Well, Brazil has come and gone and it was the experience of a lifetime. I would love to go back there. There is so much culture and livelihood. It was a magical place with so many memories I will never be able to forget even if I wanted to (not that I want). I met so many new people and became closer with the ones I already knew. I couldn’t have asked for a better group or experience, so without further ado; I give you my days in Brazil.

Day 1- The MV World Odyssey arrived into the Salvador port around 0630 and a decent amount of people got up for it (at least more than the last two ports). The port wasn’t industrialized and you could see the city so it was beautiful and the sun was already high in the sky. The field program I was on wasn’t meeting until 1400, so some people got off the ship to explore Salvador, but I stayed on the ship to relax a little and pack for the next five days. When I was eating lunch, a submarine was pulling into the port so that was really unique to see. Finally, at 1400, it was time to meet for my Amazon Riverboat and Rio de Janeiro field program.  

We hopped on a bus and headed to the Salvador Airport. After a pain of a time getting our boarding passes, we barely made it through security and got to the gate as everyone was boarding. Two flights later and a layover in Brasilia, we arrived in Manaus around 2300. We had about a half an hour transfer to the riverboat that would be our home for the next few days. Upon arrival, we had a snack of fruit and cookies and a performance by two traditional dancers. By the time all that was finished, it was about 0130 and we were all exhausted from our travels. We picked the hammocks we would call our beds for the next three nights and called it a day.

Day 2- Everyone was up by 0800 for breakfast, but I was up closer to 0545 due to the fact that we were so close to the Equator that the sun rose around 0515, but I just laid in bed until about 0630. We left where we were docked around 1000 (I think) and arrived at the Meeting of the Waters close to 1130.  In that time, a native woman had come on board and was doing traditional body painting, so most of us got a little design, which didn’t come off easily. Once we got there, I saw a dolphin jumping out of the water there and we were later told that if you see a dolphin surface three times, you’ll get married that year, but I don’t see that happening (I mean, I’m not even 20 yet). After hanging there for a bit and taking in the view, we headed to shore. We took a short rainforest walk to what would’ve been Lake January with the giant water lilies, but it was drought season, so the lake was nothing more than a puddle. On our way back to the boat, we ran into little kids with sloths (adult and baby), a snake, and a Caiman alligator. A lot of people held them and took pictures with them for a small cost of a couple dollars. Then it started raining so we all hurried back to our riverboat for lunch.

After a little down time on the boat, we got into three smaller boats in order to go piranha fishing. I’m not quite sure what kind of meat we had on the hook, but it was something. Our boat had some nibbles, but we never caught anything. By the end, we were just holding the bait right at the surface and watching the little piranhas try to bite it. The other two boats had some luck and caught a mix of piranhas and catfish. We fished for almost two hours before heading to our riverboat for a bit of a break, before getting back in and going alligator spotting. It was really hard to see anything, but the guides had big lights that they scanned the shores with in order to look for glowing eyes. Once they spotted one, they would pull up the canoe to shore and get out. Before you get too worried, Caiman alligators don’t get upper huge, so the guys went and caught them with their hands in order to bring it back to us. After talking about the alligator for a bit, it was released, and we headed back to the boat for dinner. Once we finished eating, we all hung out a bit and called it a night.

Day 3- Again, I was up early with the sun, but I forced myself to try to go back to bed and I was slightly successful. Breakfast was at 0700 that morning, so everyone was up a little earlier anyway. We got off the boat around 0800 in order to go on an actual jungle walk. This one took about two and a half hours. We tasted and smelt different plants and saw a lot of different insects, including a really big spider. Around 1030, we got to the spot the boat had moved to in order to pick us up. There was a little beach right there and we were given some free time to go swimming. I mean how cool is that? Swimming in THE Amazon River. It was very warm, but it felt so good because on board we didn’t really have a shower, so we all felt really gross from traveling, our two hikes, and the body paint, not to mention the humidity.

After we all scrubbed off a bit, it was back on the boat to head to a place to swim with pink dolphins. Yup, that’s right, PINK dolphins. I didn’t even know there were pink dolphins. They looked more like porpoises, but still, I hadn’t been swimming with dolphins since I was like eight in Mexico and I cried (sorry I don’t have a throwback picture for this). Even though we didn’t really swim and just stayed on a little ledge in the water, it was still really fun. There was a little baby one that would come and just settle on top of our feet. Myself, along with a couple people, were able to go twice, so I’m just that lucky. In between my two amazing moments with the dolphins, we had a chance to “fish” for arapaima. I don’t really know how to explain them. I would just encourage ya’ll to look them up because I would just describe them as river monsters. The workers just put part of a fish on a rope and we fought with them and tried to, well I’m not really sure, more so just fight with them. Either way, I was very bad at it and one of them took my fish right away.

Once we finished there, it was back on the boat to take about a half an hour ride to place called Acajatuba Village. Here, we would be participating in a handicraft workshop and football (soccer) match. We started off with the workshop. In the Amazon, they make a lot of bracelets and necklaces out of acai seeds, both dyed and plain. All these seeds had holes poked through so we each got to make a combination of two bracelets or necklaces. Being an indecisive person, I struggled to find patterns I liked and ended up sticking to very simple patterns. After we finished, some of us grabbed little things of ice cream, kind of those little plastic cups we had as kids. Mine was strawberry but tasted exactly like strawberry milk. Then, we walked to a little school to look inside before heading to the football field. We split into two teams among ourselves and only had a few locals, who all went to the other team. Due to my history of playing goalkeeper, that was the position I was assigned. After about an hour game, I was covered in dirt and scrapes (even though we didn’t win). We said our goodbyes and took a few pictures before piling all twenty-seven of us into a small motor boat.

We ended up traveling a good half an hour before our guides and drivers had their flashlights out trying to signal something in the distance. Right as all of us were starting to worry that something was wrong with the boat, fireworks went off from what was illuminated as the shoreline. We pulled up and got off to a welcoming banner and a beach luau. The small crew on our riverboat had set up our food outside and were grilling out. After eating a fantastic dinner, we had music and played a bunch of different games I hadn’t played for years. We did limbo and played musical chairs and tug of war before a little dancing. We all hung out a little longer before calling it a night and heading to our hammocks to get a little sleep before our early morning in a few hours.

Day 4- We were woken up around 0230 to hop on a short boat ride back to our bus to head to the airport. About thirty minutes later, a very exhausted group pulled up to the airport and checked in. Our guided, Sid and James, walked us to security and we said our goodbyes (They were amazing and fun guides).

We ended up having some time to kill so most of us just grabbed food and waited. Again, two flights later and we were landing in Rio de Janeiro. It was 1400 and we took a bus a ride, about forty-five minutes to our hotel in Copacabana. We learned a lot about the favelas, which are what our guide compared to slums, and the gangs in Rio. It was interesting, and a little scary, to hear about how many there are and how they operate. For instance, if a person lives in an area controlled by one gang, they can’t go visit a friend who lives in an area controlled by another gang because they could be thought to be a spy. We also found out that if tourists go into the favelas, they are off limits and the gangs follow an idea that they won’t harm the tourists.

Once we arrived at our hotel, we had about three and a half hours of down time so a group of us got together and made the few block trek to the beach. After going down to the water, we hopped from place to place along the coast before heading back to the hotel about twenty minutes before we had to leave.

The only thing on the agenda for the evening was a food tour around the area. We started off by walking to our first place from the hotel. As we stood outside waiting for our first dish, our guide gave us a bunch of different fruits to try. We tried two different types of mangos (or are in the same family of mangos, I can’t remember), the pink dragon fruit, and one other one I can’t remember. Unfortunately, I can only remember that we tried acai (it turned my whole mouth purple), Pão de queijo (my favorite out of all of them), and something that reminded me of a crab cake, but it was in a dish. I think there was one other thing, but I can’t remember. We also got to stop at a juice place and try three different ones. There was an avocado one that was my favorite. After we finished our food tour, we hopped on a bus to drive to our actual dinner, crazy right? There were multiple dishes set up family style and all of it was so good, but most of us were already quite full from the food tour.

Once we were finished, we headed back to the hotel and even though most of us were quite exhausted, we got a group of fourteen of us to go out for our one night in Rio. We ended up at this one club that other SASers were at and the manager was insanely nice and would ask us for song requests so we could dance to our music too. We called it a night around 0100 and headed back to the hotel for bed.

Day 5- This was our last “real” day in Rio and it was jammed packed to support that. We needed to be awake and have eaten (if we wanted breakfast) by 0700 because we had tram(?) tickets to get up to Christ the Redeemer at 0800 and our guide wanted to be early. We ended up having only a little down time before hopping aboard and taking a very scenic trip to the top of Corcovado Hill. Once we hit the top, we were told we had about an hour of free time to explore and look around. To get up to the statue there was an option of stairs or an elevator. I took the stairs, as did most of our group, and was quite happy I did because the view was phenomenal. Despite how amazing the view was, it didn’t even compare to what was waiting at the top. There is good reason that Christ the Redeemer is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. The statue is insane. It’s huge and I’ve never seen anything like it. Luckily, I didn’t keep this experience to myself. Being a loving daughter and grand-daughter, I decided that my parents and grandparents wouldn’t want to miss out on seeing it, so I facetimed them, even though it was 0530 their time (I don’t think they were too mad). There was a little chapel in the back you could look into and the view of the bay wasn’t anything to dismiss either. All in all, everything up there was truly beautiful.

Once we took the tram back down, we had some extra time so we went to a little souvenir shop for people to pick out things if they wanted. Then it was time for lunch and we had a buffet style meal again. I had an amazing cherry Brazilian soda that was quite tasty. I tried so many different things and I have absolutely no clue what any of it was because it didn’t have labels or anything. All I can say is that it was very good.

After the satisfaction of food, we headed to our afternoon activity of Carnival Experience. For this, we all hopped on a bus with our destination being a grouping of warehouses used to prep for Carnival. We were at the Grande Rio Samba School, which is one of the many that put together floats and compete in carnival. When we entered the warehouse, we could see a few different floats under construction and we were informed that each school has to put together six floats in order to tell a story. The floats are insane, and we were shown part of the process for making them, but due to sponsor reasons, we weren’t around to take pictures of most of the stuff they were working on for Carnival 2020. We then watched a video on what Carnival is and how it is scored. Carnival is known for its extravagant costumes and elaborate floats, but did you know that those floats are meant to acknowledge a problem through the story they tell. The dancing and singing factor into this for a complete package and that is how it is judged. Once we finished the video, we headed into a large dressing room with all the costumes, where we were each put into a different one. It was so fun, some of the costumes weren’t like anything I have seen before. We were all laughing at and with each other, honestly it was a great memory.

Once we slipped out of our outfits, we headed outside where it was raining, but we didn’t let that spoil our fun. We ran under a covered square area thing(?) where a group of people were waiting for a session of rhythmic fun. They were playing different drums and we were quickly pulled into a dancing circle. We were shown a few basic Samba moves before they had a spotlight performer come in the middle and shine. She was insanely talented, and I couldn’t believe how effortlessly she seemed to move. Next came the drums. We were all given drums of different sizes and we did a call and response style music which was surprisingly difficult, especially since I don’t have a ton of musical capability. After jamming for a bit, it was time to get back on the bus to the hotel and the musicians played us off.

We ended up getting back earlier than our itinerary planned, so we had free time. I was really tired, so I just stayed at the hotel for about an hour or hour and a half talking to my roommate before taking a little nap. Once dinner time rolled around, we were back meeting in the lobby before heading to our final meal in Rio. For this meal, we had the option of beef or chicken. I had the chicken and it was excellent. There were a bunch of sides served family style that were also excellent, but the dessert had the spotlight of the night. It was a dollop of what tasted and shared the texture of fudge basically made of chocolate and condensed milk. IT WAS ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC. Anyway, after that our night was over, and it was back to the hotel to crash for the night.

Day 6- We left our hotel around 0330 to go to the airport. After grabbing food and a short delay of our first flight, we weren’t sure we would make our second flight. After running through the airport, we found out our next flight had been delayed as well, but only about fifteen minutes. We took a breather before hopping on our last flight to Salvador. Once we got back, it took a little bit to get through our ship security because all the programs were getting back around the same time. Even though we still had a little time before we had to be back on the ship, I decided to stay on the ship and relax before I headed up to an outdoor barbeque on top deck. We had salmon and burgers and all that good stuff in addition to corn on the cob, rice, and plenty of wonderful fruit. In the end, it was a wonderful conclusion to my time in Brazil.

Stay tuned for Trinidad and Tobago!

With Bated Breath, Abby Lynn