A vacation and a blog both cut short in their prime by a problem with a tiny body part. An eye may be small but it carries a lot of weight. You have no idea how hard it is to write when you can’t see. As usual I am being over dramatic but “floaters” and an oily film have made seeing out of one eye virtually impossible and I have heeded the call of my doctor and am returning home for treatment.

In real time I am now two weeks ahead of the last blog about Rio De Janiero, and I can’t leave you without a quick impression of our travels.

We have spent over a week now cruising the Amazonand it has been fascinating.

Most cruise ships only get as far as Manaus:

We got there too and were lucky enough to catch a rehearsal at the opera house:But as this is a small ship we managed to go a little further up the Amazon. There are lots of great stories to tell and photos to view – sadly I have to save them for another day.

But I can’t leave you without telling of some of the great people we have come across.

Venturing further up the Amazon than most other cruise ships created an amazing opportunity for us to encounter some Amazon tribes people.

We were greeted by a tribal elder outside the tribal meeting center:

by a proud man with a fabulous profile:

a charming young man with a winning smilean even younger man with an equally winning smile

by wives with their babies,

and last but by no means least, a proud young boy with a monkey he had just caught:

But there was more to come.

We met an overdressed woman who fell heavily for Gordon:

But she was too late. Gordon had already fallen for an under dressed man

And who can blame him!

Sailing on Seabourn has been an amazing experience and the highlight of the entire trip was when they reached the furthest point up the Amazon of our trip. Here they stopped near a deserted beach so that they could set up what they described as a “picnic” for us. At seven o’clock in the evening we were ferried ashore to the the most fabulous picnic setting I have ever seen: tables set with linens, each place setting having an eight piece silver cutlery setting and four different drinking glasses:We feasted on champagne and huge barbecued catfish caught that day in the river:The fabulosity meter can still be heard!

And finally dear readers there are the passengers of the week I have been collecting for your enjoyment. They will all have to be discarded now. But there is one, so much better than the rest, that I have to share with you now. What better way to keep a smile on your face until we meet again, than this photo of a classy fellow travelerMeanwhile stay tuned – there will, I hope be many more travel adventures to come and I look forward to taking you all with me once again