Our response:
It was great to hear from you. Luda and I were hoping to stay in touch with you, but life has never settled down yet since we flew back from Tahiti. We keep saying to ourselves: "NEXT week will be calmer and more ordinary." I HAVE had time to keep up with a couple of odd but interesting discussion lists, Bionoetics and Foundations of Mind, which sometimes get into the work of Karl Pribram and other things which might or might not interest you, but who knows?
But: on to your immediate question.
We flew out February 17 towards Buenos Aires and returned home March 25 from Fort Lauderdale, for the final segment of an 80 day cruise on the Prinsendam from Fort Lauderdale to Antarctic back to Fort Lauderdale. We didn't expect to do another long cruise so soon after the Pacific one, but Luda saw a great deal on this segment and we have always wanted to see the Amazon. We also got an upgrade which was not quite as cheap as I had hoped, but still not bad, to a great room ("suite") with a very large porch overlooking the flagpole of the back of the ship.
One reason we decided to do this crazy thing was that our two previous HAL cruises were so satisfying intellectually. As you know, HAL EXC was really great in the Pacific. Our previous HAL cruise to Alaska was not technically EXC, but was pretty much the same. This was also listed as an EXC cruise.
We are very glad we took this cruise. It was the right decision. There were lots of pros and cons, however. The EXC part was far inferior to the guest lecturers on the previous cruise. The high school teacher who told us how to see the stars, and when our shadows would be the smallest, was friendly and easy to understand, but not exactly like a university class. the woman who would tell tall tales of ghosts and other woo-woo stuff was at a similar level; Luda would not want to be within a 100 meters of her, though I got a little amusement value from it. We did not bother with the random comedians and such. There was one youngish EXC employee, Heather, who did a noble and useful role of trying to make up for ALL of the real content; her talks were quite interesting, and she made a point of really exploring all the ports, but her background was mechanical engineering not anthropology and such. Practical, nice, reasonably friendly, but not Al Trujillo plus Toby in one. (That's for lectures on these places. I can see that her friends would be lucky to be her friend.)
On the other hand, the small size of the ship and the large number of people doing 80 days raised the intellectual and practical level of discussions with other passengers. When we chose sharing in the dining room, we still got stuck about half the time with folks who only wanted to talk about their deserts and such, but there were also pretty serious learning experiences, and we even met a guy who could cooperate about 50-50 with Luda in arranging heroic and great port adventures. Those port adventures and some nights looking at the stars were >90% of the real value for me, but without Luda's leadership the port visits would have been far less worthwhile.
If you are interested, I can send you the link to my vast photo albums for Argentina and Brazil. For the final leg, in the Caribbean, I posted smaller, selected photo albums on facebook, with extensive commentary. There was much more to comment on in Argentina and Brazil, but that's why I never had the time. Still, we sent some emails to our friends from there and would be happy to forward to you if you are interested. We did not take a single ship tour; the ones Luda found were not only cheaper but better, in almost all cases.
(Maybe we would have enjoyed the performance in Parinthins , Boi bumbo (sp?), which the ship arranged, but that's the only possible exception I can think of.) I especially remember the airbnb tour guide in Buenos Aires who turned out to be a real professor of law and economics working with the Congress of Argentina, who gave us a VERY professional briefing, and Pierre Schwartz of Santarem (biggest city on Amazon proper) whose life story was as interesting as the great places he took us to. (He friended me on facebook.) But the others were all pretty amazing too.
There were a couple of powerful dance shows on the ship, and a liberal ship rabbi who gave a couple of interesting small public talks, married to a world class bioethicist who actually did therapy for her clients by video conference somehow on the ship. We only bought a few days of ship wifi; for local wifi and telephone, it was FAR worse than on the Pacific cruise. I did not even take my cellphone to some of the big cities for security reasons.
I'd be happy to discuss more, but this email is probably long enough.
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