DAY 58 Mar 11 - Boca de Valeria, Amazon River, Brazil

Boca de Valeria (mouth of the Valeria river) Is located on the south bank of a 400-foot hill overlooking the Amazon and is an entrance of the Valeria River. It's a tiny Indian village, quite basic, and when an occasional ship visits, tribes from surrounding areas come in to offer handicrafts for sale and boat rides. The surrounding jungle is lush and green.

The meeting of the waters is very visible here, as the River Valeria meets the Amazon.

This small village is made up of a few houses built mostly on stilts. There is a small brick church and a tiny schoolhouse. Similar Indian villages to this are scattered around the nearby jungle all in close proximity. The village does have electricity.

The few houses are made of wood with glassless shuttered windows. The accommodation is partly open on three sides facilitating an area where the family can congregate together. The main occupation of the men folk is fishing, hunting and farming. The only means of transport around this part of the Amazon is by canoe propelled by small outboard motors mounted on long angular pipes so they operate just below the surface of the water. Santarem, where we were yesterday, is a few hours down-stream.

Boca De Valeria's school house accommodates around 30 children and is made-up of a single room. Passengers from the few visiting ships to the village often provide the children with all sorts of writing utensils as well as exercise books and other useful schooling materials.

The main thoroughfare is a path leading up from the river marked-out by a series of rudimentary electricity poles.

Prior to the arrival of colonialists from Europe and their contact with these indigenous people in the sixteenth century, the Amazon River Basin had a estimated population of up to a five million people and perhaps more than a five thousand Amazon tribes. However since then Amazonians experienced 500 years of violence, exploitation, and disease, that wiped out most of the original Amazon Indian tribes. Presently, only about 500,000 Amazon Indians survive and are distributed among an estimated 500 tribes, including about 75 uncontacted Amazon tribes living in voluntary isolation.

We had an extra hour in bed last night, well we were supposed to anyway, due to a time change brought about by the ship moving further west as we penetrate deep into Brazil. As a result I was wide awake by 5.00 and up on deck in time to see a lovely sunrise reflected on the murky waters of the Amazon River.

When I went up to the Lido restaurant for my early morning coffee I was greeted with the ship being themed in public areas in the Brazilian national colours.

In addition assistant cabin steward Edgar was hard at his vacuum cleaning, with Henry in hand, of the area immediately outside the restaurant.

Tonight's dinner menu is supposed to reflect the food of the country so we should be in for some interesting cuisine this evening.

I reminded Edgar that we had some over due laundry and he said he would deal with the matter. Within an hour he was at our cabin door with a whole load of nicely cleaned and pressed clothes that Maria soon had stored away in our over sized walk-in cupboard. The only item missing seemed to be some dry cleaning that Maria had also sent out.

At about 7 o'clock we had our first views of the little Indian village of Boca da Valeria (Boca on the Valeria).

This authentic Amazonian Indian village was one of many scattered round this part of the Amazon River.

No doubt the local people, especially the children, would be excited at the prospect of seeing passengers in their own habitat, a rare enough occurrence with only about six ships a year stopping here.

Our ship anchored about half a mile off the village at 7.30 and by 8.45 we were ready to take the tender over to meet our first native Brazilian Indians, the Tapajos tribe.

A couple of canoes had come out from the village and were along side one of the tender boats, no doubt offering their wares to Prinsendam passengers as they came on board the tender.

This was something we had really been looking forward to doing on this Grand Voyage and Maria had prepared and brought along a quantity of school utensils, pens, pencils and exercise books, ready to hand out to the children.

As we approached the very small village it was soon apparent how basic things were here.

We were greeted by children aged anywhere from 2 and 12 all wishing to hold our hands. Young parents were also there keen to satisfy their curiosity about their western guests and to make sure their children received something from the 'rich' visitors.

They all surrounded us and others coming off our tender but not in any threatening way.

It was at this stage that we decided to attempt to hand out the pens, pencils and note books.

We were not prepared for what followed as children just went mad with anticipation at receiving one of these little presents. We managed to keep some order and did our best to ensure that children did not run off with more than their individual share.

One of the male adults came to our rescue a bit and helped distribute the goods in an orderly fashion

Poor Maria was quite overcome with emotion seeing these little children fighting over a single pencil or pen.

She thought of her own three youngest grandchildren, Alex, Jackson and baby Alabama, whose young ages were amply represented here this morning by many of these little native Indian children.

She soon composed herself as she communicated, in pigeon English and pigeon Spanish, with the adult who had helped with our distribution problem.

His name was Antonio and he had a motorised canoe that for US$10 would take us down the river Valeria to see the sights.

Soon we were winding our way down this most pleasant back water and tributary of the Amazon.

Our first 'stop' was in a beautiful Water Lilly area just off the main river. The water plants were huge and plentiful and were quite a spectacle as we manoeuvred our way round them.

After this fascinating viewing we moved on down the river. Unlike the Amazon the water was a nice crystal blue colour and looked very inviting in the soaring heat.

Fortunately we had timed our visit to quite early in the morning so the worst of the heat was still to come. Others would not be as lucky as us.

Scattered along the banks were the odd little house built on stilts as all the accomm-odation was in this area.

One house, see photo above, that did stand out was bright blue in colour. We later heard from George and Rosalyn that the owner had taken them on a similar canoe trip to our one and they had in fact visited this very house.

Flooding is seasonal and in the rainy season the water will rise maybe six or more feet above the current levels.

We saw horses watering in the river, they certainly knew how to keep cool. Whether they were wild ones or not we will never know.

After a while we reached another small Indian village that seemed almost deserted.

All the residents had presumably gone to greet the Prinsendam passengers coming ashore elsewhere. It turned out that this was Antonio's village and we soon pulled up outside his home.

Four little children were playing close by and Antonio invited us in and to meet his son who was one of the four children.

The little wooden home built on poles was just two rooms. A very basic dwelling altogether.

The kitchen doubled up as an eating area.

Outside the house was a water hose.

The other room had a small bed, a sun lounger in fact with a blanket/sheet covering it, a little child's cradle/crib and tied to the ceiling seven hammocks. It was later explained that some of these hammocks were used by other friends in the village who might socialise here in the evenings.

It must be remembered there was no sofa or easy chairs to sit on.

Antonio took great pride in showing us post cards and letters he had received from round the world from others that had paid their $10 for an exciting hour or so in the backwaters of the Amazon. We took photos and promised to sent him copies when we got home. If only he had Internet I thought to myself!

Our guide told us he teaches the 5 year olds in the local school but we are not sure if this is voluntary work or what.

One of his clients had recently sent him a Portuguese/English dictionary that he had obviously made good use of as he could communicate with a little pigeon English.

We were soon on our way back to the starting point of our amazing little adventure.

This had been a real eye opener and a not to be missed trip.

We really had appreciated seeing how these wonderfully simple people lived. Of course his rewards for his toil was more than the advertised amount.

Back in the village we ran into many familiar faces as more ship's tenders brought increasing amounts of guests from the Prinsendam.

George and Rosalyn were at the little school when we visited it. We encouraged them to take one of these little canoe rides up the Valeria and they heeded our advice.

It was the same with Gerry and Gary who we bumped into somewhere in the village. Again they were told not to miss out on a canoe ride.

One enterprising villager had opened up a kind of café that was serving cold beers and ice cold soft drinks.

He was doing a roaring trade with seemingly nearly everyone from the ship making a purchase.

We enjoyed two very refreshing cold beers before deciding it was time to return to the luxury of our ship.

Just as we were waiting for our tender back to the ship Robin and Jennifer arrived in the village and we briefed them too on our adventure.

This had been a most humbling experience today and we really did take to these isolated lovely native peoples of Brazil. Their life was probably not too dissimilar in many ways to how their ancestors had lived in this same little village many years before them.

Once back in the most welcome air conditioned atmo-sphere of the Prinsendam it was time for a shower and change of clothes before cold drinks and a bite to eat in the Lido.

Our ship sailed away at 1.00 pm sharp while there was a nice little sail away party going on down on the aft swimming pool area with some impromptu entertainment from a group of the Filipino stewards. Well done to them and to the Beverage Manager Roger, for putting on the show.