En route to Macapa

Last evening I uploaded a few pictures taken in Grenada. None of them have been edited, so eventually I will delete some when we arrive back home. I took over 250 pictures in Grenada, most taken from the bus on our tour.

There is one picture of a lady with her head covered with a white cloth. She was on her way down to the river to do her family washing and when she saw me taking a picture she quickly covered her face with the cloth. Many in this poor area of Grenada have no municipal water source, so do as so many others in like circumstances and wash in the local streams. Just previous to meeting this lady, the driver had stopped on a bridge over the stream and pointed out to us some rocks in the stream that were quite white. The whiteness was the result of soap residue from scrubbing their clothes. Later we saw another lady on her way to the stream with a plastic clothes basket of dirty clothes balanced on her head. We met a couple from the ship who had gone river rafting on this same stream. I didn't have the heart to tell them they had been in wash water.

We are on a heading of 123.8 degrees which parallels the coastline. We are just 8 degrees above the equator (you'll have to ask Dave how many miles this is above the equator). At 10:00 AM the ship officers and crew conducted a ritual to initiate crew members crossing the equator for the first time. They had a king and queen, a judge and a jury comprised of senior ship officers. Surprisingly there were fewer than 30 crew members who had not crossed the equator previously. Each had their crimes detailed - three ladies from the Spa were accused of substituting crude oil for exotic oils and were declared guilty. They had to kiss a raw fish, be subjected to green slime plastered all over them and then thrown in the swimming pool. For the most part it was clean fun, so to speak.

The mouth of the Amazon sits on the Equator. Before we can continue our journey 900 miles up the Amazon we are required to stop at Macapa, the first town at the mouth of the Amazon and obtain clearance to proceed. Like the Columbia River, there is a sandbar at the mouth of the Amazon which is created by the silt carried down from the interior. The ship is timing this passage at high tide and even so will have less than five feet of clearance over the bar.

Once we enter the Amazon, the ship will shutdown the desalinization plant which procuces our fresh water because the silt would gunk up the filtering equipment. Which reminds me that on two occassions as we left a port the engines were suddenly shutdown because of a warning light which indicated engine overheating. I met the captain last evening and he said this is nothing unusual after the ship has been in the Alaska area. Apparently sea critters take up residence in the cooling intake pipes and reduce the flow of water which cool the engines. I suggested he should call RotoRooter. The look on his face gave me the impression he either didn't know about RotoRooter service or thought I was crazy. I don't know what they do, but the engines in both cases were started up again in about 15 minutes.

Ruth and I decided the heat and humidity would be too much for her, so I canceled her ticket for the canoe ride up the tributaries of the Amazon. It is to last about 5 hours and she simply cannot stand heat and humidity for more than an hour or so.

Outside temperature is 84 degrees. Sea temperature is 78.8 degrees. Our heading is still 123.8 degrees. We have traveled 413 miles from Grenada and are 822 miles from Macapa. We are scheduled to arrive at Macapa at 10:00 AM Friday morning. Current position is 08 degrees 28.26' N 056 degrees 04.51' W, which is about the same longitude as Corner Brook, Newfoundland.