Special to the Blog.

Shortly before the Marco Polo was to dock at Montevideo, Uruguay, the Captain reported that the harbor had been closed due to a collision between a cruise ship and a container ship. Containers had fallen into the harbor channel, which was then closed to all traffic until it could be sounded and/or the containers removed.



A cruise ship, pictured above, pulled up near the Polo and anchored shortly after this announcement. Passengers on the Polo believe we are standing by in case damage to the other ship is more extensive than first believed and rescue of passengers and crew is necessary.



Here is a closeup of the bow of the ship. That notch in the bow is fairly big and is the only visible damage, but it is enough. We saw a tender from this ship circling it, apparently searching for other damage.It is quite difficult to read the insignia and name but it could be the Norwegian Dream. Nothing concerning this incident was located on the internet despite considerable searching (at 40 cents a minute). There is a report that one of the Clipper line's ships has cancelled its Antarctic cruise this month, as of today, due to "mechancial" problems, but Clipper appears much smaller than the ship near the Polo off Montevideo this afternoon.

At 9:52 pm the Polo announced that the Captain and the Harbor authorities had determined that the Polo could dock at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning (Tuesday)

At 11:15 pm confimation was found in the New Zealand Herald on-line that the ship is indeed the Norwegian Dream. So these are the first pictures to be published that I'm aware of. A world wide scoop for my blog.

The NZ Herald reports that several containers of automobiles fell from the container ship,and Navy divers are searching for them now.

A day at sea, and the last day at sea for the next 5. What does a day at sea mean to the cruiser? It means a day with no port, and so no new experiences, no tours, no revealed wonders of the earth to see the which you must arise at early hours. It is a time to reflect, to recharge the batteries that power the imagination, to refuel with awe, so that the next day in port you are in the ideal state; which is to say, you are like a hippie who is high, and everything you are shown is an “Oh, wow!” moment.

On this day between Itajai and Punta de Esta, like Little Charlie, I got up when I woke up, like Bob Brozman, I ate a nutritious breakfast, and I found my shoes. You know by that I’ve either won the lottery or I’ve got the day-at-sea blues. I walked a mile after breakfast, and another mile after lunch. The temperature was down at least 15 degrees, and a wind was blowing. The experienced cruise deck walker knows what this means: hold on to your hat when rounding the bow of the ship because the winds are going to be terrific.

I posted to my blog, discovered how to not only post images but to position them in the text; had some e-mail discussion with the D.A of one of the 6 counties in which I have cases pending, in hopes of avoided an early January trial, checked my eBay bids, read the Eureka news (Roger Rodoni announces he is running for a 4th term, yesterday it was Ukiah upholds absurd medical marijuana cultivation rules), and worked up a slide show presentation of the 100 best Rio de Janeiro photos I took.

At dinner we met someone new. A melancholy Norwegian. He sat at our table out of exasperation because his regular table was given over to a group of young people who wanted to eat together. He has been cruising since 1989, taking at least 5 cruises a year, alone. He seems to prefer trans-Atlantic cruises, which are notable for inexpensive days and no port calls – he got on this cruise in Barcelona and will get off in Buenos Aires, and so far he has not been ashore at all. He had some good information about which cruise lines were best, but wasn’t so informative about the ports.

We are totally at sea, nothing but the beautiful blue ocean in sight in any direction, and as the poet said, “That’s just the top of it.” But tomorrow begins 5 days of port calls. We’ll be in Punta del Este, Uruguay, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires. Why the duplication? Because most cruisers, unlike our Norwegian, like port calls, and on this ship one cruise ends at Buenos Aires and another begins – the new cruisers get to sail across the Rio Platte’s bay to Montevideo and back across to Buenos Aires and there are 2 port calls with almost no sailing. (Look at a map).

Perhaps I’ll learn to tango.

Itajai, rhymes with ‘Meet a Guy’, is an obscure port in the south of Brazil, in Santa Catalina state, which is starting to be a stop. They were so happy to see the Marco Polo that they laid a red, carpet down the dock, put up a welcome sign, and gave us free straw hats for the sun, and maps of the city, before we got onto an actual street.



We signed on for the Ecological tour. For this tour we boarded a bus with a very nice guide named Elena, or something close to cal tour that. She is a native and speaks Portuguese, German, and English. Portuguese is the national language of Brazil, German is the language her parents spoke, and English is needed to guide the cruise ship passengers. The south of Brazil is populated by descendants of emigrants from Germany and other European countries. There were no slaves here, and so, there is no large population descended from Africans as there is in Rio.

There is also much less poverty in Santa Catalina because the area is divided into farms of about 240 acres with individual owners, rather than the huge rancheros that mark much of the country. So with no population of freed slaves that needed to be accommodated by the economy, and a tradition of small landowners, the poverty rate is considerably lower than that of Rio, and the crime rate is also. The streets are safe, she said. I noted some fortified houses, however, just as in other South American cities, with high walls topped with broken glass or razor wire.



What did we care? We were on the bus headed for the Atlantic Rainforest Park. We drove through Itajai, and another nearby city but everything looked too normal to get many photos. The larger buildings were unimaginative condos and apartment buildings, the same as we’ve seen on every coastline with decent weather. The ads were in Portuguese, but nothing special. Language aside it was hard to find anything unusual.

Access to the Rainforest Park is via a cable car, so we loaded up 6 to a car, and took off. Over the harbor it was fairly level, but as it started up the mountain we rose steeply and were way up in the air. At the top we started a guided tour. It was like being in a huge florist shop – all of those flowers that seem so exotic were growing wild here. Blue butterflies flitted from flower to flower, and our guide showed us wonders like the trees that grow hollow. Ants nest inside them, and when monkeys come to eat the leaves the ants come out and bite them. The monkey flees. The trees survive. Beauties and oddities mingled in the forest. Birds were largely in the upper canopy and we heard them but didn’t see them. Butterflies are very difficult to photograph, so look for flower pictures.

The first two days with the ship are a blur now in my memory. We got up on the morning after the Folkloric show with about 7 hours sleep to leave on an all day tour. Our principal goals: the emblematic statue of Christ, and the top of the Sugarloaf dome. Nearly missed that tour, but caught them as they were getting off the ship.



The statue of the Welcoming Christ is the very picture of Rio, but it did not loom large in my perceptions that morning. If you come in at sea it is visible nearly every moment, high atop the highest point in the dramatically abrupt mountains that surround Rio – or really, that Rio now surrounds the mountains. On the airport side of the city it is not visible at all.

Like the statue of Liberty, the Welcoming Christ was made by the French, and shipped over in pieces. It is huge, the head weighs 30 tons. It was built in the 1920s, some claim as a statement of power by the Catholic Church. Whatever the origins it is now world famous as the symbol of Rio.

The best way to get there is by cogwheel train, very similar to the train up Victoria Peak in Hong Kong. The mountain it is atop is a botanic reserve and as we went up we would pass signs telling us what plants we were seeing. We also passed small cartoonish statutes of animals and other beings. There are stations en route, and at the last, a small samba band climbs aboard and plays and yells for the last few minutes. Only the passengers display their skills, however, with tourist clothing obscuring those skills they have.



Up top the statue is huge. Hundreds of tourists mill about, taking pictures of friends standing on the stairs with the statue behind them. The views in every direction are dramatic. When you can see them, that is. We could, but the trips for the prior two days could see only fog and cloud cover.

You can’t go up into Christ as you can with the statue of Liberty, but there is a small chapel in the back of the statue. I didn’t go in but Mary Alice saw two women come out weeping, so for the faithful it must be really something. We were in the Samba car on the way down. Loud, but fun.

At the base life intervened in the form of a traffic jam making the bus late so we go to interact with a variety of “hello people” vending various things ranging from a kind of badminton birdie with a solid base that you can knock back and forth with a friend, to license plates inscribed RIO, maps of South America, hats, whistles and such. They are not unpleasantly aggressive about the vending, and one of our number was excitedly trying things, and sometimes buying things.

Lunch was at a meat -on -sword restaurant. They served red with lunch, and I think I’m beginning to get this sniffing your wine and describing it business. Mine smelled like grape cool-aid. The meat was grand. We had beef, chicken, and lamb along with buffet sashimi and sushi.

Sugarloaf is a high dome, much like Half Dome in Yosemite. The first recorded assent was by a British nanny around 1806, and it’s hard to see how she did it. The rock is steep and high and I imagine her in one of those trailing skirts of the period. Now there is a cable car system, which lifts you quite high above the ground – fortunately the cars do not have a glass bottom so you can’t see straight down. It daunts some people but I have faith in Western technology so I ride without fear right up front.

No big statue on top, just a nice place with snack bars, toilets, gift shop, and extraordinary views. Once again we missed fog and cloud and saw the mountains of Rio.

When the ship leaves port the band plays on the rear deck and passengers come to watch the sail-away. As the Zen monk said, I follow the usual customs, so I watched also. Lots of extraordinary photos. If I can get it uploaded I’ll show you the flock of birds around Christ’s statue at sunset.

The Marco Polo was staying in Rio for another day, and port excursions were available. We chose the 4 hour “Folkloric Show.” We have seen “folkloric” shows all over the world. The dancers usually wear 19th century costumes and do folk dances which out of context are difficult to comprehend – other than the motion and the music. Romania, Austria, China, Chile – I have come to flinch when the word “folkloric” comes up in connection with a tour. But it was all there was, so we went.

We got on the bus and drove to the show, but first,we passed the largest floating Christmas tree in the world. Rio has asked the Guinness Book of Records to certify that. It was nice to see and impossible to photograph through the bus windows so you’ll just have to believe me that it exists, and is very large. It floats in the lagoon.

Our tour guide was a young woman, quite enthuiasitc about Carnival,for which Rio is famous. As in New Orleans there are organizations who work through the year to assemble the floats and costumes, and here the number of marchers with each group may number up to 5000. The dances we were to see included a number of sambas, which are associated with Carnival. The young women we were to see dancing would be wearing fairly small bikinis, but that was not to make the other women feel that their bodies compared poorly to the dancers’,,but rather to assist the dancers in displaying their dancing skills, of which they are justly proud. Sounded good to me.



We filed into a large room with a large stage with a catwalk into the seating area. Seating was on long tables, and we were not the only group attending. As the room filled two young women, with feathered costumes that rose above their heads, and left them quite a bit of room on their well-built bodies to display their skills, were soliciting people to have their photos taken as a souvenir of the dance to come. I should gotten one show I could show you, but I was modest and after a bare half-hour or so the opportunity passed. I ordered a cane sugar drink which is the main drink of Rio. It goes down like lemonade but has a considerable kick, later.

The show opened with a short young girl in a soccer uniform which did not leave her a lot of room to display her skills as a dancer. Luckily she was not dancing. She was bouncing a soccer ball from knee to knee, then to her foot and back. After a while she bounced it up onto her forehead and walked around bouncing it that way.A ragged cheer broke out at the head trick, and she went back to the knee and foot bounces. Then she bounced it onto her back and held it there. For a finale she bounced it from one shoulder to another, and left. The crowd went wild.

It developed that the theme of the show was dances from all areas of Brazil, and the soccer girl expressed the national interest in that sport. The other dancers expressed something else. They opened with everyone trying to look like Amazonian natives. It looked like a 50’s Hollywood B movie. Then a fairly African dance with shields and such. At one point the men did a Brazilian Martial Arts dance which involved some very impressive acrobatics, The costumes became elaborate at times, the women in petticoats harkening to slavery days but now having some religious overtones. But it was the sambas that were the heart of the show. I’ve always thought that most folk dancing was courtship display, and there was a sexual energy in these sambas that reinforced that idea. The young women who had been soliciting photo ops, were joined by others, and put on displays of their skills which were quite impressive. It wasn’t until the end that I realized my camera would take short movies. I got a bit of it but the best was cane-sugar drink infused memories by then. There was a drumming demonstration with one squeaker drum that played a kind of horn part. The player had his hand inside the drum to make the sounds. We got dancing in Carnival costumes, and then the finale where the entire stage was filled with the dancers singing the Brazilian national anthem, or soccer song,

Then a guy came on and spoke a multitude of languages, while seeking native speakers in the audience. He called country names and when he got to Chile and hit pay dirt, the band played the Chilean anthem and the Chileans held hands and sang heartily. He found some people from Israel and the band played for them. And so forth. With an audience from cruise ships there were quite a few nationalities in the audience. Some people were cajoled onto the stage to perform – the Americans danced while the band played New York, New York.

I understand a great deal more about Screaming Jay Hawkins after that set, not to mention Little Richard, and for that matter, Beach Blanket Babylon. Early examples of cultural globalization. What a show, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

(Title quote from "Down in Mexico" recorded by the Coasters)