Amazon & Carnival Explorer Cruise - Day 42: Parintins, Brazil

Sunday, March 17

We are headed back towards the mouth of the Amazon and today our port is Parintins.  We arrived at 8:00, but Val and I didn’t see our arrival as we were still fast asleep.  We aren’t going ashore until after lunch today so we could relax and sleep in this morning.  Parintins is a relatively small city of a little less than 70,000, but we won't be seeing much of the city today as our activities will not take us far from the tender dock.

After a leisurely morning, we had an early lunch at the Lido and decided it was time to go ashore.  Today we have tickets to the Boi Bumba Festival Show which started at 1:45.  Rather than try to explain the festival myself, here is an excerpt from Wikipedia.

"Often called Festival do Boi-Bumbá, Bumba Meu Boi, or simply Festival, the event takes place during three days in late June.  The festival celebrates a local legend about a resurrected ox.  It is also a competition where two teams, Garantido and Caprichoso, compete in extended retellings of the story, each team attempting to outdo the other with flamboyant dances, singing, and parade floats.  Each team has to complete its show within two and a half hours. A team that does not follow this time limit is subjected to points penalties. Each nightly performance is largely based on local Amazonian folklore and indigenous culture, but also incorporates contemporary Brazilian rhythms and themes.  The place where the teams present themselves is called "Bumbódromo", a round, grounded stage. The 'Bumbódromo' supports 35.000 people in the audience."

The fact that this festival takes place in a relatively isolated area and draws such large crowds shows just how popular it is.  We aren't here during the actual festival and aren't seeing the show in the "Bumbodromo" today, but we would be seeing the winning team from last year's festival perform in an auditorium very near the tender dock.

Parintins is a tender port so as soon as we finished lunch we gathered our things and headed for the tender platform.  We got right on the tender, but had to wait a while for it to leave while they loaded everyone in.  Today is very hot with the temperature in the mid 90’s and the humidity in the same area.  It’s gets very hot in the tenders as there is no air conditioning or even ventilation.  The tenders are dual purpose boats and are primarily lifeboats built to get as many people safely off the ship as possible and not for comfort.

After getting to shore, we walked through the terminal and across the street to the building where the show was being held and already a line was forming to get in.  We got in line as the seating is basically flat with few tiers.  It was pretty hot waiting in the sun, but it wasn’t too long before they opened the doors.  The show was being put on exclusively for passengers on our ship so there were only our fellow passengers and some crew.

Because Val and I wanted to take pictures, we tried several different seating locations and finally settled on seats on the end in the front of the second tier.  The best seats were in the front row, but they were long gone by the time we arrived.  After getting our seats, we walked around the auditorium for a bit looking at the different sets and watching some of the performers entertaining the crowd before the show started.  At one point, the chief (the chief of what we never found out) walked up to Val and painted Val's face with juice from the yuruko seed pod.

The stage is for the musicians and singers while the dancers (who also sang) performed in the area in front of the stage.

The "Chief"

You can see the the paint the Chief applied to Val's face. She is standing in front of one of the props used in the performance.

Soon it was time for the show to start;  the first performers came out and from then on for over an hour the dancing, singing and pageantry was continuous.  Besides the dancers there was a band and singers who sang throughout the performance as did the dancers.  The costumes were very colorful and bright and constantly changing along with the sets as they moved seamlessly from song to song.

Thankfully, the building was air conditioned, but with all the people and the energy expended by the performers it became quite warm, but the dancers didn’t seem to notice and were very energetic throughout the performance.  It was obvious from the start, that Val and I wouldn’t be able to get any good pictures from our seats so we made our way down the side towards the front where we had an unobstructed view, albeit from the side.  We were joined by other photographers, but we had gotten to our position early so we had one of the best spots.

The lighting wasn’t very good and Val’s camera doesn’t perform very well in low light so about half way through the performance she returned to her seat when she got tired of standing.  I made it through the show and not only had a good spot for photography, but a good viewpoint to watch the show from.

When the show was over, the performers stayed around and posed for pictures and talked with the crowd (those that spoke English did anyway).  All in all, it was a great afternoon and one of those things that exceeded our expectations, we are very glad we went.

Val and the Chief.

We left the auditorium and went out to look at what the numerous street vendors had to sell and bought a few things.  The high heat and humidity were really getting to me so after our shopping, we headed off to the tenders.  We had a little wait, but were soon on our way to the ship and the cool of the air conditioning.  When we got to our room, we were both very hot and sweaty and took showers before relaxing a bit before dinner.

I felt much better today, but the heat had exhausted me, so I decided not to go to trivia tonight and spent the time downloading our pictures and relaxing.  I joined Val in the Ocean Bar after trivia ended and after chatting a while with Roy, Gabriella, Wally and Nancy, we were off to dinner.  Once again, I shortened my time in the casino as we have to get up early tomorrow for a tour and the clocks will be set back tonight so we’ll lose an hour’s sleep.  Val stayed longer and continued her winning ways.  She is not winning big amounts, but just enough so she can keep playing on her winnings.  Tomorrow we will be in Alter Do Chao, our last port on the Amazon.