The Lemmers Lynns, Lachine, QC, CA - SA Cruise 2004, Rio de Janeiro

The Lemmers Lynns
Lachine, Quebec, Canada
Bienvenue! / Welcome!

South America / Antarctic Cruise 2004
Monday - Thursday, February 16-19, 2004 - At sea and Rio de Janeiro

Two days at sea from Montevideo to Rio de Janeiro - the sun was shining and the sea was blue, so sun worshipping beckoned. Soon it was time for a snack and a thirst quencher.
Speaking of the blue sea, the Report from the Bridge one noon gave the air temperature as 25C and the water 26C. For me, the Atlantic Ocean at 26C does not compute, but it must be right - the Bridge said so.

Monday evening dinner was formal, with the dining room staff decked out in top hat and tails. We took the opportunity to snap the folks with whom we enjoyed our evening meals throughout the cruise.
1. Steward (with top hat) and Marg (with sunburn).
2. Bill and Lorna Switzer from Stratford, Ontario.
3. Kay Barry and Margaret Reid from St. Catharines, Ontario.
4. Bob and Jo Henderson from St. Catharines, Ontario. They acted as assistant cruise directors.
5. Bob and Jo with Roslyn Craig of Craig Travel, Toronto.
6. Marg and Bill Lynn from Lachine, Québec, with facial glows to melt the ice sculpture.

Food, glorious food! (gourmet, gourmand or glutton?)

One of the principles of cruising seems to be that all cruisers are gluttons, and the chefs do their level best to satisfy such an urge. We did not photograph the regular meals, but the chocolate buffet special one evening seemed worth a shot or two.

Deck 3 provided a covered promenade which circled the ship. 3½ laps to a mile. Often it was a walking version of the 401 at Toronto as folks attempted to equate calorie output to input. Not much traffic when this shot was taken, however.

Up on the Lido deck (deck 8), the culinary types seemed to like to play with their food. Guess their mothers never told them different.

A couple of photos of the group and our stewards to celebrate our last supper. The Switzers and Lynns are scheduled to attend a dinner / samba tour in Rio tomorrow night, so will not be here for the real last supper.

Rio de Janeiro at last!

The MS Amsterdam docked at Rio de Janeiro Wednesday morning, February 18.
Several hours were spent getting our passports back and clearing Brazilian immigration before we could leave the ship.
Then we had the day free to do our own thing. Marg and I took a taxi to the new cathedral, which can hold twenty thousand people, five thousand seated. The building is cone shaped, with stained glass windows on four sides reaching for the apex of the dome. The separate bell tower follows the cone motif.
When we went across the street to take photos of the outside, a young lady speaking English told us this was a very dangerous area in which to have our cameras out in plain view. This put a bit of a damper on our site-seeing enthusiasm. We put our cameras away and walked back to the ship along a wide street. The sidewalks were also wide, but pretty much taken over by vendors hawking their wares. Not touristy stuff, however, more for the local folk. We had trouble finding a post card to show the exterior of the cathedral that we missed when the lady spoke to us.

Wednesday evening we took a dinner / samba tour that left the ship at 6:30 PM. En route to dinner we encountered a traffic jam to make Toronto Friday evening look like a cake walk, and took two hours to get there. The guide explained that it normally takes about an hour - an accident held us up tonight.
Dinner was buffet style for salads, with gauchos serving meat on long spits from which they carved it off to spec. There seemed to be no limit to the amount available, but we had to hurry to the samba show because of the traffic delay.
The show was excellent, with very athletic male and female performers in exotic costumes, some very ornate and some very little. Unfortunately we had been told no cameras allowed and, being good little boys and girls, we left them at the ship only to see flashes popping throughout the show.
After a number of marvellous routines, all to the samba beat, the MC came on stage and began to work the audience, eliciting cheers for all the countries represented. At this point our crew thought it was over and we filed out, missing the spectacular finale that the MC was giving time for the dancers to dress for. Too bad to have missed that.
Back at the ship around midnight we had to put out our bags to be picked up during the night.

Thursday, our last day, we disembarked and found our bags under the guidance of David Craig, who organized porters to take them to our waiting buses.
With all aboard, we headed out for a tour of Rio, extending roughly to the area we took two hours to get to last night, then up Corcovado by cog railway, elevator and escalator to see the huge statue of Christ that overlooks the city. A great lookout, but the haze made the city almost invisible.

Then we were taken to a lunch similar to last night's dinner, but more enjoyable because we had time to savour it. Here a Gaucho offers meat to Eric and Ellen Stott from the typical meat skewer. The photo does not show him brandishing the huge knife they used to cut the meat - hope they have lots of insurance.

After lunch we headed for the famous Sugarloaf Mountain. En route Marg snapped some of the Rio beaches from the bus window. (This was the Thursday before Carnival.)
Some are a bit busy.
Some are quite busy.
Some folks are into Sand Sculpture - we just saw the fruits of their labour.

Soon we reached the base of Sugarloaf mountain, which we ascended by two cable car stages. By now the haze was lifting to allow some photos of the Rio skyline.

At various locations during the day the guide pointed out naval establishments, with some asides about their high class life style. He said that all beaches in Rio are public, except the navy beach on an island adjacent to sugarloaf.

Finally it was off to the airport, where we boarded our various flights home to Canada. Our flight was on American Airlines, "direct" to New York, then Montreal. It turned out that direct does not mean non-stop, so we went first to Sao Paulo (Brazil's largest city) to get off the plane, circle the concourse, go through security and re-board the plane (a couple of hours later). From Sao Paulo to New York was about a nine hour night flight. After midnight supper the lights were put out to allow some sleep before 6 AM breakfast and arrival at NY to await our flight to Montreal (and onward for the Maritimers).

"The longest mile is the last mile home"

Despite some sleep en route to New York, fatigue was the order of the day as we awaited our flight to Montreal, as evidenced by Eric and Ellen Stott of Dartmouth, NS.
Little did we (or they) know that Halifax was in the midst of a one metre snow fall that had everything at a standstill. At this writing we have not heard how they and the other Maritimers fared.

That's all for now, folks.
(There are a few technical details about our ship on the MS Amsterdam page, for those interested.)