March 10 – Rio

Today Paul, Curt, Paula, Mike and Cath left the ship for home ☹ and my odyssey on the Amazon starts. Paula and Curt did a great job of finding a Sheraton Hotel on the beach that had incredible views. It was set under some favelas and overlooked the LeBlon and Ipanema beaches. The best news today was that I met up with my former exchange student from Brazil, Carol Silva de Assis, who lived with us for my Senior year in high school. We hadn’t seen each other for 44 years and it was terrific to see her. She lives in Rio now and she met us for lunch and then she, Curt and myself walked along the beach for a couple hours in 90 degree heat. It was fun and certainly changed my opinion of Rio beaches. What we hear is about the high crime and naked women and what I found was family oriented beaches where people were playing volleyball (sometimes with their feet), picnicking, exercising, surfing, playing in the surf and the women were wearing thongs. It was a fun interesting afternoon. There still is some crime but they have really cleaned up the area and the fact that no one really wears jewelry has helped curb the crime problem. They all went off to the airport and I went back to the ship. (talk about FAVELAS POLICE, GOLD ETC IF PAUL DOESN’T) I was able to walk and swim after dinner tonight and felt terrific in the hot, humid air.