March 02: Hello Rio

Yesterday afternoon we flew from Boston to Miami where we changed planes for the overnight flight to Rio de Janeiro.  By the time dinner was served and cleared there remained about five hours of sleep time before arriving in Rio.  This is not to say that we got five hours sleep.  The accommodations were dated and we encountered periodic turbulence, vibrating us awake whenever we dozed off.

We descended into Rio through mostly cloudy skies and a little rain.  We zipped through immigration and customs, only to have our progress towards the ship come to a grinding haul outside customs.  We were told there would be a 90 minute wait before we could board our transfer bus.  We began our visit to Rio killing time in the airport food court.

Once on the bus we made good time into the city until the ship was nearly in sight, at which point we started running into detours around the parade route for Carnaval.  We actually saw MAASDAM at one point just a few blocks away, however, the bus promptly turned in the opposite direction.  We saw an interesting cross-section of the city.  There were multiple venues where people in costume were preparing for another day/night of celebrating.  We passed floats from the previous night’s parade being towed away and floats for tonight’s parade covered in plastic. 

We finally got to the port and the pier where MAASDAM was berthed with three other cruise ships.  After another, this time thankfully brief, period of constipated progress, we boarded MAASDAM where we spent the remainder of the day unpacking and relaxing.