Ilhabela, Brazil

 

3 March 2014

 

We left Rio de Janeiro last night and cruised along the Copacabana and Ipanema beach areas. We had some very nice nighttime views of the coastline lights with an illuminated Christ the Redeemer up in the hills. Our next stop is not far away. Ilhabela (Portuguese for Beautiful Island) is a very popular resort archipelago just four miles off Brazil’s coast and less than 200 miles from either Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo. 85 percent of the island is a state park so there is not a lot of major development. The major attractions are swimming, snorkeling and sailing.

This was a tender boat port, meaning the ship does not dock at a pier.  Instead, it moors out in the bay and uses its tender boats to ferry people to shore. I did not go ashore, but Russ took a snorkeling tour. He had a good time, but apparently he was the only one. The trip was advertised as a snorkeling trip to Cabras Island which includes a Marine Sanctuary. Instead, the bus the tour group traveled on went to a beach that was across a channel from the island. The channel was about a 100 yard swim. The people were told that they could swim over to look at the fish, but they were not given fins, just snorkels and masks.  The majority of the people did not bring their own equipment and let’s just say their swim sprinting days are, for the most part, in the past. Russ had his own fins and he is a good swimmer so off he went.

On the way to a planned photo opportunity, the tour ran into heavy Carnival traffic, like what we had in Rio. Carnival week is a holiday for everyone and the roads everywhere are ill equipped to handle the crowds. So the group as a whole voted to skip the photo opportunity, which was on the other side of the town and just get off in the downtown area which was a short walk to the pier where the tenders were picking up the passengers.

When they got back to the ship, the entire tour agreed to meet at the tour desk at 5 pm to lodge their complaints. Russ went along, even though he was not particularly disappointed, he did understand why the rest were upset. The tour director took a lot of notes and acknowledged their disappointments. Later, we got a letter in our stateroom apologizing and refunding 75% of the tour cost.

During the day, the ship was buzzed by lots of powerboats and sail boats. I was surprised that the ship’s security didn’t have a larger perimeter around the ship. I never did see the ship’s security boat patrolling. It is clear that there are many wealthy Brazilians in the area for Carnival, there are many large expensive boats cruising around.

We are starting to see more and more bugs, so we have started spraying ourselves with bug spray. Even so, I managed to get a couple of bites.

Next we head south to Argentina.

These are the tender boats used to ferry passengers to shore in places where the ship is too large to dock.



There were a lot of very large, beautiful homes on the hillsides.

Russ said there were a lot of fishes and coral but the water was a murky green. This area is known as the Emerald Coast because of its green water.

Every place in Brazil is preparing for Carnival.

The downtown area of Ilhabela.

This channel has a lot of cargo ship traffic.