Brazilian Coast
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| 📷 Looking down from bowsprit at Daredevil Dolphin |
The first time I was on a ship with a sea day I wondered
what I would do all day. Depending on
the ship there may be a lot to do or very little. This ship has had a nice level of
activities. There are usually some talks
by the expedition crew, always a recap and look forward talk in late morning,
some simple entertainment in the evening and often something special
entertainment wise right before bedtime.
The first sea day was Halloween, and we were crossing the equator so
two additional excuses to do something fun.
The talks have been on ants, fish reproduction, the circle of life in
the Amazon and other things. For those
non-sea folks out there, crossing the equator on a ship is a big thing.
If you have never crossed the equator, you are a pollywog. If you have crossed, you are a shellback. According to lore, you do not become a shellback simply by crossing the equator, you must also be “cleansed”. So, in the afternoon of our first sea day, we with a lot of our fellow passengers and a crew member participated in a ceremony to become shellbacks. It was all in great fun and reminded Jeff and me of boat renaming ceremonies on the river. King Neptune and his queen along with mermaids, pirates, a nurse and a judge performed the ceremony which was accompanied with mojitos. The judge brought us up in groups to hear our crime and to face our sentence. There was a myriad of crimes we all had committed, but the outcome was always the same. The gathered mob loudly called out the verdict. Once the judge spoke the sentence, the crowd chanted the sentence - “kiss the fish” which was brought to you by the nurse. After all of us had faced the judge and completed our sentence, it was time for our final step. We had to be cleansed which meant we all had to jump in the pool; wish I had realized that ahead of time so I could have put my swimsuit on! We were game and jumped in that was when I discovered one end f the pool is almost as tall as me, so I had to either stand on Jeff or tread water to keep my mouth above water. It was all fun and the mermaids joined us, so we had a full pool for a few minutes.
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| Can you spot the nurse in the top left photo? Mermaids in the bottom right aren’t bad either. |
After drying off, it was pretty much time for dinner and
then for the Halloween Party. Jeff and I
had been alerted that it was common to celebrate Halloween on Seabourn ships, so
we had gotten/made costumes ahead of time and brought them with us. I had bought a little cape that made me look
like a jack-o-lantern and had accessorized with pumpkin earrings and a
fascinator that looked like the pumpkin stem.
We decided I was the Great Pumpkin and thus decorated a yellow tee shirt
for Jeff to be Charlie Brown. The party
was up in the Constellation Lounge which is on the top deck of the ship and its
rug does look like small star constellations everywhere. The place was decorated. We had witch’s hats
hanging from the ceiling with lights in them and another string of lights that
looked like sunglasses lighting up. The piano was covered in fake cobwebs and
lots of other small decorations around the room. The husband wife duo were singing when we got
there and while they are quite good, their music is not really dancing
music. After they finished a couple of
other crew entertainers did a number or 2 and then we hit the song everyone has
been talking about – our cruise director with our feature singer did the title song from Phantom of
The Opera that was fantastic!
The lady feature singer did a few more numbers that had lots of us on the dance
floor. Most of the staff slowly,
discretely left and we finished up with popular recorded songs for dancing
which was much better than that sounds.
The staff were having their own party downstairs, so we noticed that the
expedition crew, most of the entertainers left us and the bar staff was
rotating. Keep the guests happy, but
let the staff have fun too. It was a
great party – I asked Jeff if we could do a cruise over Halloween next year so
we could go to another party. He thought
that was an expensive way to go to a Halloween party. Oh, we were not the only ones dressed up; we
also had a couple of guys dressed in drag – they did a good job, a couple who
were like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang costumes (probably a more recent movie
there), lots of people with feathers and headdresses they had picked up in
Parintins plus a couple of fantastic costumes by the crew.
Oops almost forgot to talk about the wildlife we saw!! In the morning, while I was on the exercise bicycle,
I saw a bunch of black dolphins quit well.
I was surprised they were black, and they seemed big, but the body design
was right. They were having a good old
time on the side of the ship jumping and diving and swimming in groups. I get back to the cabin and Jeff says we had
pilot whales by the ship and had a story of how they interrupted a presentation he
was attending. Well, that’s why my
dolphins were big and black – they were whales! Throughout the day we had flying fish with the
ship too. I had never heard of flying
fish before, but they are a real thing, and we had a lot of them. They have huge fins that look like wings
which they use to glide through the air once they are airborne. The sea life seemed determined to mess up
their lectures that day because in the afternoon Jeff and I were attending one
on river dolphins. It had just started
when Joe’s walkie talkie went off with the message there were dolphins on the
bow. Like most in the group we abandoned
Joe to go see them. I missed them and
Jeff caught a glimpse, but then later I caught a glimpse of some others so we
did see dolphins. The expedition crew
maintains watches during most of the daylight hours for wildlife and it is announced around the
ship which is nice.
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| 📷 Flying Fish using tail in the water for propulsion with body in the air |
Sea Day 2
No special ceremonies today, but more lectures, ship’s
galley tour and a good end of day performance planned. Jeff and I were invited to have dinner with
one of the expedition team members which should be nice. We have joined a trivia team and aren’t doing
too well yet but have hopes. We did
much better today than yesterday. Unfortunately,
the pink dolphin team has won each of the first 2 days and gotten prizes –
yesterday hats and today electronic charging blocks. Here is hope for tomorrow. We have not been bored; we are working on the
blog which we are behind on! We sat
on our balcony some and enjoyed it and worked there, but today we are in the
bow lounge which as its name implies is up in the bow of the ship. It is an enclosed area just behind a nice big
open area of the bow where the expedition folks tend to watch for sea life for
us. We have a great view, and my laptop
is getting charged too. I like that in
this lounge there is a refrigerator stocked with some treats and cans of soda,
a water machine and a fancy coffee machine of some sort. It is nice that there are easy to get snacks
not that I really need any with all the food at the meals.
The galley tour in the afternoon was interesting. The galley is smaller than we would have
expected, and all of the food is prepared here.
There are a couple of small finishing areas near other food serving
areas including the crew galley, but this is where everything comes from. As the chef spoke about his staff, Jeff and I
were surprised at how lean the kitchen crew is.
I should point out that on this cruise at least there are more crew
members than passengers. We also learned
that all the waste is weighed each day and must be reported to the corporate
office; they also must share photos of the dishes they are serving each day
with the corporate head of kitchen services.
Someone asked about how they deal with the garbage and the chef said
that this ship does not discharge into the ocean but rather it has an
incinerator so first they dry it out and then they burn it. Since this ship was designed for voyages to
pristine places such as Antarctica, the need for a “cleaner” form of garbage
disposal was a requirement- seriously doubt you are allowed to discharge
garbage anywhere near Antarctica!! After
the galley tour it was time to get ready for dinner.
Our host for the dinner was Nikoli of the expedition team. She is the cultural representative, so I had assumed she was just onboard for Brazilian cruises. Uhm no. She has a degree in a culture related field from a Brazilian university, but she has worked on ships for some time. She has been a purser amongst other duties. She is also an expert marksman for the Artic and Antarctica cruises. During the pandemic she got a job on a private yacht that was owned by someone from Saudi Arabia and had the opportunity to do some travels with that for a couple of years. There were 6 of us passengers with her for dinner and by chance it was the chef’s signature dinner, so we had a nice 6 course dinner starting with a lobster appetizer, a plum tomato cappuccino, sorbet for a cleanser then Jeff and I both had halibut followed by a very nice light coconut cake (we had seen the cake during the galley tour). Nikoli talked about her travels, but we also discussed the crime problems of Rio De Janeiro since she is from there. As we finished dinner, we realized it was time to get to the expedition lounge because our featured singer was about to do her final show before leaving the ship. I thoroughly enjoyed it, Jeff not so much. She labeled the show something about divas and she did a lot of Motown songs, a Barbara Streisand and then finished with a couple of Tina Turner songs including Proud Mary which Jeff did enjoy.
Sea Day 3
While working in the bow lounge the call went out cetaceans off the bow! Yep, it was great they were spinner dolphins. I saw a mom and child go by and then like we had been told there was a group playing right in front of the bow. It was a big group at first and slowly dropped down to just 2 of them. They were swimming and jumping right at the bow of the ship. The rest of the ship came running but not fast enough; so glad we were right there when they were seen. Later in the day, a call would go out that there were bottlenose dolphins on the bow which we unfortunately missed. It was a busy afternoon and evening for us. We had a chance to visit their submarines and the ship’s bridge plus another special dinner and evening entertainment.
The submarines are featured in some of their ads and look quite interesting. It has a bubble on either side of a solid part in the middle. Two sets of three guests sit in each of the bubbles and the driver is in the middle. He told us how they get them off the ship – no one is in it at that point. The driver goes out in a zodiac gets on and lets the ship know when he has command of the sub and then the passengers go out in a zodiac to get on the submarine. A representative from the manufacturer was there too so we heard about all the redundancy that is built in to keep everyone safe. He said that water has to be quite calm above and below surface and the water has to be clear so the passengers can see things. Unfortunately, the Amazon was quite muddy so no use here, but they will in Antarctica, the artic and tropical places like the Caribbean. We went directly from the submarine to the bridge tour.
Bridge Tour
After the Bridge Tour, we attended a lecture on plastics and the water environment. It was an interesting lecture. Isaac who gave it teaches professional lectures on a variety of topics, so he started us with how plastic is made and then onto the problems it causes. As expected, plastic water bottles are a problem. I was surprised to learn that it takes MORE water to make a water bottle than it will hold. There are many other things that are problems too some of which we don’t think about such as clothing with plastic in it. Obviously, that includes anything nylon, but he pointed out that anything that has an ingredient starting with “poly” also has plastic in it or on it. He made me question what the best thing is I should be doing with all my athletic clothing – I am not going back to cotton tee shirts to run in that is for sure! Jeff and I have always been good about keeping clothing for a number of years and I thought that was good for the environment. He made me question that since he said older clothing sheds extremely small fibers that end up in the environment and are bad for animals. He had pictures with a wide variety of types and sizes of sea life with plastics in them from fishing ropes and plastic bags to tiny creatures with small pieces of plastic in them. After that uplifting presentation, we decided to hang out on deck for a while before dinner. While we were hanging around, we started to smell smoke like from a wood fire – has the Amazon come to find us again? No seems that one of the restaurants was having a special meal and they were smoking the very first course. We decided to eat there. It was interesting it was chicken salad in small bowls (the serving bowls placed) in what looked a lot like an outdoor light fixture that got smoking/opaque inside and when you opened it you smelled the smoke. They served with small loaves of a nice bread – excellent start! They called dinner that night “earth and ocean” and it was a different menu for the evening that I ended with figs and a nice honey bourbon ice cream. Then once again it was time to hurry off to the evening’s entertainment. Tonight was the last show for the magician/comedienne that was on ship. It was a fun show.
Natal
Wow we get to use a pier today, so the boat is docked – such luxury and a first for this trip. One of the first things we learned is that Natal in Portuguese means Christmas. Seems this town/city was formed on Christmas Day. It is a major port for the shipping of fruits and vegetables from Brazil. The town is set at the delta of a river and the Atlantic and there is an island where the old town is and where the port is located. All that means is we had to arrive and leave during daylight hours, and we go under a large bridge which equates to a photo op. When we leave, there will be a sail away event – another first since we snuck out of Manaus in the wee morning hours. The day will end with a dance party on deck.
There were 3 tour/excursion options from the ship for the
day. Two were included in the cost of
the cruise and one cost extra. The one
with a cost was a dune buggy ride through the dunes here and down the coast –
remember we are on the Atlantic now.
While it might have been fun, Jeff and I both said we did not want to do
something so similar to an excursion we did in Dubai UAE (dune bashing) so we
quickly passed on that one. We had
trouble making up our minds between the other two – a tour around the town or a
tour to a handicraft market and to a capoeira show. In the end we chose the market and capoeira
show because we wanted to see the show. Although
the handicraft market was a letdown, I thought we made a good choice with our
tour because the show was unique.
Capoeira is a form of dance that was developed by the slaves to learn
how to fight. The show we saw was done
by the equivalent of an inner-city program that helps keep the kids off the
streets. The show was impressive. The first dance they performed for us was
kind of a mixture of karate, and gymnastics.
They did it to music from an interesting string instrument, a tall drum
and a tambourine. This was the main
dance they do and they had kids from probably about 5 years old to adults. It is common to have nicknames here so one
child was called “mosquito”, and he was constantly moving! Then they had a couple of the adult men doing
a fire dance. Now, we are inside a
concrete building, and they have fire torches they are running on their bodies
and eating (yes eating) and then they kind of exploded with fire and smoke that
went up to the ceiling – impressive.
After the fire dancers, we had a little samba dancing. Then they picked a couple from our tour to
learn the capoeira. It was a nice older
British couple – the lady did quite well.
In the dance, you start by stepping back and forth and then there is a
part where you kick over your opponent/partner and the crème de resistance is a
cartwheel. I must say the lady did a
pretty good cartwheel her husband did not even try. There was a huge smile on her face the whole
time and he was looking pleased too.
After that, the adults came out and gave a really impressive athletic
performance of the capoeira. It all
ended with a chance for photos and then back on the bus and back to the port.
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| 📷 Art Gallery above the market |
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| 📷 Exhibition started with he kids showing off their skills |
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| 📷 Finale was the adults |
Click on brief video to see them in action
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| Sail Away Event - Cocktails and Hor D'oeuvres on the aft deck |
Sea Day 4
It is Saturday and even on a ship off the coast of Brazil it is Game Day and Jeff being the industrious Georgia fan he is has figured out how to watch all the pregame shows and the Georgia football game. Like last Saturday, we both have on Georgia apparel and this time people on the ship notice. We were able to attend the morning recap, play trivia (lost again, but there was a new winner!), attend a wine tasting and watch the game live. Oh, we also have a new teddy bear in the household who has been named SeaBee.
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| Wine Tasting |
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| Expedition Lounge adjacent to the wine tasting with an amazing fake fireplace |
Sea Day 5
Thar she blows! Yep it seems we are
in the middle of the humpback whale migration to Antarctica. In truth, Jeff and I were a little late to
the party and did not see them well. We
both saw whales blowing, and I saw a back humping up, but others saw breaching –
maybe we will do better tomorrow. That
was in the afternoon after a couple of talks, trivia, and an afternoon tea. Today’s talks were a little less interesting
to us so we had to admit we were starting to get tired of sea days, but it also
means the end of our trip. So far, the
weather has been minimal – yay, but the crew keeps acting like we are going to
hit something soon. It did rain in the
afternoon while we were working in the bow lounge – so much for thoughts of
swimming today. The pool is at the back
of the ship and as an infinity pool look to it.
Oh well, at least we were in it earlier in the trip.
The morning talk we attended was on
the Atlantic Forest and how it is coming back – well that was the title. It was more on the Atlantic Forest in general
which is the forest along the Atlantic coast of Brazil and then cuts inland
some to Argentina. Like the Amazon it is
a biodiverse area in that it has lots of different plants, animals, birds and
bugs and they are all in danger of extinction since the forest has shrunk so
much. The positive side is that federal
governments have now set parts of the forest under reservation/protection and
some reforestation is happening partially by locals including one by kids who
wanted to get rid of the muddy water in the nearby river. Their teacher had taught them that the
disappearing forest had led to mudslides, etc., thus the muddy water so they
wanted to get trees back and their efforts have turned into a major initiative. My afternoon talk was quite different. I attended one on travelling safely with your
jewelry. I tend to be a minimalist when
I travel, but since I don’t work anymore some of my jewelry is hardly
worn. He advocated bringing some with
you packed discretely in your carryon bag.
One thing that surprised me was that he said each piece should be kept
in their own small zip lock bag so that one piece cannot damage another
piece. From there it was time to check
out afternoon tea. We had wandered
through the middle of it once by accident and it had looked nice, so we wanted
to experience it. We had a very nice
hour. We sat at the bow of the boat, so
we had a nice view and enjoyed fresh hot tea – white for me and a red for Jeff
along with some mini savory and sweet items.
There was a pianist in addition to the flying birds for our
entertainment. Boobies were the birds we
were seeing. Jeff worked on photos for
the Amazon blog in the evening and we had a late dinner with me hoping the
projected bad seas did not appear while eating or shortly thereafter. Directly after dinner, we went to the theater
for a cello performance by Andrei Cavassi which was great. Forget your usual idea of a cello sound. While you will hear that some from him, he
also likes to interpret some traditional music and as Jeff kept exclaiming – I
never knew a cello could go that high! Truth
be told, while the sea was a little rough as we went to bed, it was not bad.
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| 📷 |
Sea Day 6; last day
Woke up to sunny skies and Jeff checked a weather app and thought the storm had moved inland and we were in the clear for the day. However, walking around a deck the crew was seriously tying down some of the outdoor chairs so the captain may still be predicting big waves at noon – will know later. We started the day with a really good talk by Pepe on bird migration. He tended to key in on the birds that migrate from the Arctic to Antarctica but discussed others too. Looking forward to the unveiling of the cruise video and the deck party – farewell wave from the crew. It has been really nice to have a professional photographer and videographer onboard with us. They can get the photos of the birds and animals that we struggle to get. John the photographer has been great at giving advice on all sorts of photo-related topics.
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| The expedition team that made this trip so wonderful |
Rio de Janeiro
This was our place to get off while the ship continues onto Antartica. We are spending a couple of days here at the Copacabana Palace Hotel which is on the Copacabana Beach. We have received numerous warnings and heard nasty stories of the bad petty crime in Rio which caused us to drop the food tour we had planned. We are going to enjoy the hotel, the beach and do a half day tour tomorrow of Christ Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain followed by more beach time. We did good with the hotel it is celebrating its 100th birthday and does in fact kind of look like a palace. The hotel has 2 restaurants with Michelin stars, and we have a reservation at the Italian one for tomorrow night. There is a really old part and a still old area that is an addition - our room was there (suite actually), and we have a terrace with a view of the "pool" and oh yeah you can see the beach quite well too.
First surprise in the area is that the waves at the beach are quite big as in surfing big, but they get that size right before the beach so no room to surf. After we finally got in our room, we headed across the street to the beach. The hotel has a staff member in a tent there with chairs and will watch your belongings for you. We took them up on that offer and then went wandering down the beach towards an end. When you look down on Rio, you realize that most of the beaches are in little bays/inlets so the beach lasts till close to the tip of the outcropping where it becomes rocky. We enjoyed our walk, but it did have some excitement to it. We had walked down to almost the end and turned around when we soon realized most of the people on the beach were watching something closely. So, we looked too and saw a group of people beyond the waves. Not sure how they got out that far, but obviously all the locals thought they were in trouble. All along the beach we had seen signs for lifeguards, so we wondered where one was now that they were needed. Well just a couple of minutes later people start clapping and a guy comes running and goes up the lifeguard tower, uses a pair of binoculars and then makes a phone call. Very quickly a helicopter appears and hovers over the people in the water. A diver jumped from the helicopter. Then a netlike device is lowered from the helicopter with someone in it. The net like device is then used to kind of scoop the people up one at a time and then it gently dropped them down on the beach. The helicopter did this for each individual. It was impressive and I was envious that we don't have any service like that on our beaches since people drown in the rip currents each year. I suspect because of the number of beaches around Rio that they keep these helicopters either up in the air or on standby during the day. Time to head back to our hotel room where we decided to drink the bottle of champagne from the ship in our room while enjoying room service.
We had another early morning for our half day tour. The tour van picked us up at 7:25 in the morning and we were the last in the group so it was off to the Christ the Redeemer Statue. The statue is on top of the mountain in a reclaimed jungle that is a national park. I said reclaimed jungle because over a hundred years ago the land was a coffee plantation and the area was experiencing draught conditions. They realized that when the area had trees those trees had assisted in producing water/rain so in a very short time period, 11 slaves planted an incredible number of trees and the reclamation of the jungle was begun. The statue itself was built to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Brazil. The idea of the statute had been around for quite some time - a priest had suggested the idea many years before. We drove a van up a bumpy curvy road where there were escalators and stairs to get you up the last bit. I would have described it as crowded, we heard that was nothing compared to the mobs that visit the site during Carnival. The statute is impressive in person. I was surprised to see his heart and to see markings in his hands for the nails. While we waited in line for the park van to take us back to our tour van, we saw some monkeys and another wild animal (coati?). Then it was back to our main van and on to Sugar Loaf Mountain.
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| New 7 Wonders of the World Site |
Sugar Loaf
Our van stopped at the base of the first of the 2 cable cars that would get us to the top of Sugar Loaf. The first building had some historic vignettes showing how they built the first cable car. I should add here that this is one of the oldest cable cars in the world - I think the 4th oldest so the vignettes were interesting. Then we got in a car and started our way up. It is a 2-step process to get to the top because you a stop on a smaller mountain where there is a small park. We did not get to stop and enjoy it, but rather quickly followed the path to the next cable car - the hazards of a tour. I did see some pretty orchids on our walk. When we got to the top of the second cable car, it was time to explore. There were many nice scenic spots to look out on the bays, hills and where we came from. After a short time exploring, it was time to retrace out steps, get on our van and get back to our hotel.
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| Looking back the way we came from the top of Sugar Loaf |
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| Copacabana Beach in the distance |
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| Christ the Redeemer at the top of the peak |
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| Orchids growing in the tree behind Carol |
After more beach time - no rescues today, it was time to pack up a little and then enjoy our final dinner of the trip. A number of years ago, Jeff heard that you should always do something special on your final night of a trip. This time it is a very nice Italian restaurant in the hotel that had a tasting menu. We started with a glass of champagne and then the courses started coming. the "pizza" course and the desserts were the most memorable to me although most of them came out on unique china. Unique as one looked like a 6-inch-tall orb with the little bite on top. Back to the pizza, the sauce and topping was on the inside of a small, light dough ball. Surprising and quite good. The meal ended with multiple desserts - they just kept coming! First there was a tiramisu which was quite good then there was a dessert cart with several different things on it and you could have as many as you wanted. Not done yet. Then we noticed a huge white fluffy dish being served to another couple. We both kidded that the young lady while quite pretty and skinny now would not be that thin for long if she ate like that all the time! Well after scooping some out for their table the server went to another table that is when we realized we too would be eating some of that mysterious dish. It was gelato - the recipe the chef's mother used to make. Mom made good gelato - we enjoyed it. When we made it back to our suite, it was time to finish packing and try to get to sleep. You see we were getting up and leaving the hotel before dawn -yuck!
I did not have a night's sleep that night; I had a long nap. We made it to the airport with no challenges; my bad technology day was about to start though. We had not been able to check in online for an unknown reason thus we needed to go to the check in counter. Our driver dropped us off at the almost opposite end of the airport, so we started getting our steps in for the day. We wandered a little bit before we found where to check in which was done in person and were given paper boarding passes. Time to wander some more looking for the security entrance finally found it. In Brazil, you have a gate to get to security kind of like what you would have to get on a subway which reads your boarding pass and lets you through. Jeff went through just fine, me no. Tried different machines, saw an airport official who tried my pass and said there was a problem with the pass and to go back to the check in and get a new boarding pass. Argh. Quickly walk back cut in line, they reprint for me and on my way back my phone goes off, but I could not grab it. Try the new boarding pass and it did not work either ARGH. Jeff is right there waiting on the other side for me and says wait I got the boarding pass to come up on the phone let me try yours - it worked, yippee. Go through security and the flight is smooth. We get to Sao Paulo airport, and we run into more challenges. We still have Brazilian reals because no one wanted it! So we plan on buying something at the duty-free shop. Good idea, but we bought liquids and then realized we had to go through security again. Quick return the bottle of wine and off we go. Guess whose boarding pass won't work again! Jeff's won't work either this time, so the security tells us where the Delta check in is. The Delta agent printed us Delta passes. I go back to the security lady, and it works - yippee - no really, I was visibly relieved. Now a long walk to our gate and would you believe a good hour before our flight was scheduled to depart, they were on the final boarding call! We board and then sit for a while. Nice smooth flight. We land in Atlanta and are going through immigration which since we are set up with Global Entry is usually quite fast and easy. Jeff is fast. Me no. Technology problems again - the camera won't take my picture and this time I am not alone others are having problems too. Finally, it works and 2 minutes later we are done. I tell Jeff he is driving to the hotel, and I will be a passenger because I am not touching anymore technology for the day.
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