From Evernote: Boca da Valeria The tiny village of Boca da Valeria sits at the confluence of the Rio da Valeria and the Amazon. This remote and primitive Indian village of 75 inhabitants is surrounded by the great rain forest of the Amazon, and is…
From Evernote: Santarem – a real taste of the Amazon We arrived at Santarém at 7.30am on Saturday 19th January. Even at this early hour the temperature was edging 30C, and projected to rise to 36C later in the day. It was also very humid. Santarém…
From Evernote: At last, the mighty Amazon Having seen reports about the snow storms and freezing temperatures back home in the UK, I feel a bit guilty talking about sea temperatures around 24C and air temperatures hovering just above 32C, which is…
From Evernote: All At Sea It’s Thursday 17th January, our fourth day at sea since leaving Cape Verdes. I’ve only mentioned the day and date because it’s so easy to lose track of time. One day seems to effortlessly morph into the next, and with eac…
From Evernote: Mindelo, Cape Verde Two days at sea and we arrived at Mindelo in the Cape Verde islands. The temperature has been gradually rising since we left Lisbon, which I guess is to be expected as we sail southwards towards the equator. The …
From Evernote: Madeira – land of wine, and Ronaldo? Continuing my account of our outward journey from Tilbury in England, via Amsterdam, Lisbon, Madeira and Cape Verdes to the Amazon. We arrived in, Funchal, Madeira at 7.30am on Thursday 10th Janu…
From Evernote: Lisbon and custard creams We set sail (if I can use that term for a diesel-powered ship) from Amsterdam on the evening of 7th January, headed for our next destination – Lisbon. This entailed navigating back up the 19-mile canal to r…
From Evernote: First Stop: Amsterdam Our first day at sea was mainly taken up with unloading the suitcases (4 of them) into the limited storage space available in the cabin, undergoing a fairly protracted but thorough lifeboat drill (lifeboat 8 no…
A much-overlooked but useful feature of Wikipedia is the “Create A BooK” tool. This enables you to source useful reference information from Wikipedia’s pages into your own personalised book, that you can either download for a free as a PDF or in o…
This is the first in a series of posts I hope to publish (Internet access permitting) about my forthcoming adventure to the Amazon, West Indies and the Azores. Though I travelled fairly extensively during my time in the Royal Navy (more years ago …
