R. Doug Wicker — Author

We departed Rio de Janeiro’s Pier Maua aboard the Star Princess under fairly bright skies pretty much on time on Thursday afternoon (as I’m writing this, it is currently Friday night just after 10:00 P.M., and I intend to post this Saturday morning if we can find an internet café in Salvador).  From there we took the scenic route, first passing Guanabara Bay (remember the location of that churrascaria, Porcão, in the Flamengo district of Rio?) before swinging past Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain), and finally saying our goodbyes to the beautiful beach and hotels of the Copacabana district.

Unfortunately, the weather did not hold beyond Guanabara Bay. A low cloud deck obscured much of Rio’s famed mountainous background, and the normally bright sand and colorful buildings of Copacabana suffered from the diffused, hazy lighting and slightly bluish tinting caused by the overcast despite my best attempts at manually controlling white balance.  While I usually dislike photographing under a harsh, bright, midday sun, these photos definitely would have benefitted from such conditions.  Nevertheless, a quick ten minutes of minimal post-processing managed to bring them up to presentable standards.  Increasing contrast and saturation levels helped counter the hazy conditions, and I pretty much left the white balance untouched from the original in-camera settings.

If all goes well and weather permits, expect pictures of Salvador, Brazil, upon reaching Fortaleza on Tuesday, March 15, unless I can get them posted before leaving Salvador in the afternoon.  Until then, please enjoy this photographic record of our Rio departure by sea:

On day four in Rio we boarded the Star Princess and did our usual get-acquainted walking tour.  This is a ritual we practice whenever boarding a new, unfamiliar ship.  This is a great way to get to know the basic layout of any ship, identify its areas of interest, and helps keep you from getting lost later.  I decided on this tour to bring you along by taking photographs with one of the two travel zooms I brought along for this trip.

The neat thing about using a small travel zoom is, even though they don’t take great pictures at ISO settings much above 200, you still don’t often need to use a tripod to take photographs in available light.  My trick is to dial in ISO 100 or lower for maximum quality, select a two-second shutter release delay, find something upon which to perch the camera, compose the shot, and finally press the shutter release button.  With no unsteady hand holding the camera and a rock-steady surface available, you can get some really stunning shots even with shutter release times of a quarter second or longer.  You can’t do that using a straight hand hold, even with today’s best anti-shake technology.  Well, you can, but that’s another lesson that we’ll get into at some future date.

Today’s photographs include many of the ship’s common areas including the Princess Theater (for live stage shows); the myriad bars located throughout the ship; the suspended, motorized walkway to the Skywalkers Nightclub; some of the specialty restaurants; the outdoor movie screen overlooking one of the ship’s four swimming pools; the glass-enclosed pool with motorized canopy; the casino; the three-story Atrium with its many shops and services areas; and of course our spacious balcony suite.

We really lucked out on that balcony suite, by the way. We had booked for a “guaranteed outside cabin” (that’s cruise line-speak for a small porthole in a cramped space one deck  above the crew quarters) at a very affordable price.  About two months before the cruise we were advised by Princess that we were being upgraded to a cabin with an obstructed view (that would be a much larger window with probably a really great view of the side of a lifeboat) on a higher deck.  Then, just one week before departure date came word that we were being upgraded yet again, but this time to a balcony high up on Deck 12.  No obstructed views way up there.  It really does pay to book early sometimes.

Today we will finally depart, leaving beautiful Rio de Janeiro in our wake. All aboard time is 1:30 P.M., and the Star Princess is scheduled to set sail thirty minutes after that.  Then it’s a day at sea before we reach Salvador, Brazil.  As such, I’ll be giving the blog a rest tomorrow and will hopefully have some interesting photographs of Salvador to post the day after.

Now, as promised, here are those photographs of the Star Princess:

This is my third trip to Rio de Janeiro. It’s Ursula’s fourth.  Whenever we come here we engage in that marvelous Brazilian dining experience known as churrascaria.  And when we go for churrascaria we invariably visit our favorite such establishment, Porcão.  Porcão has several locations, but our particular favorite is the one in the Flamengo district of Rio.  The views of Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain) and Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer statue) are among the best in the entire city, and the restaurant itself is located adjacent to the very exclusive yacht harbor at Guanabara Bay

In a churrascaria, you pay a set price for all you can eat at the salad bar and any meats served in the restaurant.  The interesting thing in churrascaria service is that waiters flow around the tables with huge skewers of meat.  If you see something you like, you get the waiter’s attention and he will bring the skewer over to your table.  There he will carve off a slice as you grab it with a pair of tongs and drop it onto your plate.  That means you definitely want to go easy at the salad bar and, prior to your visit, skip lunch and go very light on breakfast.

Upon being seated all guests are issued a diagram of a cow with the different cuts marked on it.  Additionally, you will be given a round tag, red on one side and green on the other.  You display the green side, which says, “SIM Por Favor (Yes, Please),” until you simply can’t take it anymore and scream for mercy.  The emergency mercy indicator is the red side, and it says, “NÃO Obregado (No, Thanks).”  Flipping over to red signals the wait staff to collect your plates and entice you with the optional, non-inclusive desert menu.

To give you the flavor of the experience (pun intended), we decided this trip to photograph the event from the views outside the restaurant to the offerings contained within this magical establishment.  So, sit back, relax, enjoy the views, and prepare to have your appetite whetted to where you can’t stand it: