Dec 25, Christmas Day

We retraced our short route back along the Tapajos back to the Amazon and continued upstream.  The river is quite low as it's the end of the dry season and, by March, it will be a good 30 feet higher, changing the landscape we now see.  At 7:00am we anchored off the Coboclo village of Boca da Valeria, which isn't an occupied village but is more a "stage set" for cruise ships.  The houses, church, school etc are as an actual village would be and people from the surrounding villages come by canoe to "occupy" the place and sell handicrafts. Passengers who didn't pay attention to the lectures were passing out candy to cute kids who don't have access to a dentist and have little, if any, dental hygiene. There were also a number of kids offering to pose for a Dollar with animals poached from the wild such as sloths, caiman, toucan, monkeys, snakes etc. There were rides in motorized canoes available for $5.00pp which went around the streams to actual villages which were clean and well kept. This area is also where the pink dolphins are in abundance and we saw plenty of them from the ship and tenders.  We sailed away around 1:00pm and continued on towards Manaus. There was a Christmas BBQ on the pool deck with a visit from Santa.  After lunch our friend Cheryl Sprague gave an informative talk on Frederick Chopin & George Sand.  We joined Wolf & Cheryl in their suite before dinner for Champagne & canapes and the 4 of us had Christmas dinner together in the main restaurant.  They had turkey and I had fillet.  The after dinner show was Stephanie Baldwin singing a medley of Christmas theme and classical pieces.