April 19 – Back to Manaus

We didn’t have anything scheduled until late today so we both slept in.  Paul, in particular, slept quite late for him.  He is still pretty congested with a scratchy throat.  So after he got up we decided to see the ship’s nurse. 

Yep.  He has COVID.  Fortunately, Mary is negative.  We isolated ourselves in our room and had a room service lunch.  Mary did go up to the top deck to get a call out to our travel agent about the change of plans. 

The ship’s company is sending a boat from Manaus to pick us up and return us to Manaus.  This is both for the safety of the ship’s passengers and crew as well as getting Paul to civilization in case is COVID takes a turn for the worse.

We were off the boat within about 3 and a half hours of diagnosis. 

Life is an adventure.  Sometimes not the type of adventure one would like but and adventure nonetheless.

The up side is that the day was sunny, the sky blue and, for much of the ride, the water like a mirror.  It was a gloriously beautiful hour plus ride back to Manaus.

The ride gave us waterfront views of Manaus.

The ride also took us under the Rio Negro Bridge (the day we left Manaus it was dark when we went under the bridge).  Being in a boat allowed Mary to get good photos of the bridge from water level.

And there were great reflections of the bridge on the water.

We were met at the dock and staff helped us get a taxi to the hotel that they had arranged for us.  It is the hotel that we would have been staying at on our return.  So we won’t have to change hotels for a while. 

We had some conversations with Tara.  For now, the tour company here in Brazil will be working with us on figuring out where we go from here.  Hopefully Paul will get over this quickly and we might be able to finish the last part of the trip to Leneçóis Maranhenses, a beautiful national park with vast white sand dunes interspersed with turquoise pools.