The Amazon River, 200 Miles Upstream from the Atlantic

21 November 2012
(The day before Thanksgiving)

When I remember the Amazon years from now (assuming I’ll be able to remember anything), what will come to me most strongly is the smell of smoke. It’s the smell I woke up to yesterday morning as we approached our anchorage off Makapa, Brazil, at the Amazon’s mouth. It was the smell outside the 6^th-deck garden lounge as I ate lunch (tacos!). It was the smell forward on the 7^th deck as we watched the sunset last night. And it’s the smell—especially strong today—as I sit out here on my small balcony getting ready to grade the remaining cover letters and resumes from my business communication students.

And, of course, there’s the constant haze that accompanies the smoke. Without the haze and smoke, the Amazon is very much like the Saigon River we sailed up three years ago enroute to Ho Chi Minh City and my adventures in Vietnam during the fall ’09 voyage. The muddy water—orange-brown, looking like thin gruel—is lined on both sides by triple-canopy jungle. Occasionally, a small house surrounded by a miniature cultivated field, appears on the bank. Every now and then, a covered ferry—more like a large rowboat with a canopy—sails by taking people to the nearest village, I guess, for shopping, doctor visits, or to see family and friends. Occasionally we pass a dugout, a small outboard motor at the stern, carrying one or two fishermen. And this morning, we sailed past a very picturesque village sitting, like one block of a main street shopping strip, directly on the north bank of the river.

But the river is very wide, varying, I’d guess, from a little over a mile at its narrowest to well over 3 miles at its widest. The channel we are following weaves from one side of the river to the other, so at times when the ship is sailing close to the north bank, putting the starboard side close to shore, I can see the faces of people walking to their boats or down to the river’s bank to wash clothes or, I guess, to get water for cooking. At other times, when we move closer to the south bank, my balcony is well over a mile from shore, as it is now. Because of the smoke, all I can make out on the north bank is a strip of green outlining the river’s muddy water.

Yesterday morning, I figured the smoke was coming from sugar cane farmers burning the dried stalks to prepare their fields for the next planting. But according to several people who have been up the Amazon before, the smoke originates from burning forest. Fire is what the people here use to clear large tracts for cultivation. In the US, clear cutting is the preferred method; in the Amazon, it’s fire. The result is that a sail up the Amazon is an experience in a cloud chamber. Today is hot, muggy, and cloudless. Even with the heavy air, I should be able to see 8 to 10 miles clearly. Because of the smoke, my view to the stern ends in thick haze no more than 3 miles downstream.

Sergio Carvalho told us that Brazilians resent very much people from other countries lecturing them on the need to preserve the Amazon forest. It is, after all, the world’s oxygen tank. And when the lectures come from US environmentalists, they’re especially resentful. “You’re the only country who didn’t sign the Kyoto protocols, and you lecture us on carbon pollution and environmental destruction?!” But it’s impossible not to be concerned when, for hundreds of miles along the Amazon rain forest, the senses are exposed to acrid smoke and thick haze.

At the same time, I can’t stop staring at the brown water, the tiny boats, the thick jungle, the huts, the villages, and (when I can see them) the faces. This experience was worth waiting for.

We arrive in Manaus tomorrow morning. Other than a reservation for one night at a Holiday Inn (it’s all about location and the internet), I have no plans.  I think Sergio’s contacts have finally been exhausted.

50 miles North of Belem, Brazil, Approaching the Amazon’s Mouth

19 November 2012

When I finished my 30 minutes on the treadmill this morning at 6:45, I walked back toward the bow along the port-side deck. The water was still the deep blue that is characteristic of the oceans, especially in sunlight. And the flying fish were scattering in waves away from the oncoming ship. Now I’m back on my balcony 2 hours later, and the water is aquamarine and quiet. The flying fish are gone. The boobies are gone. Even most of the whitecaps are gone. We’re in the Amazon’s outflow.

According to my National Geographic map of the Atlantic, the outflow from the Amazon River “freshens the Atlantic’s waters 100 miles offshore.” I didn’t expect the change to be so dramatic or so noticeable. But it now looks like we’re sailing over a vast sandbar. And no land in sight. I’m guessing we’ll start seeing some signs of civilization this afternoon as we pass a few of the islands that sit in the river’s mouth. But the actual opening to the Amazon is over 50 miles wide, so it will still seem like we’re at sea, passing by some island outposts. Only when we get to anchor at Macapa, where we pick up the US Ambassador, will it start feeling like a river . . . I guess. We’ll see.

Rio de Janeiro

We arrived in Rio the morning of 11 November, passing the beaches—Ipanema and Copacabana—around 06:30. I wanted to see the arrival (I never get tired of watching a new destination slide by as we approach our dock), especially because those who have been to Rio before said that arriving by sea rivals the arrival into Cape Town or Sydney. It was a clear morning, the sun just starting to rise, as I walked back toward the main dining room. I decided to take a quick look outside on the 6^th-deck portside viewing area, and I walked out just in time to see Sugarloaf go slowly past. It was still too dark to see the Christo statue in the distance. I can’t say that a Rio arrival is more dramatic than a Cape Town arrival, but it certainly is now a part of my mental scrapbook: sights to remember.

I visited Rio about 20 years ago when Steve Ramsey and I went there to conduct some focus groups for Dow Chemical. My memories were of the armed guard Dow insisted accompany us whenever we left the hotel; of the favelas—vast slums of temporary, squatter homes—filling the sides of mountains that surround the city; and of the caipiringhas—surely the world’s greatest mixed drink—that Steve and I enjoyed poolside at our hotel on Ipanema Beach as we tried to record our notes from the morning’s work.  Part of my memory is also listening to Lisa VanderPas, my assistant, laughing as she tried to decipher my slurred focus group notes. “What in hell were you guys drinking?!”

(A lone boobie is back, circling the starboard side of the ship looking for flying fish. Sorry, fella. Your breakfast stayed in the salty stuff.)

After my adventures in Buenos Aires and, especially, Iguaçu, I hadn’t made definite plans for Rio. In fact, I was staring at a virtual pile of formal reports that came in from my business comm. students on the 10^th, so I knew I’d have to spend some time in port grading the 8- to 12-page reports. The students needed them turned around in order to prepare for their final briefings, coming up next. And on the 3^rd day in Rio, I had a field lab scheduled. So I viewed our stay in Rio as more a chance to catch up on work than as a chance for yet more adventure.

Barry Hollar, professor of religion at Shenandoah University in the Blue Ridge Mountains, had set up an independent trip for a small group to visit a Candomble ceremony, a ritual based on African tribal religions that has been kept alive by descendents of the more than 6 million Africans brought to Brazil as slaves between 1500 and 1880. The trip sounded interesting, so I signed up.

After Brazilian customs cleared the ship, I met our group of 12 at the entrance to the port terminal and boarded a van for the drive to the ceremony. Candomble  is an animist religion (I think I have that right). In other words, it centers around nature: the air, the water, the sun, the earth, each (and others) represented by a god. When a practitioner believes he/she is ready to become one with a god (a state that takes time and years of work—sort of like earning a merit badge), she asks for a ceremony where the unification takes place. That’s what we witnessed.

The “church”—a clean, white building that serves as a community center and place of worship—was in a favela north of the city about 45 minutes. We had an interesting tour, in fact, as neither the driver nor our guide was exactly sure where the gathering would take place. But we finally found the place. We entered through a courtyard, where a member of the congregation was selling souvenirs of the ceremony, and were escorted into a large, square room filled with congregants sitting in pews around an open center area. In the middle of the open area stood a post about 18 inches in diameter extending from the floor to the ceiling about 12 feet above. The post was decorated with paintings, fabric of brightly colored cloth, and symbols representing, I guess, the various gods. Clearly, this is the altar.

We sat in the back two rows of pews on the left side of the entry. Across the room, facing us, was a group of musicians playing various percussion instruments—drums, bells, etc—and chanting an African song that repeated the same musical phrase over and over. To the beat of the drums, two circles of celebrants danced slowly around the pole, an inner circle of about 8 or 9 women, and an outer circle of 20 to 25 men and women. The inner circle moved clockwise, the outer circle, counterclockwise. The women were dressed, despite the 90-degree-plus, humid temperature, in several layers of cotton formal wear. Their tops were white, all with a wide sash tied into a bow below their chests. The bottoms were large hoop skirts of various bright colors. And they all wore head-dressings of some sort, mostly small turban-like wraps. The few men in the outer circle were dressed much more comfortably but, clearly, in ceremonial costumes of white or brightly colored tops and loose-fitting pants.

Around and around the pole the groups went for many minutes, chanting with the band, taking ritualistic dance steps, their hands and arms swaying in prescribed patterns back and forth as they moved slowly around the pole. Every few minutes—usually each chant would run at least 10 and as many as 20 minutes—the drumming would stop, the circles would raise their arms in some sort of cheer, the people would wipe the pouring sweat off their faces (no air conditioning in the room), then a cantor would sing the next song’s chant, and the procession would begin again.

This went on for about an hour. Then, suddenly, a woman who had been moving with the inner circle went into what I can only describe as an epileptic-like fit, shaking, eyes rolled back, bent over as if ready to collapse. This, it turns out, was the new inductee. Others in the inner circle rushed to support her as she stood in the middle shaking, arms flailing. Then, as the shaking started to subside, one of the others took the inductee’s sash, which had to that time been tied into a bow at her back, and moved the bow to her front. This, apparently, was the sign that she had now become one with the god.

But that wasn’t the end. The chanting, the moving in clrcles, the stopping and starting, even, to an extent, the occasional “possessions,” continued for the next 45 minutes, when our group decided we’d gotten the gist of the ceremony and headed back to the van. According to our guide, the full ceremony can last as long as 8 hours—until the inductee has been fully inhabited, I guess. He also told us that, in Africa, the ceremony has gone through many changes over the past 4 centuries. But in Brazil, the descendents of the kidnapped Africans retained the original moves, songs, and ceremony elements. It’s a way to maintain one of the links to their heritage.

The other interesting characteristic of the ceremony was that, while most of the celebrants were black, many were brown and even white. That mix reflects the intermixing of the races that has characterized the Brazilian culture over the years. When the Portuguese first came to Brazil and began importing slaves to work the early sugar fields, the Portuguese had left their wives and families at home in Portugal. So intermixing of the races began early. The result is that, today, Brazil experiences far less racism than we do in the US, where slavery began on family-owned plantations. Of course, the US still saw some intermixing, but not nearly to the extent that occurred in Brazil. Today, Brazilians don’t think “races” because the races have become so homogenized. They do think “color,” though. And most of the faces in the poorer neighborhoods of Rio, especially in the favelas, are dark.

We spent the rest of the day having a long lunch and touring a different favela in an area closer to the centro district. Rio has begun a process of what they call “pacification” of the favelas. That means they’ve hired and trained hundreds of new police, who, favela by favela, are entering the neighborhoods, driving out the thriving drug trade, and establishing a very strong presence of flak-vest-attired security guards. Of course, all this is in preparation for the World Cup in 2014 and the Rio Olympics in 2016. They have a long way to go.

On the other hand, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro—at least the ones we were able to visit—certainly have a more permanent, fixed feel than do the townships of South Africa or the poor neighborhoods of Ghana—ironic because, legally, the inhabitants of favelas are all squatters, with no legal property rights. So the government of Rio is spending millions of dollars to pacify, sanitize, electrify, and generally clean up huge neighborhoods that, technically, don’t exist.

After I got back to the ship, I took a quick shower, grabbed a cab, and went across the city to Ipanena, where I joined Jim and Shamim at a restaurant for some feijoada (fezsh-WAH-dah) and a couple of caipiringhas. Feijoada is a Brazilian dish of pork sausage, ribs, and black beans, all cooked together in a casserole and supplemented by various greens, rice, and other side dishes. Delicious!

We took a short walk down Ipanema beach before cabbing back to the ship.

The next day, 12 November, as promised, I spent most of the day in my cabin grading formal reports. Some were very good; some weren’t. I had formed the class into teams and told them they work for a fictitious multi-national company that owns up-scale sandwich shops. The company is considering expanding into one of the countries we’ve visited on the voyage, and the class, working in teams of 3 to 4, were to write reports either supporting or discouraging the expansion. The reports had to be written individually, but they could collaborate on research, organization, even tables and figures in their reports. As expected, the teams that worked together well did the best jobs on their reports; the dysfunctional teams produced weaker reports.

It was a long day, interrupted only by a walk into the city to grab lunch at a sandwich restaurant and to buy a bottle of cashaca, the liquor made from sugarcane that is the not-so-secret ingredient of caipiringhas.

That night, I joined a large group of faculty and staff at Porcao, a well-known Rio restaurant that serves the traditional, all-meat, carved-from-a-spear-at-your-table feast. The dinner was put together by Sergio Carvalho, Brazilian native and professor of business at the University of Manitoba. I hadn’t eaten at a Fogo de Chao in the US (there’s one just off north Michigan Ave in Chicago), so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The beef was certainly among the best I’ve tasted. And it kept coming and coming, washed down with caipiringhas and red wine. I’m sure my arteries were cracking from the massive infusion of cholesterol. But wow! It was delicious.

On our third and final day in Rio, suffering from a severe meat-and-caipiringha (mostly meat) hangover--I escorted my business communication class on a field lab, that port experience required for each course and, supposedly, tied to the course content. I had been trying since last December to set up a field lab in Rio de Janeiro. I started by trying for a trip to the Embraer aircraft factory east of Sao Paulo. But after several months of back-and-forth communication, both with the Brazil HQ as well as their Ft Lauderdale US office, I abandoned that idea when I realized they weren’t going to fly one of their planes to Rio to pick up and return the class. Besides, my principal contact at Embraer was fired in the middle of the process.

Next, I tried to arrange a day-long visit to the Rio Olympic Committee, figuring their work would be interesting to learn about, could include a tour of projected venue sites, and would be an opportunity to learn about cross-cultural business comm. challenges. But, again after a month or so, I learned through a travel agent that the Olympic committee wasn’t yet hosting visits. So I went through three other possibilities: the World Cup organizing committee, the “Flamingo” football (soccer) team, the Brahma Brewery (a particular favorite idea of the students). All either didn’t reply to my requests or were “not yet” or “no longer” hosting visits. By 2 days before we arrived in Rio, I still didn’t have a field lab set up.

Then Sergio Carvalho came to the rescue. Sergio overheard my story while standing next to me at the bar in the faculty-staff lounge. And he diagnosed the problem immediately: I didn’t know anybody. (I guess the same applies to SAS and to the Brazilian travel agent SAS works through, because they had had no luck either.) Sergio reminded me that in Brazil, a very collectivist, close-knit culture, where personal relationships are everything, to get anything done requires knowing “someone,” meaning a person with influence. The next day, Sergio and I were on the phone from the dean’s office, calling acquaintances of Sergio. By the afternoon of 9 November, he had arranged a morning visit to the world HQ of H.Stern, the jewelry manufacturer; lunch with his own class and a presentation by the Canadian trade representative to Brazil; and an afternoon visit to the state bureau of tourism.

And that’s how to get things done in Brazil!

The day of the field lab was rainy and dull, a good day to spend listening to presentations on making jewelry and on infrastructure improvements planned for Rio before the 2014 World Cup. We also toured a cathedral in the centro section, a very modern, pyramid-shaped structure, ugly from the outside, magnificent inside. Though the Brazilian population is growing increasingly secular, according to our guide, they still love their churches and still call themselves (mostly) Catholic. It wasn’t an exciting day, and it was certainly not what I had envisioned. But we filled the field-lab square, and it was all because of Sergio’s relationships.

We sailed out of Rio’s harbor the night of the 13^th under rainy skies. But the skies cleared just long enough for a final sighting of Sugarloaf, the beaches, and the Christo.

For Manaus, I’m again calling on Sergio, who offered to try to set up an overnight at a jungle lodge for me and a few others. Hope that comes through. And we’re also planning a night at a concert by the Amazonian Philharmonic Thursday (Thanksgiving) evening. But top priority is finding a hotel with good internet so I can wish daughter Julie a happy 40^th birthday via Skype. I know she’ll need consoling.

How does she think it feels to have a 40-year-old daughter?!

The water has morphed from aquamarine to green to tan in the 5 hours it’s taken me to write this entry. We’re now truly at the mouth of the Amazon. And I still can’t see land.  

120 Miles North of Sao Luis, Brazil

18 November 2012

We’re now just 30 miles south of the equator, heading west toward the mouth of the Amazon, which sits directly on the equator. So between now and Tuesday morning, when we enter the Amazon and start the trek to Manaus, we’ll essentially be skimming along the mid point of the globe.

It feels like we’re on the equator. Very warm and muggy today. Again, I’m taking advantage of the weather by sitting out on the balcony, catching up on e-mail, reviewing sports scores (UM beat Iowa 42-17 yesterday; OSU topped Wisconsin; AFA won; S.Carolina beat Wofford [Wofford?!]; Stanford beat Oregon and Kansas State lost, moving Notre Dame into the #1 poll spot [No!]), and reading the electronic version of the NYTimes on the iPad app (Israel on the verge of a ground assault into Gaza; sounds of bi-partisanship around avoiding the fiscal cliff). Today is what’s called a study day—the closest thing we have to a weekend during the 4-month voyage. It gives me an opportunity to do as little as possible that’s productive, a terrific feeling. I think it’s fair to say we all miss weekends.

Last night was the shipboard auction, a money-raising opportunity for SAS to build its scholarship endowment. Most of the items contributed were ship-related: a captain’s hat autographed by the captain, a chance to raise the flag on the day we arrive in Ft. Lauderdale, a chance to blow the ship’s horn, the privilege of being first off the ship in Florida (a very big deal!), packing services by one of the resident directors, a bubble bath in one of the dean’s cabins (single only), milk and cookies served on a starry night on the 8^th deck.

The auction item that went for the most money was a map of the voyage that has been posted near the purser’s desk since Boston. The map shows not only our route but also information about the waters we’ve been crossing and noon locations each day of the voyage. It’s an interesting guide, one we all look at almost daily. Final auction price: $2,600, purchased by a student. I’m sure her parents will enjoy the tax deduction.

With Bob Smith, geography professor from Georgetown and the US State Dept, I split the cost of a round of golf at Keswick Club, Charlottesville VA. Our playing partners will be Jim Cooper & Bob Chapel. Jim made the contribution: greens fees for 2 plus lunch. And Bob and I prevailed in the auction for a price of $125. Given that guest fees at Keswick are over $100 and lunch can be pricy, Bob Smith and I will have the pleasure of superb golf, a fine lunch, and a tap into the Jim Cooper fortune. I don’t think I can take the tax deduction.

I’m also splitting the cost with Cooper of 2 weeks in a Tucson AZ home any time in April, May, or June. A 3-BR, 2100 square ft home on a golf course for $225 each. Not bad.

Tonight is the crew talent show, which, 3 years ago, was a surprisingly entertaining evening. Global talent in abundance.

Iguaçu Falls

My flight to Puebla Iguaçu from Buenos Aires on Saturday 3 November took about 90 minutes, the terrain below becoming greener and more lush the farther north we flew. The falls sit at the apex of a 180-degree turn in the Iguaçu River, where the river forms a peninsula that defines the border between Argentina and Brazil. The border with Paraguay is just 10 miles west of the falls, so the area is truly a tri-border junction. It all sits in the middle of the South American rain forest, surrounded by coffee plantations and what look like abandoned rubber-tree plantations.

The falls extend south to north from the bottom of the 180-degree bend to almost a mile down river on the Argentine side. They’re shaped kind of like a massive fish, with the head on the south end formed by what’s called Garganta de Diablo: the Devil’s mouth. This horseshoe-shaped falls is the Niagara end: an enormous torrent of water that pours over a cliff and thunders down 400 to 500 feet. The movie The Mission was filmed near Iguazu, and the falls play a prominent role, including a couple of scenes where hapless colonials fall screaming to their deaths into the open maw.

Extending north from the head of the fish are the ribs: ¾ mile of one cascade after another, falling down between the rocks, trees, and outcroppings, some sections arresting the fall temporarily on a small plateau, other sections falling straight down the high cliffs to the rapids of the lower Iguaçu River below.

At the advice of Jim and Shamim, who had visited the falls during their Argentine stay a few years ago, I had reserved a room in the Sheraton Iguaçu, the only hotel in the Argentine national park. Though the room wasn’t cheap—no surprise there—it was worth every Argentine peso.

To check into the hotel, one stands at the reception desk looking out a large window, across about a mile of jungle, to the full expanse of the falls. But my room on the hotel’s top floor offered even a better view. I could stand on my balcony (balconies are good things, I’m convinced) and see from the Garganta end all the way to the fish’s tail. The view was nothing short of spectacular. And the sound, even over a mile away, was still thunderous. They say the best view of the falls is from the Brazil side of the river, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Better still, I could walk to the edge of the nearest cascade in 10 minutes. From Brazil, only a boat or a wicked swim across white-water rapids would get you there.

From the Sheraton, one can take one of three routes to the falls. A train run by the national park (think the Disneyland train) runs every 15 minutes from the park headquarters to a trailhead that leads to the top of Garganta. Another trail, requiring only the ability to follow sign directions, leads via bridges and man-made walkways along the top of the fish’s spine. This is called the “high trail.” A third trail—the “low trail”—descends by steps and switchbacks down to the base of the fish’s tail then along a path to a boat ramp where zodiacs unload passengers from rides to and under the base of several falls.

I took all three trails and the boat ride during my 2-day stay in the national park. I can’t describe the feeling of staring down into the Devil’s mouth, walking along the top of the ribs, or walking down alongside the fish-tail cascade. And I certainly can’t describe the exhilaration of riding in a zodiac up the Iguaçu rapids and into—literally into—the falling waters of a rib. But I took many pictures, and though they can’t fully capture the experience either, they at least show the magnificence, the majesty, the beauty, the power of the place. My two days were filled with sounds, sights, and smells that I’ll never forget.

I also had a couple of nice meals with others from the ship who were either staying at or passing through the park—Dwight and Jane Alison and their two sons; Larry Silver, art history professor from Penn; Colin and Sandra White; Ann McDonald, our 93-year-old lifelong learner, oldest member of the community. I enjoyed watching the monkeys and coatimundis (ring-tailed cats) that roam almost tame around the park. And I managed to spend a few hours sitting at the Sheraton pool, where I enjoyed a couple of caipirinhas, the Brazilian answer to a margarita and surely the world’s greatest mixed drink. The internet at the hotel even extended to the pool, enabling me to have Skype calls with Haley and Corey, who just happened to be online. It also gave them a chance to wish me happy birthday on my 68^th. It’s true that life gets better past 40 and better still past 60.

I returned to Buenos Aires on what was supposed to have been a 9:30am flight Monday morning. The flight was 5 hours late due to some mechanical problems. I could have returned to the hotel to take advantage of the comforts and the internet, but the cost of the taxi and readmission to the national park—around $30, as I recall—made me resolve to stick out the wait at the airport. I got some reading done, including the entire Sunday NYTimes. Can’t remember when I’ve done that last.

I made it back to BA by 4pm and taxied to my hotel, the Pulitizer, in BA’s centro region. I had chosen it because of its location, its price, and, most of all, its free internet. The latter allowed me to spend the night of the 6^th—election night in the US—watching streaming coverage of returns on NBC while CNN Espanol was giving me the Spanish version on the hotel TV. Anne Lloyd was also online via Skype from her hotel room in Seattle, and she was watching CNN in English . . . of course. So between the hotel TV, the streaming NBC coverage, and Anne’s narration from Seattle, I enjoyed probably the best election night coverage I’ve experienced.

Of course, Obama’s reelection made the evening even better.

I spent Wednesday walking around BA, including a very interesting walking tour led by an Argentine guide who was both interesting and very informative. We went back to the Recoleta area, where the guide told us the history of some of the Victorian-era mansions built during the rubber boom and Argentina’s economic heydays in the early 20^th century. Most of these are now museums, condos, or embassies. But they’re still magnificent.

Wednesday evening, I took a 3-hour ferry across the Rio de la Plata to Montevideo, where the MV Explorer had arrived on Monday. My stay in Montevideo was unremarkable except for the 18 holes Jim and I played on the Alistair MacKenzie-designed Golf Club of Uruguay. Beautiful course; a few good shots; lots of fun.

We sailed away from Montevideo Thursday evening, with 2 days of classes facing us before our arrival in Rio de Janeiro.

20 Miles off the North Coast of Brazil

17 November 2012

It’s been more than 2 weeks since I tackled a blog, and certainly a lot of water has passed under the bow in that time. At the moment, I’m sitting on my small balcony looking across the Atlantic waters toward the equator, which is about 120 miles to the north. The weather is warm and very humid, a wonderful change from what has been a surprisingly cool voyage. Since boarding in Boston back in mid August, we’ve seen only a few days when it’s been comfortable enough to sit out here and do anything prolonged, more the shame because, for a strange reason, here is where I have the best internet connection. Go figure.

We’re cooking along at about 12 knots heading for the mouth of the Amazon River, which is about 600 nautical miles (NM) west, near as I can figure. We enter the Amazon Tuesday morning, anchoring first off the city of Macapa, where we drop off a couple of US diplomats who joined us in Rio de Janeiro, pick up a pilot, who will guide us up the river, and also welcome onboard the US Ambassador to Brazil and his retinue. The Ambassador will sail with us to Manaus. I’m not sure why he’s joining us other than because we’re 700 mostly American students, faculty, and staff. I’m guessing he’s also partial compensation for the fact that Desmond Tutu decided he couldn’t join us because of other commitments.

(That’s not a joke; Tutu is a board member of ISE and has, in fact, been on several voyages, including a couple of years ago when he sailed the entire itinerary around the world. He was supposed to have been onboard with us from Ghana to South Africa.)

I’ll be having Thanksgiving dinner with the ambassador Wednesday evening, a few hours before we dock in Manaus.

I just finished teaching my last class before we begin final reports—oral—in my business communication and intercultural communication classes and final speeches in my public speaking class. What that means is this: my class prep days are over! From now to the end of the voyage I face only about 23 hours of oral reports and speeches. Three years ago, these culminating exercises were surprisingly good, so I’m looking forward to listening, watching, and, of course, evaluating. Over the same period, I also have 2 batches of final papers to grade, so the work is far from finished. But the end is, definitely, in sight.

The flying fish are furiously dashing away from the oncoming bow of the ship. And every now and then, a white boobie—large gull-like bird with terrific eyesight and remarkable maneuverability—soars high above the 7^th deck of the ship to scan the water then folds its wings and dives like an arrow into the water off my balcony, rising a moment or two later with a fish that lost the lottery in its bill, wings (of the fish, not the bird) still buzzing.

I’m keeping an eye out for large fish or mammals: whales, porpoise, sharks, anything. Over the past couple of days, though, it’s been only flying fish and boobies.

But I digress . . .

Buenos Aires and Montevideo

We arrived in Buenos Aires 2 weeks ago yesterday—2 November—after an overnight trip up the Rio de la Plata, surely the muddiest river (in addition to the widest) in the world. The water is the color of dark milk chocolate, mostly, I’m sure, washed from the Argentine interior—it was an especially rainy winter and spring, so runoff is heavy—but also from flotsam and jetsam coming from Argentina and Uruguay, which border the river on the south and north banks, respectively. Despite the color of the water, both Argentina and Uruguay have beaches lining the river’s banks. The water looks more suitable for slicing than for swimming.

Jim Cooper and I had intended to play golf the first morning in Buenos Aires (“B.A.” to those in the know), but when we disembarked and stopped by a travel desk in the port’s terminal, we discovered that the course we were heading for had been closed for over a week because of flooding. Bad news. A few days later we managed to get in a round of golf at the Golf Club of Uruguay, but we had hoped for more than one round during our one-week stay in the two countries.

After lugging our clubs back up the 47 steps of gangway leading to the ship’s 5^th deck, Jim offered to give me a walking tour of BA, which I, of course, accepted. He and Shamim had rented a condo in the city several years ago and stayed 4 weeks, getting to know the layout and haunts fairly well. Our dock was only a few blocks from the “Centro” section, so walking to see the sights made sense. We headed out around noon, stopping at a cafeteria for a ham-and-cheese sandwich, then walking west to the Recoleta section of the city.

Recoleta is one of the several up-scale neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. The city, as a whole, lives up to its billing as the “Paris of South America”: very wide boulevards, low-rise office and apartment buildings, tree-lined streets, and many structures with the characteristic balconies and design features that look straight from the banks of the Seine. Unlike Paris, BA is also dirty and seems to be crumbling just a little. The sidewalks, filled with potholes and broken tiles, are in desperate need of repair. And the trash on the streets was exacerbated by the overflowing bins of garbage on each street corner. The city had been experiencing a garbage collectors’ strike for several weeks; it showed. Argentina is experiencing another in a long string of economic crises, facing inflation that, unofficially, is moving at a 25% pace. The result is a lack of money to keep the city clean and in repair. It’s a very pretty place as long as one doesn’t look down.

The Recoleta area is best known for its cemetery, a 5-acre garden of lavish mausoleums, final resting places of Argentina’s elite. And off in one corner, un-noted other than the family name above the crypt door, is the spot where Eva (Evita) Peron’s body finally came to rest.

It’s a dark marble structure with the name “Duarte” carved into the stone. Duarte was the name of Eva’s father, a name she took despite the fact that she was a love child, illegitimate, and rejected by the family when she was a child. When she died of cancer in 1952 or ’53—at age 32 or 33—she was initially embalmed and placed on public display by her widower husband, Presidente Juan Peron. Later her body was kidnapped by the military junta that overthrew Juan, sent to Paris and buried in an unmarked grave, then later repatriated when Juan (and his third wife, Isabella) returned to power in the early ‘70s. After Juan’s death, the body was re-emblamed—a grisly tale of an embalmer who fell in love with the cadaver—and eventually buried under the Duarte family crypt. Of course, none of this story made it into the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical.

Jim and I paid homage to Evita, stopped for a cervesa at an outdoor café near the cemetery, then returned to the ship around 4pm. That evening, the three of us—Jim, Shamim, and I—went out for an excellent dinner in the Palermo sector of BA.

The next day, 3 November, I flew to Puerto Iguazu in far north Argentina where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina meet. More on that in the next installment.

5 Miles Offshore Punte del Este, Uruguay

01 November 2012

After four days of very choppy seas and cool temperatures, today is spectacularly beautiful: calm, almost glass-like water, lots of sunshine, temps in the low 70s. And off the starboard side—my side—of the ship, we’re passing the beaches of Eastern Uruguay, about to enter the Rio de la Plata—the River Plate—enroute to Buenos Aires. We arrive tomorrow morning at 08:00, so it’ll be a leisurely cruise up the world’s widest river.

We were all dreading the past 10 days: the crossing from hell. But the days have gone surprisingly quickly, much moreso than the similar crossing from Kobe, Japan, to Honolulu three years ago. Maybe because we crossed the International Dateline in ’09 and, therefore, had to endure the same day twice, that one felt much longer. Or maybe it was because that crossing came closer to the end of the voyage, when classes were winding down and most of us couldn’t wait to sit again at the table in our favorite hometown restaurant, to swap lies face-to-face with good friends, and to sleep in our own motionless beds. I’m not quite at the same place yet. But it’s close.

These have also been busy days in the classroom, with only a one-day break Sunday for the Sea Olympics, an attempt to give the students the feeling of a football Saturday, when they paint their faces, cheer their teams, and, in the case of the onboard Olympics, encourage their dorm mates on to victory in the tug of war, balloon toss, lip-sync contest, frozen t-shirt match (teams have to untie a frozen t-shirt and put it on one teammate), and other games requiring more endurance than skill. The students had a fun time, and the faculty had a chance to catch up. We also competed.

The prize for the winning team—each composed of students who share cabins in the same sections of the ship—is the first position in line to disembark when we reach Ft. Lauderdale. That’s a very big deal. Despite the many voyages of Semester at Sea, the disembarkation process is chaotic and lengthy. At least that was my experience 3 years ago in San Diego. Luggage is carted off by the ship’s crew and placed in the terminal building, where, last time, I spent a good hour trying to track down all my boxes and suitcases despite their having been placed, supposedly, in designated areas by deck number. Then I stood in line for another 45 minutes waiting for a porter to help me schlep the stuff to the UPS representative for shipment back to Libertyville. The process took a couple of hours. Getting off the ship first would save at least an hour of that time.

Other than the day off for Sea Olympics, the remaining nine days from Cape Town have been days filled with classes, grading, and meetings. And each day—for me, at least—follows what has become a pattern. I’m usually awake by 05:30, regardless of whether the ship’s clock went forward or backward overnight. For the past 3 weeks, I’ve been out of bed by 06:00 and heading to the 7^th-deck spa and gym, where I get on the treadmill for 30 minutes.

I wasn’t working out regularly the first 5 weeks of the voyage, and I paid a price in overall feeling and stamina. The treadmill sessions have made a difference. But using a treadmill on a moving ship is an interesting experience. The treadmills are aligned along the bow-to-stern line (the longitudinal axis, in airplane terms) of the ship and are on the highest deck, where the rocking and rolling are most pronounced. So, when walking (briskly!), I have to hold onto the side rails or I’d end up hand-in-hand with the person on the treadmill next to mine. Holding on keeps the heart rate down slightly, so I compensate by ramping up the speed and incline a little bit more than I do back home. It’ll be nice, come December, to work out on equipment that stays put.

After the workout and a cool shower (the disadvantage of being on a high deck is that we’re last in line for hot water in the morning), I take my iPad and French-press coffee pot to the main dining room for breakfast. I spend breakfast—yogurt, fruit, sometimes an English muffin, sometimes oatmeal, sometimes an omelet—at a table by myself so I can read the morning news on either the Washington Post app or the NY Times app, depending which one is getting along better with the ship’s internet connection on that day. I don’t know why there would be a difference, but some days the Post app won’t load, other days it’s the Times.

By 08:30, I’m back in my cabin, reading and responding to e-mail and getting ready for my 3^rd-period (10:45) class. On “A” days, that class is Intercultural Comm; on “B” days, it’s Public Speaking. The period immediately before 3^rd each day is Global Studies, the one course that all students have to take and that all faculty are encourage to attend. Global studies looks at issues relevant to the countries we’re about to visit but, also, issues that have global significance: economics, politics, globalization, environmental matters. For the first half of the voyage, I had to go to the union—the large lecture hall on deck 6—to attend Global Studies. But a few weeks ago, I asked if the course could be streamed by CCTV into faculty and staff cabins. Now I’m able to stay in my cabin during the lectures and multi-task on prep for my own classes. Nice!

My 3^rd-period class ends at noon, when I go to the 6^th-deck Garden Lounge for lunch. If the weather is agreeable, I’ll join friends for lunch on the outside deck overlooking the ship’s stern. That’s where I was today, eating while watching the very calm waters go by and keeping an eye out for animals in the water. No luck.

Most lunches and dinners are the same: mid-quality, college-dorm food. We can count on iceberg lettuce and tomatoes—good thing I’ve learned to enjoy tomatoes—followed by serve-yourself pasta, some type of meat, fish in a mystery sauce (the most reliably tasty item on the buffet), steamed (usually over-steamed) vegetables, and a dessert. A few weeks ago, the chef served tacos for lunch. People are still talking about it.

On “A” days, I have nothing following the 3^rd-period class, so the afternoon is a time for lesson prep and grading. On “B” days, my business comm. class meets 4^th period (13:05). With class periods that run 75 minutes to compensate for the fewer number of class days available on the ship, I’m not finished with classes on “B” days ‘til 14:20. By the time I talk to students, pack up my laptop, and make it back to the cabin, it’s 3 o’clock.

Even though I planned all my lessons and gathered all course materials before boarding in August, each lesson needs review and refinement. And, with painfully slow internet on board, that refinement process can take a very long time. Some afternoons, I break up the prep and grading with a short nap. Otherwise, the afternoons go quickly, and, usually before I’ve finished everything, it’s 17:00—time for 5-6 happy hour in the faculty staff lounge.

Most non-students would say that happy hour in the lounge is their favorite time of the day. We’re served by Mandy, the world’s greatest bartender, and have the chance to relax, drink wine or something stronger, look out at the passing seas, and commiserate with fellow faculty on the challenges of teaching a diverse group of students in moving classrooms with limited technology available, little personal space, and no weekends.

After dinner—lunch variety redux—I usually return to my cabin to catch up on more e-mail, maybe some loose-end prep, sometimes watch a movie on the ship’s TV system (each evening, the library loops films & videos requested by faculty to supplement their courses—some are interesting, some are very esoteric). I’m usually falling asleep by 23:00 (11pm).

And the next day, unless we’re arriving at a port, the process repeats.

Tomorrow is one of the days we arrive at a port. In this case, it’s Buenos Aires, and it’s fair to say I’m very ready to get off the boat.

Jim and I are hoping to play a round of golf at a course near the port. Tomorrow night, I’ll go to dinner at one of Jim and Shamim’s favorite seafood restaurants in BA (they spent a month here a few years ago). On Saturday, I fly to Puerto Iguaçu to spend two days overlooking the world’s largest waterfall from a balcony room at the Sheraton and hiking around its base in the national park. Monday, I return to Buenos Aires and a hotel with free Internet and cable TV—a perfect place, I hope, for watching and celebrating or bemoaning the Presidential election results Tuesday evening.

Wednesday, I take a ferry across the Rio del Plata to Montevideo, Uruguay, where the ship will have arrived the day before. I’ll spend Wednesday night on board, Thursday exploring Montevideo, and Thursday night at the poker table in the Dean’s office as Explorer leaves for Rio.