Friday 1st March – Day at Sea.
We had a quiet day enjoying
the space in our new cabin. Glynnis came to visit and we spent a relaxing
afternoon on the balcony drinking wine and putting the world to rights.
It was warm and sunny but
there was a refreshing breeze and the sea was calm – a good day…
Saturday 2nd March – Santos, Brazil.
Santos is the biggest
container port in South America – so it’s not pretty. Went on the highlights
tour and drove along the 7 kilometre beach front first and saw the leaning
towers - which are tower blocks built on
unstable foundations in what was a mangrove swamp. They are too expensive to
repair and are expected to fall down within 40 years.
The next venue on the tour
was the football stadium. It only has a 22,000 capacity and is in a poor area
of the city but there are no plans to extend as it would mean knocking down
houses nearby. (Liverpool, please note!) The club museum was mainly devoted to
Pele, although Naymar is popular and (more surprisingly) there is quite a lot
of exhibits about Robhinio.
Ian liked the tour and had
his photo taken a few times… and Nesta liked it much more than some of the
other women from the ship who didn’t understand how big a club Santos was, and
only wanted to stay there for five minutes.
After going to the Botanical
Gardens, the final stop on the tour was the old coffee exchange (now a coffee
museum). It was similar to the Corn Exchange in Bristol and was crying out to
be a Wetherspoons! After all the temperature called out for a cold beer, not hot
coffee!
After we got back to the
ship, Austin came to visit and lots of wine was drunk…
In the evening there was a
party on board and after so much alcohol, Nesta did lots of dancing!
Sunday 3rd March – Ilhabela Island, Brazil.
What a contrast to Santos!
It is a very beautiful island
and there are no buildings higher than three stories.
We went ashore in the ship’s
tender – although the one we went on (which would now be our lifeboat, since we
have moved cabin) still isn’t right. The gear box sounds “shot”. It couldn’t
find reverse so had to go round the front of the ship before heading for shore.
It also found parking at the pier difficult. When we returned, we decided we
would wait for the other tender!
We walked along the beach
road trying to find some shade. The nearest beach was full of passengers from
the MSC Fantasia which was also at anchor in the bay, so we walked on. Met up
with Mark & Jane Scott, guests from the Captain’s Table, and another two
Voyager guests and we ended up making a “British enclave” under a tree on the
next beach. The water looked inviting so we both had a swim and then after we
had dried off strolled back.
In the centre of the town
there was a thermometer which showed a temperature of 41 degrees… so we decided
we’d go back to the ship and air conditioning!
Unfortunately the cabin’s air
conditioning cannot seem to cope with the hot weather (it’s certainly hotter
than our cabin on Deck 3) so an engineer was called. We had a shower and a lazy
afternoon and planned to go for steak and chips in the Discovery Restaurant
tonight, with one of our bottles of Malbec of course!
We then found that
disappointments come in threes… First of all, the engineer couldn’t fix the air
conditioning straight away (the parts are made in China, you know… what can you
do?) and is coming back tomorrow morning.
Secondly, Ian went down to
Deck 5 to get internet access (doesn’t work up here on 7!) and found out that
rather than 110 minutes of time left, he had nothing! Reception could not give
a reason other than “has someone else used your password” or “are you sure you
disconnected last time you used it”. As he was sure that the answers to these
questions were no and yes, Ian had no option but to buy some more time so that
he could put up a new post on the blog.
The final bit of irritation
was the fact that Dindo in the Lido Bar informs us that all ten bottles of
Malbec have gone. As you know, we do imbibe a bit but there is no way we have
drunk 10 bottles in such a short time. Nesta looked back over her scrap book
and the most we’ve had is 7 although we’re fairly certain the correct figure is
6… Similar to the internet, though, there doesn’t seem to be any redress open
to us so we’ll have to chalk up the fact that 3 or 4 bottles of wine have
“evaporated” to experience…
We had our meal (with no
alcohol) and went to bed early unhappier than we were two hours before!
Ian in the Atlantic
Monday 4th March – Paraty, Brazil.
Pronounced Par-a-chi, Paraty
is a small town on the coast which still appears to be colonial. We left the
ship, but didn’t actually get ashore! Bit of an organisational cock-up. The Brazilian
authorities only allowed the use of one of the ship’s tenders and local
schooners would provide back up.
We decided to go on the 9am
schooner for the half hour trip to shore but as this turned out to be good old
lifeboat number 2; we decided to wait for the schooner which we were assured
would be another half hour. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we finally got
on board at about 11am and the schooner set off, only to return to the ship on
two further occasions to pick up more passengers… At 11-35am we decided that it
would be too hot anyway to walk round the town, so two and a half hours after
initially planning on leaving, we decided to call it a day and stay on the
ship!
It turned out to be a wise
decision as there was no shade ashore and there were 45 minute queues to get
back to the ship. Added to this, the sea was too muddy to swim in and other
than some tourist shops there wasn’t much else in the town.
Paraty!!
Tuesday 5th March – Rio de Janeiro
We were up early and first
saw Sugarloaf Mountain and the statue of Christ the Redeemer at just after 6am
as we sailed into Rio.
We had a brilliant trip in a
jeep which took in most of the tourist areas of the city.
There is a lot of
construction work going on ahead of the next World Cup and Olympic Games and
the traffic is very heavy. We went to the Botanical gardens and then up to
Chinese view with panoramic views over Rio with the mountains in the background
– stunning.
We even had a stop at Lagos
beach which is where hang gliders land. Richard actually did a flight/jump and
said “the only really scary bit is when you run and jump off the cliff”!
Also drove along the beaches
at Leblon, Ipanema, Copacabana and Arpoadur (the surfer’s beach).
Got back to the ship and had
the obligatory siesta after lunch as at 45 degrees it was far too hot to
venture out.
In the evening, some
passengers went back into Rio for a Samba night whilst the rest of us were
looking forward to a Latino Party up on the Veranda deck but at about 8pm a
terrific storm blew up – pouring rain, thunder and really spectacular
lightening – so the party venue was changed to the Darwin Lounge.
Unfortunately there weren’t
too many passengers, but those of us who were there danced the night away…
One of the Favellas- over 100,000 live in these shanty towns
The pictures are looking absolutely amazing!! :) extremely jealous you are in Rio, however very proud of how deep you went in the sea Dad :) keep enjoying your travels!
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Looks fantastic! Wish we were still with you! That Brazilian sculpture looks like a montage of me playing catch! xxx
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