**Near-Live Blog of Zaandam Inca and South America Cruise 24 Sep - 3 Nov 2018**

[Bruinboy]

Great blog, not only the reporting, but also your positive, encouraging spirit. Thanks for taking us all along and enjoy the remaining sea days!

[kazu]

Wow Rich, between the HSC and the tenders it sounds like you had some curmudgeons on board for sure.

 

I'm with you and leave the HSC in place, too.

 

Those notes from home are really sweet.  How thoughtful of Debbie to do that ❤️ 

 

thank you for taking us along on your wonderful cruise.  Your blog has been a joy to read and follow along.  Very safe travels to you and Roger 😄  and hope you adjust back to reality without too much trouble 😉 

[dfish]

I am really going to miss this.  I enjoyed traveling along with you and Roger.   Thank you for including us.

[dchip]

Thanks so much! Your writing style is wonderful, not to mention a positive attitude that shines through in every word. Safe travels home. 

 

Cheers, Denise 

[Vict0riann]

So sad that it's almost over!    I didn't see the sea lions on the dock - anyone else?  Could you post the photo again, please, Rich?  

[gwiblong]

Huge thanks for letting us tag along. I had a great time, glad you did too!

[DianeNZ]

Adding my thanks for your blog! Great idea and very much appreciated!

Cheers,

Diane

[PSR]

On 11/3/2018 at 9:25 AM, Vict0riann said:

So sad that it's almost over!    I didn't see the sea lions on the dock - anyone else?  Could you post the photo again, please, Rich?  

 

 

There are some sea lions shown in post #395 photos, but they are not waving as described in the original post.

Edited November 6, 2018 by PSR

[0bnxshs]

Hello everyone!  Thanks for keeping up while we've been traveling home.

 

There is an epilogue that I still want to add here about the last couple of days of the cruise, Rio and our uneventful flight home, plus some photos that I just couldn't procure the bandwidth on board to add here or the time in Rio to do.

 

Sea lions?  Those are a couple of the photos that, no matter how hard I tried (sitting and cursing and walking away wasn't that hard) the Zaandam's internet service wouldn't allow for these or other photos.  Too many people signed on the last 2 days there wasn't any chance of getting much kicked up the pipeline.

 

As soon as I vote, pick the DW up from the airport (yes, she's been working all this time) and say hello to her again, I'll finish this up, I promise.

[ozcruizer]

I just want to say a bit belatedly how much I enjoyed reading your blog along with the wonderful photos.  We probably won't ever do that cruise (DH says no) but it certainly gave a very good idea of what such a cruise is about.  Incidentally, the Zaandam was our first ever HAL ship back in 2007.  Can't wait for your next cruise!

 

Ozcruizer

[Krazy Kruizers]

Looking forward to your final report.

[Ineke]

I want to add my thanks for your wonderful account of your cruise, Rich!  It’s a bucket list itinerary for me, but I know I’ll not be able to do Machu Pichu, so your account and pictures are especially appreciated.  We were on the Zaandam this summer, and also had one of the Lower Promenade Deck cabins, so it was great to revisit through reading this. Thank you again!

[0bnxshs]

I owe some photos still from Punta del Este in Uruguay..... here they are.

 

Posing sea lion and gull:

 

Waiting expectantly for a fish:

 

Shoreline in Punta del Este near the marina:

 

Ever sea (a) lion roar?:

 

I woke him from his nap of a moment earlier:

 

From the shore tender, the shoreline of Punta del Este.  Long ride:

 

You can see the rain clouds gathering in this photo of Zaandam from the tender:

 

Home again:

 

Some of the quick foods available between lunch and dinner on the Lido:

 

Another end of a wonderful day of cruising:

 

 

[kazu]

Thanks so much Rich.

 

Love the pic of the sea lion roaring 😄  

 

 

[sff]

Thank you so much for your wonderful, informative blog.   Such detail!   Great memories for us of this spectacular cruise.

[TiogaCruiser]

He reminds me of my pooch. At dinner.

 

[0bnxshs]

And now for the rest of the story..... (sorry it's taken so long...)

 

 

Day 40 - 41 (11/1 - 11/2)

 

Sea Days

 

The sea last night was unhappy, perhaps for our speed in getting to Rio and preparing to leave.  Not as badly as other nights but certainly noticeable.  I perceive an odd noise on our cabin sound machine that reminds me of the old days at Patrick AFB in Florida where an Early Warning Air Defense radar station painted the housing area every several seconds with what amounted to RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) to us because of it causing a buzzing noise that got recorded on all our tapes of albums we shared with other young couples.  The one at Patrick is long since gone but I wondered if Brazil had some similar contraption in place today.

 

I've started packing.  Not much, just a few things that I know I absolutely don't need now.  A jacket, another jacket, slacks that I never wore, a few shirts, a bag for tours, things like that.  Just to expend some lonesome energy.  It's easy to get into a mood, wishing away time, time that we won't ever get back.  I've learned that for me, the best thing is to occupy myself with mundane tasks.  Something I'm sure most people have long figured out but for me the realization came along more recently.

 

I tried eating a nice breakfast of a ham, mushroom and cheese omelet, 2 sausage links and toast this morning, along with the ever present coffee.  I'm regretting the choice now.  Only the second time I've deviated much from my cereal and fruit or muffin breakfast that has become typical of cruises for me and, like the first time, a mistake.  As much as I love breakfast foods like the omelet and sausage they have become punishing reminders that I've changed somehow over time and that they don't like me anymore.  We had a most favored dog named Missy who, for most of her years, we called "Old Iron Guts" because of some of the things we'd find her eating or already finished with.  Alarming things like a bowl of chocolate, lava rocks and disgusting things as well.  The only thing she ever turned her nose up at was the green pepper that a certain delivered pizza box always contained; those she, and I, didn't like and wouldn't eat.  Everything else for her was fair game.  Then one day when she was around 10 years old, she no longer could eat just anything and had to go on a special diet of prescription dog food after a trip to the doggie emergency room.  I guess her vice had finally caught up with her and I suppose one of mine has too.

 

So now Roger is off to lunch and I'm packing.  No lunch for my unsettled tummy today.  But I don't mind; I rather enjoy the alone time.  I play some of my music on the old computer and am happy.  Except that we've heard nothing about a Mariner's Medallion Ceremony or Mariner Society Brunch.  Not that I'm a fan of the food that's served at the brunch any longer but I need tiles!  My DW has made one serving tray already and we're collecting more for another or something else.  We didn't get invited to either for the first part of the cruise that ended in San Antonio, Chile but fully expected we'd be invited for this round.  Nothing yet though.  Odd.

 

We did receive a travel log for the first portion tonight though.  From Seattle, WA to San Antonio, Chile: 7203 nautical miles.  15,120 eggs.  I doubt anyone has actually counted the eggs cooked or used or eaten; this is likely how many are ordered a day by HAL multiplied by the number of days of the first part of the cruise. I know I ate only 4 at most over the whole 40 days.  Well, maybe 8 as I would have hard boiled egg added to my salads on the Lido.

 

The night passes a bit more calmly and I sleep well but I don't think Roger does.  I find out later that his bed has been on a slant the whole cruise and no matter where he tries to park himself he slides to the edge of the mattress.  Why in the world he's dealt with this for 39 nights and not said a thing is beyond me.

 

We each finish packing today and try to make sure the things we need overnight and in the morning are available to us; I've never gotten it quite right as I inevitably will forget something like a toothbrush, socks or an extra handkerchief but realize it isn't the most important thing as we are spending the night in Rio and not flying off after we disembark.  We fill out the silly tags we're given that coincide with our disembarkation color and number.  We are yellow 3 this time as I asked for the latest disembarkation time available since we are just heading to a hotel for an overnight stay and don't know if we'll be able to get an early check-in.

 

Roger comes back to the room after breakfast and notices that the new Mariner Society pins are distributed to each room.  He doesn't have his new 4 star pin though and is concerned.  Also, no invitations for us for any brunches.   Something is odd.  Roger mentions to Wahoo that he didn't get his pin; Wahoo has no idea about this but because it's irritating Roger he comes up with a 4 star pin and bag for it.  I wonder if he's "yoinked" it from another cabin as there is no card with it congratulating Roger for earning his 4th star.  He also has 2 tiles with him for us.  Later I mention this to the front desk on one of the comment cards.  In the afternoon someone calls and apologizes about forgetting Roger's 4th star.  Roger is told that I was invited to the brunch but I never saw an invite and Roger should also have been invited.  Just sort of weird.  We later heard of other 4 star Mariners who also didn't receive brunch invitations.  We did receive our trip log for the remaining days and somehow, we've eaten the same number of eggs as the first part of the cruise so either daily consumption has increased or my whole theory on it is wacked.

 

The evening comes early and our bags stand vigil in the hallway like guards at the doors with most everyone else's until they can be collected and sent to whatever corral the ship uses to hold them in until morning and their unloading.  I assume this is done in stages based on color and number and I admire the work I imagine someone has put into figuring out how to stage the baggage for efficient offloading in the morning.  I settle in for a restless night and thoughts about how many things must go well and right between tomorrow and Monday to finally be home. 

 

 

Day 42 - 44 (11/3 - 11/5)

 

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Home

 

Beautiful morning out the window of the cabin when I finally get tired of trying to sleep.  Roger was up at 4 AM in anticipation of being 1 little baby step closer to being home.  As you know, he's gotten quite homesick and is ready to be home.  I know it will take another 54 hours or so before we can expect to be home so don't try to dwell too much on how long that seems or I'll start to worry like I did all night about the things that might prevent it from happening.  I'm up early but so is the sun here today.  I step outside on the way to breakfast and am confronted by a wall of humidity that reminds me how much I dislike it and how much like home it feels.

 

I don't find Roger at our usual breakfast spot so gather my breakfast of cereal and fruit and head out to the only place there seems to be seats, outside on the Seaview pool deck.  At least I find a table in the shade.  It's warm and humid but rather pretty looking out over the harbor area we've docked at.  Lots of painted warehouses along the waterfront and I see an electric train running just on the other side of the warehouses with people on their way to wherever Saturday morning demands they be.  I see no sign of taxis or buses or the like and wonder how that works, but I needn't have feared.

 

I wander back at a leisurely pace to the cabin marveling at how people are running to and fro; we are often doing the same on departure day as we usually have a much earlier time for disembarkation.  Today though it's even more hectic as first, everyone must present themselves, their passports and their Brazil visas to authorities in the Hudson room on deck 5 before they can leave the ship.  We picked up our passports the day after our Punta del Este stop, including 2 pieces of paper that didn't seem to need any attention from us and were told little about except to keep them with our passports.  Turns out they seemed useful only for absorbing the dark ink of large stamps that, being written in Portuguese, were meaningless to most of us and ended up being tossed in the trash on board our flight home on Monday morning.

 

All of this lining up and stamping and lining up again and shuffling off the ship and walking what seemed like half a mile to the terminal.  The dock was empty in front of Zaandam so I chalked up the long walk to the Brazilians thinking we might need a little exercise after our long cruise.  We entered a hall where our baggage was standing in double file lines like soldiers waiting to march off when commanded.  We each claimed ours and headed for the exit, stopping along the way to ask a couple of tourist info officials where and what taxis to look for.  We were told to find a yellow taxi with a blue stripe running along each side with a "TAXI" lighted sign on top and that some would simply set a fee and others would run a meter but to expect to pay US$30 to US$50 or so for a ride to Copacabana.  We walked outside and quickly found a short line of people boarding these very taxis and were loaded into one and told US$30 for a ride to the Hilton Copacabana.

 

We think the taxi driver we had in Seattle might take some speed and agility lessons from the driver we had here.  This was a no-holds barred race from the port to the hotel and we both reached for our seat belts within just a few seconds of leaving the curb.  In Seattle we reached speeds of 80 mph or more a few times on Interstate 5; here we were doing 100 kph on the streets of greater Rio.  I wouldn't describe it as harrowing but the thought of making it this far on a wonderful cruise only to break my neck in a taxi in Rio did cross my mind a time or two.

 

We arrived intact around 10 AM at the Hilton and paid our driver and entered the 37 floor building that was surrounded by grumpy looking men and women with crested jackets and reflective sunglasses on and it took me a little time to realize they were hotel security.  Check-in went well, albeit slowly and by 10:30 we were in our 11th floor room facing the famous Copacabana Beach, just across the street from us.  It was a beautiful day and, so far, we had had a relatively easy time meeting all our plans for the day.  In fact, we had accomplished our goals for the day and had most of it still left.

 

Roger immediately decided he needed a walk along the beach to look for..... well, whatever he could find.  He'd heard that Copa had nude and topless beaches and he intended to find them.  But it was hot!  The sign in the boulevard outside flashed 34C!  One look out the window told me to stay inside for a while and wait out the heat and the sun.  So, I napped and Roger walked.

 

Turns out Copacabana is no more wild a place than anywhere else is, at least by day.  Roger came back without seeing much of interest but at least I had a nice, short nap.  We had late lunch, early dinner by the hotel pool and by then, the sun was at a much better angle, almost setting. and I thought I could use a walk too.  So off I went while Roger texted with his DW for a while.

 

I came back and Roger was all showered and ready for bed again while texting his DW and I found I was tired too and readied for bed.  Tonight, Brazil is to go on summer time and gain an hour; back home, 1 hour behind, they will fall back an hour and tomorrow, we will suddenly have a 3 hour time difference.

 

It's noisy outside with music and horns and people all night and Roger is up at 3 AM and can't figure out if that's the right time.  It is but he's not sure so stays awake and starts to worry.  Yesterday I told him that I wanted to make sure we were downstairs waiting for our arranged tour by 10 AM and that I wanted to be sure we weren't held up by checking out, if it were to take as long as it did to check-in.  I'm not sure what he took from that.  I also told him that I'd adjusted the alarm clock in the room to be at the right time come morning.  I'm not sure what he took from that.  At 6:30 AM, correct time, he really started to worry that I was still sleeping and decided to cough and clear his throat and finally turned on his phone to see if it would tell him the right time.  Not sure how he figured he'd know that though.  I heard the phone waking up and immediately told him that it was 6:30 AM here and that it's 3:30 AM at home and his DW was probably still asleep.  He was concerned that I'd sleep too late and not be able to check out by.... 8 AM?

 

As he was hungry, he went in search of coffee and food.  I tried to return to sleep.  He found the restaurant where breakfast was included but didn't understand that either and tried to pay with his credit card.  When I found him he had eaten and drunk half a pot of coffee and wasn't sure how to pay.  I reminded him that it was part of the stay and not to worry.

 

Somehow we do manage to get down to the front desk and quickly check out around 10 AM and, within a few minutes, our arranged tour arrives, the one that will show us the highlights of Rio and deliver us to the airport (GIG) in plenty of time to get checked in and settled down.

 

Olivia Alves is a top-notch tour guide and provides us with a full day's tour of Rio for a reasonable price.  Many thanks to our friends from our roll call, "wilmer3" for finding, arranging and sharing the tour with us and another couple.

 

We tour the city and have a great day looking and walking and eating and finally, the tour is over and we say "Goodbye" to our newly made friends and are whisked off to the airport in a calmer version of the taxi ride yesterday.  The airport is large and looks fairly new, at leas this terminal does, and we find the Delta counter finally and get checked in.  We are early for our flight but both of us are the sort who would rather wait at the place that we are responsible for getting ourselves to and then let the rest take its course.  So after a long walk through a mile of duty free shops and a detour to "Victoria's Secret", we get to the gate and we wait.

 

The 10 hour flight leaves virtually on time and is bumpy but otherwise uneventful until landing.  It's raining with low overcast but we're going to end up on the ground someplace and we get all but down on what we hope is the active runway when we hear the engines' pitch increase and the nose of the plane pull up.  We gain altitude and begin a slow turn.  The pilot comes on the intercom and says that some ground equipment that "helps us down the landing path" has malfunctioned and we'd have to go around.  Hopefully it will be reset by then.  This time we land, but with a hard thud and a wiggle back and forth before settling in.

 

Almost home.  Ironically, my DW is only a few miles away from ATL working, so I am nearer to her now than I will be for a few more days.   We trudge off the plane dutifully as we are 1 row behind the jetway exit row, I do pat the skin again to thank her for staying in the air for as long as it took to get us here, and Roger and I part at the intersection of the Disney-like maze of immigrations and a restroom; Roger needing the stop and me on my way to the GlobalEntry kiosks.

 

Fortunately we are early and not in with several other international arrivals so I am through immigration almost as fast as I can walk and touch the kiosk screen and retrieve my receipt for doing so correctly.  An immigration officer collects our receipts after glancing at our photos in our passports and wishes us a pleasant day.  I get to our baggage carousel before anything has arrived but a few other passengers.  Before I can claim a space at the conveyor, hopeful baggage begins to tumble down a chute and fall ready to be picked up by its owners and taken home finally to be hidden away in a corner of a closet where it will revel in telling all the left behind baggage the story of its journey and all it's seen.

 

And beyond that, I think my story also comes to an end, finally.  Each of us re-unites and re-acquaints ourselves with our loved ones we've left behind on this journey just like our baggage does.  I hope you've all enjoyed my story.  I hope all of you continue to make your story too. 

 

The port at Rio de Janeiro:

 

Copacabana Beach from our hotel room:

 

Sitting along the famous walk along Copacabana Beach, the tall building is the Hilton Hotel:

 

I spied this for our Canadian friends while people watching:

 

Statue of Princess Isabel of Spain at the beach:

 

The electric train to Christ the Redeemer statue:

 

I've seen these tracks at the old locks of the Panama Canal for the mules:

 

We seemed to ascend into the heavens themselves:

 

Stairway to Heaven?  No, that's not Neil Young or Billy Bob Thorton.....

 

I never was able to move far enough back to get a good photo for the crowds there:

 

Ever get that feeling of someone looking over your shoulder?

 

Now the clouds move along, naturally......

 

Overlooking the south side of Rio:

 

Looking to the east:

 

Copacabana from Sugar Loaf Mountain:

 

Hope you enjoyed!

Edited November 15, 2018 by 0bnxshs

[SusieKIslandGirl]

Amazing! Thanks so much for the lovely travelogue. Can't wait for your next cruise. We will be on the South America/Antarctic cruise in January so this has been a wonderful preview. Thanks again.

[erewhon]

You and Roger have had a wonderful adventure, thank you  for all your reports and photos....you were lucky to get such good photos of the sea lion.

Guess you will be planning your next cruise?

[0bnxshs]

On 11/12/2018 at 1:53 AM, TiogaCruiser said:

He reminds me of my pooch. At dinner.

 

 

My DD has a Cavalier King Charles spaniel named Victoria who looks very much like this too!  Except for the color and the water, of course.  We are all very proud of her (DD and dog) as she is a certified therapy dog who encourages children to read, visits EOC (911 call centers) to give lots of loving hugs and kisses, calls on lonely seniors in care centers and loves to be loved.  Here she is competing in a fun dog show:

 

Thanks for following along and all the encouragement!

[0bnxshs]

I truly wish I could thank everyone personally for all the encouragement and patience you have shown over the last couple of months.  Speaking with a beloved member of our family this evening reminded me that no one person ever accomplishes much on his/her own; it takes the time, effort, love, sacrifice and tears of so many people for any single one of us to shine even for just a moment.  I have enjoyed the spotlight you all have shined on me and will try to pass it along, in my own way and as best I can.

 

I wish you all the best and hope to contribute to your spotlight somewhere, sometime.

[oakridger]

[dchip]

Thanks once again. I would be honored to cruise with you one day. Your light shines through in every word. I will be thinking of you in Machu Picchu in March. 

 

Cheers, Denise 

 

 

[Vict0riann]

Great cruise!  Thanks, Rich.

[PSR]

Loved your journey, glad you're home. Thank you for taking us along.