Fernando de Naronha

Is the streak over?

We’ve been on an unbelievable weather streak, going back at least to 2009.  London, Normandy, Dublin, Scotland, Alaska, Buenos Aires, Russia, Ireland (again), Amsterdam, Galapagos, Amsterdam (again), Germany, France, Switzerland, Buenos Aires (again).  Almost nothing but near-perfect weather.  Even on this trip, making our way up the coast of South America, we’ve had an unbroken string of gorgeous days.

We arrived at Fernando de Naronha yesterday morning, home of the purported best beach in the world, a few hundred miles off the coast of northern Brazil.  Two snorkel trips planned.  Heavy overcast. Heavy rain.

On the Zodiac ride from the ship to the harbor, it was raining so hard that we were drenched before landing.

Got to make the best of it though.  We boarded a small bus and headed for one of the dozens of beaches on the island.  When we arrived, although the rain had nearly stopped, there was so much runoff a torrent of water was surging from higher ground through the middle of the beach.  Wading across it was a challenge.  The runoff had made the entire bay so muddy, that visibility was zero.  A few people waded in the warm water - - warmer than the rain - - but snorkeling was a lost cause.  There was a sea turtle project underway on the beach, though.  Four turtles had been snagged from the sea, and the research staff were weighing, measuring, and tagging the turtles.  Fun to watch, so the morning wasn’t a lost cause.

In the afternoon, better luck.  A tour boat took us along the length of one side of the island.  The rains had stopped, the sky was brighter and there were even a few patches of blue.  Lots of birds, lots of interesting rock formations.  We saw none of the spinner dolphins in the bay where they like to congregate, but we did drop anchor for snorkeling in the middle of the bay at the “most beautiful beach in the world”.  Part of what makes the beach so nice is its inaccessibility.  Very difficult to get there by land, so most people arrive by boat. 

With a small reef about 15 feet down, decent visibility, warm water and some very not-shy fish, our morning troubles were over.  The day was salvaged.  I’m not sure we can say our weather streak is intact, but we can’t say the day was a wash out either.

By the time we headed back to our ship, the sky was clearing and more blue was visible.  All good signs for a nice day tomorrow.  Too bad that tomorrow we’d be back at sea.  But that’s OK, that’s our day to cross the equator.

 

Dolphins!

I was good.  I went to the gym yesterday morning. 

On the way back, I stopped to watch the end of a lecture on Brazil.  Before I settled in, there was an announcement from the bridge that a pod of dolphins had been spotted and was heading our way.  Other than for mealtimes, I haven’t seen a room empty as quickly around here.

Insert your own cliché here, but to me it seemed like an on-rushing cavalry charge.  It really felt like we were under attack.  First, some came from one direction, and as the ship turned, they came from another direction.  All told, there must have been between 50 and 100.  It was manic.  It was gleeful.  It was completely infectious.  While I’m certainly anthropomorphizing, the dolphins seemed ecstatic to find us.  There were mothers with young who moved in perfect synchronicity.  And then there were the bow riders.  An interchangeable group of about 8-12 took up positions in front of the ship as our advance guard, guiding us to wherever we wanted them to.  After about 45 minutes and thousands of pictures taken, our pod moved on to their next adventure.

Today, I wasn’t good.  I didn’t go to the gym.

I did go to a demonstration of navigation.  Again in the middle of it, an announcement came from the bridge of another dolphin sighting.  This one didn’t look quite as large, and some felt that dolphins were so yesterday, that they weren’t sure if they needed to go through that drill again.  So, the room didn’t empty quite as fast.

Regardless, many people headed out to lean over the bow and watch.  What started as a minor sighting rapidly turned into a full-on melee.  This was more than just a frolic but became a feeding frenzy.  Again, feel free to think up your own cliché here, but the ocean really was boiling.  And it wasn’t just dolphins.  Melon head whales, plus spinner dolphins were in the mob.  Groups were moving every which way chasing whatever they were chasing.  They were all around the ship.  I’m sure the numbers were in the hundreds.  We would see groups 8 or 10 melon head whales moving in unison, probably herding their prey. 

While no one knew exactly what the prey was, many of my friends the flying fish were flying out from amid the chaos.  I don’t know if they were the main targets or just innocent bystanders.  At least the boobies weren’t still around.

The Boobies and the Flying Fish

It takes a moment to recognize a booby in flight.  On the ground, with their awkward gait, semi-vacant stare, and oversized and often oddly colored feet, they appear to be poorly designed to survive in nature.  Some, especially the blue-footed kind, perform comical dances, build nests with total disregard for safety and seem oblivious to most of their surroundings.  The village idiots of the avian world.

But in the air they are transformed.  Boobies become sleek hunters.  They glide gracefully above the water looking for a meal below.  Once lunch is spotted, they tip themselves vertically, tuck into aerodynamic position and pierce the water like a thunderbolt. I’m sure their prey have no idea what’s coming.  So whatever respect they may lose on the ground is more than regained in flight.

So, when I opened the shade of our room the other morning, it took me a moment to identify what was gliding through the air at eye level and no more than 15 feet away as a booby.  This was a masked booby, predominately white with a black mask around the eyes and black along the trailing fringe of the wings.  The bird and its friends were flying in a repeating pattern of slowly gliding along the sides of the ship from back to front, crisscrossing the bow a few times and then circling around behind the ship again.

A flying fish is another peculiar creature.  Having the appearance of half fish and half insect, it’s one of my favorite things to watch for at sea.  It can hurl itself out of the water and then its unique pectoral fins can flutter rapidly, allowing it to fly or glide above the wave crests.  It’s fun to watch how far they can stay airborne.  Under the right conditions, they can soar for dozens of feet and maybe hundreds.  So, flying fish can evade predators chasing them in the water by escaping through the air.

When a ship bears down on a flying fish, its natural reaction is to take off through the air to get away.  When a ship sails through a school of flying fish they can scatter in all directions from the bow.

The boobies seem to know this. 

They follow ships.  As they glide along the side of the ship, if they spot something in the water, they will pounce.  But, once they make it to the bow, they will linger there for a while, looking to see if any flying fish try to evade the on-coming ship.   

The flying fish seem to feel they’re safer in the air than in the water when something is chasing them.  Either that, or they’re unaware that there is a bird flying overhead.  They will continue to fly as far as they seem able to, regardless of whether there’s an airborne predator nearby.  So when the booby spots the flying fish, rather than the aerodynamic plunge, it will swoop down to the surface and try to snag the erratically flying fish in midair.  Sometime it succeeds, but usually the fish lands back in the water and escapes.

Watching from above, it’s a dance.

Rio Day 2

Prior to our little side trip to Puerto Madryn last week, the plan was to have multiple options for exploring Rio.  But, to make up a bit of lost time, we had to sail out of Rio at 3 p.m. instead of spending the entire day.  That left less time on Sunday to cram it all in.  We chose to go up Corcovado (see the aforementioned really tall Jesus – or more formally Christo Redentor), and the cable cars up Sugarloaf.  Going to a city like this for the first time, the iconic landmarks were a must.

Rio doesn’t wake up well on a Sunday morning.  A 7:30 a.m. departure from the dock got us ahead of most tourists.  Driving to Corcovado, we passed government buildings, statues, many many (many) cathedrals, favelas (slums) and, most importantly, the SambaDrome.  An explanation for the non-Carnivale afficianados:  This is a several block long strip of pavement, with seating on either side for 30,000(?) or 60,000 (?). (I guess I didn’t wake too quickly that morning either).  It’s where the Samba schools parade during the last 2 nights of Carnivale.  Not quite the size of the world’s largest futbol stadium just down the road, but impressive never the less. 

Anyway…Corcovado.  After several tunnels and varying neighborhoods, we arrived at the foot of the cog railway that took us up the mountain.  It’s about a 15 minute ride in an ancient train car up a very steep slope.  We were 5 across in a pretty narrow car with some seats facing uphill and some downhill.  Despite starting in the city, the railway cuts through a forest.  Dense growth, flowering trees and occasional peeks of the surrounding landscape surrounded us.  I was also momentarily bombarded by a very confused hummingbird, which flew in through the open windows and decided it would be a good idea to fly down my shirt.  Now I was awake.

The train took us within about 200 steps of the top.  The stairs wind around behind the statue, which was between us and the sun.  So we emerged at the top, suddenly bathed in sunlight, beside this massive icon and the city of Rio laid out far below us.  Your literal religious experience. 

Attempting to further describe this would be an injustice.  I’ll let a few of our pictures try to do that.  But the people-watching was world class.  There is another set of steps in front of the statue, leading to a point overlooking the city. Everyone went there for pictures of the view and to turn around to photograph each other in front of the statue.  Group photos, individual photos, selfies and even attempted glamour shots all competed for prime spots.  Of course, no one succeeded completely, which made it that much more fun.  I would hate to see this place on a really crowded day, and really wouldn’t want to be up there when the Olympic throngs arrive.

Back down the mountain and on to Sugarloaf.  You ascend Sugarloaf in two stages, both by cable car.  As you would expect, the glass cable cars are packed, so everyone tries to get a prime spot.  Actually, it wasn’t that hard….old people are slow. 

While not nearly as high as Corcovado, Sugarloaf is not to be sneezed at, and has the added advantage of being in the heart of Rio. On one side are two huge beaches and the city center.  On the other side are the better known beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema.  Vultures and other birds sail on the updrafts beneath and around you.  Small monkeys scamper in the trees.  One was trapped in a garbage can, but was released by a slightly nervous passer-by.  Rock climbers scale the faces and rapelle down.  The views were spectacular.

Rio is spectacular and magical.  It is a place that is every bit what it is purported to be.  Water, multi-shaped and soaring mountains, green patches, bright sand beaches, glass high-rises, crumbling colonial architecture and favelas that fill in the gaps, all combine in a chaotic, sometime depressing, sometime dangerous, but always charming and entrancing way.

That’s the end of my attempt at Rio.  Back now to random experiences and stray thoughts.

Rio Day 1

Shore leave is over.

Time for the travelogue of our 24+ hours in Rio.

On the morning of arrival, we gathered on deck in anticipation of our grand arrival.  It was a warm and sunny, but hazy morning.  Perfect conditions for sunburn and challenging photography.  Little by little, islands and hills emerged from the haze.  As each one appeared, there’d be murmuring among the groups, wondering which one was Sugarloaf, or if one of those mountains was Corcovado, the perch of that really tall Jesus. In due time it all sorted itself out.

We approached from the South, so you first pass Ipanema and Copacabana beaches. Then comes Sugarloaf, which stands as a sentry to the inner harbor.  A couple of ancient forts lie on either side of the entrance.  We passed an oil rig which had been towed in for maintenance, and a few ships of the Brazilian navy, and then arrived at the cruise ship dock.  None of the monsters were in port that day, so our dinky little ship was dwarfed by the empty space around it.

Brazilian customs are notoriously slow.  It’s not uncommon for it to take 4 or 5 hours for the hard-working government officials to clear a ship and its passengers for entry.  That’s of course after you feed them lunch.  Since we arrived at the dock around noon, no one made any plans for the afternoon, figuring we would be confined to the ship until late in the day.  When it was announced after about 20 minutes that we were free to go there was a mad scramble.

At the end of the docks was an odd-looking building on a small spit of land jutting into the harbor.  It was obviously very new.  Staff who had been here as recently as a couple of years ago had no idea what it was.  Depending on your perspective, the building looks like a lobster, the baleen of a whale, or a cockroach.  It turned out to be Rio’s Museum of the Future.  The building was certainly futuristic.  Those of us with, perhaps, a more finite future than others, (i.e the over-60 contingent) received free admission.  So, the museum was a nice way to spend an unplanned afternoon.  The walk back and forth gave us a peek of Rio at ground level.

The evening was time to schlep the tourists on a bus and show them some Brazilian nightlife and culture.  Although even the suggestion of going OUT at 9 p.m. was met with incredulity by some, most went along.

As you would expect, Rio on a Saturday night is a sight to behold.  The neighborhood bars and clubs spill out into the sidewalks.  The sultry and slightly steamy atmosphere, busy night markets, music on every block, bustling bus stations and dim streetlights gave it the ambiance you might expect.

We went to a Bohemian district of the city, with pedestrian streets and many clubs, bars and restaurants.  We went to a “private” club for a concert by a locally well-known “contemporary samba” singer and his band.  It was an interesting locale, basically a long, narrow hall, with a stage in the middle and, somewhat incongruently, exhibits of historic Portuguese and Dutch tiles on the walls. While the acoustics weren’t the best, the band was great.  Once the more fuddy-duddy-ish among us left on the early bus, there was room to spread out.  The Brazilian drinks (caprianha?) and appetizers flowed freely.  Samba is infectious.  Hard to feel bad.  (Although I think some of the group felt bad the next morning!).  Although I know we were back at the ship before things really got lively, or maybe even before dinnertime was over, it was a great experience.