Wednesday, February 14

At Montevideo today, I took another half-day tour. It’s somewhat similar to Buenos Aires, but a good deal smaller. It has lovely beaches and lots of parks and statuary. When I got back I saw the doctor about the bronchitis, got some expensive pills and cough syrup, ordered a room service lunch and went to sleep.

Thursday and Friday, February 15-16

Weather has been great, warm with smooth seas. Two days at sea mostly lost to bronchitis and sleep. I even skipped the formal night Valentine’s Day dinner, but Jill and Lillian and John brought me long-stemmed red roses that were part of the festivities...very sweet of them.

Saturday and Sunday, February 17-18

Rio de Janeiro...again mostly lost to bronchitis and sleep. Wound up canceling both tours I had booked here in favor of another trip to the doctor who gave me a whole bunch more pills and stuff. But I didn’t miss all of Rio completely.

When we docked Saturday morning there was some sort of Carnival kick-off thing going on in a building right near my cabin...7:30 a.m. this was. In a fenced off area were about 100 people (mostly men judging by their shirtless condition) dancing and partying to incredibly loud and driving samba beat with a sort of wailing "New Age" kind of vocals...except when a piercing soprano launched into that famous aria from "Carmen!" It was so loud that I’m surprised that every pacemaker and bypass owner on the ship didn’t go into cardiac arrhythmia!

Fortunately they shut it all down around 9:45 so I went back to sleep. Many of the tour buses got stuck in bad traffic caused by the first day of Carnaval. One bunch of people were on a bus that took 1.5 hours to go 3 blocks! The saving grace was the view they got of various dance clubs, including one group of men in pink tutus followed by another group in red samba dresses...sort of wish I’d seen that, but I was better off asleep. When I was awake I had a great view of "Cristo Redentor" from my verandah as seen here...telephoto, of course.

This afternoon we sailed at 3:00 p.m. The Captain requested and got permission for the ship to sail around the harbor to view the beaches before heading out. It was all on the starboard side, so I just sat on my little verandah and snapped away with my camera as we sailed right past Sugar Loaf. And frankly, looking at the cable car that goes up there, I’m just as glad I didn’t have to test my acrophobia on that tour! FYI, the cable car is the teeny weeny black dot in mid-air to the left of the crag.