Amazon & Carnival Explorer Cruise - Day 28: Rio de Janeiro Day 1

Sunday, March 3

Today we are in Rio de Janeiro where we will be for the next three days and two nights.  Google describes Rio as "Rio de Janeiro is a huge seaside city in Brazil, famed for its Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, 38m Christ the Redeemer statue atop Mount Corcovado and for Sugarloaf Mountain, a granite peak with cable cars to its summit. The city is also known for its sprawling favelas (shanty towns)"  It was founded in 1564 by the Portuguese and was the capital of Brazil until 1960 when it was transferred to Brasillia.  Rio is second in size to Sao Paulo with a population of 6.7 miilion with the total metro area of 12.2 million, a very large city.

Carnival is just starting in Rio and there is a lot of the excitement in the air as the week of Carnival is a national holiday and everyone gets off work.  The Rio Carnival is considered to be the largest in the world with over two million people per day in the streets.  Carnival officially starts approximately a week before Lent and has been going on since 1723.  The highlight of Carnival is the Samba Parade which is held in the Sambadrome, a specially built stadium specifically for the Samba Parade.  There are also numerous planned and spontaneous street parades and parties that go on during the week of Carnival.  Carnival is much more than I can describe here so here is a Wikipedia link with much more information.

We have tickets tonight for the Sambadrome which is where all the samba schools parade and get judged.  It goes on for two nights with the winner announced on Ash Wednesday.  There will be seven schools competing tonight and seven more competing tomorrow night for the prestigious title of the best Samba School.

Here is a quote from Wikipedia describing the samba schools and parade, "The typical Rio carnival parade is filled with revelers, floats, and adornments from numerous samba schools which are located in Rio (more than 200 approximately, divided into five leagues/divisions). A samba school is composed of a collaboration of local neighbours that want to attend the carnival together, with some kind of regional, geographical and common background."

For once on this trip we are on the port facing side of the ship and we woke up to a great view of Rio.  I had to get up at 7:30 today as I was meeting Bob in the Neptune Lounge just before 8:00 AM to go together to pick up our tickets just outside the cruise terminal.  Bob and Carol will be sitting in the same box as we are for the parade so we have decided to stick together.  We had booked our tickets through DoBrazilRight Tours and the owner, Marcello, was waiting right on time at the specified pickup spot.  The tickets included shuttle service back and forth so we are all set.  Marcello said that 100 people from our ship had bought tickets from him.  The ship is offering a tour, but when we tried to book with Holland America, they were all sold out.

The Samba Parade starts at 9:00 PM tonight and goes until around 6:00 AM so there is a long night ahead of us.  I doubt we’ll make it through the whole night as it has been a long time since we have been up all night and we were quite a bit younger at the time.  Luckily there is a shuttle that leaves after every Samba school so we can leave whenever we want.

After picking up the tickets, I returned to the room and tried to nap, but I was wide awake and finally gave up.  We had breakfast in the Neptune Lounge and then hung around the room and watched the action from our balcony until it was time for lunch.

The view from our balcony with one of the five terminal buildings in the foreground.  You can see the murals on the building, and the peak way off in the distance is where the Christ Redeemer is located.

Val used her super telephoto lens to get this picture of the Christ Redeemer statue.

They were restocking the ship today and we saw palette after palette of fresh fruit and vegetables being loaded.  Each palette was inspected by one of the ship's chefs.

Another view of Rio looking the other way off our balcony.

After lunch in the Lido, we decided to get off the ship and look around a bit.  What we found was quite different than the quiet terminal I saw this morning.  There are five ships in port with most of them debarking passengers and then embarking new passengers.  Couple that with people like us who were just getting off to walk around and you have a crowd.

We walked through the terminal, occasionally stopping to look at some of the vendor booths inside, before exiting to the area outside.  When Rio hosted the 2016 Olympics they renovated the terminals and the areas outside.  There is a large promenade with large murals painted on the buildings and a transit stop right outside the terminal to catch an intercity train.

When we emerged from the terminal the area was teeming with people and vendors trying to get our business.  It was all very colorful and interesting especially with Carnival being the theme for many of the vendors and people.  We wandered around for a while and then decided to head back in as it was quite humid and we have two more days to explore.

Lots of people and lots of vendors selling their wares.  You can see one of the five cruise ships that were docked.

 

Some of the murals on the walls of buildings.

 

There were the ever present street vendor carts selling food and drink.

 

Looking back towards one of the terminals lined with vendor's booths.  Just to the left is the metro station.

You can see the long line of people waiting to get back to the ships.  There was very tight security which led to a bottleneck.

We finally got a map of Brazil, and we were very surprised to find a vendor selling these here!

As we started back into the terminal, we found ourselves in a long line waiting to get back in.  There was a security check so that slowed everything down, but it did move at a reasonably fast pace so we were soon back on the ship.  We are going to try and get some rest this afternoon since we will not get much sleep tonight, but as I write this blog post, I am not tired at all.

We never did take a nap, but we did spend the afternoon relaxing and getting ready for tonight.  We went up to the Lido at 6:00 for an early dinner.  We ran into Wally and Nancy who were also going to the Sambadrome tonight and sat and chatted with them while we ate.  They are going with the ship’s tour so we parted ways with them and returned to our room for our final preparation.

One thing we hoped wouldn’t happen, did; late this afternoon thunderstorms rolled through and we had thunder and lightning and intermittent rain.  By the time we went to dinner, the rain had turned torrential and we became concerned.  The weather forecast was for the rain to stop by the start of the parade and we hoped that was an accurate forecast.

We had agreed to meet Bob and Carol in the Neptune Lounge at 7:20 and the time finally arrived.  We put on our rain gear and headed out into the rain and off to the shuttles.  We were both excited and nervous as we headed out wondering what the night would bring us ...