, the cleaning lady's on her way! Crowds in the village already, about four zodiacs already in with about 40 people. We see the "dance hall" where people gather at the end to watch the kids play with their balloons, blow their plastic flutes, look at the books and toys given them, and generally get more attention than they usually do. We look in to see 6-7 year-olds being taught in school, and on the way back a man was repeating grammar or math boringly to a group of what looked to be young teen-aged men, who stared out at me with envy for my freedom. The village had a satellite dish, lots of radios in evidence, electric lines stretching out to the cabins, and a large concrete/plastic water collector. Demonstrations of the mush inside calabashes, useless except for the husks for jars and containers; the sticky seeds inside the yellow cocoa pods which split to taste of bittersweet diluted chocolate powder; some sour fruit made into desserts that I don't remember the name of, and what looked like a green mango growing next to a lime. Various palms had flowers, beans, seeds, nuts, and nothing. Followed a group back along a stream to end with a (plastic?) lizard motionless on a tree over a swamp, taking pictures of mushrooms, strangely veined leaves, beautiful tree-trunks, and flowers. Go "left" along the river to a highly eroded area with a newly-felled cocoa tree lying in the mud, followed by a trail of ants across the path, with some already attacking cocoa seeds. Hear a dog bark (which turned out to be behind me) and turn back, and later see a cat as pet, but no monkeys or parrots at all. Everyone's gathered in the "dance hall" and I photograph until I get bored, then go down the river to the "right," to see a large cooking-fire, a guy hacking up rubber to repair his sneakers, a sick kid, lots of flowers, and generally more of the same. Kids looked cheerful, but how much of that is due to the fact that Marine Expeditions is paying them off with pencils and notebooks and other goodies for the village "this year," with other villages scheduled for following years. Back on a half-empty zodiac, down to turn up the air to high to try to dry my shirt out, and finish this at 10:50AM, nothing doing until lunch at 12:30. Maybe I'll try looking at my videotape NOW. Get the wiring and get out of my room just as the cleaner comes in, and I'm looking at how to turn on the TV when it's announced that there's going to be a Tae Bo class. Great! Run my wires back to my room just as the maid, with a male escort outside the door, is dusting my laptop top. Then take the TV camera up to the bridge, where I photo the charts (though they HAVE been corrected in 1996), the cute 2nd Captain, the floating islands coming toward us, and the radar screen. This lasts til 11:30, when I decide to come down to the room to take a shower. My leg does NOT look good: a slimy white surface adheres to a piece of toilet paper that I use to dry where I don't want to rub, and some of the deepest part seems a bright red, some is still covered by the slimy white, other bits are just an ANGRY red, and some are so black I fear they might have some wood splinters stuck in them. Put on loads of Bacitracin despite the fact that my near-ear injury, which had stitches, looks much better without the Bacitracin than my leg does WITH. But my face doesn't have my crummy-dirty trousers rubbing against them, which at least the gloopy Bacitracin should help to alleviate. Try filming the opening of a new bottle of mineral water, but the geyser is much less impressive this time. Maybe I should shake it next time. Now 12:30 and people are lining up for lunch, but the noise level is never as bad as it is after Happy Hour at dinner when the place just ROARS. Actually GET the "It's 12:30" announcement a few seconds BEFORE 12:30. He really IS variable. Lunch is Fusilli Bolognese with tomato-heart of palm salad, followed by coconut ice cream which becomes a shallow float when I add some of my Guarana. Almost forget my pills at lunch. Then it's time to reserve center seats for Cassio's presentation of Brazil's history and economy and culture, and he seems wonderfully intelligent with a great sense of humor: "They took the ballots on a boat. They changed them of course. You could see the ballots floating on the river, bye-bye." "Brazil has a little trouble with Argentina; in fact, they never get along." He talks until 2:15, and since I'm really worried about my leg, I ask to find Juan, but no one's seen him. So I ask Brad if he can get in touch with the doctor, and he pages him. I stand around while everyone races to man the zodiacs for the 3PM outing of group 1, and the neat-looking doctor sails past. "Brad called for me," he says; "Yes, for me," I respond. "What's your room number?" he asks when I ask if he has a chance to look at my leg. "427." "Let's go there." So we're down and he looks and hums and looks again, saying that I did well to put Bacitracin on it, but he looks again and says there's a tiny bit of infection, and he'd rather put iodine on it and a bandage over it to let it dry out. He does that, first saying the dressing is "too deep," which I correct to "too thick," cutting it in half, taping it down, iodinating the better-healed one below and leaving it open, saying I shouldn't use the Bacitracin any more, and that I should see him tomorrow, "Any time." "And I can go on the boat?" I ask, when the silly woman says "Why isn't anyone at the landing platform?" when it isn't even 3PM yet. "Yes," he smiles. I gather my stuff and get into the next zodiac leaving, Rob driving and Gil aboard. Right away Gil sees monkeys in the trees and they turn into spiders, some with babies on their backs! We look at those for a bit and from across the river comes a call: "We've got TWO kinds of monkeys over here." Across to find capuchins (larger, of which I'm not sure I got ANY photos), and spiders, some of which isolate themselves completely at the top of the leafless tree and silhouette themselves against the sky. We stay there a good deal of time (oh, we left EXACTLY at 3PM), everyone very impressed and seeing everything, and then we take off to another place---but stop because there's a giant male sloth improbably hanging from the very top of a completely dead tree. "I thought they only went where there was something to eat?" says one. "Maybe he already ate it," volunteers another. We take him from every angle, including the one in which I say he looks more like a grocery bag than anything living. Gil starts driving and saying that we should get back to the boat before the clearly obvious rain hits us, but as we're lifevesting up, I see a pink dolphin surface right in front of us, then another almost immediately behind, and someone says they see a gray one, and then there's an INCREDIBLE PERFECT profile of the long nose, the pugilistic face, and the long sweep of pink back to the hump before it vanishes into the waves. Rob is keeping track of things and has to get his book out three times, ending up saying, "It all has to be downhill from here, this has to be the best day ever: two kinds of monkeys together, birds, a sloth, and lots of river dolphins." We all make a lot of fun of him as it rains fairly hard back to the ship, and when the two Russians meet us at the landing gate with flimsy transparent raincoats over their tanned bodies, Rob observes, "Happy to see you wore your condoms," which unfortunately the Russians don't understand, but someone says they'll translate for them. Juan welcomes us back, telling the zodiac to wait until the rain lets up before the next group ventures out. It's 4:05 and I see someone munching on something and remind myself of my pill at 4:10 after a meal, so I go into the lounge and see the "Russian Buloshka filled with Potato" as listed on the menu which I took from the table, and it looks like a soft, fresh cream puff, but you bite into garlicky, mealy potatoes and onions and the contrast in expectation and reality is quite striking. Have one dripping wet with my life vest still on, then take another one downstairs with me while I have a drink of water with my pill at 4:12. Fix up my evening-meal pillbox with another pill, and I'm now into the home stretch. Sure glad I took a shower before deciding to see the doctor. "Last call" for the zodiacs at 4:32, surely one of the earliest, and it passes through my mind to try to go a second time, but I'm content enough and NOW think I might try my videos in the Lecture Room now at 4:45. Nothing there until the 6:30 Happy Hour. 10:30PM: But the Russian landing-attendants are drinking at the bar. So I take the wiring back to the room and take my cameras to the top deck to watch the sunset. Quite idyllic, most of the time alone, dramatic clouds, rain falling somewhere, zodiacs in the distance, egrets flying onto and off of floating islands. Sunset about 6:15PM worthy of a number of video and still photos. Watch til 6:45, down for two daiquiris and a long talk with Nancy about Nick's vomiting and Someone Russell who wrote a book she loaned to Steve because "he was the influential member of his---group." I mention my IBM-paid acid trips and Actualism; she hasn't read or experienced much. Salmon at dinner is OK, Nick is sweet to me, asking if I play chess, the daughter ignores me completely and moves off to sit with her boyfriend. I join Nick in the library after dinner and we can't complete a game before the 9PM movie. His teacher-friend explains "capture en-passant" to Nick. I take back a move that would have lost my queen and he says nothing. Someone comes to the movie with water, she said she got it in the dining room, and I race through to get a bottle, noting that Nick's sister and her boyfriend are playing cards at the library table. I'd seen the movie "Amazon" on National Geographic, maybe when it was first broadcast in 1968. It was over about 10PM and I get back to the library---to find a tablet with card-playing scores obliterating the chess game we'd left. Clearly his sister knew her brother's homemade set! How MEAN! We agree we can't reconstruct his side of the board, so we say we'll play again since I don't feel up to starting another game this evening. On my way back to the stairs, his sister and her boyfriend pause to let me pass. I pass wordlessly and hear him mutter "You're welcome." HEY, I've made a FRIEND! While sitting on the top deck I thought about my many wonderful travel experiences and thought of a contest: I'd award a bottle of champagne to the best list of travel experiences. I mention it to Juan and he says four people are leaving at Manaus and two men are joining the group, so he can print up the sheets before Thursday, which will be very busy for him, and give them out Thursday night. I come down to the room about 10:10 and come up with the following rough draft: What Were Your Most Memorable Travel Experiences? This question was asked of me at dinner a few nights ago. I wondered how OTHERS would answer this question. So I proposed a contest to Juan; he said it was a good idea. A bottle of champagne will be awarded for the best set of answers. Please be specific: don't just say "Antarctica," say "The day the penguin ate a hole in the zodiac and then the orcas pushed us to shore." Don't say "Africa," say "Standing at the top of Kilimanjaro." You can write of one, five, or fifty experiences, but they must fit on this side of this sheet of paper. Please think of a CODE name, so judging can be impartial. Neatness COUNTS: if it can't be read, it can't be judged. Artistry does NOT count: don't try to "make it pretty." One entry per person: couples and family members can each submit one sheet. Entries must be received at       by 9AM, Saturday, April 29. 2000. At the bottom:     followed by Code Name. I hope I'm not doing something stupid! Now 10:45 and I'm REALLY tired. Bed 11:11.

Wednesday, April 26: Wake at 12:15 and pee, wake at 1:40 and pee again, taking a pill, and I'm wakened by a sweaty feeling, a sniffly nose, and a series of hard coughings which make me fear I might be catching a cold, or the flu, or have some adverse reaction to what might be the itchy chigger-bites on my left outer ankle. A few minutes of coughing, but then it's over and I can go back to sleep. Announcement at 5:30 wakes me, and I doze fitfully until 6:30, when the announcement is made that Group 2 can come to the loading platform, a half-hour late since it's raining in spots, looks VERY gray out, though it doesn't seem to be raining at the ship itself from my porthole. Think that they might call group 1 early, particularly since there's a 6:35 announcement for the "last call" for group 2. Up to the dining room for only Nuger and Frank, and one of the cousins in 429 later, and pulling aside a curtain reveals two zodiacs, each with maybe an average of seven apiece, zooming off toward the coast, though later one is sighted parallel to the ship among the floating grass-islands. I have some cereal and apple juice, taking both pills: the Clindamicin scheduled for 7:40 at 6:50, and the ibuprofen scheduled for 7:10 also at 6:50. Juan keeps passing through, so I go down and get my sheet and present it to him in the office. He looks at it, says that I can do the introduction at tomorrow's dinner, and only the hard-core stuff will be printed on the page. "Can we look at it again when I'm awake?" he asks with a smile, and I laugh and say I feel exactly the same way: I'd written this last night. We didn't discuss where the entries would be left, but we can do all that later today. Also before breakfast had a humongous shit, with oddly wiped almost clean. Benefits of showering? Wash the little bite-marks on my outer left ankle, but are slightly less itchy now, but I still figure to mention them to the doctor when I see him today. Down to last 7 ibuprofen (7x8=56 hrs) and last 8 Clindamicin (8x6=48 hours), so I'll be finished with these on Saturday, and with the Naproxen sodium on Tuesday. Use ear-swabs, drink the last of the little bottle of water, listen to people moving in adjoining rooms, look out the window to see the far shore completely befogged with rain, though still no raindrops right out my window-view, and finish this up at 7:18AM, when I guess I'll take my plastic-bag wrapped cameras inside my plastic-bag wrapped A&K bag up to the loading dock to chat with whoever is coming off and going on to the zodiacs on this gray day. Forgot to record yesterday: new roll of film #0 has manioc growing, #1 a five-month-old manioc root, and #3 a calabash which is used only for jars from the husk, the interior mushroom-like substance being inedible and unusable. Took over 30 pictures yesterday, but am prepared to go out this morning and never unwrap the plastic from my bag, only take out my binoculars to look at what we see---can't imagine anything that I haven't already taken from a distance, though of course I want my cameras WITH me, just in case, as Rob learned yesterday when he didn't bring his long-lens with him, which guaranteed his passengers got remarkable sightings. End at 7:23AM. Look at the rain from the loading top until Gil returns with people from group 2 at about 7:35AM. No one has anything but binoculars out, and even those lenses are always steamed up. My arms and hat (which seemed to have had some salt-water remnants from a former trip that made my eyes smart at the beginning) got wet, but my plastic-wrapped bag kept my crotch dry and my bent knees thankfully kept my bandage dry, and the life-vest kept large areas of my back and front dry. Lots of dolphins surfacing on the waters, then a beautiful yellow-green frog perfectly posed on a water-hyacinth leaf. What looked like a 4-5-inch snake had only a head and sinuous body swimming through the water until the zodiac threatened it and the lizard got up onto its hind legs and sprinted across the water with splashes. Lots of birds flying past: white-winged sparrows which seemed to have more white BODIES than wings, striated herons, white-capped hawks, other kinds of hawks and maybe even an osprey. Then around to a clearing where a group of water buffalo stomped in the mud enclosed in a wooden-railed enclosure, with a huge male in the hock-deep water grunting his primacy over the territory, and a lone smaller female on the left side, mysteriously also outside the enclosure. Then around to another farm where Gil had seen a dead caiman. There it was, stretched over a floating log which would eventually be marketed for the building of houses, but when he poked just behind the bloody gash across its head, it began to MOVE: the poor creature was still alive, and, as someone inevitably pointed out, suffering. It spread its claws in seeming agony, its eye opening blearily, but the muzzle sank into the water with no seeming effort to raise it to breathe. Gil hopped onto the log and held it up under its jaws, raising it almost to his head-height and there was still a bit of the tail looped on the log, so it was somewhere between five and a half and six feet long. As he put it back down, the log began to shift and he had to jump back into the zodiac before the log partially turned over and dumped the poor caiman thoroughly into the water, where it agonizedly rolled over and over two or three times before sinking below the surface. "The piranhas will come in a few minutes and --- pffft!" Ironic: the farmer had wanted it killed because it was eating the fish he'd caught in his nets, and now the culprit would be devoured by another kind of fish. Some of the women made disgusted sounds when the head was turned to show two or maybe even three deep, bleeding gashes on the top of the head, and I can still see the clutching claws telegraphing the agony. Flocks of egrets congregated, saying, as I said to Nuger, "It sure is wet out here, isn't it?" Many isolated flycatchers, a number of birds whose name Gil knew instantly and repeated, but which I forget. The doctor without a shirt sailed past with only two others in his zodiac beside the driver. I'd be curious if anyone in a zodiac OTHER than Gil's had even SEEN the dying caiman. Head back to the ship about 8:45, and I drip down to my room to feel chilly as I shed first the shoes, which miraculously remained dry on the inside, then the pants, thoroughly sopping, which meant I had to reposition the safety pins in the black trousers so I had something to wear to breakfast, and took out the sodden tissues to throw away and the sopping handkerchief from the back pocket which I draped over the sink. Tried hanging the trousers on the hooks over the carpet, but the constant dripping of the falling water seemed too much, so I transferred them to the bathroom and draped the dry towel over the chair. My green shirt and underwear and socks went back onto hangers on the wall-hooks. I had my new blue shirt ready to put on after drying myself with my towel, clean underwear and socks (which were hard to put on with my feet still damp), and pinned pants. Now 10:17 and the cleaners are approaching, as is the 10:30 talk by Gil on Amazonian markets and the 11:30 observation deck for wildlife viewing, hardly----wow, look out just now to a LARGE community, maybe two hundred buildings lined up along the shore and six or seven deep in the areas of densest population---not raining anymore and the coast isn't foggy, though the clouds are thick and low and black--- feasible at this point. 12:24PM: Ask the friendly room-cleaner if she could just DRY my shirt and pants, and she said yes! Now I wonder when I'll get them BACK! Gil is VERY funny again: The busses leave very early in the morning. They have a capacity of 35. So they carry about 80 people, some in hammocks. #31 on the current roll of film is the chart of the Lybova. Shiela again reminds me that we were on the BORIS PETROV. And that I want to know about ITN (International Travel News), a subscription monthly newspaper. As well as the guy who gives good tours of Copper Canyon. The Observation Deck IS deck 8, over the bridge, where Cassio is trying to point out things. They pass around a cocoa pod and I suck a seed dry and keep it. Nancy identified Christopher as the grandson, and Andrew as Rex's son, which explains why he's with them and was told that Amelia never heard of "Rocky." Nancy wept when recounting how wicked and angry Kirk (the ex-husband) would get with Amelia that he'd throw her out of his apartment in favor of his current girl-friend. She has a lot of anger, and Nick TOLD her someone had messed up the game, but "It didn't matter." Just as my taking my finger off my queen wouldn't have mattered. But he can't keep on like that, since he's obviously defending against the attacks of his father. He asks if I want to play, but Nancy volunteers when I say no. She thinks it's sad that Amelia cares only for herself and might not even be aware that she messed up the chess game, which I doubt. Cassio says guarana grows on a coffee-like plant, and we might see some below Manaus, which no one seems to know how to pronounce: Shiela fumbling with Mananas, Nancy wanting to say Manus. I wear my hat to try to dry it out, and it partly works. When Nancy wanted to know if an inlet was a branch cutting off an island, I suggested we look at the radar, and we get a good demonstration of the "rain suppressor" that, left off, shows a large front of rain ahead of us, but we pass through it to get to our stop. I joke "This is the only place we get be sure of the correct time," and the pilot adds, "And my watch." The young small one is sure cute! Portuguese gets everyone into a discussion of why the nautical mile and the statute mile isn't the same, though they have the same name. Nick bores quickly and leaves, which reminds me that he CONSTANTLY fussed with his plastic bag of chess pieces through Gil's talk. I'd have to have him killed. Nancy wants to hear more about my third Acid trip, and I have to decide how much I want to tell her. Clearly she'd be OK with my being gay---except for Nick? Juan still has not had time to look at my sheet. He's willing to supply a box for the entries, however. GOT to stop for lunch now at 12:40. Join the Yanofskis again: just as the others have settled down to standard places, I seem to have also, finding that I avoid Frank, the Portuguese, the priest, the doctor, Amelia, and the Grundens and Replins have been joined by the Pate/Smitt duo, taking up that table. Leaving a space by the Bernice-like needy one who almost makes as much noise as Nick does, which I certainly do NOT want to take. Shiela reminded me that I'd forgotten to mention the wondrous-large Victoria Regina lilypads and 9-inch white lily-flower. I've seen it, I can talk about it, I just can't show it to my friends. I decide to see if the doctor is available, but Rob says that he doesn't know the doctor's schedule, so can only put a note for Juan or Rachelle that the doctor is requested in room 427. While someone else asks him what can't be brought back into the United States (and Rob says only something about a certificate that anyone should get), I look at the Malta registration of this ship and see that LOSco stands for Lyubov Orlova Shipping Company. Took my after-lunch Clindamicin at 1:10 and put my 2:50PM ibuprofen in my pocket to take after Simon's 2PM talk on travel in Brazil. Raining again outside, so I hope it might clear before we're scheduled to leave at 4:30PM. The Quiche Lorraine for lunch was super, as was the french toast for breakfast. Now at 1:30 I'm feeling TIRED: infection? Less than eight hours' sleep last night? Boredom? 5:45PM: Lay and rest until 6:55, then up to sit between two dozers: Nuger and Yanofski, as Simon does NOT give a good impression of his slides now that he's trying to actively sell them. He had a nice head of dark hair, his companion looked cute, and some of the comments about driving the car into the swamp were funny, but most of the shots where really rather mediocre, except for the woodpecker in a window in the trees. He ends about 2:45 and I tell Rachelle that I'm back in my room, and in a few minutes she calls to say the doctor's on his way down. He enters barehanded, saying that he should keep a list of his patients, and I remind him that I had the leg-bandage to be changed, and he has to leave to get his materials. I then remind myself to show him the bites on my left ankle. When he returns he smiles and says they're only mosquito bites. An ugly blotch comes off the wound with the bandage, but he assures me it's doing better rather than worse. He puts on more iodine, and it seems to me that it stings over a larger area than it did yesterday, and he tells me to keep it dry. He dabs my step-wound and the spot above them all. I ask about his opinion of DMSO, and he says he had trouble reading the book because his English is not that good and he had to keep looking into a dictionary to check words he didn't know. I ask him if I should use the Aquaphor to soften the clot from which he has to remove eight stitches tomorrow. "No, but use it AFTER the stitches are removed." I show him my two knees and he says I should use DMSO, and to let him know how it works out. I decide to put some on this evening before I go to bed. Then, just before he leaves at 3:10, comes the announcement that there are spaces for eight in the next zodiac for anyone in group 1 who wants to leave early, so he smiles and lets me go as I grab my plastic-wrapped cameras and zip upstairs to be disappointed to be tenth in line, but it turns out they have TWO zodiacs waiting to go, so I get into Gil's at 3:15 as I put my watch into a pocket so it won't get wet. It's raining pretty hard on the way over, and there are no dolphins to be seen. He cruises along what I take to be an enormous floating mat of grasses, but then it's held back by two barriers to form an ingress to the shore-front village visible behind. Only a few birds are to be seen, and he keeps staring off in his portentous way and racing off in another direction. Nuger is sitting to my left and I try not to let him drive me crazy, talking about the rain, how he's wearing the wet clothes from this morning, where are we going, why are we going HERE, etc. Flocks of yellow-capped birds fly up as we pass, and lots of white-winged sparrows and swallow-like birds. Look at the blue-painted church with the ornate cross and hanging bell-pull and draw up to a seeming party taking place under a floating barge from which smoke billows. Turns out Gil had talked to them before and he shows us the sunken canoe in the back in which they soak the manioc roots for two days to get them soft, or "ferment" them, and then half fermented and half "raw" ones are fed through the grinder. The ground manioc is then put into a press that tries to get rid of most of the moisture, and the clumps are then sifted to take out the lumps and the sifted material is put into the four-foot metal pan on the clay oven---all built on balsa logs so they float with the level of the river, to be roasted for two hours. When Gil asked how long he'd been working on it, the stirrer felt a few clumps and said the equivalent of half an hour. He wasn't working from a clock but from the condition of the manioc. The roasted manioc is then put into a vat of water to sit for two hours to "wash" it (all this is in some way to remove the poisons that make the raw manioc fatal), and then it's taken out and put into bags which can be kept for months. The water that's left over it allowed to settle, and a manioc "powder" sinks to the bottom which can be used for other cooking purposes different from which the flour is used. Corn littered the floor, Gil saying it had to be picked before it went bad, and they'll husk it and take it from the cob for the farm animals, or grind it into cornmeal. There were two zodiacs when we arrived and one remained when we left, Claire joining us because "we're going right back to the ship." I land and tell Juan that I wouldn't mind going to SEE something rather than the manioc roasting, and he says that's where the next is going at 4:30. But then another group comes up which is going out "for a ride" and Juan asks if I want to join them, and I join the Grundens and the Replins and the two odd singles who seem to be a couple, and then Nancy comes into our boat. I'd left my camera bag behind, so I had nothing on but my lifejacket, so that when the rain more or less stopped, the breezes started drying my shirt and trousers. Oh, remember that I scraped loose flesh off the bottom of my left foot when I took my sock off to show the doctor my bites: am I getting some kind of foot-rot? Wearing wet socks in wet shoes surely couldn't help. In a way, it was a magical release: here were the perfect drowned forest settings, a perfect swoop by a yellow-backed caracara, the perfect flight of a kingfisher from one top-perch to another top-perch, the threat of monkeys that never turned out, and I didn't have the equipment to take advantage of it aside from my eyes, which I used to get pleasure from my surroundings even though Kirstie KEPT ON talking and talking about nonsense, and Steve HELPED her! Lovely scruffy-looking hawk high in a tree with rain-soaked wings, a mysterious bird that wasn't a cormorant but didn't seem possible to be a vulture outstretched its wings to dry. Then there was the strange birdcall: ooh-kwa, ooh-kwa-kwa, ooh-kwa-kwa-KWA like some demented duck. Darkness started gathering and I feared rain before we got back to the ship, but we got there successfully; Steve had some kind of finger symbols worked out with the cute young docker (he's 19, the other's: he put up three fingers and made a zero: 30) that he professed to know nothing about. Got back to my room at 5:40PM, having been told by Juan that he WOULD get to the sheet but that he had other things he had to do first. Oh, I'd asked the name of the sour but tasty fruit from the village of Caxui muni, and it was bacuri. Got out of my wet shoes but decided to WEAR the only clothes I had left which had LARGELY dried from the breezy trip back, but I DID get a clammy seat from sitting in the wet underwear and trousers, even with the gray long-sleeved shirt on for warmth. Then, as I typed, she came in with my dry shirt and trousers which I put on and finished this at 6:42, halfway through the 1.5 hour Happy Hour this evening with "Planter Punch." 8:45PM: I feel INCREDIBLY tired, but I INSIST on writing this before going to bed to give SOME chance for my food to digest before going prone. Part of the problem is probably the TWO Planter's Punches I have AND all the pretzels, potato chips, and peanuts I stuff into my mouth while I'm talking with the people, particularly the McNeals, whom I've forgotten how pleasant they are, and I eat with them while debating whether the ship is listing more now than usually. The Jaeger Schnitzel is OK, but not that good, the lentil soup good and peppery, and I had a glass of the house white wine. Juan makes some point about the 10 staff getting only 20% of the tips while the 58 crew get all of 80%, and it doesn't sound THAT far off, simply a ploy for more individual tipping of the staff. Relieved to hear that we don't have ANY zodiacs tomorrow, the touring is mostly included, and breakfast isn't til 8AM, though I do have to have a meeting with the doctor before going off on the bus tour. Still with pills to take and clothes to put away, I feel I've finished with this at 8:54PM. Take a huge, clean shit and get to bed at 9:15PM feeling totally completely exhausted.

Thursday, April 27: Now at 1:55PM, exhausted from the day already, I transcribe and embellish the notes taken today. Pee at 12:22AM; 3:30 pee and take clindamicin. Pee at 6:19 and MAYBE take ibuprofen at 6:50, but I'm not really sure, and I just counted and I don't think I did, since I didn't record it. Up 7:35, shit again, wash face, DMSO on knee. 7:55 announcement "Breakfast being served." Eat quick (ham and scrambled eggs) and tell Juan I think it should be AFTER Manaus to remove my stitches, and he agrees with me and will tell the doctor when they go shopping for medications at 9AM. Get FIRST to bus at 8:15, then in to buy $5 Manaus book and back at 8:23, slowly loading. 8:35 off on tour. Stop at Opera House 8:50 and #36, last of Sensia 400 films, is schedule for operas, and #0, first of Agfa 200 films, is side of opera house with ticket window at 9AM. Said to be 1.8 Reals/$. 40R top for opera, Il Guarany tonight! It has 685 seats. The black wood in the floor is jacaranda, symbolizing the Negro River, the light is rosewood, the Amazon. They want $7 for twelve postcards and $12 for map of Amazon. It's EASY to say no. On bus at 9:30 from opera to market, which was built in 1906-8, brought from Paris, exactly like Les Halles. #8 is Palacio Rio Negro Cultural Center with dried tobacco leaves hanging over the doorway. At the market 9:40-10:10, little bit of everything: cutting fins off live fish, guarana powder for tea. Shiela got postcards down to four for a dollar. It's cloudy but HUMID, though it gets up to 35 degrees by 1:40PM, 95 Fahrenheit. At INPA 10:35-11:40, nice LAYOUT, but nothing ON aerial walkway, but two sloths at end were good. Maybe it was an Amazon turtle instead of a matamata. #21 Manaus from INPA suburb. To Bufalo, 15.000R for the churrascaria, mostly tough, and two beers, but GREAT fried bananas. At two enormous tables (not getting as good a selection as those at the side tables) from 12:05-1:35. Take both pills on loaded stomach at 2:10PM, only 3 Clindamicin left but 4 ibuprofen. Didn't seem to be a car waiting for Stern's or Sauer, but I'd like to see the Tropical Hotel. Also thought of buying pants, but will they be cheap if Manaus is one of the country's most expensive towns, and what of my thought that I should have worn the JEAN-SHORTS on the wet zodiacs with a tee-shirt, saving good pants for later. Quit this at 2:15 to brave the heat at LEAST for the Negro-tide marker and the Scottish built Custom's House. Guide told us that "Amazonia" comprises eight states of the 28 in Brazil. Amazonas is one state of 1.5 million square kilometers. We left on the tour at 8:30AM, Manaus is 3 degrees south, with 1,600,000 people, where the temperature goes up to 35-40 degrees ordinarily, and last summer, because of deforestation, it hit 51 degrees, or 124 degrees Fahrenheit. Humidity is usually 85-90%. Get a LONG drive in a private taxi from 2:30-3:10 to Tropical Hotel's Stern's shop, with 6-8 other tour people there. I wander out into the mini-zoo and the orchidary, which has a pair of orchids of wonderful scent blooming. It's gotten quite hot, the "jungle walk" isn'tt very interesting, and I get back to Stern's to find a couple having multiple credit cards rejected, so I choose to come back at 4:32 with two gals who happen to get the same driver who drove me in. Back at 5:05 to find three wonderfully cold slices of watermelon perfect to quench my thirst, along with the rest of my bottle of water. Juan hasn't finished the form yet, doctor isn't available yet, so I go up to watch the sunset over Manaus until 6:10, when Juan asks Victor and the doctor is in. He comes down and says he'll come to my room in a half hour. I wash my face, start writing this, and he knocks about 6:40PM. He takes me to his room on the seventh deck, asks me to sit down on a cot, turns on a bright light, and begins looking at my chin. He uses some solution, then asks me to turn my head and uses the same solution at my right ear. Then he turns back to the chin and starts cutting stitches, saying it looks OK, and I can just leave it dry, no salves. It'll be OK by itself. For the ear-front, he says there WERE no stitches there. I say I must have misunderstood. He presses my leg-vein and his three white fingermark-circles remain, and says I should check my venous return when I get home, maybe the veins have enlarged, maybe there's something wrong with my liver or circulatory system, but I should check it. I say this is the first time I heard anything. I show him the bruises on my upper arms and he uses DMSO on both upper-arm bruises and on my knee, so I have to sit 10 minutes while it dries. He asks if I'd been in other hospitals before, and I amuse him greatly telling him my Nanking story of 3-day stay with 5-day diagnosis, IVs and fever (which his patients HERE have!), and "No food" and "No eggs" breakfasts. He can't find "prone" as in "accident-prone" in his dictionaries. He says the leg-cut is better, except for one little bit that adheres to the bandage, and he iodines it again and says it'll be OK tomorrow, I should see him on Saturday. Back to my room to look at my chin (oh, he DID laugh when I said I DID record it all on my video camera), and it looks OK. Finish this at 7:33PM and go up to dinner, not knowing whether Juan will announce the contest or not! 9:45PM: dinner with the McNeals, pleasant as ever, and Juan shows me the final draft: THREE judges, me and Brad and HIM! Oh, well. Then Juan announces it and I say "many" and he insists it's THE MOST, and they'd CHANGED it from my PLURAL! Everyone seems to insist that it must be only one. And Miss Obnoxious Zodiac Driver Kirstie shouts that there's NO WOMAN on the panel, so SHE is one of the judges! I go up to watch Manaus pass to the background and at 8:50PM ACTUALLY SEE the merging of the waters: the light on the mast is strong enough and the reflections down from the clouds of the lights below are intense enough that we can SEE the swirls of tanner Amazon abutting the black Negro. I'd also previously judged we were NOT out of the Negro because of the absence of STUFF floating past in the water. When we merged, the trees and grasses began flowing past. Watched as we passed between a red blinking light on the left and a green blinking light on the right. Down at 9:35 to write this and at 9:48 suddenly realize I have NO water in my cabin with which to take my pills! I know the bar is going strong, but I can only hope there's water near the stairway or that the dining room's open! Well, the dining room door opens and people are still working there, so I take a bottle of water and just leave when JUAN passes, saying "Excuse me," not even recognizing ME, as it seems. Anyway, I can take my ibuprofen at 10PM and go to bed. I leave the cooling on full, I realize, but am too tired to get up.

Friday, April 28: Wake, figuring it might be 2AM for Clindamicin, but it's 4:07, quite a surprise. Pee, and open the porthole to see if it's raining, but it's still dark. Doze a bit, look at watch at 5:04AM, then up at 5:25 to put DMSO on arms and knee, leaving it bare to dry for fifteen minutes. Then get to this, noting that I should take third-to-last ibuprofen at 6AM before boarding my early-morning zodiac. Really counting down the days to the end. Now to start dressing at 5:40AM, hoping it doesn't rain. Oh, and Gary McNeal gave me some black thread, so I guess my black pants will try yet another incarnation. Take a pill at 5:50AM and am second on line, leaving at 6:04AM. Two go two miles upstream for NOTHING, and Brad keeps asking where the entrance to Furo do Moara is, including from a native who waves downstream. They talk and talk and finally find it at 6:34, down to manioc drying and chicks and pigs 6:45-7:01. Others are so bored they're talking about other trips they'd taken. This is San Antonio, with twenty families raising manioc and tobacco and corn. Father takes a canoe (IS taken in a canoe) across to a ruined church. We reach the terminal water-hyacinth raft at 7:11 and turn back. We stop to get chocolate from a cup which I'm careful to touch with only the outer part of my lip (as if that would help) and a manioc cake/pudding with is substantial, since I've had nothing of breakfast this morning yet. This goes to 7:30 and we're back to the ship at 7:52, looking like rain, and others are waiting and stay out a long time in turn. I just get to my cabin when they announce breakfast, fried eggs and bacon, which I have with Gae and the bald guy, and Rachelle asks to join us and we get started talking about opera (Gae's favorite is Mefistofeles!) and plays in NYC and the City Opera and Audience Extras and The Lion King and Les Miserables, and Rachelle leaves saying "Thank you for some intelligent conversation for a change." We continue talking then and I try to make a list of the places which might qualify for my most memorable experience, and come up with 32 possibles of which 6 are strong: 1) Hotel-less in Borneo, 2) Njemilis Dropoff in Koror, 3) Walking in Yap with Coca leaves, 4) Snow at Nordkapp at noon June 21, 5) Sete Quedas, 6) Getting last opera-ticket in Beyreuth. As I think of it, I star 4) and 5) and will probably choose 5) if only because it WAS in Brazil and is no longer THERE. Then to Rob's talk on sounds of orcas and whales, then to the Observation Deck for no Simon for Wildlife, but I watch the coastline pass and video a long stretch as "typical." Quickly sew up my pants so that I can return the kit to Gary McNeal at lunch, which is fresh-caught Amazon fish, quite bony, rather salmon-like. A Spanish girl with Djhill (NOT Gill) join us and I think SHE was Kirstie (can't FIND her name!), but she ends up telling Carroll (yes, that's the way she spells her name, as on the final address list) about the charter flight that takes the crew from Croatia to their home on the Black Sea and returns another crew. Then to Gil's talk about monkeys, typically funny (starting with a dark slide: that's a nocturnal monkey), who stops before 2PM though group 2 isn't scheduled until 3PM, though maybe something's been changed, since we ARE anchored. BLUE sky above!! Really had to FORCE myself to do this til 2:20---why am I so TIRED!! Took the LAST Clindamicin at 11:20, the penultimate ibuprofen at 2PM, so only the last to take at 10PM. Also have only four Traumeel left, which I'll finish tomorrow. Maybe I'm overpilled?? Will rest now. At 2:52 I hear "Zodiac group 2" and RUSH to get ready. Then I think, "But I'm group ONE!" Go through the trouble of getting out Fisherman's Friend because my throat is faintly sore. Lay on my side (so I don't snore myself awake lying on my back) and get up at 4PM to get the snack of wedges of brie and slices of goat cheese with crackers and slices of watermelon. Splash on my shirt and go to the room to wash it out with water. Group 1 is called at 4:15 and I put my life-jacket over the wet and dash up to be fourth on line. Others come out later and marvel at the quickness of its growth. Actually get off with (ho ho ho) Rob at 4:30, and he's into his dolphin mode still, having seen three botos and three tucuxis at one time. This time the ship is anchored on the OPPOSITE SHORE, so it takes about twenty minutes simply to cross the river, and then we hit the efflux of the lake which makes incredible currents, dead spaces, and whirlpools. I'm sitting in the left front, so OF COURSE when we cross the wake of a passing ferry there's ONE big splash and I get it right up and down my left side, killing my toilet tissues in an instant. Simon passes us (why does EVERYONE pass the zodiac I happen to be riding in?) and I condemn myself for feeling grumpy and more or less like Nuger always LOOKS. He's right across from me and makes classic statements like "All the wildlife must be asleep," with birds flying overhead, parrots chattering in trees, dolphins surfacing, and unusual hawks and doves appearing in treetops. I keep telling myself to just exist in the moment, without caring about former zodiac successes or failures, or how many days, meals, or zodiac outings are left on this trip, or what comes AFTER this trip. When the scene is engrossing, as it often is with brilliant sunset colors against massed clouds, passing boats boasting red and white flags flying, and school children whooping to be let out of school on Friday afternoon, time passes effortlessly. When I grumble about Gae taking a swim from the other zodiac, making everyone speak of mermaids, and Rob clearly disappointed that no one in our boat wanted to swim with him (as he already HAD by the wetness of his hair) (and I DID manage to catch a video of his intense blue eyes, albeit in the setting light of the sun). I SAW lots of green and blue on the backs of passing parrots, but couldn't manage to film any of them, as I continued to miss the dolphins. Battery went down to half so quickly that I put it on Refresh when I got back. Pointed out "the pink river in the sky" at the zenith of sunset, and Rob ejaculated, "Oh, what a planet we live on." Was I that bad when I was as young and enthusiastic as he is? Probably worse. Some still shots of panoramas, but couldn't quite get a line on the spectacular clay cliffs at the entrance to the river, mounds of red and yellow surmounted by trees that had been cut like with a cleaver, the discarded half swirled down the river. We're the last zodiac in, I think, because as I undress from my wet clothes and change into my sewn black pants (taking care not to stoop and rip the stitches even before dinner) and Galapagos tee shirt, hanging up all the rest of the things to dry. Martinis at Happy Hour will be easy to avoid this evening. Guess I'll settle for a glass of the house white. Nothing much more to say at 6:45: I'd taken six vitamin Cs, since I feel like I might be coming down with something---ANYTHING for a reason for my almost constant fatigue! Go to the bar, order my white wine, and talk with Nancy and Gae about the day, when Rob comes over and wows us all with his blue eyes. Pretzels and potato chips and peanuts as usual, but only one glass of wine until 7:30 dinner, where I check that the couple did NOT get their credit card cleared but they got their purchase ANYWAY. Sit opposite a dour Jan Zaal who makes NO effort to be sociable, but thankfully Gary sits next to me, shares a glass of my red wine with his steak, and explains that Carroll can't have solid food after 7PM, so she really enjoyed the cheese earlier. I finally asked if they were newlyweds, but they'd just been married 26 years---he made rice and beans for their twenty-fifth anniversary, so as not to spoil her. Finish at 8:25 and go to my room to change the clocks to 9:30, leaving only eight hours sleep if I want to go to bed NOW and get up at 5:30 for our 6AM zodiac tomorrow! But Brad says tomorrow is the LAST day with two outings! The end is in sight! My throat STILL feels somewhat sore, so maybe I AM coming down with something. Will take six more vitamin C with my two night-time pills, including the LAST ibuprofen! Bed just after 9:45PM. SETE QUEDAS: Planning a trip to South America in 1962, a friend of a friend who had been in the Peace Corps said that I shouldn't miss a little-known Salto das Sete Quedas, roughly The Falls of Seven Cascades, on the River Parana 160 kilometers north of the more famous Iguasu Falls. My travel agent found a little airport in Guaira, the nearest town to Sete Quedas, and booked me a flight from Iguasu to Guaira on January 1, 1963, which fit into our itinerary from New York to Rio on December 25, 1962, Rio to Iguasu, then to Buenos Aires, Bariloche, Puerto Montt, and Santiago. My two companions didn't want to make the Iguasu-Guaira part of the trip, so I said goodbye to them in Rio and flew to Iguasu. Midnight of December 31 found me under starry skies in the pool of the old Hotel das Cataractas at Iguasu Falls. Bad news the next day at the tiny Iguasu airport: the airport at Guaira was under three inches of water, no flights in the near future. "I'll take a taxi," I announced. After the laughter subsided, a brave driver volunteered to take me, making it clear it would have to be an overnight trip. I agreed. At first I thought he'd picked up his wife and nine-year-old daughter to take to a relative's to stay while he was away, but it became clear they were coming with us. What luck: his daughter had a school book with English on one page and Portuguese on the facing page. With this I could communicate with Orlando, the driver. We drove north on a muddy track along the Parana; frequent downpours decked the intense green leaves with diamonds. Lagartas, local lizards, up to four feet long, had to be avoided. When his four-wheel drive vehicle started slipping downstream as we crossed one of the many creeks, he stopped to put a stick at the water level, making it clear that if the water were higher on our return, we wouldn't be able to cross. After about five hours we reached the falls, the spray from the seven falls visible from a distance. The Parana fell something like 350 feet over a brink holding six tiny islands connected by swinging cable bridges with wooden planking covered with slippery moss watered by the constant spray from the falls. One of the most vivid moments happened when Orlando, safely carrying his daughter in one arm, slipped on the wet planks and scrambled to regain his footing while clinging to a single cable with one strong hand. Only Brazilians visited these falls, and the hotel was a cement-block rectangle connecting rooms along a single hallway with one foul latrine at the back. Dinner of local vegetables, fruit, and pork chops stuck on skewers pushed into a central piece of wood on each table was included in the price of the two rooms (one for them, one for me), which, including breakfast the next morning, came to a total of $4.95. We revisited the falls the next day, marveling at the rainbows everywhere above the muddy trails crossing the islands from one bridge to the next, astounded by the sheer volume of red-mud-filled water (which, my Britannica told me, was so enormous that, when multiplied by the height of the falls, made it the greatest waterfall in the world, by a factor of five greater than the next, Paolo Alfonso, I think also in Brazil) flowing over each of the seven falls. Reluctantly, we returned to Iguasu; the water had not risen above the level of his stick in the bank, and I found his price of $60 for the two-day trip such a good deal that I didn't bother to bargain. What a memory; but the sad fact is that the entire Sete Quedas are only memories: the giant Itaipu Dam, which furnishes a significant portion of Brazil's electricity, has completely erased any physical remains of the Salto das Sete Quedas.

Saturday, April 29: 12:52AM pee and take 6 vitamin C. Dream of being an IBM programmer who has to decide which machine to program for, but my boss is in a big conference and I can't get the advice I need and don't know what to do next. 2:25AM pee and look for zinc drops, but I didn't bring them! 3:20AM pee and mull over what I'm going to write, and finally get up and WRITE it starting with page 3, line 33, to 4:24, still too long, but I can cut things as I write them NEATLY on the entry form. Take two comtrex for AWFUL cold: nose dripping, congested, coughing. At 5:34 there's SOME announcement, but I'd turned the speaker too low to hear. I'm up, shit, put on DMSO, and dress even though it's still COMPLETELY dark outside. Get to the loading platform and there are ELEVEN people there ahead of me at 6AM! The drivers are sitting up the spiral stairs, dressed and looking morose. Chat with everyone about how crazy we are, and it's RAINING to boot! Check my watch at 6:06 and 6:16 and 6:27, and finally there's a line of light over the distant horizon, they put zodiacs in the water, and Juan whispers "Last call for group 1," and counts 19 including the doctor, unfortunately in the second and last zodiac. Rob drives the first with Gil aboard, ready to wrestle a caiman which we hope to find, and Cassio comes with Kirstie, not quite as loquacious. Again we're parked FAR from the shore. We take off at 6:35, following the other to a hidden entrance, no dolphins this morning. Flycatchers, LOTS of vultures skulking in trees, and flocks of cattle egrets looking like terns flying overhead. Up a narrow Boca do Boto with trees on both sides, and some comfortable looking houses in which no one's up this early. Gradually gets lighter and there are people working in the houses and a few canoes sweep past, having to bail when we send water over their gunwales. Finally see TINY spider monkeys shaking the branches (Cassio says) to get at the ants which the birds then fly around contesting them for. Another set of spider monkeys switches from the right to the left side of the river right over our heads, peering down at us inquisitively. It rains the whole while, and only at the howler monkey at the end do I reach for the zipper to take out my video. Put my watch safely in a pocket. We exclaim about horses and brahma bulls and cattle, some of which are extremely thin. Almost to the end we come upon a beautiful fence, stake after stake, surrounding lush pasture for 1000 cattle, Cassio says. Ibis fly overhead and stalk under trees. Then on the way back there's a HUGE brown shape swinging from branch to branch and it's a howler monkey, the first I'd seen, and it poses for only a second then leaps away as we shout about it. GREAT sighting for the doll married to the loudmouth. Gil thinks he sees something, but it doesn't follow through in the end. Kirstie says she's going to get hell for coming back so late, and we get back at 8AM for the last group of group 2 leaving for the view. It looked like it might stop raining for a bit, but it only got stronger so that I had to change everything when I got back to the ship. Comtrex is supposed to last six hours, and it's done pretty well so far: I only coughed twice in the zodiac. Cassio was telling a story about a hunter firing NAILS at a jaguar, fastening its pelt to a tree, and in the middle of it a branch brushes past the doctor and the loudmouth and she SCREAMS, saying she thought it was a jaguar (sure!), and the doctor laughs and Kirstie laughs and I sit there with a remonstrating look on my face, just wishing they'd all SHUT UP. He DOES quiet down toward the end where there's nothing more to point out. Best sight aside from the howler was a WONDERFUL hawk flying to a roofbeam, wings outspread, showing lovely delicate colors like a moth's wings: circles and bars and areas of color subtly interwoven. A few good flycatcher trajectories, too, and many trees just LOADED with hulking vultures. Stop and go up for breakfast at 8:40AM, hungry. Eat with the Jameses, who moved away (in jest, I hope) when I told them I had a cold. Shiela told me over the serving trays that she was going to write a letter to Marine Expeditions after she got back, complaining about the noise levels allowed in the zodiacs. Gary McNeal came up to me and said they heard us all the way up to the zodiac in front. What a PAIN! Take a glass of juice to my room to take my pills, with six more C, and then start to copy out what I need from the Sete Quedas narration. Stop for Simon's talk from 10 to 10:45 about his travels in Brazil with birds, and finish my transcription before the cleaner gets there. Also take still and video photos of the BAT which has been hanging outside my porthole since this morning. Proofread much of the paper and then go upstairs to ask about the doctor and sit on the deck for a bit, watching people photograph the much smaller bat hanging there, as well as moths and other insects aboard our teeming ship. Back to my room around 11:40, and am just blowing my nose when the doctor knocks, says that I could have the stitches INSIDE my lip cut in four or five days, because the inside was hurt more than the outside. He looks at my leg and says it doesn't have to be changed until tomorrow, and that I CAN take a shower with the bandage on. Then I show him my visitor and he exclaims "My God," and dashes out to get his cameras, taking two flash pictures with each. While he was gone, the bat stretched its wings and shifted around so that I feared he might leave, but he's still there now as I finish this at 12:28PM, just in time to finish this and get ready for lunch. Took two more Comtrex at 11AM, as I was starting to feel sniffly again. Got a new bottle of San Antonio to video the opening of. Peeing a lot, too. 2:40PM: Meet Gae and Simon on the way to lunch and they BOTH come to photo my bat! Lasagna not bad, with McNeals. Feeling my cold much. Sneak my entry into the ballot box and ask Brad if I can start reading them; he says OK, but has NO idea for to judge them. Rob talks about aquatic mammals from 1:30-2:15 and I get 11 entries and alphabetize the names (including Joe Perlman) and evaluate them on a scale of 1-5. Only 2 (me included) get 4, one a 3+, 4 3s and 4 2s for 11. Now I think I'll shower, since I can. 3:40PM: Showered, got bandage wet (it sort of CHANNELS water), dressed, went up to find two more forms (to 13), told my "scheme" to Juan and Maewynne and they seemed to think it was OK. Back to note notes from Rob's talk: There are more crabeater seals than ALL other types of seals combined! All mammals have hair, Only mammals have hair, mammals give birth to live young, are warm blooded, and suckle their young. Get sheet to transcribe name-list in BLUE ink, as opposed to the black ink on my entry (7 of 13 so far in black ink). Feel pretty good, considering. The bat still hangs there and the sky is CLEAR BLUE! 6:20PM: Looked at millennium atlas until a apple turnover came as snack at 4PM, and then back to room at 4:15 to take stuff up and be first on line for the 4:30 outing, thankful that Simon appears and I'm first on at 4:35, with Carroll and Gary, the Portuguese and Russian, Shiela and Seymour, and the short feisty gabby guy. "Who hasn't seen the Victoria Regina?" asks Simon. I raise my hand, and even though everyone else has seen them, they return for me to see some small ones, but later large ones with rose flowers. "Is your life now complete?" asks Gary. I think to myself, "Not until I film a Jacana walking on one," and around the next corner I get exactly that, with two little ones thrown into the bargain. Rufescent something-else crane the pick of the lot, with a Muscovy duck and many other birds: purple ibis, Amazon crane, both snowy and great egrets, yellow bright birds and white pure ones and black hulking ones. The hit of the day: a caiman, surprisingly pinkish, filmed full-on with me in the best possible seat. Back at 6:10 quite pleased, though we could have stayed out longer since the sun is not near setting. I whisper to Carroll, "See, some people just KEEP ON talking." To get two more forms (now 15) and back to the bat in my porthole, a change of clothes, and lots of sniffles after two big sneezes on the way back to the ship. Going to be a rough cold, particularly after I run out of Comtrex. Type this to 6:30 and will read forms and go up for Happy Hour's caprinhas. 9:30PM: From notes during day: I took two more Comtrex at 4:11PM before going on zodiac. Then from 6:30-7:45 filmed and watched and WAITED for the bat to leave, but it NEVER DID, until after I left and before 9:30PM. At 7:45 up to deck 6 for the barbecue, loud music and heat and standing making that unlikable, so I get stuff and my bottle of red and take it down to eat with the McNeals. Then leave after an interminable Portuguese story and get the final nine entries at 8:40PM. Back to my room and read them and rate them and upgrade two 3+s to 4s, leaving me with 4 4s, 13 3s, and 7 2s. Of course MY 4 can't win, so it's Phosphorescence, Orcas, or Trust, up to the others to pick, unless they REALLY want one of my 3s. Draw up the list of Alter Egos and can only find Kirstie, who accepts the list with the scoring (she SAYS it sounds OK), but she doesn't want the entries tonight, and tomorrow she'll be driving a zodiac all day, so....? She says probably Juan will take them tomorrow morning. Good luck, you three! My 4:11 Comtrexes wearing off, I'm coughing and have a drippy nose. In a panic I think I've lost my handkerchief, but it's in the pocket of my other pants. Put the air off and lock the door and get ready for bed with two more Co---no, I should WEATHER IT OUT tonight, if I can, take C and try to get RID of it! Off at 9:42PM. Bed 10.

Sunday, April 30: Go to sleep easily, up at 1:10AM to pee, and back to sleep easily, though I feel warm. Pee again at 3:45AM, vague memory of a dream of having to play one side against another with a kind of floor plan. Look at my watch once more, then look again and it's 6:55, so I'm up to try to flush the toilet, but it doesn't go. Shit anyway and try again, no go. Put on DMSO at 7:10, giving it time to dry before getting dressed. Take last Traumeel pill. Feel like the cold's going away, like I might not even need to take Comtrex today. Remember that I haven't read the instructions on paying which have been posted at the reception area. Would like to get rid of the entries. Sun is well up when I raise the porthole-cover, no bat, and the sky is cloudy but it doesn't particularly look dark enough to rain. Counting: two zodiac destinations, three zodiac trips (two today, one tomorrow), four days left, eight meals left. Winding down. Left leg swelling down from last night, but the skin below the scratch is suspiciously red. Would like for the doctor to see it BEFORE I go to Alter do Chao. Will now dress and get out at 7:25AM. Get to the 5-6 people line at 7:35, and we actually board at 7:50 and land at 8AM. Gil rolls his eyes when he hears that FIFTY will be joining for the walk through town. Birds greet us in flocks, and ironically the landing, the one made by MOST, is almost the wettest, on a sandy beach up which they pull the zodiac before I got off so I remained dry. People look at us as we pass and we stop at the museum, which is quite good, and I pay $10 (borrowed from Claire) for a rubber armadillo: 1) rubber for the Amazon, 2) armadillo for Brazil, and 3) for kitsch. Video lots of the exhibits. Great 1982 National Geographic map of Indians of South America. I turn around a few signs with Portuguese on the front and English on the back. Then slowly walk to the main square, and it's a tiny town with lots of salespeople. Church is locked on Sunday morning, but the liquor store is open and I borrow singles from Carroll to pay $4 for a bottle of Licor de Caju, cherry/banana in taste (or cough syrup) and like strong wine. Sit watching people, kids bring sloths in for the tourists, I have a glass of beer from Kanae, Father gets the church open and I photo inside. Then take a zodiac back at 11:30, finding other beaches just outside town, change clothes to let my totally sweat-soaked shirt dry, and brush my teeth, which really need it by now. Then Juan receives $42 and our Belem plane ticket in a long line, and they announce lunch at 12:30. I pay Claire back already, take three singles for Carroll at lunch, if she's there, and leave this at 12:37PM. Reminds me of sign upstairs: 0630PM!! 1:10PM: lunch good with the McNeals and Yanofskis liking my Licor, others taking samples, and the beef and onions went down well, tonight ordered pirarucu, the big fish of the Amazon---not on our plates it isn't! Meet the doctor who points to his bare feet and says he's busy, say he must try some Licor and he smiles "With pleasure!" Drank lots of water with lunch with the Licor and still feel pleasantly smashed. Back to look at the beach down the road from the town square. My KNEE is really becoming a cause of concern (now that my wounds from the plank have mainly healed, except for various lumps inside my lower lip): it's sorer than I'd like it to be, and recently it feels DELICATE, as if I have to be careful not to put it down at an odd angle, or something terrible will happen to it. I keep thinking of the wife on the Tibet trip: she said the knee just collapsed without warning, but she COULD have had a condition like mine that she chose to ignore, or minimize, and when she didn't take care, she tore something. That WOULD be awful! There's an area of redness around my OLD wound that concerns me, as well as a red area diminishing away from under the bandage over my new wound. Put on my calendar: See Doctor V: FIVE times already. Now 1:20 and the zodiacs are starting back at 1:30 and I have yet to change clothes. Up quickly and the second zodiac goes to the BEACH, so I get on the end of that one, Kirstie welcomes us to "her island," which gives me the idea that it IS an island, which it turns out not to be. Watch the Grundens go to the wave-washed end of the island where it goes subsurface until the next island of beach, chat with Nancy at her table with two ENORMOUS platters of chicken that were much more than she thought they would be, and then go the other way, which looked like it had fewer bathers, but have to stoop under branches that come right out to the water, and then see, surprise, the Grundens ahead, so when I come to a well-traveled path leading inland, I figure to go "across to the other side," and take it. Walk in the hot sun and film a wonderful little lizard which fans each foot after it places it on the hot sand. Then at 2:15 decide that the path isn't going ANYWHERE, and turn around to encounter a local couple walking who knows where, and Joan and Kanae on a hunt for something. Back to the beach and ask Kirstie when the next zodiac leaves for town, and she says the doctor will be in soon. I buy a small beer for $1 and immediately the doctor arrives, transporting the captain and some other honcho. Rob gives me his lifejacket since I left mine at the other end of the beach and that's how they count how many people come and go. In the process I give a terminal squeeze to the fragile plastic glass of beer in my hand and it spurts over my shirt and pants and Rachelle laughs a lot. Get back to town at 2:50 and walk down a sandy street to the far end of the "local" beach, and film hunky guys playing beach volleyball; it's not until later that I realize that the hunkiest of all was the guy whose face I liked when I was filming the bridge: this was the beach the Russians hung out at! Film (self-consciously) some of the kids playing in the half-sunken trees, and take pictures trying to capture the Portuguese dolce vita lifestyle. Wander back and meet a couple whose name I STILL don't know and take some of their beer, then buy a large bottle for $1 which they put into a cooler which I had thought was an even BIGGER bottle at first. Drink lots of beer, talk about indexing and how I started and how I do it, then get into opera and Beyreuth and Jean Eaglen and I begin to get the "this is special" buzz, so that when she says she wouldn't mind staying there for a long time, I feebly remark that the jazzy music would get on my nerves about two hours more, but I have to admit the smiling faces, brown bodies, carefree beer and cheerful waiters make a seductive atmosphere of pleasure and relaxation. 5:26PM announcement: The bar is open. There are too many motorboats, and two motor scooters which will probably make life hell for a few people, but the kids with their sloths, the parents with kids playing in the water, the locals who come up and talk to us, all give a relaxing, pleasant aura of specialness to Alter do Chao. Walk back to the boat-dock and watch the simple-minded sloths trying to do THEIR thing while the kids are trying to make them do what THEY want. Then it's the doctor again, taking aboard two of the Russian women and lots of tourists, and he stops to get some keys from someone on the "russian beach," and one guy in a skimpy blue bathing suit looks most appetizing for a large crotch. Back to the ship for the penultimate time, look in at 4:15 to see that the snack is cheese and crackers, and as luck would have it I take the last two crackers as the grandson looks and says "cheese and---no crackers," and notices that I have two crackers, and he probably hates me more than ever. Down to change clothes completely and start recording this, when the announcement comes that the staff is diving off the loading platform on the starboard side, and it's correct except that it's the PORT side. Simon has a VERY pale back, Rob isn't there, the big Russian loader jumps off, and the grandson doesn't while I'm watching. Finish this at 5:32, debating what to do about the contest. The group photo on the pool deck at 6PM somehow sounds like something to avoid, but I suspect a lot of passengers have the same thought and I don't want to be grouped with THEM! And will the doctor see me today as he said? Should I ask for him? From the pleasures of the timeless day, I'm now in the morass of thinking about thinking about deciding about doing. Off this anyway at 5:35PM. 8:30PM: Again terminally tired! Lay down to rest, then at 6:06 the call came for the group photo and I couldn't resist. About HALF the people showed up, others looking down superiorly from upper decks. Three stood against the back rail and I joined them, so I'll stand out, at least. Then I went to the forward observation deck to find the passenger-doctor jabbering loudly away, so I went to the REAR observation deck to watch a not-special sunset. Then to two gin-and-tonics as house drinks because I wore my necklace from the Yagua---or whoever. Kept trying for the doctor, and finally met him going upstairs as I was going into the dining room: "Later," he said tiredly. Someone told me Raewynne had read all the entries, and she'd marked down her scores on a xerox of my sheet: wouldn't you know it! My four 4s she had marked as 1s except for Malcolm's "Trust" which she had as a 3. Her two 5s were my 2s: the woman peeing into a plastic bag and calling it goldfish, and the couple asking for a wakeup call and getting an alarm clock. "You see, I've written and edited articles for travel magazines, so I know what people want." Maybe, but you sure as hell don't know what I want! That's what makes judging panels a ballgame. Brad seemed to have no interest in anything, and Juan actually wandered behind the bar WITH the entries in his hands, so maybe he WILL do something with them. With her rating of MINE as 1, at least I won't have the embarrassment (read, suppressed joy) of being called the winner when I can't be. The fish for dinner is very white, and the mangos in the sauce are delicious, but the mashed potatoes and cabbage is terribly bland, and I sit as Kirstie orders a PLATE of cabbage for dinner, saying how much she loves it (ah, at 8:37PM Brad is called to the bridge---so for his judging?), and Rob orders TWO of the risottos, mostly cabbage and potatoes, saying how GOOD it is. And he's so CUTE! Thank goodness group 1 goes for the final zodiac ride at 7:45 tomorrow morning. Now at 8:39 Juan is called to reception by Rob. Wonder who's going to be presiding over this event in the bar at 9PM??? I guess I'll stay here til the last moment, in case the doctor comes in. Then, at 8:55, someone calls for the doctor in Russian, so I feel I should go upstairs. People gather, I sit down, saying I have no idea what happens next, and Juan wanders in and out, seemingly looking for me, and then Raewynne calls me out and hands me three sheets marked 1, 2, and 3. Meanwhile, I guess it was Raewynne, calls on the black guy to read his poem, and then Juan motions that I'm on. I figure to announce the name and the person will read their entry. #3 is White Slave? to which NO ONE will admit (she, the woman with odd Steve, I still don't know her name, later says she expected to hear the meeting ANNOUNCED since I said I wasn't sure what was going to happen because some of the judges hadn't read the papers yet. I apologized for misleading her), so I have to read it, announcing that I'm changing my gender. It gets a mild reaction. #2 is Dopey, and SHE (Joy May, who owns up AFTERWARD, saying I read it MUCH better than she would have) won't declare herself, so I read THAT, turning when I hear a lot of laughter to see Raewynne miming the action with an actual plastic bag! The audience absolutely ate it up! Then I beg Laverne and Shirley to be there, and they are, but Madeleine won't read and the other one has to, and I don't know HER name either! It's rather a flop, because the first two were funny and hers wasn't, about the ice-stream bath and wet papers. Then Gloria suggests that SHE take the entries, and anyone who wants to sign them can come to her to sign them, so Raewynne brings in all the entries and two pens, I sign mine and a few others come forward to sign theirs, and Simon gets up to tell a story, which goes over very well, and then Cassio has a story of his own about a (possible) UFO, which he ends with "Believe it or NOT!" Johann follows with his doggerel, OK I guess, and then Father Feeney gets up and tells two jokes, and I try to get others to volunteer, but I end with a lame "If you got 'em, smoke 'em," and leave. They announce a National Geographic movie for those who have to stay awake, and I come back and finish this off at 10:04PM, figuring the doctor won't be here this evening. OH, and Brad announced from the bridge that, due to a mistaken number for distance between Alter do Chao and Belem, the actual number being rather greater, the zodiacs for tomorrow are CANCELLED because we have to get through the Narrows in daylight, and the only way we can do it is by steaming straight through the morning without stopping. So my drying clothes don't have to be used again, and I can stay in bed all day tomorrow with my cold and my sore knee if kneed be. So now it's 10:08PM. NOW I can't remember why I REOPENED this---something that I'd forgotten to note. And what IS it with the BUGS: stepped on a roach coming downstairs from the dining room earlier this evening, killed a fly in my room a few minutes ago, and just now stepped on a roach which was scurrying across my floor. They must have fumigated some area and this is the refuge! Think a bit and conclude that the only way I'll remember why I reopened this file after I closed it before is to close it AGAIN! Note from 10:17PM: What I forgot was the TEMPERATURE relation, which I remembered when I adjusted the temperature for the night: Rob said, "Because everyone said the BAR was so cold, the thermostat on the WHOLE SHIP was turned down; so the dining room is HOT and the rooms are MUCH less cool. 10:19PM: Discover a RASH on my left inside leg! Infected scratch? DEBATE calling doctor, but I CAN'T do it, he's so worn out by all the sickness and problems aboard. I get into bed at 10:30, then get up to wash my face and remember that I FORGOT to take my evening pills, including Lariam! So I finally get to bed at 10:40PM.

Monday, May 1: Wake at 12:30AM, having not slept that much before that, and then at 3:15 to pee. Then wake at 6:15 with the sun already up, and I count: 24 more hours on the ship, 24 hours getting to Florida, 11 hours to get home, for a total of 59 hours yet to go. Four more meals on the ship, only one FULL day of the trip left, five more sets of pills to take. Already vaguely thinking about the Times waiting for me: save the puzzles for Prague; the laundry to do, the fact that I'll have film and videotape enough, and that my cold should be over; and maybe I can go to HIP emergency Wednesday night to see about my knee. Out of bed at 7:10AM to shit a reasonably normal quantity and quality, then put on DMSO so it can dry before I dress. Shut off the air so I won't chill while doing this in the nude. 7:30 announcement of breakfast in half an hour. Raise the porthole and it's sunny, river is brown with much less stuff floating in it, and I'll surely be able to see the doctor since ALL of us are completely ship-bound all day today. Finish this off by 7:40AM, still coughing, but verify that the sputum and nasal discharge is safely white, rather than yellow or infection-green. Check the new schedule for the day, and Gil is on at 9:30AM with his video contacting little-known tribe. Get on the long line for breakfast and get asked who won, and only later do I find Agnes Jackson's name from her. Others also ask how they can get the entries WITHOUT a web-site, and I say they have to talk to Gloria about that, and I note that she's in room 411 and figure it might be better to telephone her. 8:46AM: "Doctor, please come to reception," from Juan, better than Rob's "He knows you want to see him, but maybe he doesn't need to see you." Let's hope he DOES come here, and before 9:30. Scrambled eggs and ham, and sit at same table with Shiela, with Seymour at another table. She regales us with stories, and she put in TWO, both Red Eye and Blue Eye, one about the Prince putting people up overnight in Bahrain, the other about the airport mix-up in Lima. I'm content to say, "Between you and me, I didn't agree with ANY of the winners." Simon requests everyone return the reference books (which weren't to be taken out of the Library in the first place) in the cabins be returned to the Library. Gil comes up to me and asks if he can use my video camera and wires for his presentation. I ask him to come to my room, and he marvels that it's so NEAT. I say I'm alone in the cabin. He says he's alone in his cabin too and he can hardly find room to walk in it. I take out my film, recording that it's currently at 41:35, and his face falls: HIS tape is smaller and thicker than mine. I suggest he simply makes a request over the PA for that type of camera, because "I really want to see your film." He seems embarrassed and reluctant to do that, apologizes, and leaves. I put the film back in---and now decide to REWIND it and run it UP to a correct reading, it'll be much simpler that way in the long run. Get out the wiring to do that. Blow my nose. Look at some of the tape, and the bat and the officers playing volleyball and some of the diving from the landing platform all came out rather well. Tape is back to normal. Glad the boat has less than 24 hours to go, because I'm beginning to feel ever so slightly nauseous when I look at something on the ship for a long time. Off now at 9:12AM. 10:12AM: Phone Gloria in her room but there's no answer. Look around the reception area and library, and finally find her in the dining room. She says, "Tell them to write me and send me a couple dollars for postage, and I'll be glad to send them a copy." I dash away because I want to see Gil's presentation, but at 9:30 he still hasn't found the right camcorder to play his European-type thicker/smaller videotape. But he does have another tape that he plays, about the Machikenga of Peru, some of which might have been on PBS, about hunting howler monkeys. In the middle of this I see the doctor outside and try to get him, but he's going downstairs saying he has other people to see, but he'll get to me in half an hour. I check my watch: 9:51AM. Back to watch more of the tape, and when he just puts on the rest of the tape to play, lots leave, and I go toward my room, ask Frank for a plastic bag (expecting something special) for my DMSO, and he knocks on my door a minute later, giving me an ordinary thin-skin bag, and when I mention the doctor, he says, "Oh, he rebandaged my foot and left just a few minutes ago." I hope he didn't cross me off his list, and now I have to stay around even if he doesn't arrive by the time Simon's lecture starts at 11AM. I feel like I'm imposing on him so many times, but there MAY be a problem with the rash, though the reddish area below the scratch seems to have lessened. It may be that the doctor will just say I'm too dirty (or my pants are too dirty), and I'm to blame for the rash, and the scratch is not infected. I wouldn't mind, but I wonder if he has any idea how long my cough and cold will last from the syndromes by the other passengers. Now at 10:20AM it IS half an hour, but I can't expect the doctor to be as meticulous with time as I am. Hear what may be the cleaning lady next door, and I guess I'll just have to wait outside while she cleans on the off chance the doctor will come during those moments. Notice now to bring the zodiac life-jackets to the reception area. Time for NEW file!

AMAZON FILE FIVE: Monday, May 1: 10:23AM: The last new file of the trip! Took my slippers and socks off to let my feet air before the doctor gets here. But it's now 10:25AM and he's not here yet. Guess I'll just lie down! Then at 10:35 he knocks, smiles, looks away when I take off the bandage, says the rash is related to the venous problem and can be relieved by keeping my leg elevated. Though there's matter stuck to the bandage, he says it's healing fine, not infected, though later he smilingly refers to "Amazonian infection." He has to go back to his room to get bandages, and he first puts DILUTE iodine around a large area, then opens the concentrated iodine for the cut itself, which stings just a little bit. When I mention that it's starting to itch, he says that's good, because it means it's healing. He leaves at 10:50, saying he'll get a drink "after work," and I say, "Even if I'm not here, you're welcome to have a drink." He smiles, but may not have understood, and would probably not take me up on it. Cleaning lady interrupts him, but he says "Three minutes" in Russian and she comes back after he leaves. I go up to Simon's talk and slides of birds and animals, saying the tambaqui which we had for dinner is a vegetarian piranha! When I ask about phosphorescence, he says that's strictly an OCEANIC occurrence, so it wouldn't happen IN South America itself. We HAD been fairly close to the left shore before, but now it's widened out a bit, so I don't know if we've entered the Narrows yet or not. Will take my long-sleeved shirt and hat and cameras and go up to look now at 11:53AM. 2PM: Lots of little boats row out, and Carroll reported that five or six zip-lock bags of goodies went over the side in a series of giveaways. Later videoed Gil throwing "crayons, pencils, and notepaper" to the kids, who paddled madly after the floating white packages. Sasha and Kirstie had fun spraying each other with the hose with which they were cleaning the zodiacs. From the cloudy sky it actually rained for a few minutes, but that wet didn't equal my sweat-wet. Lunch with the Caju Licor on the ersatz strawberry ice cream, and good chicken breast. Two meals left: barbecue tonight and breakfast tomorrow. Then lunch in Belem, dinner on the plane, breakfast in Miami, lunch on a plane, and dinner at HOME! Tired of watching the multifarious island-boundaries slip by. Charts showed our farthest north as 1 degree and about 2 minutes south. Belem is on the large chart, after the maze of the Southern Branch of the Amazon. Now 2:06 and I plan to rest before the 2:30 Trivia Contest by Rob. 6:10PM: Then they announce that the final payments are being accepted, and I missed the floors while I was on deck. So I get my credit card and pay $95: $80 for bar (2 $15 bottles, 4 glasses for $12, 5 sodas for $5, 3 beers for $9, and 12 Happy Hours for $24), and $15 for laundry. Fill out an Evaluation Form and pick up an envelope for tips, into which I put $120 cash. Then we're to divide into teams of 1-4, and I'm sitting with Nancy and Claire and Nick, so I suggest we four, and we work on that 3:47-4:47, getting a good score, but probably not the best. Then back to the Observation Deck for the Narrows, dozens of rowboats coming out to get white sacks filled with goodies tossed mainly by Gil, but also by others. It rains a bit, suns a bit, and I sit stupefied as we pass cargo-pallets pushed by tugs, ferries, and start worrying about how to pack. Sunset isn't great, we're into the Para River at 5:40PM, I go to the back to see the fires starting for the barbecue, and I'm COUGHING a lot! Down to start seeing about packing, deciding to CHECK this in one of my bags rather than carry it all day in Belem and then between planes to Miami. Less that 48 hours left: 24 hours from now start 24 hours of travel to NYC! Bags to be out at 7AM tomorrow. Feeling tired already, and what do I do about showering and brushing my teeth?? Off this at 6:18PM. 6:44PM: Can't BEGIN to think how to pack without putting THIS into the large blue bag, buffered by papers and clothing, and then everything ELSE into the green bag, which I can open for toiletries or a jacket if I need it BETWEEN flights, but just get RID of everything. So I'll take lots of index cards to transcribe what happens between now and when I get home to unpack this and finish off the LAST pages of this journal, of which this is page 51, if I count right (I don't; it's really 42), and at least I'll get to the end of the page before signing off tonight. [Following transcribed from notes 5/23:] 6:48PM I pack the computer! To deck at 6:56. Finish wine, eat three plates of food, have beer and tonic. Our Trivia score was 40.5 and the winner's was 43. Back to room at 8:50 to read log. Pee, bed at 9:15, tired, but not excessively so. 9:20, coughing, take two comtrex.

Tuesday, May 2: 12:05AM up to pee and shit a tiny pellet, cough, look at watch at 1:10 and 2:20 and pee at 3:10. 3:30, coughing, take two comtrex. 4:AM arrive in Belem? See MYMPTHS! Nap. Look at watch at 6:02. Up at 6:10. 6:15 move, we'd NOT docked. Two bags out 6:45. 6:58 turn in FOUND life vest and evaluation forms. 7AM to breakfast, to 7:25. Shower to 7:55. Brush teeth and read to 8:25. 8:35 "Customs delayed, not off for a least 30-45 minutes." TOTALLY ready at 8:45AM. Read 8:54-9:25, when "Clear to board busses." Pee. Off boat at 9:32 and onto bus in FRONT. 12:05 to Marula Tuchava restaurant. Bashuras are LOW slums while Favelas are HIGH slums. To market: MANY fruits. Yellow-colored manioc is yucca. JUICE for beverage, SQUEEZED in straw "anti-finger-trap" device. LEAVES of manioc into food. Passion fruit pudding. Pretty park was Batista Campos. Cocoa-like fruit is Cupuaçu. Lunch, then get passports at 1:45, after sitting in cool lobby. Get two luggage tags and two AISLE seats! Out at 2 to zoo at 2:15 and HE says 1 hour and THEY say 1/2 hour. RUSH: manatee eats a star apple. Macaws of ALL colors, and lots of screaming parrots. Morose leopards, prowling black leopard, spider monkeys. THEY all end up in SHOP. Spoonbills and storks and ducks and flamingos and otters and tapirs and a free-walking capybara. Lots of administration and closed exhibits. I went BACK to get umbrella. Saved CAMERAS but got wet anyway. HUGE crocodile, LOTS of turtles and a crocodile exhibit for which you had to pay extra. Tiny tambiques, unseen piracuru, three electric eels motionless. THEY not back by 3:15! Busses block traffic. Fair number of locals. COULD have rained at lunch, maybe, and made it COOLER! BOTH busses loading. Leave 3:25. He'll GO to the church, then to the mall. Pass an AMORC temple! Urbanus=Urban bus; Bem Vindos=Bien Venidos. MUST MALL: Out at 4:07, back at 4:40, and it's three floors. I vaguely look for drugs, but of course they wouldn't take dollars anyway. Thirsty, but have to wait for airport. Pictures for the "thereness" of it. I bet people get LOST and are VERY late! I'm on bus at 4:31, wet shirt and tired and 26 hours to go! Bus leaves 4:45, rains to airport at 5:15, and FULL plane permits NO seat changes. Flight "confirmed" at 6:40, 30 minutes late already. Numb at 5:30 and get out apple. Still thirsty, so get two 300ml waters for my sole real. 6:10 flight is unloaded from Manaus and we board at 6:30 and they (unk!) exchange WINDOWS! Off at 6:46 and up in clouds with lights ON and HORIZONTAL STREAKS of RAIN, and it's bumpy and AWFUL. Land at 7:38 in 96E airport and plane gets HOT. Fuss with seats and we're not even started at 8:07, due NEXT at 9:10! Off at 8:18, bumpy, UGH! Land 9:30 and find Miam1 flight leaves at 11:15, Gate C. Get to Gate C to find we go to Miami  VIA RECIFE! MUCH ado checking film, but we're through by 10PM. Lounge NOT cool and the SAME OLD JABBERERS jabber away. IS $25 for cointreau, too much. Load and back out at 11:15! RAINING. One hour to Recife. Off at 11:22 and land at 12:17. LOTS of lights. Odd music in rear of plane FINALLY shut off. They CLEAN while we SIT! Off at 1:35, 12:35PM in NYC. 7:35 flight. Take two Rohypnol at 2:15. Sleep. 4:24 cough, pee. Search for comtrex, can't find it! To 5:02. GREAT clouds on way. Shadows, rainbows, then islands, cloud layers, lots of pictures of Biminis. Change watch at 9:17 (LATE landing) to 8:17 NYC time. Discover STITCHES gone from inside lip! Land at 8:37 for a total of 8:02 flight. 9:02 to baggage. NO earlier USAir flight. She sends me to gate C for breakfast and at gate E I pass "Top of the Port" and have fruit (as I told clerk I wanted): orange, grapefruit, kiwi, grapes, honeydew, cantaloupe, watermelon, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, pineapple and I THOUGHT there were 12, but I think I counted pineapple TWICE. GORGEOUS morning: clouds with sun, shadows, rainbow shards. I just wanna be HOME! Eat and drink expensively to 11:40. To Gate at 12:10 and they're boarding! It's a PAIN to go BACK to customs to check in BAGS, but LAST check is DONE! LOVELY 5F at 12:20-- 6 hours to go, and then six DAYS to go, to Prague! Land 2:15, 100 minutes. 2:22: shit and blow nose and it BLEEDS a bit. Knees SORE. Tired! Left ear is eyeglass sore. Board 3:08. CB (crying baby) on boards, but WAY back. 1:19 flight, 63E in Newark! #2 Chesapeake Bay islands? 4:20 start down? 30 minutes LEFT? #4 Philly? GREAT pictures, land at 4:58. Get luggage quick and out at 5:20, next bus at 5:45, but it leaves at 5:35 for $11. Get to WTC at 6:19 and home by $7.25 taxi at 6:40PM. Bloody shit??? 1) Pope CALLS 6:47-7:30, 2) Talk to John 7:30-7:35, make dinner, 3) Visa/Choice fuss 8-8:25, have to get new card by UPS tomorrow, 4) Mildred LW 8:25, 5) Ken 8:26-8:38. Messages: 1) Dick McLean called ME Thursday, 2) Easter Day: MARION coming to NYC, 3) Marion again, 4) Citibank Visa, 5) Mildred, 6) Narion, 7) Citibank, 8) Elaine Claudio, 9) Citibank, 10) Ken. Bed 10PM, chilled; put electric blanket on; doze, wake 11:20PM almost BURNT!! 3:37AM pee and shit. Up 6:50AM, shit with NO blood.

Thursday, May 4: 7:05-9:30 mail, breakfast to 9:50, magazines to 10:40, Chin to 10:40 ("Keep taking Naproxen; if diarrhea after 2 weeks, test stools"), 10:45 LW Carolyn, 10:46 LW Sherryl, Vicki to 11:15, Charles to 12:20, Pope to 12:30, Marine Expeditions to change Visa number to 12:35, Fred to 12:52. Talk 4:50-5:30 with Mildred, 7-7:15 with Marion, 7:15-7:25 with Elaine Claudio, and feel SO bad I go to HIP 7:30-8:45, where they say I have 99.4E temperature; eat 8:55-9:30, wait 9:45-10:50 for a leg x-ray which won't be available for 10 days, and he prescribes amoxacillin for 10 days for cold/lung congestion. That drags on til almost 11PM. Don't even jerk off these days. Bed 11:15, TIRED!

Friday, May 5: Wake 7, shit to 7:15, up 7:40. 11:25-12:10 Shelley. Bed 12:35AM.
Saturday, May 6: 3:15AM diarrhea, Imodium. TV all day. 8:15PM BED! Temp 99.4E.

SUMMARY

4/12-5/3=22 days. Take 41# in two bags, return with 49#. Trip package was $2794, Miami RT $175.50, spent $588.89 in cash. Haven't got Visa charges yet, but already over $172/day. Still feel that I've got some kind of bug left over, now typing this at 2:10PM 5/23/00 after an intervening 8-day Prague trip!
AMAZON DAY-SUMMARY PAGE
WED,APR.12: Fly NYC-Charlotte 8:28-9:55AM; to Miami 11:28-1:08PM. Dick not in. South Beach Stone Crab lunch. Walk South Beach. Dine at Philly Cheesesteak (where I LEFT shoulderbag: Visa # taken?), $50 room in Berkeley Shore Hotel.
THU,APR.13: McDonald's breakfast; Safari Tour to Everglades and Gator Farm for lunch and Airboat (only 10AM-1:48PM); Dick in 5:55PM; talk; dine at Sushi Siam.
FRI,APR.14: Key West tour 7:38AM; breakfast at Treasure Village on Islamorada; Truman Annex/Museum; Tram tour; back 9:40PM; Burger King dinner, just awful.
SAT,APR.15: Cuban breakfast with Dick; Metrozoo and lunch; "Giselle" with Hubbe and Moradillos; Lincoln Road Cafe Cuban dinner with Dick and white sangria.
SUN,APR.16: Read Times; "Dead Bolt" movie on TV; Bass Museum closed; lunch at Wolfie's;chat with Dick; Quick Pizza awful dinner; Miami flight leaves 11:50PM.
MON,APR.17: Land in Lima 4:49AM, 3:49AM Lima-time. Sheraton Hotel rest; Lima-Iquitos on good TACA 10:24-11:51AM. Tour Iquitos,to Jungle Lodge 1:50PM:single!
TUE,APR.18: Night-boat-tour last night. Momon to Nanay to Amazon Rivers boat; Iquitos sitting-buffet lunch;Yagua Indian village:lost-jungle walk;dinner/music
WED,APR.19: Jungle-zoo tour; El Dorado hotel-rest; buy ayahuasca; SINGLE on Lyubov Orlova 4:10PM room 427! Buffet and drinks: riverfront lunch; bed 9:30PM!
THU,APR.20: Indian village of Pucaurquillo for Boros and Huitotos in rain; "artist" Francisco Grippa in Pevas, TOTALLY soaked, hit shin on riser; Quebrada Shishita trek (tarantula) over an hour; Cuba Libres; show videotape; diarrhea?
FRI,APR.21: Actualism session, start Trip File 2. Two zodiac tours: Peruate and Lago Cahocuma: birds, Boto and Tucuxi river dolphins. Pisco Sours at barbecue. First Imodium. Schedule changed (miss Amacayacu Nat.Park): Sharon's broken leg!
SAT,APR.22: Leticia stop; fall on planks: Hospital San Rafael de Leticia for 8 stitches in lower lip ($40). Zoo tour, prescription Clindamicin and ibuprofen.
SUN,APR.23: Reset new watch. Take drugs. Parana das Panelas flooded forest. Iguanas in trees. Good eclairs. Rio Urutubinha zodiac for Squirrel Monkeys at sunset, third at night with later-identified kinkajous! Start DMSO salve.
MON,APR.24: Parana do Jacarai zodiacs: dolphins, Brazil nuts. Two lectures from guides. Blackwater Lago Uara sunset; medications, screaming tourboat people!
TUE,APR.25: Jerk off to 5:30AM. Village at Boca do Cuxui Muni for walks and kids, dogs and cats. Visit from Russian doctor for leg-cut infection. Boca do Justica zodiacs for Squirrel Monkeys and Brown Capuchins; three-toed sloth, quick glimpse of Red Howler Monkey. A few sightings of enormous Morpho Butterflies. Sunset-watch from top of ship; chat with Nancy, chess with Nick,"Amazon" on TV.
WED,APR.26: I present sheet for "Most Memorable Travel Experiences" to Juan for contest. Rio Badajos for wounded caiman; talks; Lago Anori for manioc grinding. Bridge visit; doctor's visit, he recommends DMSO. Planter's punch with dinners.
THU,APR.27: Manaus bus 8:35 to Opera House, town, INPA Research Institute. Churrascaria lunch at Bufalo Restaurant. Tropical Hotel ride for Stern's, look at zoo and orchids there. Stitches removed; contest (3 judges->4!) announced. Sitting outside in darkness we actually SEE meeting of Negro and Amazon Rivers!
FRI,APR.28: Lose way to Furo do Moara, village of San Antonio for manioc drying and chocolate from native cup, and manioc cake/pudding. Lago Carauacu for dolphins and bright sunset with lots of unphotographable birds and dolphins.
SAT,APR.29: Write contest-entry 3:20-4:24AM, Comtrex for awful cold. Boca do Boto for Spider Monkeys overhead; horses and bulls and cattle. Bat hanging outside porthole. More Comtrex. Rio Balaio for Victoria Regina and a pinkish caiman! Try to watch bat leave, but it doesn't. Caiprinhas and barbecue and beer.
SUN,APR.30: 8AM landing in Alter do Chao, into Center for Preservation of Indigenous Arts and Culture. Buy rubber armadillo ($10) and Licor de Caju ($4), take long walk, sit and chat with beer, video Russians at volleyball. Judges rig contest; I read second and third places, others read and tell own. Worked!
MON,MAY.1: Last doctor; Breves Narrows; gift-throwing to canoes; Trivia Contest.
TUE,MAY.2: Off ship 9:32AM; Belem lunch Marula Tuchava Restaurant;zoo; mall. Fly
6:30-7:38 to Sao Luis, 8:18-9:30 to Fortaleza, 11:22-12:17AM to Recife: MADNESS!

WED,MAY3: 1:35-8:37AM (8Hrs) Miami, Top Of Port Breakfast,12:35-2:15 Charlotte,3:38-4:58 NYC.

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