It is a repeat of yesterday's breakfast with a roll, ham, cheese and fried egg with very sweet coffee with warm milk. I get my breakfast quickly, but while I am eating, a huge line forms at the same time we approach our second stop some 8 hours later than scheduled. Tomorrow, I will be sure to get here early to avoid the lines.
Our second stop is in Gurupa around 7 AM to just handle passengers and not cargo so hopefully, we will catch up some except for a slight delay when two of our passengers got back to the dock after the gangplank had been stowed. They had made a cigarette run.
While sitting with my iPad, I met a second Brazilian who spoke English. he was traveling with his wife and two little boys to visit his parents in Santarem, our 6th stop. He was comparing his small Dell laptop to my iPad2, and after looking at some of the iPad features, he declared Steve Jobs a genius.
The Amazon has opened up and must now be at least a mile wide. the vegetation of Jungle vegetation comes right up and into the river. Large chunks of vegetation swirl past our boat with an occasional log that causes the boat to curve around the floating debris.
We pull into Almerin about 4PM and unload a few boxes of cargo and leave about 5 PM and still, one passenger failed to get on board in time so they picked him up a few blocks north of the wharf as he crossed a few tied up boats to jump aboard ours. You can see behind me some of the flooded streets.
About 10 PM the boat slowed down considerably and was using its spotlight against the shore. I found out the following morning that the pilot got lost for about 4 hours before the Captain woke up and corrected him. I guess the pilot was used to navigating this stretch during daylight hours.
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