Day 10

Saturday January 28, 2012

This morning we entered the Amazon River… yes the AMAZON.  But I would have no idea that we were cruising down the Amazon River unless that had told us because the river is so wide that you cant see either side so it basically just looks like we are in the ocean.  This morning I also started taking my Malaria pills.  I hadn’t been concerned in the least about this until my Global Studies class that I just had.  In Global Studies my teacher was talking about all of the diseases that people harvesting rubber in the Amazon are in danger of contracting and all of the reasons why we take our malaria medicine (because apparently its not just for malaria).  Evidently we are entering an area where vampire bats, spiders the size of your head, ticks, leeches, cyanide-squirting millipedes, worms that somehow get into your brain, berne flies that lay eggs under your skin, “kissing bugs” that latch onto your lips and cause heart or brain swelling, mosquitoes bring malaria and yellow fever, etc, etc, etc (I couldn’t type fast enough) are not uncommon… HOWEVER, I think I’ll be just fine.  I can’t believe in 2 days I will be off the boat and exploring Rio!  This is the longest amount of time we have been on the boat without seeing land so far and even though its only our 4^th day everyone is going a little stir crazy.