Jay’s Internet Log

Early this morning we crossed a sretch of shallow water called the Barra Norte. This marked our exit of the Amazon River, and shortly afterwards we altered onto a northerly, and then north-westerly heading along the South American coastline towards Devil’s Island.

This morning we woke up to a rocking ship. We were now out of the Amazon River and in the Atlantic Ocean, heading north along the coast of Brazil. We don’t have very far to go until our next port, so the ship is moving slow and the ocean seems to be controlling the ways that the ship rocks all around. We love it when the ship moves so much, but we noticed throughout the day that many passengers were getting seasick. Heather and I went up to the pool at 6:00AM to find a wave pool, which we also love. I took the underwater camera into the pool and we had fun with it. We noticed as we were getting out that there was a film of beetles all over the top of the pool, and many were clinging on to my camera strap. They must have gotten in there while we were still in the river. There were so many bugs in the Amazon River that they turned off all public lights on the decks as well as closed down the eating area on the back of the ship. It is now open again, so I hope to get some good video footage off the back in the next few days. After breakfast, we sat through a few lectures; one on some upcoming ports, and another on a tale of survival in the Arctic Circle. This afternoon, I fought with the Internet for about an hour to post the first day’s log. I’m only behind by about a week! For dinner, I had Prime Rib, Pulled Pork, and Lamb. Now that I’m really full, we’re waiting for a production dancing show to start. Tomorrow will be a very early day, so this will be about it for tonight. The last cruise, the ship was not able to stop at Devil’s Island due to rough seas, but everyone is hoping that we’ll be able to stop this time. The four of us plan on being the first to tender over there, if we make it.

Today we will continue on our passage along the Amazon River, towards the city of Macapa in the early afternoon. Here, we will finally disembark our Amazon Pilots, and continue towards the mouth of the Amazon and the open ocean.

We woke up this morning to take a swim in a salt water pool as we navigated through a fresh body of water. The pool onboard is small, but if you get there early in the morning, it is usually empty. Since we were still on the Amazon River, the ship was not moving around very much, so the pool was calm. In the early afternoon, the ship’s dancers put on a “Crossing of the Equator” ceremony that we’ve seen before when we navigated through the Panama Canal a few years back. They choose a few passengers who have never done it before and proceed to put whipped cream all over their heads, dump lemonade on them, and throw cooked spaghetti at them. They surprised a crew member this time as well and it was quite fun. When we actually crossed the Equator, I filled up the sink with water and watched as it went straight down the drain, with no whirlpool created. If you know me at all, you can only guess how many times I did this before getting it perfect right at the Equator. Heather and I walked through the casino to hear meowing.  We found two electronic penny slot machines called “Kitty Glitter”, and we are going to have to try them out. Instead of cherries and gold bars, you have to line up different breeds of cats. It’s very cute, but at the same time, it made us miss Kit Kat and Lit’l Chunks. After dinner, which was my least favorite (All four of us had chicken, but it was not advertised to contain a lot of mushrooms, which I’m not too fond of), we watched a comedy illusionist who we’ve seen before on a previous cruise, but I am still amazed at most of his tricks. After the show, we went back to the room and watched Lincoln Lawyer on TV and went to sleep.

This morning, Pacific Princess will drop her anchor outside the small Amazon Indian village of Boca da Valeria. Once ‘brought up’ to the anchor, we will commence our morning’s tender service. This afternoon, we will once again weight anchor, navigate past the island of Ilhas do Calderao, and set our first courses towards the open ocean.

This little village has definitely been the highlight of this trip so far. I could describe it as similar to the island of San Blas, but the people were a lot nicer. The community at Boca da Valeria is one of about 150, mostly made up of small children. They don’t have many outside influences, and thusly were extremely kind people. It was nice to see a community where corruption wasn’t present in the slightest, but it was difficult at times to see how they were living, with next to nothing but their huts and clothes on their backs. We could see the village from the ship as the tenders were taking passengers over to walk around. There are no tours here as there isn’t much to see, but this area had a huge impact on us. We took some candies for the children and some dollars for the adults, as we were told that if we took photos of the people, they expected money. As we boarded our tender, canoes with the natives paddled up along it, and they held out sloths for picture taking. I went through almost half of my candies right then. The trip ashore took about 3 minutes, and when we got close, I told Heather that we didn’t have nearly enough candy. We were greeted by about 50 children, and two of them immediately took each of Heather’s hands and started walking her around. Two also grabbed ahold of Mom, but we were not able to all stay together. Since I had a large video camera, I didn’t have an escort, so I followed Heather around as we were walked through the small school and up the bank of the river. A group of three boys started following us as well, and when I put the video camera down on its tripod, the children had a lot of fun watching themselves being recorded on the small screen. We hiked up a steep, muddy hill and into the jungle, but then quickly came back down as there wasn’t much to see up there, and we weren’t prepared for a long walk on this terrain. The ship had set up water stations and we needed water badly as the temperature and humidity were unlike anything I’d ever experienced. We were dripping with sweat after an hour or so out in this environment. We made it back on board and watched as we left this little village behind us, wanting to return someday to bring supplies and gifts to these people.

Early this morning, Pacific Princess will arrive at the port of Santarem, and following the completion of our arrival checks, we will make a sharp turn to starboard and out of the main river flow and manoeuvre alongside our designated berth for the day. In the evening, when all passengers and crew have returned to the ship, we will secure the ship for sea and slip our mooring lines. Once the ship is clear of the berth, we will turn to port and retrace our steps back up the Amazon River to Boca da Valeria.

Today we were in Santarem, Para. The city looks bigger than Parintins, but we never made it into town as it was far away from the pier. We took a river boat tour, which took us to a meeting of the waters, where the black water of the inlet meets the brown water of Amazon River. They mix like water and oil and both flow together. The river boat then took us down a narrow passageway where we saw lots of birds, cows, horses, and indigenous people. They live in little huts on stilts and the kids run up and down the banks waving at us. The boat stopped for us to see a sloth, but it was really hard to spot. Once we got to the end of the small river, we stopped and fished for Pirhana. Our boat only caught a few small catfish, but we could see the Pirhana nibbling at our lines. They kept stealing Heather’s bait off her hook. We both got a little too much sun on this tour, and once we got back to the ship, we shopped at a few small stands on the pier. The dinner menu didn’t look all that appetizing, so we decided to eat up in the Sterling Steakhouse. I had a tenderloin steak and rack of lamb, both of which were amazing. After dinner, instead of writing this up and seeing a show, we both fell asleep for about 10 hours.

Late last night, we disembarked our Manaus pilots and continued on our river passage under the guidance of Amazon pilots.  Around lunchtime today, we will slow down and drop anchor near the port of Parintins, and start our tender service.  In the evening, we will heave up the anchor and continueon our river passage to Santarem.

Happy New Year!  Last night, Heather and I stayed up to welcome 2012 in the bar on the top deck.  There was a band playing and streamers flying everywhere.  This morning, the kitchen staff had an impressive buffet laid out in the dining room, and they allowed me to take some photos of it before everyone dug in.  The ship arrived at Parintins around 11:00AM and Heather and I took a tender into “town”.  Mom and Dad stayed on board as Dad is still not feeling 100%, but hopefully he’ll feel better soon.  It only took 4 minutes to get to the pier, and I caught the whole trip on video, which will subsequently be sped up to last only about 15 to 20 seconds eventually.  We were not signed up for any excursion today, but we saw many tricycle drivers waiting to take us for a ride.  These tricycles were basically large wheelbarrows with a small roof and bicycle attached to the back.  A local man rode the bike and we sat up front.  He spoke zero English, so my high school and college training in Spanish proved useful.  Parintins reminded me of Resident Evil 5.  Since it’s both Sunday and New Year’s Day, most everything was closed down, and the locals were just hanging out close to their homes, singing and conversing with one another.  I mention Resident Evil 5 because I felt that at any moment, the empty, run-down streets could slowly fill with zombies.  Another characteristic of Parintins is that almost everyone rides either a bike or motorcycle.  We saw children riding motorcycles, sometimes 3 on one, with their arms stretched out, holding other kids who were on bikes, pulling them along.  Nobody wears helmets.  Our tricycle first took us to a cathedral, which was empty except for a single child, and had one of the nicest nativity scenes I’ve ever seen inside it.  We then were taken to their Boi Bamba festival stadium.  Not being on a real tour, we didn’t learn what this was, but we know that there are two teams; a red one and a blue one.  The spectators take sides and half the seats are blue and the other half red.  We were then taken down some back streets and back to the pier area, where we shopped for a bit before heading back to the ship.  Once on board, we had some cheeseburgers and took a nap.  As one would expect, there are many bugs here on the Amazon River, and somehow a cricket got inside our room.  We found it right before dinner, but decided to let him stay as a pet of sorts.  For dinner I had duckling and turkey pot pie.  We are now waiting for a production show and that will probably be it for the night.  If anything exciting happens, I will write about it tomorrow!

Throughout last night and today, Pacific Princess has remained quietly alongside her berth in Manaus. This evening, when all passengers and crew have been confirmed on board, we will slip our mooring lines, thrust off the berth, and manoeuvre clear of the dock. We will then pass Ilha Marapata on our port side and then turn to port, heading out into the River Amazon, on our way to Parintins.

Today was an interesting day. The four of us were scheduled to take a tour of the famous Opera House, but during breakfast, Dad didn’t feel well and he and Mom stayed on board. I was upset because I knew that Dad really wanted to see the Opera House, as he had visited it previously in 1963. Heather and I took the bus ride to it and were amazed at how beautiful this building was. It is nestled in the middle of the city, and stands out among the other architecture which is mostly drab and plain. The Opera House was built during the height of the rubber boom, and once it was completed, the rubber boom had ended, so it never really got much use. The different pieces of it; flooring, chandelliers, bricks, etc, were all imported from different European countries, and it is obvious when walking around. In one room, they required us to wear little booties over our shoes due to the fragile wood flooring. Downstairs they had a replica of the Opera House made out of Legos. We really enjoyed that! We then boarded our bus and drove to the Military Zoo. This is a training grounds for the Elite Military of Amazonas, and we were told that the military officers do not like their pictures taken. I found this out first-hand while trying to catch them on video! We saw Anacondas, different types of monkeys, the largest rodent in the world, Caymans and Alligators, and some really cool looking large cats. It was here where it started downpouring on us so we took refuge in a roofed-in snack bar for about 15 minutes. Once we could get to the bus, we left and went to a small native indian museum where we saw pottery and jewelry that the natives made. This tour took about 5 hours and was fun and informational. After lunch, Heather, Mom, and I walked into Manaus to see the market. We had been hearing firecrackers going off all day because it is New Year’s Eve, and when we got into the middle of everything, they were going off all around us. Watching us walk around in this crowd must have been entertaining because we stuck out like sore thumbs around the people who live here year-round, 3 degrees south of the Equator! For dinner I had Sirloin Steak and Pheasant, and Heather had four Lobster tails. Tonight there are parties all around the ship to welcome in 2012, and we are looking forward to attending.

We will be remaining alongside out berth tonight and tomorrow, before getting underway tomorrow evening.

It took a total of 30 hours to travel from Hartford to Manaus, half of this time spent in the lovely Miami Dade International Airport. The flight to Manaus was chartered by Princess Cruises and was full of fellow passengers. The plane had about 50% more crew than was required, including 3 pilots. One of the pilots sat in the very back of the plane for the entire trip, playing Skyrim on a really nice laptop. I spent some time back there talking about the phenominal RPG with him. Flying over the region called Amazonas was interesting. Looking down, all that could be seen were clouds, lush greenery, and many winding rivers. The airport is what you would expect for an airport in the middle of the jungle. It looks like something that hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years, and the bathroom I visited had a smell that I couldn’t get out of my nose for about 45 minutes, if you can believe that. Seriously, I caught a whiff of it even after our bus arrived at the pier. I am accompanied by Mom, Dad, and Heather. This is my eleventh cruise with Princess, and my first time to Brazil. Manaus is a city of 2 million people and is situated in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest. It sits next to the River Negro and has a checkered history. It became very popular with the export of rubber, but quickly declined to near nothing when Malaysia could produce rubber for much less money. It now holds many favelas and markets. One of its most prized structures is the famous Opera House, which we will be visitng tomorrow. Pacific Princess is a sister ship to the ex-Royal Princess that we loved so much. It holds close to 700 passengers, and this sailing is completely full. When we boarded, our rooms were not ready yet, so we went up to the buffet, where other passengers were waiting. I had a waffle and by now was completely delirious after being awake for close to 40 hours. Heather and I decided to walk around, so we went out on deck and walked the length of the ship. I don’t know if I’ve ever been to a place with more humidity. It is both hot and humid here, but after spending so much time in the freezing cold Miami airport, we were fine with it. We randomly ran into the head room steward who told us that we could head to our room. After a quick shower, Heather and I fell asleep for a few hours. I awoke and then took a walk outside on the pier.  I snapped a few photos and watched as local boats came and went. These boats are full of hammocks, and locals take them up river for either work or vacation. They are packed like cans of sardines. We then came back on board and had dinner. I planned on seeing a local folklore show after dinner, but can barely keep my eyes open, so we decided to come back to the room and sleep. That’s going to happen right…..now.

To begin with, I’ll put it out there that I tried the Forza 3 demo two years ago and absolutely hated it. The setting was boring, the handling felt weird, and there was no nitro boost. You see, to me, the best racing game ever created is Mario Kart, which is vastly disimilar to the ultra-realistic and almost RPG-like game that Turn10 has created. I played the demo for about ten minutes and knew that the game was not for me.

On the day before Forza 4′s release, I downloaded the demo on a whim to see if the game had been improved with two years development. Boy was I surprised! I ended up spending about 45 minutes with it, completing all six races and wanting more. I read about it online and watched some video reviews. I read about the Speed Wheel and how it wasn’t a complete joke like the Wii Wheel. I also read about the super rare Limited Collector’s Edition that was going for over $200 on Amazon, much higher than it’s asking price. All in all, I was excited, and about a game that I abhored the previous time I played it. It was a strange feeling.

I decided to try arriving at Best Buy at opening and see if they had a Limited Collector’s Edition there. I wasn’t expecting them to, but upon getting there, they had about 10 of them. I instantly felt sorry for all the people who spent a lot of money on them. I also was able to demo the Speed Wheel and was impressed at how well it worked. I was told that with Kinect, it is even more precise. I ended up picking one up as well.

Forza 4 jumps you right into the racing, even before I was able to get the Speed Wheel set up. The campaign progression works as seasons, with each season having faster cars and more races. The types of races are varied well, and after every few of them, you level up and get a new car to try. As you race cars from the same manufacturer, you level up your affinity with them, giving you cheaper and eventually free upgrades. I haven’t really gone into the upgrades yet as the game will automatically upgrade for you when needed, and that’s as deep as I’ve gone. It also has a very deep tuning section that I briefly saw. It was like walking into a room you shouldn’t be in and instanly running away scared. That’s how I felt when I saw what types of things you could do in the tuning section.

The game integrates with Kinect and on paper, it sounds pretty awesome. When you turn your head in real life, the camera turns a bit to look at your mirrors. All I’ve been able to make it do is look to the right, even though I’m trying to look forward or even to the left. It hasn’t worked yet but I’ll try it again, but I think you have to be closer or standing to make it work, neither of which I want to do. When you crash in the game, you can press a button to initiate the “Sands of Time” in essence to go back a few seconds. This is great and all, but the way I have my controller set up, whenever I start up again, it quickly looks behind me and is just annoying. Other than these little issues, this game is rock solid. There are many modes, and I was able to lose two online races successfully without lag, but people online are jerks and crash into you a lot.

Now I picked up this wireless Speed Wheel as well, and I like it a lot. It is shaped like a “U” and I think it has a gyroscope in it. The tops of it glow green at times and I think the Kinect sees it. In any event, it works very well and the movements mimic the hands on the steering wheel in the game. The only problem that I’ve come across with this wheel so far is that it doesn’t have the XBOX bumper buttons on it anywhere. There’s plenty of room for them, even on the middle section. This is problematic when navigating the menus in Forza 4, which released alongside this device. In order to change my title in the game, and probably tune my car, I have to switch out to a regular controller, though this causes other problems when trying to sync back up with the Speed Wheel. It’s funny how third party controller manufactures are not allowed to make wireless controllers for the Xbox, but Microsoft can’t even remember to put the required buttons on them. I’d love to hear their reasoning behind this.

All in all, I am having a blast with Forza 4 and the Speed Wheel as well. This is definitely the best automobile simulator that I’ve ever played, and I’ve just scratched the surface!

Dead Island is another game that I was not planning on buying until a few weeks ago. You could say that I succumbed to peer pressure, as a good handful of my friends were planning on picking it up. Also, there was a midnight release for it at my local Gamestop, and I’ve always had fun at midnight releases.

Dead Island is not difficult to explain. You’re stuck on an island in the South Pacific, partying it up one night, then you stumble back to your room and pass out. When you awake, most everybody has obviously been turned into zombies, and you have to escape the island. The game plays as a first person shooter, almost too similarly to Borderlands, but as a Borderlands lover, this doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

I’ve played Dead Island for about 14 hours, and I have had a lot of fun with this game. Sure, there are glitches here and there, for instance, FateOfVengeance and I stumbled across a couple; The man had recently been bitten by a zombie and wanted us to drive his girlfriend up to safety. You’re supposed to get in the truck and she follows you to it, but instead, she just ran in place. Even after exiting and starting up a new game, she didn’t seem to run to the truck, but when we each tried it in our respective single-player games, she ran to the truck without a problem. That was the biggest issue that I’ve come across with the game. For the most part though, the game plays very well. It’s definitely not perfect, and there is a 37 point patch that is going through Microsoft certification now that should, among other things, make the engine noise louder. Oh yes.

I was worried that Dead Island would be a Left 4 Dead clone, but instead it’s a Borderlands/Fallout clone with zombies. I’m having a blast with it, bugs aside, and would definitely recommend it if you like the RPG aspects of Borderlands, but set on an island, with the voice acting technique and questing of Bethesda RPG’s.

I played Duke Nukem Forever this morning… really, I did.  You can too if you’re in Gearbox’s First Access Club and get emailed a code.  But the game does seem to exist, and it’s shaping up to be a fun experience.

I played through the two-level demo three times, once on each difficulty. The most difficult run was the first one on the easy setting.  This is because enemies spawn in the same location on each difficulty, so once you learn the pattern, the game is cake.  Near the end of the demo on my first run, I got stuck because I found some planks, and when you get close to them, Duke says that a crowbar would be handy, so I looked around the area for a crowbar for 5 minutes before trying to just melee or shoot the wooden planks and move on.  I did die in the vehicle section of the hard run because I got shotgunned and hit by rocks, which takes off a lot of damage on that difficulty.

The game has various weapons spread around the map which are fun to use, but not all are beneficial for that particular section.  I learned quickly that the sniper rifle is very cool.  I found what I think is a hidden item called a Holoduke.  I don’t think there are any other hidden items, but maybe someone else will find one.  Between levels, while the game is loading, you are shown onscreen tips like most games.  Some of these are serious, but others, like the following, are just there to make you smile:  When being shot at, try to avoid bullets

You can feel the Gearbox influence in the way Duke moves around.  It feels a lot like Borderlands.  An issue that I see right away though, and I’m not sure if this is just for the demo, or if it will propagate to the final product or not, is the stutter.  The game seems to struggle on my 360 at times, and it can be distracting.  Overall though, Duke Nukem Forever seems like it will be a really fun playthrough once or twice.