Traveling The World: Pole to Pole with Silversea - Buenos Aires to Manaus

4/10

Cruising the Amazon and a beautiful sunrise this morning. The Amazon is very wide this morning and will get narrower later.

More snowy egrets

Neotropic comorants

Gray-breasted martin

Lesser yellow-headed vulture. I love the coloring on this bird!

Gull-billed tern

Malcolm picked this lovely creature up off the deck. It's a mole cricket and burrows like a mole.

Today the 14 Pole to Pole guests were invited to a special lunch. Chef Pia did a wonderful job as always!

I have so many photos to go through from my zodiac tour today, but most will need to wait until tomorrow. I've been getting up for sunrise on the Amazon and we had an amazing crew talent show tonight and I need to get to sleep! But here are just a few.

Yellow-headed caracara

White-winged parakeet

Wattled Jacana

Sunset on the Amazon and lots more pictures tomorrow, hopefully. Busy days ahead.

4/11

More photos from zodiac cruise yesterday. So many zodiacs in the water.

Black vulture. Not sure the carcass.

Ani

Iguanas

White-headed marsh tyrant

Great kiskadee

Spot-breasted woodpecker

Lesser hornero

Cattle egret

Fork-tailed flycatcher

Roadside hawk

Need to confirm this one. Confirmed Oriole blackbird.

Dragonflies

Dogs!

Bananas

Couple fishing. Fish in the net, which she proceeded to pound to kill.

Last night we had a crew talent show. Lots of talent on this ship!

Out on deck this morning we saw a few birds. Greg was collecting insects off the deck.

Cormorants and egrets

Great egrets

Large billed terns

All along the Amazon there have been patches of grass growing hydroponically.

Mole cricket, hercules beetle, hawk moth

Morning rainbow and rock landscape

We will be in Manaus tomorrow. A map of where we have traveled since Buenos Aires. Once we are finished in Manaus we will have traveled 4886 nautical miles/9050km on the Amazon.

I did see pink dolphins yesterday but Ron shared a video with me that I screen shot this photo from. Not very pink.

6/12

Yesterday afternoons zodiac ride was again with perfect weather, but the current in the river was running quickly getting into the zodiacs.

White throated kingbird and Yellow-headed caracara

Lapwing

White-winged parakeets

You can't see them in this tree, but boy can you hear them.

Lily pads of the Amazon. Victoria amazonica.

Black-collared hawk

Large billed tern

Sloth! If you zoom into the top left of the second photo you can see a little of the face. Many of the zodiacs looking for sloth.

Cows!

This blob is a squirrel monkey. Saw them playing, but couldn't get a good photo.

Scarlet macaws!

Gorgeous white-winged swallows!

A cattle boat. Lots of cows in the bottom.

This morning we arriving in a very rainy, stormy Manaus. We passed the Meeting of the Waters. It is where the tannin-rich water from the Rio Negro combines with the milky water from the Rio Solimoes to form the Amazon.

The weather cleared up and I took a pink dolphin tour and stop at a community, Paricatuba, that had been booming during the rubber boom, but now not so much.

At the dolphins we could have 10 people in at a time. A worker fed them fish. The dolphins live free in the river and our pink dolphin expert, Bia, said the feeding may make them lazy, but they feed local fish so they aren't eating any newly introduced food and they live in the river in the wild. You can't really see them under the water when you are in the water. I was petting a dolphin and said to Ron, next to me, that there was a dolphin right by him. He told me I was petting his leg. Oops!

4/13

More dolphins

We took a short cruise in a beautiful area.

Then visited Paricatuba. Various areas including what was originally a hotel, that was then a hospital and school and had a jail cell. It must have been beautiful at the time. We visited a school.

Views on the way back. The beach in a very rich area with expensive housing. Something I was surprised at in the Amazon. I was pretty naive about the Amazon before this trip. They have lots of floating gas stations since the main way to get around is by boat.

Last night I went on a caiman tour to see them at night. Our spotter grabbed one right away. It was about 2 years old and will grow to about 5 feet. We also saw a great potoo that looks like an owl, but isn't. Saw some night herons and heard frogs.

Sounds of the night.

This morning we took a short zodiac ride on the Ariau River. Saw howler monkeys (no photos) A few birds. Paul was our zodiac driver and it was his last ride before he heads back to Ecuador tomorrow. It was peaceful and quiet.

Red-capped cardinal

Lesser kiskadee

Smooth-billed ani

This afternoon we anchored off Praia Grande and went to a beach. Yes a beach, with sand in the Amazon. They had some chairs and a bar set up for us.

Alex, Alex, Lin and Neil

Me, Joshua and Grant

Tonight we are going to the Opera House in Manaus to see Carmina Burana. Tomorrow is a new leg of the journey so we have a tour for those of us in transit to a jungle adventure at an Amazon eco-park.

The Opera House is beautiful. Carmina Burana was very good. This afternoon we had our farewell with the Expedition team. Four are leaving. Alex, Ian and Paul were with me since February. Karin got on in Buenos Aires.

Alex, Ian, Paul and Karin