December 20 - AT SEA

getting closer

Weather – 28º, a few pillowy clouds, more humid than yesterday.

closer and closer

Steps – 5,983

Today we learned that our Christmas Eve over night excursion to an Amazon eco lodge will only have 10 people on it, including us. This is an interesting development. This is very low compared to the numbers on other over land tours we’ve been on. 10 is a great number in terms of logistics and hearing the guides, but maybe not so great in terms of diluting the tour know-it-all/big mouth…every tour has one and nope it’s not us. Time will tell if this small number is an asset or not.

that's one GIANT enchilada

The thing I’m looking forward to most about visiting the Amazon is the wildlife, but this means there are bugs…and bugs (mosquitos specifically) mean there could be malaria. Anti-malaria pills are started 3 days before arriving in a malaria zone and for the duration of the time there. …today we started our malaria pills. These can be hard on the gut. We’ve taken malaria pills before and were fine, so we weren’t too worried, so far, we are fine.

It was another typical day at sea. Today’s lunch theme was Caribbean, we knew

glorious spot

this would include enchiladas. We expected the small, hand pie type thing we are familiar with. As expected, there were small enchiladas, but there was also what I think was the world’s biggest enchilada! We ate some of this delicious mammoth meat pie off the back of the ship again today. I love eating there. It even started to rain at one point, but there’s enough cover for protection and it certainly isn’t cold.

In the afternoon I watched an enrichment lecture about Brazil’s Carnivale. Did you know…that Carnivale means to ‘take the meat out’? I sure didn’t! Of course, I knew that Carnivale comes right before the Lent starts and that some Catholics don’t eat meat during Lent, but I never made the connection between that and
the word Carnivale.

miso glazed sea bass

Predinner drinks were had at the ship’s loyalty party. Everyone on the ship is invited to meet in the theatre to learn about where all of the 6 Regent ships are at the moment, the captain says a few words…it’s basically a Regent propaganda gathering. The most interesting thing about these parties is that they tell you how many people are at each loyalty level are on board at the moment. There are 60 people at our loyalty level of above.

Dinner tonight was the famous Regent miso glazed sea bass…it truly is delicious, and I get it every time it is on the menu.

One thing I forgot to mention on Monday when we were in Trinidad was that our van came to a complete stop on rather busy road to stop for an iguana! Things were touch and go for a bit while the critter lurched back and forth, deciding which side was safer. The 2-foot-long iguana eventually made safely to the other side. Just like stopping for crossing ducks at home.