Four days at sea

Recap of our four sea days between Santarém and Salvador. It gives you an idea of the scale of Brazil when it takes four days to get from one city to another. And we’re still three days from Rio!

There was a “cooking demonstration” on Monday morning that we decided to attend. Turns out it was more of a comedy presentation as it was a competition between cruise director Carson and general manager Ludmila, with head chef Farid officiating. We didn’t learn much, but it was a fun diversion and the boys laughed a bunch, mostly at Carson, who freely admitted to not having any idea what he was doing. Monday brought us the first real rain we’ve seen so far. The boys and I went out late in the afternoon for some swimming (PE!) and saw that the rain was coming down pretty good. Not torrential, but more than the on-and-off showers we’d experienced. Given that it was still warm this did not deter us and we got in some pool time.

On Wednesday there was brunch in the Grand Dining Room. It was a big production with multiple tables loaded with food. Some of the cakes and fruit decorations were very impressive. Before dinner we attended the “Sing Out Loud” performance, which was a choir of passengers singing songs that they’d been practicing on the cruise. It was fun, and I’m impressed with anyone who will get up and sing in a public setting. It’s clear that the crew try to provide some different activities on these stretches of multiple sea days to help break up the monotony.

On Thursday the crew put together a "country fair," where they set up various booths on the pool deck with games. Do well, or even just participate, and you got raffle tickets. DJ won a prize which turned out to be... a bottle of wine. Two minors on the ship and one wins a bottle of wine. CD Carson swapped it out for a tote bag with some golf goodies.

We’re getting in a lot of ping pong as part of our physical activity. The table is in about the best place it can be – back in a corner of the pool deck where it is sheltered on three sides. But the wind still gets in there and is definitely a factor in play. The boys hadn’t played a lot before but have improved very quickly.

Tomorrow is Salvador, where we originally did not have any plans. But after a bit more reading we decided we did want to see the city, so we used some of our shipboard credit to book an excursion. It’s supposed to include a fair bit of walking, which will be welcome.Leggi altro