Sailing down the Amazon. Makes me want to order something online.

We are sailing down the Amazon River in a large ship. We've got 900 miles to sail before we reach the Atlantic. The captain told us today (after the fact) that at one point there was only 4 feet of water between the bottom of our very large ship and the bottom of the river. It's very wide but not always very deep. Someone showed me a pic of a different very large ship that is stuck in the middle of the river, having badly miscalculated. It will be there until it rains somewhere upstream a lot. I mean, a lot. Seems that it hasn't been raining enough. Duh. I am watching an English Premier league match (Man U vs. Chelsea) in the middle of the Amazon River in the middle of the Amazonian rain forest because, well, one can. They are not savages here.

So this is a Grand South America Cruise. They have circumnavigated the continent, plus they went to Antartica where they did not get to cuddle with penguins, so all were bitterly disappointed and wrote hostile letters to whoever at Holland America might be in charge of penguin-cuddling excursions.

 This is a 74-day cruise, very much like the one I was on in October that is the Grand Africa Cruise. The difference is that I got on at the beginning of the Africa cruise, and I've gotten on at the end of the South America cruise. At the beginning of the Africa cruise, everyone was totally excited and pumped and ready to go see everything everywhere and ride camels and climb sand dunes and visit ruins and mosques and ancient churches and eat weird foods and balloon-ride over the Serengeti and hang their toes over Victoria Falls and see lions and tigers and bears, oh my. OK, just lions, but you know. Check boxes on the bucket list. That's what it's all about. Tickin' them boxes.

At the end of this cruise, people are, well, tired. They've seen nearly all of South America. Well, the outside bits. They've waved at Antartica. They've done all the doing they planned on doing. They're a bit sick of the rest of the passengers. The buffet no longer enthralls. They saw sloths and penguins (albeit from a great and disappointing distance) and caiman and jaguars and village girls and boys and mountains and deserts and valleys and very very wide rivers, and they are pretty much ready to go home now. With two more weeks to go. They've misplaced their bucket lists, and they're not too concerned about it. Boxes are ticked. Whoopee.

This was my audience today. I got the feeling that they've heard a lot of lectures on sloths and penguins and caiman and jaguars and village girls and boys over the last 60 days, and they're tired. Very, very tired.

But man o man did they have a good time. They woke up. They perked up. They laughed at all the right places. They were awed at all the right places. They were stunned, baffled, bemused, and bewildered at all the right places. They had the best time. 

So I became an instant rock star on the ship. Well, maybe 1/2 or 1/3 of a rock star, because that's how many people came to the talk - about 1/2 or 1/3 of all the passengers. So I'm a rock star to all of those, and completely anonymous to everyone who didn't come. I have to smile at everyone, because you never know who might be a fan, and these are fans with high degrees of expectations of their rock stars. Some people don't know me, but you can never tell. I went to the loo today in a Brazilian village, and another guy in the loo asked me if I was going to talk about quantum mechanics. I'd never seen him before. You've probably never had anyone ask you about quantum mechanics in the loo. It's not the first time for me. 

My face kinda hurts from all the smiling. But really. It's a kick in the pants. In a good way. A few hundred came to talks. A bunch came to the Q&A afterwards. It went, if I can safely say this on a big ship in the middle of the Amazon River, swimmingly.

These pics, btw, need to be put together. I just took them off the back of the ship - they are the Amazon River, one side to the other. I couldn't fit it all in one shot.