Our Trip to the Amazon...Iberostar, Thursday

Thursday, November 10th, we enjoyed a Day at River. When you are on a big cruise ship, you sometimes have a Day at Sea as the ship goes from port to port. Since we are on the Rio Negro, I determined we were having a Day at River. 

You see, when we stopped to sign up on Wednesday evening for Thursday excursions, we only wanted to do one, the visit to the Rubber Tappe Museum. I told the young man that was the only excursion we wanted on Thursday. He signed us up and then looked closely at me and explained that, since the river was so very low, the tender could not take us up the channel of water very far. Now, everyone would have to walk another mile on very uneven terrain as it was the river bed and it would also be a mile of walking at an angle. Did we really want to do that? I looked at Claude. Claude looked at me. We remembered our hill in Sadieville and opted not to take that excursion. We would instead have a lovely Day at River relaxing and getting ready for the return trip home. 

Now there was to be an early morning tour to watch the sunrise. It was at 5:45am. We determined we would get up and watch the sunrise from the Terrace Deck of our ship. I set the alarm and we got up. When I looked out our stateroom window however I saw the moon. And, there was lots of light. I told Claude I believe we missed the sunrise. We got dressed and went up the stairs to the Terrace Deck. Sure enough, we missed the sunrise. What to do? Go back to bed and finish sleeping.

When we woke up, we headed back to the Terrace Deck to see if they still had the buffet for a bit of food. We found a little something to tide us over. We also found Bruce and Roxana. We all sat at a table and visited. Meryn and Burr would join us after a bit. 

At noon we enjoyed a lecture on “Amazon Birds”. After lunch, it was back to our room and Claude took a nap. 

I realized our ship was back by Manaus and I could see familiar places along the shore. This first picture is looking at our hotel and the beach area we walked along on Sunday. Our hotel is the last one on the left. If you look to the right of center, you can see the arch in my Sunday pictures. 

This picture is downtown Manaus. 

This picture is the harbor area of Manaus.

A picture of the Manaus Bridge from one shore to the other.

Clouds over the water.

Before dinner, we went up to the Terrace Deck. Our ship was going to go under the Manaus Bridge. It was also sunset time. 

If you look closely, you can see a very large tractor trailer going across the bridge. It gives a bit of the scale of this bridge.

Going under the bridge.

Coming out the other side with the sunset.

Bruce, Roxana, Nataniel, me, and Claude. We called Nataniel the Great Pumpkin in his orange shirt.

After this we got dressed and headed to Kaurup's for a Gala Dinner for our last night board ship. 

This dinner was followed by a Folkloric Show put on by the staff of the ship. Lots of music, singing and dance. 

We packed in the afternoon and were now ready to rest for the evening so we could disembark the ship the next morning.