At Sea and Ilha Grande

We were counting today and decided we have been on eight different cruises.  Yesterday and today were the first times we have been limited in what we could do because of weather.  We probably should not include the QE II as there were no ports of call along the way.  Yesterday we were to anchor off the village of Buzios and take tenders into the village.  Buzios once upon a time was a sleepy little village until in the 1960's Bridgett Bardot came to a hotel in Buzios to get away from the paparazzi.  After her visit tourism exploded.  There is even a statue to Ms. Bardot in Buzios.  We were awakened Tuesday morning about 7:30, actually Lynda was awakened, Tim was already up, by the captain explaining that the seas and wind speed were too high to make taking tenders into Buzios safe.  So we spent yesterday taking a slow circular route to today's port of call.  The day at sea was mostly spent reading although we took time out to play duplicate bridge in the afternoon.

Today, Wednesday, we anchored off of Ilha Grande, an island about 120 miles southwest of Rio.  It has rained all day.  We were to have taken a schooner boat ride this morning that included snorkeling.  We decided against it.  We later talked with a couple who did take this excursion and said that because of the rain the snorkeling was poor.  After lunch Tim decided to take the tender into the village anyway.  In the sun it would have been lovely.  There were lots of little restaurants and bars,  many souvenir shops selling mostly bikinis, cheap fedora hats and cheap local crafts.  Tim did stop at a bar and sampled a ciapirhnia (pronounced ki(long i) per-on-ya) a Brazilian specialty drink made of rum, lime juice and sugar that is very sweet and potent.  Historically, Ihla Grande was a pirate hideaway (aargh!) but today is a resort island, home to a tropical rainforest inhabited by a number of endangered animals.  There are no motorized vehicles on the island.  It is now a national park and has over 90 miles of hiking trails.  You now know as much about Ihla Grande as we do.  Hopefully the weather will improve tomorrow.

Having completed this blog posting we, unfortunately, don't know when it will actually be posted.  Our webmistress, Jilayne, hopefully is working feverishly to figure out why we are having trouble getting these posted.  Sorry!