Amazon & Carnival Explorer Cruise - Day 25: Buzios, Brazil

Thursday, February 28

Time seems to be flying by; it doesn’t seem possible that today is the halfway point of our cruise.  The port today is Buzios, Brazil which is the replacement port for the cancelled stop in Vitoria, Brazil. 

Buzios was a small, little known fishing village until 1964 when the movie actress, Brigitte Bardot visited.  Since then it has become an upscale resort area for those wanting to escape the crowds of Rio de Janero.  The big attraction is the 23 beaches situated along the peninsula that Buzios is located on.  It remains a relatively small town with a population of only 30,000.

Our ship anchored in the harbor in the  upper area just right of center.

Because our visit here was a last minute change, the excursions offered were also last minute and none of them interested us so we have nothing planned today.  Buzios is another tender port so we saw no rush to join the first wave of people going ashore.  We went down to the tender loading area around 10:30 and found it still crowded with people.  We missed the tender that was being loaded as it filled up and had to wait for the next one.  We finally made it to shore and walked along the waterfront through town.  It was a very pleasant walk along the shoreline with views of the beautiful harbor on one side and numerous restaurants, bars and shops along the other.  Val checked out a couple of shops, but didn’t find anything that interested her.  We were getting hot and hungry (we skipped breakfast) and decided to stop at one of the restaurants for lunch.

 

We picked out a nice seaside restaurant and found a table in the shade with a nice view of the harbor and after looking at the menu, decided on a meat platter for two consisting of steak, pork, chicken and sausage along with potatoes that looked similar to french fries, but weren’t.  When we received our lunch, we were shocked to see how large it was, there was no way we were going to be able to eat all of that.  After giving it our best shot, we asked the people at the next table if they would like the rest as we hated to see it go to waste and it was very good.  There were two couples and one of the ladies came over and tasted it and found it to be very good so they took it and had some food along with the drinks they were enjoying.  We later found out that they couldn’t finish it and passed it on to another table, our meat platter for two fed eight people.

You can see the influence of Brigitte Bardot, the restaurant was named Madame Bardot.

 

Our meat plate for two and we had already eaten some of it!

A beautiful view as we ate.

After paying our bill we decided we had had enough of the heat and crowds and headed back to the tender dock and back to the ship.  There was another ship in port today called the MSC Seaview.  The Seaview is a very large ship and holds over 5000 passengers which is over four times the capacity of our ship.  This influx of people made the little town very crowded today, but I’m sure very good for the local businesses.

A statue of Brigitte Bardot along seaside walkway.

 

When we got to the tender dock, we were met with a very long line so we had to wait a while to get on a tender.  It was a pretty pleasant wait as we had a great view of the harbor and beach activity, but it was hot and humid which made everyone anxious to get back to the ship.  We finally got on a tender, got back to the ship and back to our room.  The air conditioning always feels so good after being out in the humid weather we’ve had through most of this trip.

At least we had a nice view while we waited.

 

The tender being loaded, the line stretched all the way along the pier to where I was taking this picture.

Full and ready to go.  If you look and see how packed it is you can see why we don't like tendering.  Not only is it crowded, but there is no ventilation so in this climate it is very uncomfortable.

We relaxed and cooled down for a while and then Val left for trivia and I wrote up the blog.  I also downloaded our pictures from the day and did some organization and backup.  Val returned from trivia and we didn’t do much of anything except relax and read for the rest of the afternoon.

We changed our dinner routine tonight as we had a reservation at the Pinnacle Grill which is a specialty restaurant on the ship.  We had tried to get reservations for my birthday, but they didn’t have any available for the times we wanted so tonight is a delayed birthday dinner.  Our reservations were for 7:00 and when we arrived, we were promptly seated at a great table by the window.  Since it was dark, a seat near the window normally wouldn’t matter, but tonight we were going through an area of thunderstorms so we had a ringside seat for all the lightning that was going on.

Dinner was wonderful, but after our meat feast at lunch today, we filled up very quickly.  After dinner we did do our usual casino visit where I continued my breakeven streak, but I cut the night short as I was just too full from dinner and just wanted to back to our room and lay down.

We did hear some terrible news tonight which put a damper on the evening.  Today while we were walking back to the tender dock, we found the sidewalk blocked with people and as we walked around the crowd in the street, we saw someone performing CPR on what looked like a fairly young person.  It was very sobering to see, but we didn’t want to add to the crowd as there was nothing we could help with and continued on to the tender.

We found out in the casino tonight that the person involved was from our ship and had died.  This was shocking in itself, but we found that he was the nephew of one of the participants in our evening trivia competition and sat in the group next to us.  The mother of the young man who passed away was also part of that group so it made it a lot more personal for us.  He was a young man in his twenties, in the navy and seemed to be fit and healthy.  He was evidently snorkeling from a boat with his family and was in the water when they noticed he wasn’t moving.  They pulled him back on the boat and began CPR.  The reason he was on the sidewalk when we saw him, was they had taken him off the boat and were waiting for the ambulance. 

One minute the family is having a great a great time on the cruise and the next minute tragedy strikes and their lives are forever changed and the fun cruise will only be remembered for the loss of a son and nephew.  Once again, we are reminded to live life to its fullest as you never know what the next minute may bring.

With that sobering note, we called it a night and read for a while before turning out the lights a little later than usual tonight as tomorrow is a sea day.