"Dolla?" The young brown-skinned caboclo (river dweller) holds up a cuddly three-toed sloth and poses for a photo. "Dolla? Dolla?" Patricia, my daughter, is swarmed by beautiful little dark-eyed children who shove colorful seed beads at her. Cameras click, U.S. "dollas" are hastily exchanged for beads and photo ops and the barefoot children move on to the next tourist. We're a long way from home here in Alter do Chao, "altar of earth," an island fishing village by the turquoise waters of the Rio Tapajos, a tributary joining Brazil's muddy, winding Amazon River.

Silversea Cruises' small luxury liner, the Silver Cloud, is cruising 1,000 miles up Brazil's amazing Amazon River from the Atlantic Ocean to the port of Manaus. Dense jungle river banks, high water marks on the tree trunks starkly record the changing river levels, which can rise and fall the height of a four-storey building. Jungle vines twist around fiery centrosima blooms, exotic to us but really a river weed. We pass by stilt huts with woven palm roofs, as caboclos of all ages paddle primitive dugout cascos (canoes). Like a temperate-zone youngster on a bicycle, a caboclo child rides a canoe about his principal playground, the cresting river. Amazon children learn to swim and handle boats at an early age to take them to school, to fishing grounds, to neighbors' houses. From the rain forest, we're greeted by the high-pitched scream of monkeys, tortured squawks of macaws and the raucous cries of the ever present black Amazon gulls.

The Amazon River is the second longest river in the world, yet no bridges cross it as it flows through Bolivia, Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador and Brazil, 4,000 miles from its headwaters high in the Andes Mountains of Peru to the Atlantic Ocean. The Amazon is, however, the largest river in terms of the size of its watershed, number of tributaries and volume of water discharged into the sea.

Belem, our first stop, is 90 miles up river from the sea and slightly south of the equator. Executive Chef, Laurent Austrul, invites us to accompany him on a shopping trip to Vero Peso, one of the most colorful markets in South America. Stalls are piled high with pineapples, figs, mangoes, guavas, snake fruit, papaya, giant avocados, tiny bananas, and farofa (manioc flour). Vendors flourish machetes to crack open the coconut-like Brazil nuts each of which may hold seven or eight nuts. To decorate his Brazilian theme-night dinner, Laurent buys the tiny sweet bananas, Brazil nuts and bunches of colorful pucunha or palm fruit from Carmelita who has worked here for the past 32 years.

Riverboats tie up at the fish market with their catches of dourado, surubim, pacu and pirarucu. Gift shops sell charms for the Afro-Brazilian religions of Candomble and Macumba. We buy exquisite Marajo Indian pottery in typical blue and rich chocolate glazes, wishing we had room to carry home woven baskets and the huge wooden pestles used to grind manioc flour. Although many stalls offer tempting treats Veronica Braga, our new Brazilian friend and fellow passenger, warns: You eat here, you die there!" (pointing to the gutter).

The market area is noisy and bustles with activity. A young man passes us, balancing dozens of baskets on his head. Hawkers sell umbrellas against the daily three o'clock downpour. We grab a cab downtown where sidewalks are lined with vendor stalls. Here the traffic is even heavier.

"Wait a few minutes after the light turns green; they like to run the red lights," Veronica says. In a tiny side street bar, she treats us to bottles of Cerpa, her favorite Brazilian beer. A world traveler, Veronica is from Rio de Janeiro but has never visited the Amazon and is really excited about discovering this mysterious area of her own country.

It's great to be with someone who speaks Portuguese. Veronica translates as we enjoy a private tour of the splendid Teatro da Paz, an opulent opera house opened in 1878 and built with rubber plantation money. With its facade of Greek columns, it is a smaller version of La Scala in Milan. Inside are magnificent chandeliers of bronze and crystal imported from France, and wrought iron benches from England. Floors in Amazonian basket designs are of yellow and red wood and acapu, a native wood. In the boxes, floral paintings indicate the level of importance . . . roses, orchids, exotic blooms on the first level, field flowers in the next and no flowers at all in the top boxes or "paradise" as it is called. Famous Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova is just one of the world famous entertainers to have performed here.

Aboard a small riverboat, we cruise the narrow Guama River, a branch of the Amazon with myriad channels bordered by lush tropical forest. Here we are up close and personal with the ribeirinhos (river dwellers). When yearly floods come, the margins of the rivers widen to as much as 60 miles. As the water continues to rise, usually from one to two inches per day, the difference between the water line at the height of the flood season and the lowest level of the dry season can come to as much as 66 feet. Ribeirinhos are forced to move their cattle to solid ground but they stay in their stilt houses or palafitas, either raising the floor or building a new one above the water line. Although they may have to go some distance to get crystal clear water from the igarapes (water that comes from the forest) they insist on living on the riverbanks where food is more abundant.

We see cacau (cocoa seeds) drying on a dock and pass by a kapok tree that is just a "teenager" at 250 years old. A kapok tree can grow up to 80 feet tall and live to be a 1,000 years old. Formerly used to stuff mattresses, kapok is now found in the finest of life jackets. Near-naked children frolic in the muddy waters or watch wide-eyed from open windows and wooden decks as we go by.

Docking at Santa Maria Island we put on Deet mosquito repellent and follow our guide on a jungle path, catching glimpses of brilliant bird of paradise blooms, mighty Brazil nut and rubber trees. In a clearing, we encounter 60-year-old Ladi, his pet black tarantula spider clinging to his bare chest. We're invited to pose with it for photos. I decline! Next, with great speed and agility he shinnies up a tall palm tree and quickly returns with a coconut.

Leaving Belem, we navigate the south channel around Marajo Island to approach the exciting and unpredictable Breves Narrows, a passage through the maze of the Thousands Islands. We wind through 90 miles of yellow flood lanes, bordered on both sides with equatorial forest. In the Furo Grande, the ship begins to round a hairpin bend, the bow and stern almost touching the trees. Here, a village's stilt houses are joined by wooden walkways and a few even sport satellite dishes.

The Silver Cloud provides Sunday entertainment as cabocolitas gather on the riverbanks to watch our progress through the swirling waters. Suddenly our path is blocked by a chain of dugouts. Is this a blockade? A protest? Captain Michele Macarone-Palmieri gets on the horn, fearful the light canoes will get drawn into the propellers of the ship. Disregarding his appeal, flimsy dugouts, surround the Silver Cloud, some bearing up to six family members waving their greetings. On shore, men in white shirts and black pants and women in dresses watch us from the front porch of their Evangelical church. The Fundamentalists have come into Catholic Brazil and built churches and schools in the remote Amazon villages.

At the city of Santarem, third largest on the Amazon, the humid heat is stifling. In the 1920s, Henry Ford spent $80 million to establish an enormous rubber plantation here to produce automobile tires. The project ended in disaster when many of his workers died of malaria. The narrow shopping area is crowded with shoe stores and fabric shops. The hammock market displays a multitude of fabrics and designs. Moorish influences are seen in some of the older buildings. In the park, vendors oversee tables of souvenir piranhas, latex rubber purses, beads, blowpipes and coconut masks decorated with seeds, beads, bones and fish scales. Numerous river boats are tied up along the pier, some of them unloading goods and produce, others providing transportation for the local population to river communities up to 186 miles away.

It's 10 o'clock the next morning as the Silver Cloud approaches the village of Parintins. A loud explosion of fireworks illuminates the grey skies. On the pier, brilliantly plumed musicians welcome us. Going ashore we're greeted by adorable little girls in colorful feather headdresses, tiny coconut bras and plumed skirts; dancing, singing, posing for the cameras. Behind them their parents, Satere-Maue Indians, sell fantastic plumed headdresses of every shape and size.

This small village lies on Tupinambaran Island, part of a large river archipelago in the mid-Amazon, 250 miles east of Manaus. In existence for two centuries, Parintins is rich in Indian culture, boldly represented in the celebrated annual Boi-Bumba Festival, an 80- year-old ritual of magic, mystery, passion and faith, inspired by local legends. In 1988, the enormous Bumbodromo stadium was built to accommodate the more than 40,000 spectators who come and take part in this festival each June. Featured as a Silversea Experience, we are treated to a special performance just for us in one of the rehearsal halls. Barefoot dancers clad in fantastic feathered apparel are accompanied by drums and music in a dramatic spectacle of the death and resurrection of an ox (a cow that can't have a husband, our guide explains). The music is so addictive I begin to sway to the rhythms while, beside me, a tiny feathered child follows the steps, oblivious to all around.

It is hot, it is noisy and we hail a bicycle-cart taxi back to the ship where we are greeted with chilled flutes of champagne. I could get used to this life! I automatically call the Silver Cloud home because the onboard ambience makes us feel like guests at a floating house party. This, I've found, is the number one difference between the Silversea experience and other cruise lines. Not only is the cruise all-inclusive with champagnes and spirits flowing freely throughout the ship, we can also choose from 100 complimentary red and white wines. The guest list numbers just 296, with a ship's company of 210, one of the highest crew to guest ratios of any ship at sea (which explains the elbow room and loving care). It is hard to comprehend my geographic position on the planet – wild jungle lining the river banks – while here on the Silver Cloud I'm being pampered with a decadent aroma stone treatment at the Mandara Spa, named No. 1 "Spa at Sea" in the April 2003 issue of Condé Nast Traveler, or dining on one of Chef Laurent's Relais & Chateaux "La Collection du Monde" signature dishes of coq au vin, jumbo scallops with fresh chanterelles, breaded monkfish medallions, crisp duck with candied turnips and spiced plums, frogs legs soufflé mousse or seared sage and scallop skewer.

On this small ship, we make friends from all over the world. Genial Canadian "gentlemen hosts," Jim Starkey and Terry Heggerud, are great company for dining, dancing or just conversation. As do many other women traveling alone, Patricia and I find them great company. Frequent solo traveler Nikki Jones of Las Vegas confides that on Silversea Cruise ships she never feels alone and Katherine Hepburn double, 89-year-old Joan Corcoran from New Hampshire, who is bravely traveling both directions alone, is observed dancing with "gentleman Jim" or the captain, and being escorted ashore by Terry, as she tramps over rough jungle roots and challenges Terry to keep up with her! There's international hostess, the charming Ilona Rauhala, formerly of Montréal, Hotel Director, Rossano Giunti, the entertainers and crew as well. Artist and restaurateur Mary Rice from Bayfield, Wisconsin, sets up her easel in the Grand Suite and invites us for champagne, caviar and a viewing of marvelous paintings of her Italian villa.

Highlight of the cruise for solo women passengers is a formal invitation to dinner by Captain Macarone-Palmieri and his officers at the evening BBQ by the pool. A full moon and starlit sky complement the romantic setting: candlelit tables, a sumptuous BBQ and music by the Silver Cloud quartet under band leader, Henryk Kuczynski. And not a mosquito to be seen.

We receive a further jolt back into the real world during a motorized canoe trip into the archipelago of Anavilhanas through the Rio Negro to the Acajatuba area. A jungle trail through a protected rainforest reveals a typical native family re-enacting life in a tipi with its open fire cooking. Our guide cuts a branch from a palm tree with his machete and peels back the bark to give us a taste of palm heart. We all jump back when he begins hitting a hollow tree "to wake up the tarantulas." He also demonstrates the extracting of latex from a rubber tree. On our trip back to the ship, we observe a bare-chested bearded man nailing a jaguar hide to the wall of his shack. Obviously a poacher, since it is illegal to shoot jaguars.

On another excursion by motorized canoes we cruise through some of the igarapes or channels, through arrox-de-mareca or duck rice that grows straight up during flooding, reaching six meters. A woman screams, disturbing the tranquil setting and we see a small caboclo has paddled near her boat, holding up his anaconda! His pet's jaws are wired shut, and he is hoping to earn some U.S. dollars in return for photo ops. Beside our boat, a little, brown-skinned boy proudly displays his pet caiman, a type of crocodile found on the Amazon. Jagged teeth are seen protruding from the mouth, but its jaws are also wired shut. More kids approach us with parakeets and sloths. They have paddled out in their flimsy dugouts from their primitive stilt huts.

The jungle is left behind, 1,000 miles up the Amazon, at our final destination: the port city of Manaus, home to 1.6 million people. Primarily the product of the mid-19th century rubber boom, when the Amazon supplied all the world's rubber, the city was opened up with advent of steam navigation luring mass immigration. At the height of the rubber rush some 5,000 men a week headed up the Amazon. Governor Edwardo Rivero laid out boulevards with cobblestones imported from Portugal and lined them with ornamental trees from Australia and China. He installed the first phone system in Brazil, built a race track, bull ring, and dozens of schools, hospitals, churches and a bank. Rubber barons and their wives slaked their thirst with silver buckets of French champagne while the wives, disdainful of the muddy waters of the Amazon, sent their linens to Portugal to be laundered. During a period when the cities of New York and Boston still had horse-drawn trolleys, Manaus had 16 miles of street car tracks with electric grids. In 1869, the imposing Teatro Amazonas was built with rubber money. Local materials were rejected in favor of more than $2 million worth of imported materials and furnishings. Swedish diva, Jenny Lind, sang here. Luciano Pavrotti flew from Rio de Janeiro just to test the acoustics, which he pronounced amazing.

A river cruise takes us past a natural phenomenon, "The Meeting of the Waters," where the clear waters of the Rio Negro and the muddy yellow waters of the Solimoes flow side by side for several miles without merging and later, join the Amazon. We see float houses made of a local wood able to withstand rotting for up to 10 years. Handy if you don't like your neighbors, you just pull up anchor, our guide explains. We stop to take a short walk along a jungle boardwalk to January Lake where we admire giant water lilies, Victoria Regina, named by an English naturalist after Queen Victoria. Some plants have leaves measuring as much as a yard across, able to support the weight of a small child!

Although the voyage has lasted 16 days, we reluctantly say adios to the Silver Cloud, Amazonia and its people, bearing precious memories of the voyage of a lifetime!

Silversea Cruises has been named World's Best Small Ship Cruise Line by Condé Nast Traveler for the past seven years. For more information, click: www.silverseacruises.com

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