Boca da Valeria is the stop on this trip that definitely qualifies as most different. You know it’s a little different when the Captain tells you on arrival that the first tender takes the shore party over to do any repairs necessary to the pier before they start taking passengers over. This is basically a small river village where people lead a pretty simple life. When a cruise ship stops, people come from up and down the river to set up to sell things. Unfortunately, again a lot of the stuff they’re trying to sell is on the prohibited list, so we can’t buy it. Which is a shame, I did see some nice carved wooden boats that I liked. Also saw some paintings of canoes that I liked, but that guy ended up not still being there when we came back from the village (I found out later that apparently he was down from Parintins).
When you get off the tender, you start to get mobbed by kids, all looking for little trinkets or dollar bills. You’ll also pass more kids that all have their pets out, looking for you to take pictures and pay them. Anything from monkeys, sloths, birds, and a catfish. And when you show any real sign of actually having things to give out, you’ll really start to get mobbed. Cathy especially at one point seemed to have an absolute horde of kids around her. She was giving out some pencils, crayons, paper, plus a few other trinkets. Amazingly, what the kids seemed to like best were these cheap crappy plastic slinky type things we had. (Ultimately by the time we left, the kids even wanted the plastic bags she’d put things in to give out.)
We’d heard from some people that were on the cruise before that one of the things to really consider doing was to find one of the locals offering boat rides on the stream near town. Basically they were asking for $5/person for about an hour long trip. Since the sun had started going behind some clouds again we decided to go ahead and do this. The boats were a small wooden canoe or maybe longboat powered by a small motor with a prop on the end of a long pole. The water levels were low enough that the vegetation in the water was causing problems for the motor, and every now and then the guy would have to turn the motor around and clear out the weeds from the propeller. You start out in this really dinky stream that really doesn’t look like it would go much of anywhere, but around a couple of corners it starts to open up. Lots of birds near the edges of the water. Further and further back you start seeing more houses of the villagers. The place was actually quite a bit larger than I expected. The ride was fairly exposed to the sun, but definitely was worth the trip.
After the boat ride we wandered back through town. Getting later in the day there were definitely signs that things were winding down for the day. Villagers were starting to leave (including the guy selling the paintings that I liked). Cathy managed to give out the rest of her trinkets, and we got back on the tender to the ship.
Only other thing to comment on really was that evening while sitting in the dining room, we could see looking out the window and absolutely beautiful sunset. Oh, and tonight was Italian night, so Cathy could get her limoncello. (Which, to me at least, was amusingly stored in a recycled 1800 tequila bottle.)