Day 53 - 11/28/23 - Fortaleza, Brazil

 We were about a half an hour late in docking in Fortaleza today because of a delayed pilot pickup and the need to move a ship from our berth and a pretty significant swell.  I watched our arrival from the railing on deck 3 as the ship came into the harbor past the breakwater and pivoted counter clockwise to be able to snuggle up to the berth on the ship's starboard or right side.  The tide levels were a bit strange which required a reset of the gangway from the A deck to Deck 1.  A deck was below the pier level which is a difficult location to set up the gangway.

To give some perspective, Fortaleza is a city of some 4 million people in the city and surrounding suburbs.  The area is is an area where there are two seasons, rainy and dry.  There is little crop growing areas except there seems to be a penchant for cashews.  Fortaleza means "strength".

Our group assembled in the Ocean Bar and when we were cleared we all headed off the ship, across the pier and into the terminal building where we were treated with straw cowboy hats, and a sand sample, and lots of colorful tourist information.  Our guide was waiting for us just outside the terminal building the the group quickly divided into two groups with 8 of us in a van and the 15 others in a mini bus.  Raphael was our guide in the van and we saw the others throughout the day off and on.  This was scheduled to only be. a 1/2 day tour, but in retrospect, I wish it had been a 6 hour tour to make better use of our time in port.  There is literally nothing to see at the port and it requires transportation to get to the nearest beach or other attraction and town is about 5 miles away.

On our drive in, we passed by a man made beach, a mausoleum, a giant white Christmas tree and reached the former jail that is now a tourist center with lots of souvenirs for sale.  There were also a number of cats there as well as at many of the stops today.  From the tourist center we drove to the Theater which reminded us of the Manaus theater.  Next was the Cathedral which looks dingy on the outside, but is very nice inside with white walls and lots of stained glass.  The only figures in the church as Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.   It was really refeshingly simple inside.

Mercado

From the Cathedral, we drove a short distance to the Mercado or market which is housed in a building with 5 floors.  Angela and I made it to 4 of the 5 floors and I finally found a Brazil shirt that I liked for $7.  It was around 1pm and Angela and I and another lady did not want to return to the ship, so the van driver dropped us off at the shuttle location at the tourist center and we headed off to explore on our own.  Angela found a hand towel there that she liked and we walked around the downtown area a bit before visiting Martyrs Park where we found a open air cafe and enjoyed a soda and some cashews (cashews are very popular here and found everywhere).  We then wandered back to the shuttle pickup point and caught a shuttle back to the ship which took nearly an hour with traffic.  

Back on board, I caught up with a couple of my YouTube subscriptions and Angela went swimming.  Our onboard time of 4:30pm came and I went out to the Lower Promenade Deck to watch the last passengers come aboard.  The last passenger was a lady delivered to the ship in an ambulance who we learned later had been taken to a hospital for a checkup after suffering some sort of injury earlier in the cruise.  I also watched the end of the extensive re-provisioning being loaded.  This reprovisioning was fruits and vegetables.  It was fun to watch and the ship was really moving at the dock in the sea swells.

While watching this, Captain Smit came on the PA system with his departure announcement and announced that we officially were going to sail to Manaus which had been in some doubt for the past week or so due to low water conditions.  He thanked all of the guests for doing a "rain dance" as there was now enough water depth to make it to Manaus although we have to do the last section in the day time hours.  This also requires us to stay a second night in Manaus so we can sail back down river in the daylight hours as well.  This news was a welcome relief to the many passengers who have had Manaus on their bucket list.

Before the evening entertainment, I rechecked our hot water situation; and fortunately it has been fixed.  However, we still have not been able to get the room below 75º for the past week.  I'll report this for the third time.

The evening entertainment was Gabe Abelson, and he was pretty funny and clean in his humor.  He's a former lead writer for the Late Show with David Letterman.  Afterwards we returned to the room to read and for me to catch up with my blog and communicated with our tour operator for the Manaus excursions.  We have a few sea days ahead of us before we reach Santarem which is our next port of call and our first stop on the Amazon River.