Today was a day I’ve had marked on my calendar for a long time—my first time ever setting foot on the mainland of South America, and in Brazil, no less, a country that has always intrigued me.
Fortaleza, with a population of 2.7 million, is Brazil’s fourth largest city, and the first of our three ports of call in South America’s largest country. The city has a busy industrial port, and no dedicated cruise terminal of the sort visitors to the Caribbean are used to. Nor is it even permitted to walk through the working area to reach the bare bones terminal that provides entrance to the city proper. Rather, we were required to board shuttles right off the ship’s gangway to drive us to the terminal, where we met our tour buses. Fortaleza has beautiful, hi rise-lined beaches that are popular with the local population, and I wouldn’t be surprised if increased international tourism results in a modern cruise terminal in the near future. Right now, though, it seems pretty clear to me that the overwhelming majority of the city’s tourism is domestic.
As mentioned, Fortaleza is a big city, but we were more interested in seeing what the country looks like outside the city limits, and I think we chose wisely. One of our first stops was at the largest sand dunes I have ever seen. They were some distance from the beach, and we had to cross a busy four lane highway to reach them, but it was worth the effort. And, effort is an understatement when describing what it took to climb to the top of the dunes. It didn’t look that hard, but the sand was very loose, and with each step my feet sank in to the ankles and slid a bit backward on the steep slope. Throw in the hot, equatorial sun and I was gasping for air by the time I reached the top. The dunes are beautiful in a Saharan sort of way, and the view from the top wasn’t bad either.
Our next stop was at Parque Estadual do Rio Coco nature preserve, which is the largest urban park in South America. The park is a peaceful refuge from the city noise, and has a jungle-like feel. To me the most amazing thing I saw was, of all things, the termites. If you think we have termites at home, you ain’t seen nothin’. Their nests were everywhere in the park’s trees, and I really don’t have words to adequately describe them, so you’ll just have to check out the photo below. They also have monkeys, but we were told they are very shy, and retreat deeper into the park when large groups of tourists are hiking along the main path. Unfortunately, that meant we didn’t see any.
We made a couple stops at popular beaches on our way back to the ship, and found the crowds surprisingly light, even by Tuesday standards, and all the beachfront food places were closed. Our tour guide explained that everything along the beach opens at 5:00 pm and closes at 11:00, and during that period the beaches are crowded and there’s lots of partying. My guess is that being this close to the equator, the hot midday sun has a lot to do with that. Also, our guide explained that there’s a lot of skin cancer here, another reason to delay coming to the beach until the sun is lower in the sky.
After returning to the ship we grabbed a late lunch, rehydrated, rehydrated some more, and then headed off to the ship’s cinema for a 45 minute documentary on an explorer/adventurer’s attempt to reach an isolated crater lake deep in the Amazon rainforest. It was very interesting, and another example of how Royal Caribbean is working to enrich our travel experience. So far I have nothing but good things to say about the way they’ve put this epic adventure together.
Time for a word about dinner on the Serenade of the Seas. Not counting three smaller pay-extra specialty restaurants, the ship has two main all-included dining venues—Reflections,the main dining room, which is a bit more formal, with white tablecloths, restaurant style menus, and doting servers, and the far more casual Windjammer Cafe, which is a serve yourself buffet. We tend to frequent the Windjammer, which we can walk into whenever we want, even straight off a tour bus in shorts and a tee shirt. More importantly for us though, the variety of choices in the Windjammer far exceeds those of the main dining room, and often are themed to the country we are visiting. Tonight was Brazilian night in the Windjammer, and they had several delicious dishes that I could neither spell nor pronounce.
Wrapping up a wonderful first day in Brazil, Royal flew in a Brazilian singer named Camila Andrade to entertain us in the main theater after dinner. Her repertoire included popular Brazilian songs from the 40s through the 60s (think Carmen Miranda and The Girl from Ipanema), though she did throw in a Beyonce song towards the end. She was great, and I really enjoyed the show.
Tomorrow is a sea day (I hear Father Neptune may pay us a visit), as we round the easternmost tip of South America and head toward our second port in Brazil, Recife. Not sure if I’ll post tomorrow, but will be back for sure after our day in Recife.
No cruise terminal in Fortaleza, at least anything resembling the nice ones you see in popular cruise destinations. We actually had to be bused from the ship through the industrial area to get to the barebones terminal that gets you out into the city.
These were the biggest sand dunes I’ve ever seen, and they were nasty to climb. I was definitely winded by the time I got to the top. Michele and I both agreed that it was worth it though, as the view from the top was impressive.
On our way down. The tour guide and I were talking, of all things, about training to run half marathons, something I used to do and he does now. He was an excellent guide.
Those things, believe it or not, are termite nests. They were all over the trees in Parque Estadual do Rio Coco, the large urban nature preserve in Fortaleza. I can only imagine what they’re doing to the trees.
You feel like you’re in the jungle when you’re in the park until you come to an opening in the trees and realize how close you are to the city’s highrises.
You may not speak Portuguese, but I’ll bet you can figure out what this sign in the park says.
At a stop near one of the city’s excellent beaches. You can see our ship in the background behind Michele.
Fortaleza’s beautiful beaches get busier in the evening when the sun starts going down and the food places open.
Me next to a sign for one of the beaches. I wish our ship could have stayed a little longer so we could see what it’s like when the area comes alive in the evening.
One of the more interesting Christmas trees you’ll ever see, made of large water jugs.
I really enjoyed this 45 minute documentary on Ed Stafford’s trek into the Amazon jungle. The Serenade of the Seas is one of the few cruise ships that has a dedicated movie theater on board. They show a different movie or documentary every day.
We could see the ruin of an old lighthouse from our ship. The lighthouse of Mucuripe was built by slaves between 1840 and 1846. Brazil did not abolish slavery until 1883, twenty years later than the U.S.
We closed out the day with a performance by Brazilian singer Camila Andrade. We really enjoyed her rendition of several of her country’s popular songs.
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