As we approached the port this morning we sailed past many little fishing boats that seemed to returning to port also. We are docked in a very industrial port. Right in back of us is a big ship unloading raw phosphorus into semi trucks. They are taking the ore to be processed into phosphate fertilizer near here. As you will see in my photos there are nearly 100 new John Deere combines ready to be exported. John Deere has a factory near here too. At the end of the pier they are constructing offshore oil drilling platforms for the wells off the Brazilian coast. There is still a lot of agriculture here in southern Brazil which includes: corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, cattle, and sheep/wool. Again here they are praying for some rain as they have been very dry for several weeks now. It has been cloudy about all day with one small shower this morning. This has kept the temperature down in low 80's but with high humidity.
On the pier this morning as we left on our "Sights of Rio Grande" tour, there was some local dancers and musicians performing. Our bus was very nice but could not go very fast as all the roads are made of big bricks and very rough. There is a large Brazilian navy facility that we passed near the port on our way to the city. The downtown area is only about 15 minutes from our ship. Our first stop was at an Oceanographic museum. Kind of interesting buy everything was written in Portuguese. Had 45 minutes here but I was back on bus in 15 minutes as it was starting to rain a little. From there we drove to the downtown area and set off on foot for a 90 minute walk around town. Our guide was French (don't ask why he is a guide in Brazil) so had a hard time understanding him. So I took off on my own, keeping group in sight, taking photos. We stopped at the San Pedro Cathedral, obligatory cathedral in every SA tour. Then went to Museum of Sacred Art at the Chapel of San Francisco. I skipped this! Cathedraled and museumed out!!! We walked through some parks with very dirty pools with gross things floating around in them. They really need to clean the place up. We went over to the very small local fish market with mostly small shrimp and some white fish that had been filleted and the flies were dancing on it. Very appetizing indeed!! By this time the sun was coming out and it was HOT.
Actually, I kind of enjoyed this place. The people seemed very nice and it had some "character". Our guide said the population was 200,000 but we were only in the downtown area and did not seem that big. It had a 1 star (just guessing) hotel in downtown but could not imagine a tourist coming here for more than one day.
Well, I have to get ready as there is a special show at 6pm for Seven Seas Society members. It is featuring the virtuoso clarinet player and a mezzo-soprano singer. We caught the last number of the clarinet guy last night and he was very good. The show after dinner is a production show featuring the ship's singers and dancers. By the way, we dined with Elda, the assistant cruise director, and Terry, the lecturer, last night. We had a wonderful evening with great conversation. The veal Parmesan last night was finally up to my standards. I am happy camper!!
