Today has been very special, and long! Let me explain…
It started very early, or was it late? You see, after returning to our ship yesterday upon the conclusion of my excursion ashore, I was not feeling particularly well. I don’t know if it was tiredness, or dehydration, or whatever, but we went topside (an old Navy term) for dinner and, by the time I was done eating, I was nearly shivering. I wasn’t nauseated, just cold, which is not something one would feel when it is in the mid-eighties! I begged Alicia’s foregiveness for the evening and got into bed, pulling every blanket I could find over my head. We had no thermometer to see if I was running a fever, but I suspect it would have been in the range of 38-40 (and that’s not Celsius)!
I slept for several hours, then somewhere around midnight, got up, shook off the grogginess and realized I had two things yet to accomplish. One was to complete my blog entry (which was likely only important to me) and the other was to go up to level 14 and hope for clear weather. I have just completed my second week south of the equator, and have yet to find a clear sky that would allow me to locate the Southern Cross (not really a bucket list item, but we’ll call it Bucket-list v 1.2.) So this point was very likely only important to me also.
There two small groups of stars visible in the vicinity of where I estimated “south” would be. (Ship’s compass told me we were on a heading of 49 degrees so I knew approximately where to look.) I snapped a couple of photos then headed back to the stateroom to finish, then “publish”, my daily blog entry. By this time it was about 1 am, or 0100 hours as we say at sea. My excursion (Highlights of Santos) this morning required (or at least suggested) a wake-up call at 6:45! So sleep quickly then arise after having just fought through a bad case of the chills.
Today we were tied up to a pier so the excursion required only walking to a bus, not climbing in and out of a boat dancing on top of the water. But Alicia had already cancelled her excursion because of the published description, which stated there would be a lot of walking. (That ended up not being the case.)
We started out with a bus trip to the Museo de Cafe of Santos. The city is basically on an island, separated from the mainland by a couple of rivers. The two major exports from the city are coffee and orange juice, both of which are grown on the mainland and brought into the city for sale and export. During the late 19th century the coffee buyers would come to Santos and meet with the coffee barons to haggle over the cost of their product. The location of these meetings is now a museum where they explain the history of coffee manufacturing and exporting. Unfortunately, the explanation is in the form of placards as you walk through the museum and the placards are not bilingual.
Museo do Cafe (The Museum of Coffee) Am I the only one that didn’t know that the word cafe means coffee in Portuguese, French, and Spanish?
The ceiling of the main chamber of the Coffee Baron’s building
The seats where coffee buyers from around the world would sit and haggle over the price of the Coffee Baron’s product, a scene we were told, not much different than the Trading Floor on Wall Street.
The history of coffee on display
I assume this is a work of art? Hundreds of coffee cups pouring out of a cabinet.
From the coffee museum it was a short walk to what used to be the first train station in Santos. Today it is used for several other purposes, one of which is a make-shift curios sales market. I walked up to one display and started to look at the offerings. There were three women standing nearby and one walked over to me to see if she could be of help. The display I was drawn to was a group of small paintings, canvas on a wood frame, with bright colors. My first thought was this looked like a project that Betty and her Cloverdale Ladies group would have done during one of their weekly get togethers. So I pointed to one that I liked and she said that she had painted that one herself. She turned it over and showed me her name on the back- Betty!
When they began the design of the train station they had originally planned to remove the white church next door, the St. Anthony of Vakego Sanctuary. They brought in their strongest men and biggest horses to pick up and move the statue of St. Anthony inside, but try as they may, they could not pick up the statue. When the mayor heard of this, he declared it a miracle, and had the train station downsized to allow the church to remain in place.
Across the street from the church and the train station was the Museu Pele. Pele, if you didn’t know, is universally acknowledged as the greatest soccer player in the history of the sport. (everywhere but the US calls him the greatest football player. Apparently they’ve never heard of Tom Brady.)
His 1279 goals scored is recognized as a world record by the folks at Guinness (not the beer people, the book people).
Pele was among the greatest athletes of all time who gathered for this picture. How many of these men and women can you identify?
The third stop on our tour was the orchid museum which, as it turns out, is pretty much without orchids this time of year. So they “expanded” their focus to make it a botanical garden with animals added as a bonus - some in cages, some not.
This statue of a naked lady was originally at the entrance of a church, but when they decided to turn the orchid museum into a botanical garden it was decided that the statue would be more fitting in a nature setting.
There were huge, colorful koi swimming around in the water (my phone doesn’t have a polarized lens so you have to take my word for it) beneath these birds.
These animals (whatever they are) were spotted in several locations, running free.
These were the only two orchids to be found in the orchid museum.
I missed the description of what this plant is, but did confirm that it smells like chocolate.
This is what the few flowers we found looked like. Not as colorful as expected.
From there we rode, on our bus, back to the pier along the entire length of their huge 8 km long beach, the entire length of which has a garden/park separating it from the traffic on the street. The city has built 7 canals that run north and south from the river to the ocean so that when the water level rises in the river the town will not flood. These seven canals (identified by number, 1-7) are the main identifiers in town, so when locals are asked where they live, instead of a major road or street name, they will give you the canal number, then, for a cross street they will tell you how far up from the beach they are.
After returning to the ship, Alicia and I went to compete in a trivia contest, then we got all dressed up and went to eat at the Polo Club. We then went to the closest thing we could find to a steak house, onboard. We were joined by two other couples at our table and had a wonderful meal with great conversation.
When we had finished our meal, I offered a toast to my bride of seven years, then explained our story to our new friends, about how we had first met in 1962, then reconnected at our 50 year high school reunion, and told them it was our seventh anniversary. Then, as if on cue, our waiter, his manager, and another waiter, show up with an anniversary cake with a candle sticking in it, and everyone sang Happy Anniversary. Like they say, timing is everything!
Then, in keeping with the dinner and a show theme, we went to a show in the main theater, which featured the performance of musical numbers from several classic Broadway musicals. It ended up being a delightful evening and put a smile on my dear wife’s face that, hopefully, will last another seven years!
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