Amazon & Carnival Explorer Cruise - Day 20: Recife, Brazil

Saturday, February 23

Our port today is Recife on the east coast of Brazil.  Recife, was founded in 1534 by the Portuguese, but was occupied by the Dutch for a 20 year period in the early 1600's.  Even though the Dutch occupation was short, there is still evidence of the Dutch influence.  Recife is a large city with a population of just over 1.5 million.  The oldest section of Recife is an island connected to the mainland by a series of bridges.

The large island in the middle of the map is the oldest part of Recife.  We are docked on the east side of the island.

We were originally scheduled to dock at 8:00, but due to the delay in leaving Belem caused by our excursion returning late, we didn’t get in until 9:00.  That was fine with us as the ship excursion we had schedule for today was delayed an hour which meant we could get up at 8:00 instead of 7:00.

Recife has been called the Venice of Brazil because of the rivers and canals that flow through the city causing it to be a series of islands.  Our tour today would be a view of the city from a catamaran cruising those rivers.  At 9:00 we were in the showroom waiting for our tour to start, but there was a short delay because Brazilian authorities were slow in clearing the ship.

Our tour was called at 9:30 and we were on our way.  The ship is docked in a large industrial port where pedestrians weren’t allowed so we had to take a shuttle to the terminal, which was just as well as it was a pretty long ways.  The shuttles were large buses and there were a lot of them so there was no delay in getting to the terminal where we were let off.  After a walk through the terminal, we found the bus for our tour and had a thirty minute drive through the city to the dock for our catamaran.

Recife is a modern city, but once again we were struck by the contrast between the modern, high rises and commercial areas with areas of obvious poverty.  It is really no different than our own big cities except that the areas of poverty are much larger and seemingly worse than our own.

When we arrived at the catamaran dock we boarded the boat and were relieved to see that there were shade screens to protect us from the sun.  We had been told that the catamarans had minimal shade and to be prepared for a hot ride.  It was still warm with the ever present high humidity, but the breeze off the water and shade kept us from getting too uncomfortable.

Our tour through the canals of Recife was great and we thoroughly enjoyed it; you can see the sights through our pictures below.

Our catamaran was waiting for us at the dock.

The Recife skyline.

Once again we saw the contrast between the new modern city and the old, impoverished areas along the shoreline .

 

Recife is a city of rivers, canals and bridges.

I don't know what these sculptures were, but they were interesting to look at.

There were boats everywhere waiting to take you where you wanted to go.

These buildings were once rundown warehouses, but have been modernized and turned into shops and restaurants.

 

Carnival was still a week away, but preparations were in evidence everywhere.

 

We spent about two hours on the catamaran before it was time to board the buses again for our next and final stop of the day.  We drove back into the center of town to the Casa da Cultura, which is a handicrafts market located in a converted prison.  Each shop is located in one of the cells and identified by the cell number over the door.  Since this was the same location where the shuttle to the ship stopped, we opted to exit our tour here and return to the ship on our own on the shuttle.

This was once a prison that is now three stories of shops in the old cells.

 

We spent quite a bit of time browsing through the shops and buying some things to take home with us, but even though many of the shops had fans or small air conditioners, it was getting just too hot.  We had originally planned on exploring the area a little, but the humidity was just too much for us so when we finished our shopping, we found the shuttle and returned to the port and our ship.   

We saw this from the bus on the way back to the ship.  A huge stage being built for the upcoming Carnival.

Once again we had to transfer from the city shuttle to the port shuttle at the terminal building, but we were quickly back on the ship and in the welcoming cool of air conditioned air.  We didn’t know what to expect from our tour today, but we were pleasantly surprised and enjoyed all aspects of it.  We were very glad we had chosen it.

It was getting to be mid afternoon and we were hungry, so after cooling off a bit we headed off to lunch.  By this time the Lido Buffet was closed so we decided to have hot dogs today at the hamburger and hot dog stand at the Lido Pool area.  The hot dogs and accompanying french fries were very good and really hit the spot.  We ran into Wally and Nancy who were just finishing up their lunch so we talked to them for a bit.  They had gone to the nearby colonial city of Olinda which they said was OK, but without much enthusiasm.  They couldn’t talk for long as they were going back out and taking the shuttle into Recife to do a little exploring.  They are hardier folk than we are as we had all the heat and humidity we wanted for the day and were content to spend the rest of the day in the air-conditioned comfort of the ship.  After lunch we headed back to the room for an afternoon of reading, relaxing and for me, writing the blog and downloading our pictures for the day.

Our evening activities were the usual trivia, dinner and the casino, but we did not stay out very long as we have an early tour scheduled tomorrow.  Our port will be Maceio, Brazil as we continue our journey towards Rio de Janeiro.