Happy Easter from Agadir – Morocco – Instead of Easter bunnies, I have something quite different. The story continues …

On Wednesday, April 2, still in Manaus, we were going on a “Pink Dolphin Encounter”.  Unlike pink elephants, which are a figment of your imagination when you have had too much to drink, pink dolphins are real.  I spent my time photographing one of my favorite marine photographers, Dee, while she found just the right angles:

The next day, we docked in Parintins, home of the Boi Bumba Festival.  These are the people with the blue Coke cans, remember?  They have figured out how to turn their town’s obsession into money.  It helps pay for the costumes, staging, and all.  I signed up for the show but got all screwed up in the time changes and arrived way early, two full hours early.

I spent the first one touring the town in a tuk tuk.  

Note the politically correct shirt the Tuk Tuk driver wears.  He’ll take a red fare or a blue fare.  Makes no difference.  Parintins isn’t a city.  It’s just a town.  It has a church, which my driver assumed I would want to visit:

A waterfront:

Traffic and shops:

But, what’s important here is the Boi Bumba Festival, the costumes, the dancing, the floats.  The festival celebrates the Bumba Meu Boi, a legend about a resurrected ox. It is also a competition where two groups that perform this play, the Boi Garantido (red) and Boi Caprichoso (blue), compete in extended retellings of the story, each team attempting to outdo the other with flamboyant dances, singing, and parade floats.

There are installations all over town creating this kind of thing:

This would be the red side garantido.

Here’s some blue side work:

All of which is very cool, but I never did get a blue Coke.  When I got made to the Pier, very near the show venue, I was still an hour early.  I had made a bigger mistake than I thought I had.  Luckily I met up with another passenger, Bev Moon, from Tennessee, who had managed to do the same.  With another hour to kill, we went out in search of an ice cream cone, or a beer, whichever we found first.  It was the beer.  The bar was interesting.  At the same counter as the libations, you could also buy snacks, cigarettes, razors, menstrual period supplies,

On the opposite wall, were the groceries, and, if that wasn’t complete enough, that wall was just a divider.  There was a bank and a notary on the other side of it. Here we sit, bellied up to the bar:

We thoroughly enjoyed that little interlude and it put us in the right mood for the Boi Bumba show.

It was a hard act to follow, but our comedian, Martin Beaumont, did a creditable job that night.  We have had him to dinner a couple of times since and he’s a lot of fun.

On April 4, we were at Alter do Chao and I decided to give it a miss and catch up a little.  If that had been more successful, I might not be writing about April 4 on the 18th, but now I really am catching up.  Maybe.  Alter do Chao looked like another Boca de Valeria only less lively, if that was possible.  The ship obviously didn’t think much of it, as we pulled in at 8:0am and out again at 1:30pm. They even scheduled a dressy night, which they pretty much never do on port days.  They put the Repertory company on stage too, and that’s always good. 

On the 5th we were back at sea, and crossing the equator yet again.  We were sailing away from Brazil after a whopping 18 days.  I don’t know if I have ever been on a cruise ship that spent that kind of time in one country.  Oy! Brazil