Saturday, January 25 - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Day 2)

 There are 5 ships in port today, 3 of which are of the 3-4,000 passenger variety so the terminal was chaos.  Fortunately, again we weren't doing the visit to the statue or Sugar Loaf Mountain with all of these visitors.  Yesterday, the trams up to the statue got stopped for an hour or so because a tree fell on a wire and stopped the whole system.  Eeek.

Our tour today was to the Botanical Gardens and the Eco Forest in the middle of Rio.  We boarded open-air (covered, thankfully) jeep-like vehicles that held 8-10 passengers on benches along the side.  It was cooling to have the open breeze, but also dirty and noisy.  We drove through Rio in a convoy of 3 vehicles plus another smaller jeep for backup in case something went wrong.  Our driver knew two speeds - full on and full stop.  We were bounced around in there like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.  Rio's roads are anything but smooth.  Hope my back recovers.

On our bus was a lady from Mallorca, where two of our dear English friends have a vacation condo, so we chatted about that for a while.  Then there was a lady from Perth, where we had to end our 2020 World Cruise.   We chatted about how COVID affected us all then.  And finally there was a couple from San Francisco.  We knew he was legit because when we asked where he went to school, he said Galileo, which is a high school and the only proper answer to that question if you are a native.  His wife went to Mercy Burlingame just down the peninsula, so she almost counts as a SF native.

That pretty ferris wheel by day turns into a light show at night advertising the new Galaxy S25 phone.  And the really bright light on the right was a spotlight that was aimed right at our cabin all night.  No open curtains for us last night.

This elevator had been making banging-like noises for a few days.  Hopefully, it's something these gentlemen can fix

In the middle of the forest there is a National Park with this pretty waterfall.  The forest was replanted after failures of various crops back in the mid-1800s by either 6 or 11 slaves (depending on the guide) over 12 years.  They were given their freedom at the end.  Other sources say locals were also expropriated to plant, so who knows?

Our transportation

Whoever replanted it did a very good job.  It's very dense and beautiful.

The next stop was to walk around the Botanical Gardens for almost an hour.  I'm sure they were lovely, but since the temperature had climbed to 87 (feels like 95) and the humidity was right up there, I could hardly focus.  I was sweating just like the last time we were here.  Thank goodness we had water and our cooling neck scarves.

There's a very large black koi fish hiding at the back of this group of lily pads, but it's very difficult to see him.

Looks almost like you could walk across these.

The cruise terminal was just as crazy when we got back.  We were hot and hungry so it was straight up to La Veranda for lunch in the lovely air conditioning.  There are lots of new faces on board now.  We'll see if we can get a new head count.

At trivia, we had 13/15 for one point.  After the game, there was a sudden wind squall that sent lots of dust around the ship.  It was a bit eery as you couldn't see anything beyond the windows.

These are piles of iron "chips" that are getting ready for export to the US, according to one guide.  They create lots of dust that we've had to contend with while we're here.  That's what was all stirred up during the wind storm.

We had a pre-dinner drink at the Mariner Lounge and then had dinner in Compass Rose at Sugi's table again.  I overheard the restaurant manager say that there were now 508 passengers on board, so we did lose a few.

Today is Burns' Day, celebrating Robbie Burns from Scotland, so Terry Bishop did a special evening show about the history of Scotland in his usual irreverent, humorous style.  His has Scottish blood on his mother's side, so he feels he can poke fun at his ancestry.