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For the Amazon by the sea and the Soul: Part 2

Eleven days

Transcending the boundaries between murky waters of the Amazon and Tapajós River, blue in the sky in the morning, the Princess Royal Docks docked at the port do Para, Santarem 0846 Terminal Two degrees, 24 minutes north latitude and 54 degrees, the position of 44 minutes west longitude, in the midst of the multitude of small river boats, against a cause-north, the position of zero degrees.

brown water, like the Amazon, flows over sedimentary rocks and therefore carry large amounts of sediment with them, while so-called black water, as than the Tapajós River itself flows over crystalline rocks and densely wooded areas of evacuation. Due to their different density, temperature and acidity, the mixture resisted for several miles and finally induced turbulence.

Founded in 1661, Santarem, located midway between the cities of Belem and Manaus, Amazonas, in the Amazon River and the junction of the 15-mile wide Tapajós River basin is the third largest city with a population of 265,000 and serves as a gateway their deepest heart.

In 1927, Henry Ford had obtained 43.000 miles square of rainforest, cleared 50,000 hectares of it, and planted three million rubber trees, the construction of a city called "Fordlandia" to facilitate and serve the mass planting, but with an interval 17 years and spending $ 20 million had been a failure and sold the land in Brazil for the paltry sum of $ 250,000.

population Santarem, echoing the Yukon in late 1800, erupted overnight with the discovery in 1958, a vein of gold in Itaituba, 60 miles on the road from the river Tapajós, which acts as a gateway for thousands of hunters who travel by air and river.

Eleven years after, in 1969, completion a road connecting the city of Cuiaba Brazil road for the first time, although the river still serves as its main artery. Small boats arrive early morning to sell fresh caught catfish, piranhas and picaruru, among other types, while river boats serve as floating buses for transportation between cities Amazon throughout the day and night, reconstituted by floating gas stations.

Santarém is a leading manufacturer of hammocks, which provide many advantages over the bed: they are cool, cheap and portable, even in the evening boat trips, while the mattress is comfortable and easy to mold.

The closure of cassava farm, located on Route Chao Alter and operated by farm families, is a series of straw huts display applications native fruit medicinal plants, extraction of rubber trees and cassava flour production.

Cup outer bark of the tree produces a red rubber cutting, as if it bleeds, and coagulates slowly in white, rubber latex, which is then extracted.

cassava flour is a nutritional staple in the basin Amazon, are handled by a human-powered saw, which cuts toxic cassava root. This is then pressed liquid meal, and toasted before being charged bags for transport to market. The operation is completely outside, raw, with a thatched roof.

When the sun is in the pastel sky, had arched west in 1700, life in the Amazon port of Santarem had begun to do: Tri-decked boats open sides, the means of connectivity between civilization that pocket lining, had long since abandoned their daily schedule, the entire truck with the support of the wells below the imposition of Royal Cruises Princess, had accepted his submission. Extensions of vegetation that leads to the city has taken in the velvet greens highlighted horizontally, while the Tapajós river shone with a silver mirror. The river was a source of life for communities in the Amazon, in the same way I had followed the party so tiny two-day river cruise.

I think of that brief interval. the river used to define the path of the size restrictions vessels had left him little choice if I wanted to arrive safely at your destination. What is, however, had defined my way, and what fate brings?

Twilight touched the sky an orange watercolor west Amazon, which took place in the light blue stripes and even intensified in refractionary light making money sculptures scattered clouds and gray, and the Amazon a dark, quiet area of metal. This area once again provide the buoyancy of the vessel and movement through the darkness, while citizens of the Amazon can not be exploited with his life when the sun had come back one day.

An excellent dinner in the Club Restaurant that night was marked by white wine Zinfandel Thumbs eggplant with roasted garlic and goat cheese soup, cream of barley soup with smoked hocks, turkey escalope Roquefort cream sauce served with a spicy pumpkin Rojo popes and happiness of Austria Sacher cake with cream and ice coffee latte.

Once removed from their moorings in 1827, Royal Princess is now pinches of 280 degrees west and softness in a speed of 12 knots in 2200. Explore the Amazon River, whose ship lit, the color of coffee milk seemed solid as snow where your helmet slalom gradually closed the gap between Santarem and Boca da Valeria.

Twelfth day

A series of thin orange crossed the eastern horizon to 0540, the day between undulating formations that money extended to the tropopause in the mountains, announcing another saturated humid Amazon. Wood Continue to ten knots, the ship pursued a 243-degree heading.

Anchored on the morning of silver in 0723 with six channels, the Princess Royal stopped the movement in two degrees, 27 minutes north latitude and 56 degrees west longitude coordinate, in 27 minutes.

During the extension of the tender ship visit hydraulic ramp on deck 3, several small wooden canoes, barely large enough to support families and children people and so immersed in the mud Amazon water level was parallel to the sides and was constantly dug back paddled to the giant shirt to see the mouth open and play the "civilization" a lifestyle unknown to them and then something like an alien visitor from Earth. Although the ship's passengers waited impatiently for the taste of local life, this first meeting had indicated that they felt that the experience of all the bits of reciprocity and, if it were not for benign curiosity, you might have to be considered as "invaders."

Located at the confluence of the Amazon and the Rio da Valeria, Boca da Valeria, translating as "the Valeria river mouth "is the representative of thousands of small isolated communities in the Amazon basin, where basic, almost primitive" bones Riberinhos " or inhabitants of the river "," live from the river and the rainforest in a dozen wooden houses on stilts to support the 75 residents who attend a school and only the church and the distribution of a communal farm and produce cassava in the field. You can, by any measure, Brazil is considered "real.

Covering the distance of the Princess Royal of the coast in mid-water arch, pink dolphins, my tender penetrated thick, swampy, molasses their boats and then doubles, two boats on the river before entering the wooden houses on stilts and with the support of thatched huts marking the Boca da Valeria "pocket of humanity "which also could have been considered a pocket" (stopped) time. "To the river dwellers are" Home ". It was all he had known. We brought our preconceptions "of the house, which was all that was known. Nor was the same, or even remotely nearby. Maybe I should find some common elements between the two during my visit.

I landed on the small wooden pier, floating, self-bit more than a floating boat, heard the words: "Welcome to the jungle!"-the past and only in English, the deposit on the dirt road leading to the crowd of villagers and Aboriginal children, and soon realized that we share the same desire to discover and appreciate the lifestyles of others. I was in the process, has served as a bridge between my world and theirs.

The road leads past the pit lane with a thatched roof, which could be considered as the market of the village and local crafts have submitted their economic activity mainly focused on tourists in the village community. The business buying process, selling, and profiting, has been completely new to them.

Stucco "Escola Municipal de San Francisco" or "school district of San Francisco" with an exterior windows blinds, blue and yellow wood without glass, spartan interior with chairs and desks, a globe and a blackboard above which had been hang a banner with mathematical examples divided into four functions, such as "ADICAE" or "more" and "Multiplicaco" or "multiplication" among others. The one-room school was clearly the basis for the Community, or heart, and knowledge of the channel, and pride in learning and high grades were shared equally and be demonstrated in this work for the rights and drawings hung on the wall behind human emotions covering the distance from my hometown in the U.S. in this small people in the Amazon.

Monitoring and surrounded by a crowd of children that I inspected on foot classroom and took notes, I felt his interest and curiosity, but not my interest or activity but rather in donations collected that suit them and put in the bag hanging from my hand. What all of us as tourists, so that items could be engaged without the knowledge of the modern world in this primeval forest puncture intensified their curiosity, but were curious and want to if I had brought nothing to them was not different from when I, as a small child, had cast an eye on a bag for a parent visit had prevailed and we hope that asked, "Do you have something in it for me?

The people only "street" stood before me, a way rocky ground, covered with a handful of stilts with the help of wooden structures considered "houses", each with a toy boat as I met my boat for fishing and short sea, surrounded by brown water behind them. They were clearly the idea of the village of "a car in every garage," although these cars were "lifestyle needs.

A local women invited me to his house. Locks and police stations have been replaced by trust here, or perhaps the reverse of the order had been in my company. Greed and materialism may well have considerably increased the comforts of life, but these "primitive" have retained their virtues and therefore connections with God, which seems to preclude the realization of the need for these luxuries unless and until that have been faced with temptation. Unfortunately, we as the tourists represented.

The house, accessible by three rustic wooden planks serving as steps and is subdivided into three rooms, exhale rarity: a kitchen with a little over a table, a living room with a single seat, and one room only identifiable as such by the wall of hammocks, but a piece of modern civilization, which seems clearly out of the city, attacking the eyes and ears and undo what had become in my mental picture of life here: a great, though very old, the black-white television. Because the world to come, could have served a show organized by contrast, has only served to ruin. I traveled here to learn and experience what was "new", not to see what we already knew, and I was diverted look quickly.

The house across the street "looked a hammock suspended between two stilts beneath the obvious the main floor and one of them had been kept on a leash to a pig, which had been the family pet or dinner, while steam rose from a poor stove resting on the porch behind it.

A perpendicular, the path leads to produce stability in the communal village land and exploitation of cassava, the two main sources of support other than the river itself. The road, then disappeared into the jungle.

The rainforest of the Amazon itself, the world's largest tropical forest surrounded by Guianas plateau in the north, the central plateau of Brazil to the south, the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Andes in the west, had been the yard "people" and is the watershed Amazon River and its tributaries, covering four million square kilometers in nine countries: Brazil, French Guiana, Surinam, Guyana, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. Covers 40 percent of Brazil. Its existence is the result of high stability of temperature, humidity and precipitation.

The forest, covering more two-thirds of Amazonia, is an extension of the dry forest and savanna in the north and the south and mountain forest west of the Andes. Its dense vegetation, making levels several closed canopies that prevent all but ten percent upward of sunlight reaching the ground and extend 150 feet, more plant life between these levels and the field itself. His extensive flora, on average, more than 250 species of trees per acre typically includes rosewood, mahogany, rubber and Brazil nuts.

Several million species of insects, birds and other life forms, some are science untouched, including alligators, anacondas, boas, manatees, river dolphins, piranhas, electric eels, catfish and freshwater turtles of the world's largest, with 150 pounds Ranger yellow heads, whose only other habitat in Madagascar. mammals land are the jaguar, tapir, sloths, red deer, and monkeys.

Of the 16 million people living in the basin, more than half living in rural areas Boca da Valeria and along the river that provides the vital link with food, water, soil for planting and transport.

When you reach the end of the main artery the village, which had been covered with grass and wore a size structure on stilts, I realized my time temporary and distort culture was broken suddenly, as if suddenly a car was driving collided with a soft brick wall, revealed when the center of the color that appears in the water for coffee known as the "Amazon" The support of the skyscraper-lined balcony of the city designated the Royal Princess. The breeze was related to my emotions more than anything, my initial feelings of loneliness, innocence, simplicity and lack materiality that attach my soul to ease the cracking of glass. This floating city in a few hours some thin, take me away from the place and both emotional simplicity, spirituality somehow promoted last time, and back your physical comfort and safety, where all my desires, needs, desires and met immediately. I lowered my eyes and felt the embarrassment and huge disappointment to me.

A villager, who was attending to his ship, invited me home where I had met his wife later. large stairs, straight, wood leads to outdoor balcony so important. His "inside" has been divided in two rooms: the kitchen and bedroom bedroom.

Contact with his wife in Spanish, Portuguese respondents, I found out the kitchen, definitely well stocked compared to those visited in the homes of others with a center, a picnic table covered with sheets, a wide range of pots and pans hanging aluminum and archaic, but nevertheless are still working, the stove lighted match was the scene of some of the cooking, most directed toward the abroad because of the internal heat of the wood structure, despite the fact all the windows were without glass.

The room size so spectacular, cross ventilation to receive cool breezes during the night from the river, because their diametrically opposed windows and doors (which had no windows or real a hinged panel that covers it), composed almost reads like a house and a double hammock. But what seemed most salient and somewhat out of place in this primitive village in which the work does not seem to belong the list of activities necessary for survival such as fishing, planting and feeding, has been the platform of books.

"Wow see all these books! "I told the villagers in Spanish." Why? "I wanted to know.

"I am the master of the people I love, had returned to Portugal, which shows the school house on the road, and somehow it seemed right that a person of such importance, who had served as a model a key role, would have a bigger house. This man was the village chief and a link to the lighting.

We have spent considerable time examining the books, Of course, each case to varying degrees and printed in Portuguese, and is divided into subjects such as reading, math and language. There was even a chapter for the Spanish lexicon.

During the afternoon, reversing the rocks and earth red stained tender pier, which was a bit surprising to find that the cruisers, which would have been clearly visible from this point of view, had disappeared, not because he was unconscious or psychologically erase my mind in my quest to complete my image the primary reality, but due to a characteristic of flash flood of the Amazon had visibility, and although its non-existence, and the earth had become in a series of lakes of different sizes.

Leave the village in the offer, I always thought that the high proportion of children to adults, children, if they belonged to the people or another in the world had been waiting for the future, but the whole experience was carried out immediately hand for gifts and money Me and all other passengers and whether the cruise ship was a regular, multi-annual Santa Claus visit.

Like people, the inhabitants of the river he shares the same fundamental qualities and characteristics that the rest of us: identity, personality, talent, hoped contribution to world, the hopes, dreams and the final realization of the footprint in the mud when he reached the end of its life cycle. The village had provided crude, primitive, wooden structures called houses where their families had been beaten, commercial ideas, common to subsistence foods of the river and land, a house of school to learn, share, grow and advance, a church of worship and reconnect with their higher powers, and models of parenting, teaching, and the priest to lead, inspire and emulate, everything shows that, despite the geographic differentiation and the differences in lifestyle that we all come from the same source.

However, I still focusing on the outstretched hands and could not help but wonder if we, the tourists who have freely given and taught to expect free, had somehow subverted and spoil its primitive and unspoiled, innocent pocket, no signs of the times. But I knew we had …

I even gave me the master of people a point of a week, if not monthly salary in Boca da Valeria-if, indeed, there was not a salary, but justified as an investment in education.

Somewhere down the line, when the conversion process of modernity and materialism was irreversible, it would have to find a new Valeria da Boca. While traveling, I would like once more to learn and profit from it. While traveling there, I would once again be partly responsible for the inevitable change.

As Princess Royal returned slowly to its hydraulic boom powered by the tender board on deck 3, view of the town and "riberinhos OS "has gradually decreased in size as the group slammed heavy iron decided!

I hope I never lose what we have learned today, I think …

BBQ lunch is served out of the pool this afternoon includes a hamburger with cheese, German potato salad, fresh fruit and blueberries.

Withdraw its offer and staggering in its anchor, the Princess Royal turned to the right a 1400 first-degree section 020 illustrates the Blue Mountains and white puffy cumulus clouds, parallel to the edge of a deep rust-red and green Amazon and wooden stilts Boca da Valeria supported back home, frozen in the geographical time. Not a human soul, adult or child, can be considered somehow suddenly deserted and desolate village, as if the passengers had permeated the ship life and rapidly recovered after the short break it.

Almost silently went to subtract six nodes, the vessel entered the state of Amazonas in sector in the short Parintins.

Movement during the pre-dawn, the shining silver surface water exploration barely perceptible to 1625, the ship anchored off Tupinambarana the island, the location of Parintins, in front of his boat anchored and marked by two prominent steeples.

The dinner was eaten in the restaurant specializes meat in the evening law specialty, place to eat in the reserve only in the starboard side of the bridge 10, which had been marked rich, dark wood paneling and a bar, and included merlot wine, a salad with grilled artichokes, asparagus, roasted peppers, avocado, shaved Parmesan cheese and balsamic vinaigrette, grape pie Mediterranean lobster mousse, tarragon, salt and olives, grilled asparagus, filet mignon, baked potato with sour cream and chives, cream of spinach and mushrooms sautéed, a seven layer chocolate cake s'mores with strawberries, marshmallows and chocolate sauce and coffee.

The Princess Royal has remained anchored in Parintins overnight.

Day Thirteen

The sky had woven a quilt bulk roses, white, gray and silver 0600.

Parintins, hiding the ship's starboard side, was situated on the island and Tupinambarana was founded in 1793 during the colonial expansion of the Amazon.

Tupinambarana The island itself is part of the The largest group of islands in rivers that had been created when the river had deposited rocks, silt and sediment of the Andean highlands. Today, the island chain 200 miles long is abundant, with beaches, forests and banana plantations.

Known by the Boi Bumba, the second largest Brazilian popular festival after Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, the city receives 35 thousand in the bull phase Bumbodromo shaped head during the annual event, held in late June, attempts to tell the story of African and European roots in a working beef unit that was stolen and killed by a farmer to meet the desire his wife pregnant cow's tongue, but later revived by Jean-Baptiste.

Two teams, or the guaranteed and blue, or capricious, the Red attempt to tell the story of how the most extravagant costumes, dances, songs, richly decorated floats and fireworks, and a team of judges selected the winner chooses a secret. computer support is indicated by the red or blue clothing of the person, the street, and even the color of Coca-Cola box. Parintins is the only place world authorized to bottle Coca Cola in both blue and red boxes.

transport from the main city are river boats and a tricycle.

A delicious breakfast served in the Panorama buffet including pork chops, ricotta and spinach cannelloni with cheese sauce, Mediterranean vegetables and fresh fruit.

earrings white cloud, the sky over the Amazon jungle, has given a barrel of light rain in the warm, moist air throughout the morning, but a lid threatening, dark gray back has spread across the river in 1300, preventing all the rays of sunlight reaching the ground.

The transition from sailing ship was still anchored has made almost imperceptible because of its night, mid-river location, attach the fall had not been visible with which to provide a reference. Instead, their engines were audible, had planned to enter the river surface of money to a knot of five slide on a n 243-1340 extent to which the waves were a fan, for its part, the start the last section in Manaus.

Mixed emotions were inevitably overwhelmed me. The cruise when combined with previous travel and many the ground, road, rail and air, all sub-sections provided the trip of my life. During it, I sailed the Atlantic, Caribbean and the Amazon has linked North America and continents explored South San Bartolomé, Santa Lucia, Barbados, Devil's Island in French Guiana, and four ports of call along the Amazon in Brazil was largely me culturally enriched, had learned a lot, there were many unforgettable, once in a lifetime experience, he has met with a number of different people, had fun, has broadened my horizons, and re-examined and I to my life as a result of it. Overall, the experience has provided evidence for a number of related journals and travel articles.

Positive emotions maritime past has certainly been many and all-encompassing. However, some sadness, coinciding with the contemplation the end of my trip, also leaked out. Further examination of this sadness has indicated that his heart was empty, a void not yet filled.

When I landed for the last time, the accomplishments that clearly had many stops, which induces both sorrow and concern empty are no longer satisfied by it. However, I wonder if the emptiness somehow alerts me of the attempts that may take longer road while I had made, perhaps reducing the "incomplete" empty.

The vacuum does not seem to turn round opportunities presented, but rather the they do not understand. Every person on earth time is limited and every minute that passes, and is not used for any individual value is lost forever and can not be found. Time, the dimension of physical existence, is planned for a reason, and you can log into a bank account then withdrawal, with interest. When it runs out each of us, that exhaustion is forever.

Attacked by the rain, the Princess Royal has negotiated the "islands of green velvet and patches of land in the Amazon, changing the course of the bypass, but continued progress toward darkening, horizontal curtain, steel wool braided front of him.

When I leave this journey, I hope has been used time and time to be completely filled by him. When I travel my life, I hope that I have used their time and opportunity have been completely filled by it fully.

The project is the first step toward reform.

The dinner, served in the restaurant of the Club, had including white Zinfandel wine, a Tian of crab, scallops and shrimp with a duo of caviar sauce and papaya, squash and pear soup garnished William poppy seed, endive, Boston lettuce and cherry tomatoes with blue cheese dressing, sour cream and leek vichyssoise redfish potatoes with truffle oil, chocolate ice cream with pineapple ice cream, small ovens and coffee.

Footage of Orange came into the veins of gray on the western horizon, shortly after 1800, the Royal Princess, entered night again.

Day Fourteen

Crawling through the blue waters of the Black River in September knots under blue light, the morning sky with white wisps of cloud pictures, the Princess Royal had a degree n 217 in 0830, now four miles south of Manaus, the capital of the state Amazon and its last port of call.

The thoughts of the end of a cruise or trip enjoyable, rewarding, inevitably, turned to sadness. During two weeks of sailing, which had begun in the State of Florida, the North American continent, and ended the state of Amazonas, on the continent of America South, the ship was my home away from home and I had become a new, albeit temporary, way of life for me, with a daily routine, daily activities, restaurants, nightlife, the attractions located in front of my door, and the two members of the crew and other passengers had begun to know and with whom I started question, in what had driven in fact, all the necessary elements of a floating city, and has no easy exit from this chapter, and their players back, never be repeated.

People, more than any other factor, had provided the bulk of the connection to all this, the spirits with whom I connected as a collective entity, and walk with them and has been the equivalent of breaking a whole, leaving the newly created, expanded and most-encompassing me behind my back and reduce a single individual who has left a huge void. Is not this the feeling, though on a much larger scale than I had when I was first separated from all up and down to earth?

A breakfast buffet served in the Panorama had included a pink grapefruit considerable, scrambled eggs with asparagus, grilled tomatoes, and beans cream cheese, rolls and croissants, cranberry juice and lemon.

Arc in a right turn, the boat approached the skyscrapers of significant size architectural monoliths man not seen for over a week in 0915, when the plane banked into a sort right turn to final approach in Manaus which served as a reference point known as civilization. Laterally to maneuver in his bunk to starboard, three degrees south latitude, 08-minute, below the Ecuador, the Southern Hemisphere and longitude coordinates 60 degrees west 01-minutes, she appendices, 20 minutes later at the dock for its ramp where the noise of the city attacked ears as sharp arrows, an unwanted intrusion almost unknown after the break, spent among primitive peoples that line the Amazon. I was already hungry again.

The evolution of an Indian village revolved around the city of Sao Jose da Barra fortress built in 1669 to guard against invaders from the current Dutch Suriname, Manaus, whose first name was "Sao Jose do Rio Black, Stick, is located 993 miles west of Bethlehem and 475 miles west of Santarem on the Black River and is the state capital Amazon, with a population of 1.8 million euros.

The Black River, a tributary of the Amazon, provides a fifth of its total rejection of an area 292 000 km ² drainage. His dark, warm water of the sediments, without complying with the sediment-laden waters of the Amazon in Manaus, resulting in a clear blue-brown border between the two countries that do not begin to disappear until it reaches a point several miles below.

The expansion of a village in 1832 in a small people in 1856, the city, renamed in honor of Manaus largest ethnic group in the region, Indians Mina, was the first to benefit from electricity, the service stormwater drainage, water treatment, sewage, and tram Electric. Characterized by its European skyline sprouting from the middle of the jungle has been largely determined by the rubber boom, whose wealth has created a 20-year, the architect of European influence, between 1890 and 1910.

The rubber boom itself controlled for about 100 sails rubber barons, hiring and employment two Brazilian cities and tribes, and plantations, producing 90 percent of rubber in the world deducted from the sums of ostentatious wealth that has facilitated the construction. Nirvana fourth century, however, ended when Malaysia began to usurp the monopoly Brazil cause of 70,000 rubber tree seeds, which was smuggled abroad by the Englishman Henry A. Wickham, who was then germinated at Kew Gardens in England before to be redirected to the Far East.

One of the opulent buildings of the rubber boom era, the Teatro Amazonas, remains today. Open December 31 1896, during the administration of Filato Ferreira Pires upper stretch cycle, the neo-classical opera, once performed by people like Enrico Caruso, 701 seats in both public and cottages and Sports green dome, blue and yellow glazed ceramic and vitrified tiles 36,000 of Alsace. Your entry hall 300 people, with the support of 16 bands marble floor leads to the current auditorium with red velvet and tri-level public cameras are flanked by cast French lower columns, Corinthian columns above, 22 Greek-style masks, chandeliers and a ceiling painted to resemble the base of the Eiffel Tower.

The first floor hall, which has a capacity of 200, has a ground block unadhesived 12,000 walnut, oak, maple, mahogany and parts, 16 iron columns, 32 lamps of Murano glass chandelier and ceiling with a painting by Domenico Angeles titled "The Glorification of Fine Arts of the Amazon."

The decrease of the rubber boom led to a decline until 1967, when Manaus was declared a free zone and is now the largest company on Ecuador and whose 80,000 employees produce industry a wide range of electronic products. The city is the site of the factory in rural America South more bike.

An elegent, adapted tea cruise results served in the restaurant of the Club of the Princess Royal in 1600, had included the delicate smoked salmon, scones with cream and jam, pumpkin triangles and mocha cake layers, and was followed two hours later by the cabernet sauvignon Dinner landfall, fish and seafood in avocado with lime vinaigrette, cilantro, vegetables grilled with onions and Romaine lettuce hearts with blue cheese, garam masala freshwater barramundi with aromatic rice, green beans and carrots; mud cake chocolate rum raisin ice cream and coffee.

Twilight burned the western horizon, a bright orange, providing a brilliant backdrop of smoke gray cloud formations, whose team pink lights in the last moments of sunshine on this side of the day.

Day Fifteen

The shuttle took crossing the Black River bridge between ship and passenger terminal the next morning, hot, of course, I looked back at Princess Royal, the "vehicle" that had allowed me to navigate my way from origin to destination, and was firmly attached with its thick, tight on the ropes for a time past and think that no matter where we begin the journey of physics, but where and how it ends, the same statement could be said about the journey of life. Two, I have been infinitely enriched and in the process, have grown a lot.

Would I go back that way one day? I need?

About the Author

A graduate of Long Island University-C.W. Post Campus with a summa-cum-laude BA Degree in Comparative Languages and Journalism, I have subsequently earned the Continuing Community Education Teaching Certificate from the Nassau Association for Continuing Community Education (NACCE) at Molloy College, the Travel Career Development Certificate from the Institute of Certified Travel Agents (ICTA) at LIU, and the AAS Degree in Aerospace Technology at the State University of New York – College of Technology at Farmingdale. Having amassed almost three decades in the airline industry, I managed the New York-JFK and Washington-Dulles stations at Austrian Airlines, created the North American Station Training Program, served as an Aviation Advisor to Farmingdale State University of New York, and devised and taught the Airline Management Certificate Program at the Long Island Educational Opportunity Center. A freelance author, I have made some 350 lifetime trips by air, sea, rail, and road.

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