THE CLIPPER ADVENTURER
ON
THE ORINOCO AND AMAZON RIVERS

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A report on the Clipper Adventurer on their 16-day exploration along the jungle rivers of South America.

We were 16 days on the cruise and 10 of them were on jungle rivers or exploring wildlife in some way. The wake-up calls on exploration days sometimes came at 5:30 a.m., with passengers having a quick breakfast of fruit, melon and pastries, then boarding zodiacs and heading for the shores or tributaries of the Orinoco and Amazon Rivers. Many days there were two scheduled zodiac trips, one in the morning and one in late afternoon, to check out wildlife or to visit local villages.

This is not a casino/cabaret/dancing-till-dawn kind of  cruise. It’s an ecotourism-style voyage on the Clipper Adventurer, the expedition ship of Clipper Cruise Line that was a former Russian research and passenger ship. Renovated and refurbished, carrying naturalists and culturists as guides and lecturers, the ship now takes 122 passengers (max) on adventure cruises into off-the-beaten-path places where big ships don’t go. The lifestyle aboard the ship is casual and unregimented. The only entertainment is a few movies, lectures and good conversation and exchange of ideas with other passengers and the officers and staff. The passengers are mostly active travelers who are interested in wildlife and local culture and who are ready to scramble up a muddy path or walk through a rainforest. They’re looking for new adventures and new experiences to enrich their lives.

Center of activities on the ship is a main lounge with a bar where early breakfasts, buffet lunches and cocktail hour appetizers are served, and where the lectures are given. There is 24-hour iced tea, juice, coffee, and hot chocolate available here also, as well as the coveted 4:30 p.m. chocolate chip cookies. A smaller lounge and bar is located midship where there are usually late-night gatherings of a few passengers and crew or a few passengers playing cards or cribbage in the day. A library has good reference books on the area and wildlife. Most people when not on excursions gather in lounge chairs on the aft boat deck or at tables port and starboard to catch the best breezes. There is an open bridge policy so you can also go to enjoy the activity at the helmstation.

Cabins are simple, all outside, with twin beds and a private bath with shower (handheld style). Avoid the two aft cabins on the main deck because they have engine noise and also are next to the zodiac boarding areas … good for being first on the zodiac, but bad for the noise of suitcases being offloaded at 4 a.m. the last morning. Four suites are on the boat deck. The two aft ones are best since the forward two have a somewhat obstructed view. The best lowest price cabin (category 1) is cabin 104.

The dining room accommodates all passengers at one seating. The usual program is to have juice and fruit in the lounge early, then have a full breakfast in the dining room after the zodiac outing. Evening entrees have a choice of seafood, meat or poultry, pasta or vegetarian. Special diets are accommodated. One evening there is a barbecue on deck. Food was plentiful, but not gourmet, and usually too heavily sauced for our taste.

Dress is totally casual during the day, usually shorts and t-shirts.  However, you may want to bring long sleeves and long pants for some of the jungle encounters as extra protection against mosquitoes and walking through occasional grass and bushes. Bring a visor or other hat for protection in the equatorial sun, and lightweight raingear to carry with you for surprise squalls. Most evenings are casual; captain’s dinner and the farewell dinner are dressier, men usually wearing a sports jacket and tie, and women dressy pantsuit, dress or long skirt. Also bring a sweater or jacket for the lounge where lectures are given … it’s kept freezing cold ... must be leftover from when the ship was used in Russia for expeditions and cruises.

We encountered only a few mosquitoes on our September-October expedition (still dry season), but bring insect repellant to take on outings in case you need it. Yellow fever protection is required (shots last 10 years). Some people take larium for malaria prevention, but many reactions have been reported to larium and many people choose to not use it.

Passengers were mostly from the United States and Canada, with others from Europe, Africa, and New Zealand. There was a film writer, another travel writer, some physicians, a dentist, a corporate consultant, a man who made his money from fast-food franchises and storage warehouses, a group from M.I.T., several retired couples, a couple on their first cruise and a retired naval officer who had been on 25 other Clipper cruises. One couple was staying on all the way to the Antarctic. The officers were German, and the staff and crew were U.S., Canadian, Swiss, and Filipino. The naturalists were from Costa Rica, the U.S., and Brazil.

There are motorized zodiacs for exploration with a naturalist on each who help spot the wildlife and share their knowledge with wonderful stories on the birds and other animals and plants seen. The naturalists keep in touch by VHF to tip each other on good finds. On good days there were only 10 passengers per zodiac, on other days there were 12, much too crowded for comfort or good camera action. An extra zodiac is needed. A good naturalist tip for spotting wildlife: don’t just look at the shoreline, but focus your eyes into the forest at various depths.

The cruise began in St. Kitts, with the first day spent at sea, with our first stop the next day at the island of Margarita, from which many passengers took an optional day flight to Angel Falls and back. The ship motored all night (to be the usual pattern), and the next morning we arrived in Trinidad. There was a morning excursion to a bird nature center and a late afternoon excursion to the Caroni Swamp where we motored in large 50-passenger wood boats along a narrow mangrove waterway where we spotted many birds and saw a boa constrictor resting in some branches overhead. This is the day we saw our first really unusual bird – a potoo. It is shaped and colored like an old dead branch of a tree, and you could barely tell what it was even after it was pointed out to you! At sunset we stopped the boats within sight of an island of trees that were the roosting trees of scarlet ibis. Hundreds and hundreds of the brilliant red birds whooshed and glided through the sky and settled until the trees looked like giant Christmas trees with scarlet ibis ornaments.

The next day we got the zodiacs in the water -- we were on the Orinoco River -- and went up the river, a naturalist to each zodiac, to see what we could see. Bird watchers were in heaven – there were blue and gold macaws, kingfishers, egrets, herons, and there high in a tree a pair of toucans posing for us. The river was narrow so we could go from one shore to the other. On one shore we saw a two-toed sloth millimetering (slower than inching!) along the branch of their usual haunt -- a cecropia tree. Along another shore was a flock of parrots and a group of capuchin monkeys. And one of the guides found floating in the water a dead anaconda. Then the high point of the morning -- our zodiac was the first to spot the hoatzin, a bird surely put together by a committee, with spindly legs, a gangly neck, a chicken head, and a crown like a peacock’s crown with punk rock spikes to top it off. The body is tan and brown, the face is blue, they have poppy little eyes,  they eat leaves, and they smell – the locals call them "stink chickens".

The next day, we explored the Orinoco further upriver. More kinds of parrots and other birds, and a band of  howler monkeys ... creatures with more of a loud roar than a howl. Later that afternoon we were invited to a village of river dwelling natives. This was no tourist stop – they only have a ship stop by two or three times a year. We strolled their board walkway, listened to two boys play guitars and ukuleles (one totally handmade), took photos of a 112-year old elder, and took pictures of a friendly woman with a parrot on her shoulder. They live in stilt houses because the huge tidal action and the rainy season usually brings water to their doorsteps.

The next day, near the mouth of the river, dolphins greeted us, and we made one more run into some side creeks. That night one of the naturalists, Joe Ordonez, read a poem he wrote that captured some of the sightings and our feelings. Part of it:
 "A howler monkey, all the more interesting because we feel a kinship.
He is our past.
We determine his future.
He looks at us unknowingly …
We take a moment to stop, to listen
To shut down our thoughts, and let the river speak.
Every creature a part of the greater whole, and the greater whole a creature in itself.
As we pause, they come to us.
Capuchin monkeys dance in the trees.
A toucan flaps, then glides, then disappears.
We hear the call of the kiskadee, and the chatter of the kingfisher. How lucky we are!"

We were at sea all the next day, heading for the Amazon, with time to think about what we had experienced so far, and to hear lectures on bird songs by Luis Baptista of the California Academy of Science and on the camouflage techniques of rainforest creatures by Marcel Lichtenstein.  No wonder we had so much trouble seeing things! That night we watch the film Papillon. Tomorrow we will be at the islands where the prisoners were kept … Iles du Salut. Devil’s Island is the other name. We visited two of the islands, remembering the film, and walked the ruins of the French penal colony. Ferns and trees and roots are taking over, but we can see the hospital, and the cells for solitary confinement, and the cemetery for children. And the church, austerely standing by. Pig-like rainforest rodents called agoutis wandered about. The prison was shut down in 1953. A rocket launch site is now next to the hospital. We saw thousands of leaf-cutting ants parading with their leaves on the path back to the ship.

The lectures and recaps of the day by the naturalists have me constantly saying "Wow!" as I learn things such as the fact that it is the leaf-cutting ants and their cutting of tree leaves that allows sun to come into the forest and allow undergrowth to occur, that little green herons fish with a lure, that there is a bird that uses a plant to treat itself for snake bite, that butterflies come to flowers with landing platforms and hummingbirds come to flowers that hang, and birds have dialects according to their location and they learn their language best when young and when taught by personal interaction, just like humans, and their songs have patterns with introductions and variations of themes as in human music.

The next day, at sea again, we heard a talk by Mike Hopkins, one of a dozen naturalists who worked full time for six years to put together a book cataloguing the thousands of plants in one small area of the forest. It went to press just days before the cruise and we were able to read the bound page proofs (in Portuguese now, English later). There is so much diversity in the Amazon … new plants and insects and even new Indian tribes are still being discovered, and sadly 1 percent of the rainforest, perhaps more, is being cut down every two years.

The next day we were on the Amazon River, the mighty waters that collect from the mountains of Peru and the vast lands of Brazil.

We did a zodiac run without touching shore until the Brazilian officials decided we were legal, then later visited the little town of Alter do Chao. The highlight of that town – the Center for the Preservation of Indigenous Art & Culture that contains an excellent exhibit of native art and artifacts representing more than 75 Amazonian tribes. Their gift shop has fantastic things and reasonable prices, including ceremonial masks and tribal music.

 We did two zodiac runs a day for the rest of the days. More parrots, more monkeys. A visit to another village. At one point I grabbed a handful of the water and pressed it on my face. My hand has been in the waters of the mighty Amazon.

The final day on the zodiacs was special. This time it was because we were in the midst of pink dolphins, called boto, at the mouth of a tributary to the Amazon. Some of the passengers went piranha fishing.

As we approached Manaus most of us got up early (again!) to see where the muddy waters of the Amazon are met by the tea-colored waters of the Rio Negro, forming distinct demarcation lines until the mix. The last day we were in Manaus, quite a contrast with street vendors, a busy market, bumper to bumper cars and more than a million population. Manaus once exported most of the world’s rubber and was a wealthy city. We toured the famous Opera House, built in 1896 and recently restored to some of its original splendor (I danced some waltz steps and imagined the music and dancing there in the elegant past). Then we shopped the market for last-minute souvenirs, including more ceremonial tribal masks and hand-hewn dugout canoe paddles.

Departure was by charter plane early in the morning. We left with good memories of the moments in the rainforest,  the new experiences, and the new friends made, but also with the disturbing knowledge that these vital rainforests are being destroyed and the ecosystems being exploited, many species of animals and plants already lost forever and others under threat of extinction. The destruction is not just a loss to Brazil, but to the world. Even where there are regulations, they are seldom enforced. Who is the most important animal in the Amazon? Man, said one naturalist, since he will decide what happens to the forest.