S America/Antarctica - 12/18/2013 - Morning in Rio and Getting on the Ship

After a good nights rest, we awoke to beautiful sunshine, blue skies, and even bluer water in Rio.  Our bus transfer to the ship wasn't until 11:00 am so we took advantage of the great day to explore the beach area which was right across the street from our hotel.

We had great 3G coverage in Rio.  T-Mobile offers free data and texting from all the countries that we will visit on the cruise.  Voice is only $0.20/minute so you don't have to worry about huge phone bills when you get home.  You do want to avoid the ships service....really expensive.  I enjoyed people watching.  The story about all the Brazilians being fit and fantastic looking, especially on the beach, is not true....more like 50% based on my unofficial observations.

The beaches were not crowded and were very clean.

They play a lot of volleyball on the beaches.

This Brazilian is obviously pretty fit....the one standing that is.

Our hotel, the Royal Tulip, was very nice.  It is the hotel provided by Holland America when you take the pre-cruise extension.

Breath taking scenery around Rio.

Post card photos of our ship, the ms Zaandam.  On this cruise, we had 1,407 guests and a crew of 615.  The ship is 785 ft in length and 108 ft wide.  It weights 63,000 tons and can cruise at 21.5 knots (about 25 mph).  It burns about 85 gallons/mile of fuel oil while producing 59,000 hp or 43.2 MW to propel the ship....more information than you wanted I suspect.

Part of the check-in gauntlet is the "Welcome Aboard" photo.  We rarely buy these but made an exception this time.  They run you through so fast that you don't have time to ditch your luggage for the photo.

This is part one of our posts for today.  Later in the evening, we will go out on the town.

I promised a little more information on Rio in the first post.  I can only comment on what I see as we drive around town.

Rio is a city of contradictions.  You see wealth and abject poverty, dirty and clean, old and new, beauty and ugliness.  Where you are in the city determines what you see.  From the airport to one of the major tunnels going under the mountains, you see old poorly maintained industry and homes.  Everything is jammed tightly together.  A large percentage of the 6.5 million people living in Rio are very poor and live in shanty houses in the northern part of the city.

As you pass through the tunnel to the southern part of the city, you are on "the other side of the tracks" and are in the wealthiest and most expensive part of the city and of all South America.  This is the Rio that most people see.  The entire southern part of Rio has beautiful beaches and resort hotels.  Names like Flamengo, Ipanema, and Tropicana come from the beaches and neighborhoods of Rio.

We really enjoyed seeing Rio but would not want to go back.  It is way too crowded and chaotic.  The things that people go to Rio to do and see are not things we enjoy the most.  There are plenty of other places to go in the world to see a great beach.  Being a skin cancer survivor, the last thing I need is to lay on a beach.

Rio will host the 2014 World Cup Football games this summer.  It will also be the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.  The construction of the new facilities for the Games is way behind schedule at the time of this writing.  Lets keep our fingers crossed that they can recover and be ready when the torch arrives.

Older folks will remember the "Girl From Ipanema" song that was so famous in 1964.  It is one of my favorite songs even now.  The song was written about a real girl who would walk by Stan Getz's (author) hotel everyday to get to the beach.  He fell in love with her but never got to meet her until the song became a hit.  She is still living in Rio and reportedly still beautiful at age 70 something.  Here is a link to the song...enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJkxFhFRFDA

The next post will cover our night on the town in Rio.

South America/Antarctica Cruise - 12/16 & 17/2013 - Getting to Rio

This post is the first in a series of posts 20+ posts covering our cruise to South America, the Falkland Islands, and Antarctica.  There will generally be one post for each day on the trip.  This Adventure is one more step in getting to our goal of visiting all seven continents.  Antarctica will be #6.  Only Africa remains after this cruise.

Rio De Janeiro is where we get on our ship, the Holland America ms Zaandam.  The map below shows the ports of call for the cruise.  The future blog posts will have tons of photos and commentary on the trip.

Our trips starts in Kansas City.  We were up by 6:00 am on December 16th to finish packing and prepare the house for our long absence.  I won't go into detail on our preparations but we do have a standard list of things to do before leaving on long trips.

The limo picked us up at 11:15 am for the 50 minute ride to the airport.  On longer trips (20 or more days), it is a break-even on the cost to park at the airport versus using a limo service.  In the winter, it is especially valuable to not have to scrap windshields and worry if the car battery is dead due to the cold.  Any time of year, it is very convenient to be dropped at the door to your airline and then have someone waiting for you when you return in the baggage claim area.  Usually, you are exhausted on returning and don't need any hassle to get home, take a shower, eat, and sleep in your own bed.

We were very concerned about traveling this time of year given the unpredictable weather and potential flight cancellations.  We traveled a day early so if we had bad weather we might be able to recover and still make the embarkation time for our ship.  We also make sure that we have lots of time between flights....we do this any time of the year....we are retired and not in a hurry.  This will prove to be a smart thing to do on this trip.

We arrived at the KC airport at 12 noon for our 1:45 flight to Chicago.  Our journey to Rio is via Chicago and Miami.  The weather in KC was cold but no snow or ice.  We arrived in Chicago on schedule at 3:10 pm.  Our flight to Miami is scheduled to leave at 5:15 pm.  It has just started to snow in Chicago as we arrive.  The snow picks up as time passes and as we board the plane, there is significant accumulation on the ground and on the plane (photo below). 

We sat on the plane looking at the snow builing up on the wings and wondering why we hadn't taken off already.  It turns out that the luggage compartment door on the plane wouldn't close properly.

 A mechanic was called to work on the plane as we sat on the runway.  After about 30 minutes, the plane was fixed but now had to be de-iced before we left the gate.  That took another 20 minutes and then we finally got off the ground headed towards Miami nearly one hour late.  The photo below was taken from our seats on the plane as they de-iced it.

We arrived an hour late in Miami but that was okay because we had built in extra time between flights.  If we could just get in the air towards Rio, we would have it made.  Our Miami flight was scheduled to leave at 11:20 pm (EST) and we arrived at 10:20 pm so all was good.  We did have a little bit of a hike to get from where we came in to where the Rio flight departed from in the terminal.  Due to other flight delays, they slipped our scheduled departure from Miami to 11:40 pm.

We had time for a little snack and then boarded the plane.  We pushed off from the gate and then stopped for about 15 minutes.  The pilot came on the PA and told us that there was a problem with the Pitot Tube on the plane and a mechanic had to be called.  The Pitot Tube tells the pilot how fast the plane is going so it is a critical piece of flight information.  The mechanic determined that the tube needed to be replaced and it was a four hour job so they had us all get off the plane.  There was a replacement plane available but it needed to be serviced for the long trip to Rio and all the food and drink and luggage had to be transferred from the old plane to the new one.  Long story short..... we didn't take off from Miami until 1:30 am on December 17th.

The flight to Rio was good but very late.  Our 11:00 am arrival turned into 1:30 pm.  Holland America was waiting for us to transfer us to our hotel.  We had to wait for other coming in so we didn't leave the airport immediately.  We finally arrived at the hotel around 4:00 pm Rio time.....about 31 hours after our travel day began.

Driving from the airport to the hotel was an experience reminiscent of China or Peru.....near total chaos.  The roads are inadequate and the rules of the road were obviously meant to be broken in Rio.  The congested traffic actually moves decently.  The weather was very overcast and gloomy....nothing to cheer two very tired travelers.

I will talk more about Rio in the next post.  The photos below were the view from out hotel balcony.

  

Tomorrow, we get on the ship and do some sightseeing in the evening.  I will discuss Rio a little more in the next post.

Remember that this is just the first of more than 20 posts on the trip.  The cruise was way too big in scope to cover it in one post.  In a blog, the posts stack on top of each other so the newest post is on the top of the stack.  If you start with this post, you need to move to the next Newer Post to see the trip in chronological order.  You can find individual posts in the Archive List in the right hand column of the screen.  You might need to click on a date to expand the list and see the posts.

We took over 6,000 photos on the trip and I am still working on them to get them ready to post so there may be days between new posts on the blog....be patient and check back for new ones.