Saturday, March 2
We are
visiting the island of Ilhabela which is a resort area popular with the residents of Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo, which is 125 miles inland. The island is known as the sailing capital of the Brazilian coast which is very evident by the number of boats in the area. Ilhabela has a relatively small population of just over 32,000.
Ilhabela is very close to the mainland. |
This is the
southernmost port of our cruise and we had anchored between the mainland and
the island, and both looked like beautiful countryside with beautiful, lush
green hills above the towns. Ilhabela is
another of the Brazilian beach towns we have been visiting and after seeing the
presentation on it the other day, we decided to skip going ashore today and stay on
the ship. It is another tender port and
there were no excursions that appealed to us so for the first time on the
cruise, we skipped a port.
It was a
lazy morning and we didn’t do much of anything except relax and read. We did say good-bye today to our room
steward, Abdul, as he is getting off the ship tomorrow in Rio and going home. He is pretty excited as he hasn’t seen his
family in nine months and will get three months off before his next
assignment. The crew lead a very tough
life as they work long days without a day off for months on end, but the pay
enables them to provide a better life for their families than they could if
they stayed home. Many of them save enough
to eventually start their own businesses.
We had our
lunch in the Lido and went out on deck to see what was happening around the
ship. Ilhabela is very
close to the mainland and we are anchored between the mainland and the
island. Our balcony is facing the
mainland, so this was our first view of the island. It looked very nice, but with the ever
present heat and humidity, nothing made us change our mind and go ashore.
We returned
to the room and I decided to grab my camera and return to the deck and take
some pictures. When I returned, Val was
getting ready for her afternoon trivia so I did as I always do and caught up on
the blog. We didn’t do much of anything
for the rest of the afternoon until it was time to get ready for dinner.
We were
back to our usual routine tonight of trivia, dinner and the casino. I went through my money quickly again as has
been the case lately and was down to my final try of the night and what do you
know, I hit a fair sized jackpot. I
cashed out my winnings and Val was ready
to go so we quit for the evening and returned to our room. Tomorrow morning we will be in Rio for
Carnival.
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