April 3, 2025 Yesterday, upon departing Boca de Valeria I took a photo of a boy sitting by the shoreline looking out into the Amazon River. I imagined he was contemplating his future and wondering what life would be like beyond Boca de Valeria. Perhaps, I was wrong. Last night, I was told of a… Read more

April 3, 2025 Before reading this blog, Please read my blog “Hope for Boca da Valeria” published on January 19th, 2024. It will provide context for this blog and have you learn why this community is so special to Chongae and I. You can read it by going back to Page 1. We are so… Read more

April 2, 2025 Some people make a lot of money over their career, some people lose a lot of money, and some people do both. Some people do both very quickly. Manaus has done both. This was a strange place to build a city, in the middle of the rainforest but there is a reason… Read more

March 30, 2025 Well before we started into the Amazon River, we saw signs of it – especially the brown shade of the water, caused by the immense amount of sediment that flows out into the Atlantic Ocean, covering 500 square miles. We are sailing along the confluence of the Amazon and the Tapajos rivers,… Read more

March 29, 2025 The Amazon River is by far the largest volume of water in the world. It encompasses more water than the Nile, the Yangtze and the Mississippi combined. As we begin our journey down the Amazon River did you ever wonder why it even exists or how it got its name? Let me… Read more

March 26, 2025 A comment from my good friend, Marty Shenkman, regarding my last blog regarding Recife, Brazil. “Fascinating. I had no knowledge of any of this history. It is tragic that so many hundreds of years after what you describe people continue to torment each other over differences of faith, nationality, etc. We don’t… Read more

March 24, 2025 In my last blog I shared the feeling of comfort that Chongae and I feel when we feel connected to the faith community. I am not naive to believe that there have not been times when people of faith have been less than kind to one another. There have been blatant acts… Read more

March 22, 2025 Salvador da Bahia is the fourth largest city in Brazil and one of the many ports we are visiting as we sail up the long east coast of Brazil after having left Rio de Janeiro. I’ve attached a map where you can see the locations of Maceio and Recife two other ports… Read more

March 20, 2025 After a hectic few days in Rio de Janeiro, it was nice to arrive at a laid-back beach resort. Some ports are designated “tender ports” because they are too shallow to accommodate cruise ships. This requires that the ship anchor offshore and you take a tender, a small vessel, the ones you… Read more

March 19, 2025 My friend, Rich Holman shared a comment on our first day in Rio de Janeiro and our trip to Sugar Loaf Mountain. Moonraker was a 1979 film so changes to Sugar Loaf but if you are a James Bond fan enjoy the clip below. Tom,There is a very famous scene in one… Read more