Port Information. The city of Rio de Janeiro (River of January) has a population estimate in 2022 of 6.2 million people (the greater Rio Metro area has a population of about 13 million people. The city is know for its wild and crazy Carnival celebration, its fabulous beaches, Copacabana and Ipanema, and its amazing geological structure, Sugarloaf Mountain. The music associated with Rio de Janeiro include the iconic group, Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66 and Astrud Gilberto ("Girl From Ipanema") and Antonio Carlos Jobim who created the dance craze, the Bossa Nova. Today, there are three ships here – besides the Splendor, the Costa Pacifico and Costa Favolosa are docked.
It’s a beautiful
day in Rio and I had the best night’s sleep I think I ever had on a ship. It helped that I was jet lagged and exhausted
and that the ship was docked. But it was
nice not to get up at 3 AM.
I went to La
Veranda for Breakfast at 6:30 AM and checked out the buffet. I ended up with a small bowl of Frosted
Mini-Wheats, an order of plain pancakes (2), and some very good scrambled
eggs. A server at the eggs and omelet
station takes your breakfast order and your food is brought to your table (the
tables are numbered) so the timing needs to be worked out. The eggs, which are on the buffet, were cold
by the time the pancakes got there. I’ll
figure that out. Ellen ordered something
from Room Service. Our bags would be
moved to our new room while we are on tour.
Our tour today – “Sugar Loaf and Copacabana” is scheduled to meet ashore at 8:45 PM.
We scanned out and met our
Group (Group 3) on the dock. We walked a
few blocks to our bus – our group had 26 people in it and 16 didn’t show. So that meant we had plenty of room. We had two guides because we didn’t need a
second bus so we had both women on our bus.
Yvonne, who did most of the talking, and Celeste, were
both terrific and easily understandable.
The bus was comfortable.
The tour took
us through some neighborhoods of Rio. There
are of course, the Favellas. But there
are some new condos or apartments as well.
Our destination is the iconic Sugarloaf Mountain (Pao de
Acucar) – the geological structure you always see in pictures of Copacabana
and Ipanema Beach. The mountain, composed
of granite and quartz and situated on Guanebara Bay, stands 1,299 feet high, and
was formed when the outer parts of the structure wore away over geological time
to leave the loaf like structure we see today.
The tour
started off at a military facility near Praia Vermelha (Red Beach)
at the base of Urca Mountain (Morro Urca), where you queue up for the
Cable Car ride to the mountain. As we
disembarked the bus we could see the cable cars making their way up the
mountain.
We waited
while Celeste got the tickets for the rides.
The park uses QR codes on a wrist band, which is scanned for entry into
the cable car.
The waiting crowd was entertained by a performance artist all decked out in silver. Kind of like the "Silver Surfer" after a long day at the office before he goes surfing the Universe.
Even though it’s a week day (and I assume a work day), there were lots of people in line. The process is very organized and the cars come quickly – passengers are let off on one side and new passengers get in on the other side.
Urca Mountain has a height of 650 feet. We could see our cable car headed for the embarkation spot to pick us up.
There are of
course, wonderful views from the cars (you have to get a good spot - if you get in last, you are by the double doors and a very good view spot). Red Beach and the town of Urca are an
interesting addition to the scenery.
At Morro Urca,
(a sign tells us we have arrived)
I got pictures of both our guides, Celeste (below) and Yvonne.
We checked out
the shops and managed a facility stop. The shops are located along the slope and
lush vegetation. I was looking for a
local beer but couldn’t find any. Yvonne, our guide, explained a little about
what we were looking at at this stop.
One of the key things at this site are the black-tufted marmosets, small
New World monkeys that are native to Brazil.
There were about four or five of these cute monkeys walking along the
railing. They did not seem to be afraid of the tourists and I got some nice pictures.
Ellen found a way to get a picture of the cable car mechanism. It has a "steam punk" look but as long as it gets the cars from here to there and back, that's all I need to know.
The group went to the cable car boarding area. It didn’t take long for a cable car to arrive.
I hustled to get a spot by the door (as I said before, the best place to get pictures). The next leg of the climb took us from Morro Urca to Sugarloaf Mountain, the iconic structure associated with Rio de Janeiro.
Sugarloaf Mountain rises to a height of 1299 feet but at the 1200 ft. level, there is an overlook there which provides a dramatic view of Rio and the surrounding areas and waters. On the way up, we saw little condo communities (I think that’s what they were) complete with athletic fields. Guanabara Bay is also visible.
We arrived at the overlook and, of course, I took another iconic picture of Ellen at the railing.
I should note that the day started off clear but when we got to the Sugarloaf Overlook, the fog started rolling in and the views were not nearly as good.
As far as unusual shots go, here's one with superhero, Lady Bug (never heard of her).
There were plenty of shops at the Overlook including a place selling beers – after a back and fourth language exchange I finally found a local beer – Ceveja Therazopolis. You can't get beer in bottle - I guess no one wants broken glass around.
Apparently, the beer is award
winning and has notes of honey and citrus (I didn’t really pick up on that
because I drank the beer pretty quickly).
I also read that this started off as a Danish beer company but was not
considered local.
We started our
trip back down – at Urca I got a great picture of Ellen with Sugarloaf in the
background.
Even found
some more Marmosets on the return trip.
At Urca, we
also saw some earlier versions of the cable cars (at least one of them was
German). They were quite different in
design from the current one.
An then it was time to head back down reversing our trek up to Sugarloaf.
I guess we didn't lose anyone up on the mountains (don't know how they did the count).
Soon, ee were back
on the ground – I did take a nice picture of a military monument, “Monument
to the Heroes of Laguna and Dourados” dedicated to events in the Paraguayan
War.
Back in the bus, we were off to our next major stop – Copacabana Beach, Rio’s iconic beach and home to huge rock concerts in the past. People who have performed her include: Freddy Mercury, Rod Stewart, Madonna, and a 1994 New Year’s Eve concert (various performers), which set the record for biggest concert at 3.5 million people. Copacabana Beach is only five km long.
The bus did
not stop at Copacabana but we did see both the beach and the Copacabana
Palace, the super posh hotel and home to rock star visitors. The beach
itself look like it get raked and cleaned up.
The beach also has “cooling trails” consisting of hoses that slowly leak
water on the sand from the street to the ocean – this is important because the
sand gets very hot and the walk to the water is long – wading in the cooling
trail will keep the bottoms of your feet from burning.
We got back a
little after lunch, which was up in the Pool Grill adjacent to La
Veranda. The Pool Grill also has someone taking orders and table numbers. There is also a salad bar and other food
items on the buffet at the Grill. Don’t
remember what we ate – jet lag and all.
We are in our
new suite 670 – port side aft. We
unpacked and put out stuff into the walk-in closet – much more storage than we
would ever need.
There was no
letter from the Cruise Director in the suite so I went to the Reception Desk on
Deck 5 midships to see if I could see Andy.
He wasn’t there but I left a message and got a call from him to come
down and go over stuff. His office is
behind Reception and we sat down and went through the order of the talks – I
had made a slight change that was supposed to have been passed on to the ship
but wasn’t. Andy said that it would be
corrected in the program. Passages. He
told me that the ship seemed very roomy because it had a passenger capacity of
750 but a gross tonnage of 55,000 tons or about 10,000 tons more than ships
with similar passenger loads. In
addition, he said that they were sailing with about 650 passengers, which makes
the ship seem even roomier. According to
Andy, the ship was sailing with a heavy European contingent (we were able to
detect lot of German on board). He emphasized
that the 45 minute time limit was critical because the theater was used for
rehearsals. It was a nice talk and it
looks like he will be easy to work with.
We had dinner
in Compass Rose, the other open restaurant on Deck 4 Aft. This restaurant, which I don’t think we ever
went to on Mariner (I will check) is a more formal restaurant. They have a changeable menu each evening but
also some items that are always available. On the always available options are
several fish including sole, salmon, and branzino. We both ordered the salmon – you get to
choose your sauces and I picked the olive oil/caper sauce. I also ordered Lyonnaise Potatoes and Sauteed
Spinach as a side. I couldn’t resist
trying the San Marzano Tomato soup. We
found the perfect table, #115 table for two in the back of the restaurant
against the wall. The servers, Christian
and Sharina (from the Philippines) were all good and the food was also.
We went to the Welcome Aboard Show in the Constellation Theater. CD Andy Heath introduced Fabiano, the Pianist who plays in the Observation Lounge,
the Duo of Rhyme and Rhythm, who are in the Splendor Lounge,
and Andy sang a song himself (“You’re Too
Good To be True”). He introduced Tammy,
his wife and Social Hostess (married 43 years) and Aaron, the assistant CD.
The show also gave us a preview of the Regent Production Cast who did "We Will Rock You" from one of the Rock based production shows (generally too loud for us).
The shows on this ship are all at 9:30 PM, which is kind of late for us. What can you do?
We called in a day – it was a good start to this cruise.
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