Monday, February 5, 2018- Cruise Day 13; Fortaleza, Brazil

Monday, February 5, 2018- Cruise Day 13; Fortaleza, Brazil

After breakfast in the Horizon Court, we packed up our daypacks with rain gear and sun gear.  We have been dogged by rain this whole cruise, and today is no exception.  The ship docks at a containership facility so no-one is allowed to walk off the ship to town.  A $20pp round trip shuttle is provided to the center of town.  We have a paid excursion to see a Cachaça Distillery Museum, which is a ways inland from the waterfront.  The other Princess excursions centered around city beaches, churches and theaters, so this sounded a little more interesting.  We did see a lot of neighborhoods, including what are called flavellas or slums at the outskirts of downtown.  It started raining quite hard as we were boarding the buses, and as we drove from the port through town.  There were some very 3rd world looking areas with children playing barefoot on the dirt streets, people riding piggy back on bicycles, and blocks of buildings that appeared to be partially demolished.  We ended up in terrible traffic, so getting to the Cachaça Museum took nearly 2 hours.  We did drive past a Sam’s Mart, as well as more developed and urban areas.  We got onto an interstate national highway, but there was a lot of construction causing delays and detours.  When we finally got to the Cachaça Museum, we found out that the Museum was opened specially for the Princess excursions because it is normally closed on Mondays.  Trip Advisor had described the place as a Cachaça theme park, but most of the facility, which included climbing walls, archery ranges, paddle boats and other fair-like amusements were closed, so only the museum and tasting room/gift shop were open.  The museum had several small rooms with exhibits and plaques that detailed the process of making Cachaça, and the history of the family that owned and operated the sugar cane plantation and distillery.  There were a few interesting artifacts, but the exhibits were a bit heavy on the family history.  There was a theater towards the end of the tour where they played a video that did a much better job of explaining the story of the place than the exhibits, and it would have made more sense to show the video first, and then let people wander through the exhibits.  We then got to tasting room where we were able to sample the various types of Cachaça drinks.  Cachaça is made by pressing sugar cane juice from cane stalks, fermenting and then distilling the alcohol.  The resulting alcohol can then be rested in steel casks or aged in various wooden casks, and then blended with flavors. They had a lemon and a guava flavored blends, as well as a one year cask aged and a 4 year cask aged variations.  If this sound familiar to the Rhum distillery, as far as I can tell, it is the same process, but different names due purely to geography.  On the way back, we received a surprise present of a pint bottle of Cachaça each for a souvenir, so we'll have some to bring home. Another woman got a bottle for her husband, who missed the tour because he was ill, but she didn't want it, so she gave it to us, so we really scored big on the Cachça.

The guide spoke pretty good english, but did seem to spend a bit too much time complaining about how corrupt politics in Brazil are.  For example, if some gets elected Senator, and serves just 6 months or the 4 year term, they can retire with full lifetime $50,000/yr salary and benefits for their entire family, and they can then appoint their replacement, who usually turn out to be campaign donors.  

On the ride back to the ship, we took a scenic tour through town, pointing out the shopping districts and expensive fancy apartments.  What he was describing as very fancy and expensive places to live still had graffiti tagging all over them and razor wire fencing around them.  Overall, our impression of Fortaleza was this is a big city with some real 2nd and 3rd world problems behind pretty downtown facades.  After we were dropped off at the cruise ship terminal, there was a nice looking beach just beyond the terminal, but there was a kevlar vest wearing military policeman standing at the end of the walk who barred us from going to the beach, even though we could see locals on the beach.  I guess they wanted to make sure the cabbies had guaranteed business because you either had to take a taxi or the $20 princess shuttle to get anywhere off the pier.  We returned to the ship after 2:00PM and the ship was scheduled to leave at 4:00PM, so we used the poor wifi at the terminal to check emails, and then reboarded the ship.

We had afternoon tea, and then got showered and dressed for an early dinner.  We made telephone reservations for 5:15PM again, and were able to be seated promptly and finished our entrees in time to skip dessert to see the early show with Magician Michael Barron.  This turned out to be a very good magician.  He did slight of hand card tricks, rope tricks, and table levitation, all of which were done so well it was hard to see or figure how he did any of it.  The most amazing thing was he took 3 wedding rings from passengers in the front row.  We knew one of the couples from having played trivia with them during this cruise.  He took the 3 rings and somehow joined them all together.  The couples all examined the joined rings, confirming that they were their rings, and then he unlinked them, handing them all back intact.  It as pretty cool.  

Thre was a 7:30PM James Bond Themes Trivia where sound clips were played and you had to list the movie and artist for each clip.  We tried to study up on this, but still got beat solidly with a score of 17, while the winners managed a score of 21.  Oh well.  

When we returned to our room we found an envelope on our door with a note saying that Ben won a drawing for the Wake Show, where you have to answer a question each night, and can be drawn from a pile of correct answers.  The question was who are the lead actors in the movie It was another Wine Bottle Stopper!  Yea!  So we ended up still being winners.  I forgot to mention that we had also found a blue aluminum Princess water bottle on our door with a note saying Ben had won the Wake Show drawing for the question of how many days does the ship stay in port in Brazil, so that was twice in a row.  Ironically, Janet is the one who watches the Wake show every day and fills out the answer sheets with each of our names every day, so she should have won the prizes, but we're happy to be accumulating some loot.

Since we skipped dessert, we made a tour of the Horizon Court and found that they had a Mongolian BBQ set up, so we gave that a try, as well as picking out a dessert.  

We have another sea day tomorrow as we head to Ilhabela, Brazil, and a review of the Princess Patter reveals that there is a flags of the world trivia tomorrow night.  So it’s time to do some flag cramming.