Rio de Janeiro

We were due to dock at 7:00 AM, and sunrise is at 6:30, so Brian and I decided to get up at 6:15 and watch us sail into Rio de Janeiro. We woke up and looked out the window – and instead of seeing open sea we realized that we were already in the port – too late to watch us sailing in to the harbor.

We had a quick breakfast, and headed down to the Pursers’ Desk to collect our passports. I was a bit concerned that there may be a mix up and that they would not hand them over, but I misjudged the staff, our passports were there and ready for us to collect.

We headed up to the Queens Room to wait to be called to disembark on our tour. We had decided to go on the “Scenes of Rio” tour so we would at least get the opportunity to see what Rio was like before heading off to the Falls. The tour was good – we started off in the rather run down area around the port, and then went through one of the many tunnels and saw one of the more upscale neighborhoods. Because of the proximity of the mountains to the shoreline they have had to construct several tunnels to enable traffic to go from one part of the city to another. This is helpful, but with the amount of traffic in Rio, they are inadequate, and the whole city suffers from serious traffic congestion. Despite the traffic we were able to see several of the city neighborhoods, and had stops on the beaches where we could get soft drinks and stretch our legs. Copacabana Beach really is as beautiful as it looks in the movies. We weren’t able to go up Sugar Loaf Mountain, or to see the Christ the Redeemer statue close up, but we had good views of both from a distance.

Our final stop was at the cathedral in the downtown area. I love modern architecture for the most part, but the architecture of the cathedral just didn’t work for me. It looks just like a concrete cone. The stained glass windows do look lovely and are the building’s only redeeming features. Otherwise it felt cold and uninviting on the inside, give me St Paul’s in London instead. There was a modern statue of St Francis at one of the entrances, and I did like that. However the most bizarre thing was, here is this cold, concrete, soulless modern building, and there inside was a very ornate white stage coach with a pathetic illuminated statue of St Sebastian with the prerequisite arrows inside. It was totally incongruous.

As we were heading back to the ship our tour guide Jim was telling us all about the building of the Brazilian capital, Brasilia, and then all of a sudden he went off on a tangent about a flying saucer that had landed there, and how the government are hiding 2 extraterrestrials from the general population. It sounded very like the Roswell UFO incident. He seemed totally to believe it all, making the rest of us on the bus rather uncomfortable. Luckily he had to stop because we were back at the port.

The tour took 4 and a half hours and I think was ideal if you wanted to get an overview of Rio, especially if you had limited time or mobility. Several passengers stayed on the bus when we had our brief stops. However, if we had had more time I would have liked to go up Corcovado to see the statue of Christ the Redeemer, or to go up Sugar Loaf Mountain. The views are meant to be spectacular from both, but the waiting time for transport up there can be very long.

The bus let us off quite a way from the ship, but there was a shuttle bus for those who wanted to take it. We wandered back to the terminal building to check it out. There are soft drinks for sale, an ATM machine that worked, and several stalls selling local hand made goods and souvenirs. One stall had beautiful retro looking crochet tops and dresses. As I am still in search of the perfect cover up for the pool I really wanted to take a closer look, but by then we thought we should make our way to the airport, so alas, no crochet dress for me.

We grabbed our bags from the cabin and took the shuttle back to the terminal. We were surprised to be refused entry. A few hours ago when we had our tote bags it was fine, but now with our larger bags we had to go through customs. As everyone else who was disembarking had left the customs hall many hours ago there was some confusion as to what should be done with us, but we finally sorted it out and were on our way to find a taxi.

It is about a half hour ride from the port to Tom Jobin international airport so we were actually there in really good time. We were flying on LATAM, a new airline for us. We had been watching the news a few days ago about a Brazilian airline that ran out of fuel and crashed, but luckily it wasn’t LATAM. We decided to try to check in at a computer kiosk, and it communicated with us in English, and efficiently produced our boarding cards. Security was very quick and efficient, and we even had time to have a really good lunch at one of the airport restaurants. The restaurant was called Delirio, which at first made me think of delirium, but then I realized that it was a Deli in Rio, so that was a more likely origin of it’s name.

There was loads of overhead space for our bags, and we had a free snack on the 2-hour flight. We were certainly not on Alaska Airlines any more.

Our tour guide, Paulo, was there at the airport to meet us, and whisked us off to the Belmond Hotel. The hotel is right next door to the Brazilian Falls, and is one of those great old colonial style hotels, which reminds us of the Victoria Falls Hotel in Zimbabwe. There are even monkeys near by. We were lucky enough to get upgraded into a falls view room, so we can see the falls right outside our window. It is amazing!

After dumping our bags we wandered down to watch sunset over the falls – but the sun was still high in the sky, so we abandoned this and headed back to our room where we could watch the sun set over the falls as we got ready for dinner.

We are very impressed with the hotel. The service is excellent, everyone is very friendly, our room in gorgeous – and as much as I love our little cabin, having 2 sinks and being able to have 2 people in the bathroom at the same time is a real plus. The shower is huge, but does not have the reliable temperature settings that we have back on the ship, and turning the 2 taps to find the perfect heat was a challenge, but I got over it.