In a real Tai Chi school the Master won’t let you go to the next movement until you master the current movement. Robert told us that it usually takes a week of classes to get a movement perfect; some of the difficult movements take longer, up to a month. So he says we are doing really well adding a movement every sea day. Of course, we are not doing the movements perfectly but with the review we get at the start of the class each movement improves every day. By the time we get to the end of a set the first third of it is looking pretty good.
April 21 – As we arrived at Georgetown, Ascension Island (left) I had still not found anyone on the ship that as been here before. It’s a very small island and is of recent volcanic origin. It is now classified as dormant, not extinct, so future eruptions are possible but there haven’t been any in the 504 years since it’s discovery in 1501. In this case, discovery is a well-advised description because, like St. Helena, the island was uninhabited at that time and shows no sign of ever having been any permanent settlements until 1815. In that year King George III of England ordered a garrison to be established here because he thought the French might use it as a base of operations for attempting a rescue mission to free Napoleon from his exile on distant neighbor St. Helena. The UK has been here ever since.Most of the island could be uncharitably described as a ‘gravel pit’, but it has a beauty all its own. The broken and very sharp edged rocks of a’a (ah-ah) lava cover much of the surface. This type lava is formed when lava flows rapidly. As the surface cools the next lava flow goes underneath it and breaks it up into large fields of very rough rocks. The edges of these rocks can be razor sharp and even the nearly round ones are as rough as very coarse sandpaper. If you slip and fall on them they scrape the skin right off wherever you come in contact with them. There are also some pahoehoe type basaltic lava floes, mainly on the sides of Green Mountain and at the beaches. I think at one time the entire island was pahoehoe
Much of the rest of the island is covered by cinder lava. This pumice type of rock is formed when lava is ejected from a volcano by gas under high pressure. The gasses are trapped inside the molten lava, which cools very quickly as it flies through the air. The very small air bubbles, as many as 5,000,000 in a cm2 (there are a little over 6 cm2 in a cubic inch) of the rock, make even a fair sized rock very light. There is also some of the very dense basalt type rock that volcanoes produce around but not much; mainly on Green Mountain and at near the beaches. We picked up an example of each. They are about the same size but the pumice weighs less than 10% of the weight of the basalt.
Most of the volcanic hills on the island are cinder cones (right). That is they are huge piles of this pumice rock that accumulated around a lava vent during the gas charged ejections of small amounts of lava. There are huge areas covered with broken up pumice that have little or no vegetation on them even after at least 500 years. The tallest mountain on the island is Green Mountain. It is the only place on the island with any serious vegetation. It’s a green oasis on a very stark place. There are banana trees and other species near its summit. This is the main volcano that formed the island. It’s about 2,825 feet tall and composed mainly of basalt and other very solid rocks. All the other hills are much shorter and are cinder cone in make up, a fact reflected in their names: Ragged Hill, Lady Hill, Cross Hill, Traveler’s Hill, etc. The cinder cones are mostly red, while the basalt is basically very dark grey to black. This grouping of a central stratovolcano and a number of surrounding cinder cone volcanoes is called a Monogenetic volcanic field. All that means is that all the volcanoes had a single source for their lava. Usually the cinder cones develop after the pressures are no longer sufficient to push lava from the central and much taller stratovolcano. Cinder cones rarely rise more than 1,000 feet above their surroundings, while stratovolcanoes reach heights of over 8,000 feet.
We anchored about a mile off shore (left) and are tendering in again today, as this island does not have a proper harbor, which was also the case in St. Helena. At the pier there were about 20 wet, somewhat slippery, cement stairs to climb. This information was relayed back to the ship from the tender carrying the shore side equipment and personnel. The wiser “mobility challenged” people decided not to go ashore, the more foolhardy or intrepid, depending on your interpretation, continued with their shore side plans. Unfortunately when we arrived on the pier and climbed the stairs it was still about a 500-yard walk into town over very uneven ground. Most turned back to the ship at that point, some persevered but by the time they got to town they were in no condition to continue any further.The island’s population is mostly people from St. Helena here working on contract as well as British and American military personnel. The military people work at what are essentially intelligence gathering bases on the island. I served on a base like that on the Island of Crete in 1967-68. What you have is several large antenna fields and people who are fluent in various languages listening in on and recording various types of transmissions looking for information valuable to their government. Unlike St. Helena they do have an airport. It has one runway but it’s a long one. There was a Russian plane here, the largest plane currently flying. I’m not sure what it was doing here but it took off at noon heading who knows where.
The school busses were giving island tours for $20 so Diana and I hopped on one to get a look around. We drove out of town and our first stop was at Cat Hill, the site of the USAF Air Station. There are not many US personnel here. Most of the station employees are on contract from St. Helena. The only positions filled by Americans are the sensitive intelligence positions. Our driver took us on a short tour of the station. It had to be short as the base is very small. Most of the antenna fields are scattered around the island so the station only has the dining hall, admin offices, housing, theater and maintenance buildings. The theater is the only one on the island so everyone is invited to attend the shows.
The airport, Wideawake Airfield (right), is adjacent to the USAF Air Station. It was built by 4,000 American troops in 1942 for use by American warplanes assisting in the Allied North African campaigns. It was called Wideawake Field because after a long flight to get there you had to be ‘wide awake’ to land your plane as there is only one runway and you had to use it regardless of the direction of the wind. This can make for a tricky landing if you have strong cross or tail winds. You can’t go elsewhere as by the time you get here you are very low on fuel and there’s nothing else around. St. Helena is not that far away but there isn’t enough level ground there to construct a decent bowling alley. If you look at a globe you can see why it’s so important. Most of these warplanes had limited range even with the external tanks attached. The only way they could fly across the Atlantic Ocean to Africa and avoid the European Theater of Operations and its attendant risk of interception was to fly to South America (Brazil was an Ally) and then across the Atlantic to Africa. Over 20,000 aircraft were delivered to combat operations between July 10, 1942 and the end of WWII. The task force assigned to build the airstrip arrived on March 30, 1942. Between March 31st and July 9th they had to unload all their equipment and construct the airfield under very adverse conditions. They built not only the runway but also the tank farm for fuel, the submarine line, water supply and support facilities. Finishing that task in such a short time is considered to be one of the miracles of WWII.
The island remains strategically important to this day. During the height of the ‘Cold War’ years photographs were strictly forbidden, as they were when I served on Iraklion Air Station, Crete. At that time the Security Service bases run by the Air Force were not even listed on maps. Like everyone else in the military we received mail at an APO address, ours was in New York. We were forbidden to receive mail at any address that identified us by name and came directly to Crete. Our mail came in secure mail sacks from New York. I don’t think that base exists anymore and security at this one is very low by comparison. During the Falklands war the British used it as a staging base for military operations in the South Atlantic.
From the airport we drove up Command Hill to have an overview of the area. From there we could see not only the airfield and the US base but the ocean, several antenna fields and South West Bay Red Hill that blocked our view of Georgetown. South West Bay Red Hill is a nearly perfect example of a cinder cone, very symmetrical and red. The only blemish was a small band about a third of the way up where some of the volcanic gravel slipped down the slope. Behind that hill we could also see Cross Hill over near Georgetown.
From there we drove past Traveler’s Hill and the Royal Air Force base (no aircraft or runway) to Two Boats Village (left). Here we had a great view of Green Mountain. Unfortunately, Green Mountain creates its own cloud cover and it was in shadow most of the day making it very hard to capture the greenery up at the top. We stopped at the Two Boats Club for a little break time. They have a patio area with a swimming pool, a snack bar out on the patio and a skittles alley. There’s a large chalk board out there captioned “The Two Boats Village Club Skittles League” so it must be an organized sport here.Skittles is a little like bowling in that the aim is to roll a ball down the alley and knock over as many skittles as you can. Unlike bowling you get three balls per frame and all nine skittles are reset between balls if you knock them all down, making the top possible score per frame 27. The front 6 skittles are set exactly as the pins in bowling but th
e back three are set to form a diamond pattern. They call the frames, turns and the alley is about 24 feet long. There are a variety of skittle shapes from various parts of England. The ones they use here look like two inverted Styrofoam coffee cups glued together at the open end and they were about a foot tall.Diana and I were a little hungry as it was after noon and we had been in town since breakfast. They had a deal for two scones (right), one with cheese and the other with cream and jam, and half a sandwich for 1 Pound 50 Pence. That’s about $3 in US. We got two cokes and the scone deal. They were very good. The half sandwich was some sort of pickles. It was very tasty. Apparently the only place you can order Diet Coke is in North America. The rest of the world knows it as Coke Light.
After a short break at the club we left Two Boats and drove back toward the coast from the base of Green Mountain. Our next stop was at the One Boat Golf Club. It’s sort of a temporary building with a row of garden sheds along the side of the parking lot. Turns out the garden sheds are the locker room. They are lined on both sides with lockers (left) with names on them like Bogey Man, Puddy and Steve Choppers written on them. There were some bags of clubs setting in front of some of the lockers. They showed the effects of playing the course. It’s a links style course, which means it has no fairways; in fact it has no grass. The ‘greens’ are ‘browns’, made entirely of finely crushed volcanic pumice. Like a links course it has landing spots made of the same material. You can imagine what this abrasive material does to the irons and woods. In fact, all the ‘woods’ I saw were metal. The dirt would consume a wooden headed driver in no time. You don’t have to replace your divots because you can’t find them. They’re a large puff of volcanic dust. You are supposed to smooth out any holes you create.One real oddity is the large industrial strength ball cleaner at each tee. I was wondering about them until I discovered how they kept the crushed pumice greens from blowing away. They pour all the used oil on the island on them. Consequently the oil seeps into the cups so when you retrieve your ball it’s been dipped in used oil. The ball cleaners are filled with a special soap solution and equipped with a large crank with very stiff brushes attached. You drop your ball into a hole and crank until it reappears in another hole, clean of the oil and only mildly damp from the soap solution that evaporates quickly. I don’t think Tiger Woods will ever play here, although he might think it was fun. It’s certainly unique.
From there we drove past Sisters Peak and Perfect Crater to English Bay. Both Sisters and Perfect are cinder cones. English Bay has one beach with two natural jetties of basalt lava rock (right), the real heavy stuff, on either end that run from the main lava flow to about 50 yards out into the ocean. In about the center of the 600-yard long beach is another shorter jetty of basalt rock that is separated from the main lava flow by the beach behind it and extends out into the ocean only about 15 yards. The tide was out and this center jetty traps some water behind parts of it to form a series of tide pools.
The diving and snorkeling must be great here because the tide pools were teeming with life. A large community of crabs was scrambling over the rocks. It looked a little like ants there were so many of them. Natural selection has produced a color on the crab that is identical to the basalt rock, except that the crab has tiny lighter spots all over it (left). They look somewhat like the way the light reflects off the pock marked and rippled rock. There were several varieties of small fish also trapped in the tide pools. The Atlantic is fairly cool here so there is not much in the way of plant life in the pools. Our guide told us that grouper are plentiful as are many other species of fish. Moray eels are also very common, as well as a variety of rays and skates. I saw some very large schools of fish roiling the surface. I figured there was a predator feeding on them from below that caused them to head for the surface. Maybe it was a feeding activity but I don’t know what they would have been eating as the surface was not full of insects or anything I could see.The island is the breeding ground for Green Sea Turtles. They migrate here from Brazil to nest. The beaches are full of depressions about 3 feet across that mark where a turtle has laid its eggs. We saw a nest that had been damaged because the mother did not move far enough up the beach to nest. The waves had uncovered the eggs. I don’t know what the fate of these eggs will be but only a small percentage of the eggs laid ever produce a fully-grown turtle. Attrition, through birds that raid the nests and predators that feed on the brand new hatchlings when they make their initial run to the sea and there first moments of swimming, is tremendous. Ascension is one of the few unspoiled breeding grounds they have left.
I got a kick out of our driver. He’s a young, maybe middle 20s, man from St. Helena. He has never been anywhere but there and here. He confided in me when we were alone standing by the van, “I’ve never seen so many old people in my life!” I had to laugh and then I replied, “You don’t know the half of it. These are the young people, the really old people are still on the ship.” His eyebrows went up and he has a look of disbelief on his face. Then he saw that I wasn’t kidding and his eyes went wide with surprise.
Next we drove by the NASA tracking station to Moon Base 1 Beach. Our guide told us that Moon Base 1 got its name from the fact that the first broadcasts from the moon were received by this station to be sent to NASA in the US and then on to our TVs. The beach here is very small, probably only 30-40 yards across and it’s at the end of a very narrow channel in the lava rock(right). The channel in the rocks turns part way out so the wave action of the Atlantic is reduced to almost nothing by the time it reaches the beach. The water in the little bay formed by this channel is very shallow and remains shallow almost the entire 60 yards it takes to reach the larger bay from which it extends. A perfect place for sunbathing and swimming. Four of the cruise staff were there, Jen, Emily, Johnnie and Craig. The staff on the ship usually tries to find an out of the way place to hide when off the ship to get some time out of the public eye. Their life on board consists of long days of constant public contact. That would be fine if all the passengers were cordial, friendly people but they spend a lot of time dealing with the stuffy, rude and thoughtless minority and I know it takes a toll on them.
From Moon Base 1 we went back into Georgetown, stopping to
take pictures of some feral donkeys on the way. The female was obviously pregnant. Once back in Georgetown Diana and I decided to check out the “shopping center”, read that as grocery market. I looked around at all the British goods, chutneys, and pickles, etc. that we don’t really get to see much of in the States. I found some potato chips; they call them crisps because they call French fries chips, made by a British company, Walker’s. Our cruise director’s name is Gary Walker so I thought I’d buy him a small bag as a gag. Then I noticed that they had flavored chips, BBQ and the like, so I checked them out.Do you know what Vegemite is? It’s a vile, green sludge that you mix with liquid and drink, usually for breakfast. You can get in almost any health food store. It’s supposed to be good for you, but to be honest I don’t get it. Well the British have a version of the stuff called Marmite and Walker’s makes Marmite flavored crisps. Well, what can I say? I’m always up for an unusual eating experience. I bought two bags, one for Gary and one for me, both Marmite flavored. I’ll report on the flavor later.
After doing a little shopping we went over to the post office (above left) to look at stamps. St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, the three related islands in this group are all somewhat famous for their stamps. We got some first day covers and stamps from each of the islands. We walked around the village. The old barracks is now the Exiles Building where citizens of the British Empire meet and have social functions. Fort Hayes sets on a small cinder cone hill next to the harbor. Some of the old coastal guns are still there from WWII. St. Mary’s church (below right) is an Anglican church that was built in 1843. It was the island garrison’s church and military chaplains served there until 1984. Since then a civilian Vicar or Cannon has s
erved to lead the church. It’s a very pretty building.It’s pretty hot and dry and the sun is getting to us a little so about 3PM we decided to catch the tender back to the ship. It was an interesting and somewhat nostalgic day because of the USAF Air Station we saw reminded me of my time on Crete.
I purchased a special edition of ‘The Islander’ the islands weekly newspaper. It had all the articles of the current paper with some additional maps and information about the island attached. They had included some old articles from the archives. First published in 1971, it had some humorous tidbits but the one that struck me was a published invitation from the NASA staff for islanders to come to the tracking station and watch the live feed of the Apollo XVII moon mission. It said that they had to park their cars outside the perimeter and be accompanied on their walk to the station. It listed the approximate times of the various happenings for getting to and from the moon. A public invitation to watch inside the working part of a NASA station would never happen in the US because you don’t know how people will act. Here it’s not a problem. People don’t lock their cars or houses; in fact they mostly leave their keys in the ignition. There’s no crime at all except an occasional drunk that needs to be sobered up before he’s allowed to drive home. Now we have three days at sea to get ready for Brazil and the Amazon River. My Tai Chi should improve a lot.
April 22, 23 & 24 – Three days at sea and two of them were 25 hours long. Ahhhh, the pause that refreshes. On the 24th we celebrated ANZAC (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) Day. It’s a holiday in Australia and New Zealand that is like our Memorial Day. It’s a day when they remember all those killed in battle in service to their countries. (Until just recently they always fought together, but the more socialist New Zealanders would rather appease the radical Islamists and let them attack us at will rather than fight them on their turf. So Australia joined us and the New Zealanders chose to sit home and knit as befits their character. Is my distain for their attitude properly coming across? I hope so. They’d all be speaking Japanese or German if we hadn’t bailed them and the rest of the British Empire out twice in 40 years.) There are a few Australians on board but none of the weak kneed New Zealander but the Tai Chi instructor, Robert is an Australian veteran and wanted to hold a celebration. (r to l in the picture above left: Tom from CSI, Pastor Doug, Andrea, represented.Robert, Tom a passenger, Ron & Frank)
He enlisted the help of other veterans and got the staff involved and at 7AM on the 24th we had a service aft on the fantail of the Lower Promenade deck. The participants were all citizens of the British Empire or clergy. Robert was the MC, Pastor Doug, Father Bill, Ron (the dance instructor), Tom (one of our CSI cruise escorts and the most British man I know), Frank (our port lecturer), Andrea (one of the shore excursions staff) and the Captain all had part of the duties. They offered prayers, poems and other tributes to those fallen in combat of all the countries.
When we got to the fantail the ship was headed directly west and that meant that the audience was looking directly into the sun. It was a clear and very bright day. When the Captain arrived he took out his radio and spoke into it for a moment and the ship
immediately began a very slow turn to starboard. When the sun was on the starboard beam the turn stopped. This put the sun just barely over the left shoulder of the audience and not at all in the speaker’s eyes. Just perfect. I guess there’s not really much sense in being the captain if you can’t put the sun where you want it every now and then. As soon as the service was over we resumed the original course.The service was very well attended, mostly by veterans, but some wives and others came as well (right). There were 50-60 people in the audience. I took pictures for the ship. They are pretty nice. The ship had hung flags across the superstructure behind the audience. Mostly members of the British Empire, the United Kingdom, Canada, Turkey, Australia and New Zealand, but to honor the veterans on board they also hung the Netherlands (this is Holland America Line after all), the USA, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Robert seemed pleased with the results.
April 25 – Today we are in Fortaleza, Brazil. It’s much larger than I thought it would be with high-rise building all along the coast as densely packed as Honolulu. Fortaleza is in the State of Ceará. The people of Brazil speak Portuguese as opposed to the normal Spanish of Latin America. This goes back to the division of the new world between the Spanish and the Portuguese by a Pope many in the 1500s. Brazil is the easternmost country in South America and was mainly on the Portuguese side of the line. The rest of South and Central America was on the Spanish side. Of course the non-Catholic countries of the world paid no attention to the Pope’s division and thus the British, Dutch and French had most of the colonies in North America. The Spanish, read Mexican’s, lands in North America were acquired by force or by purchase, as were the French and Dutch in the USA. Unfortunately, the British were not as successful in Canada and they are left with the French Canadian problem.The people here are very friendly. English is not so widely spoken here but both Diana and I find that we can get along with sign language and a little Spanish. If you greet the locals in Portuguese by saying (I’m typing phonetically as I do not know the correct spelling) ‘Bom Dia’, which means good day and then say “en Espanol” which means ‘in Spanish’ and then say whatever you have to say using Spanish, you get a great reception. Especially if you ask them how to say what you just said in Spanish using Portuguese. If you just speak Spanish without the Portuguese introduction the reception is somewhat disdainful. Like they are thinking, “Stupid tourist, we don’t speak Spanish here!” Apparently just a little extra effort garners you a whole pile of good will.
The first time I tried this was with a young shopkeeper. Diana and I were looking at some of her native crafts and I said to her, ‘Bom Dia.’ She replied the same way. I said, ‘en Espanol, Esta me esposa.’ while pointing at Diana. Indicating that I was switching to Spanish and telling her that Diana was my wife. The girl grinned and nodded. (Lots of people here speak Spanish) Then with a questioning look on my face I said, ‘¿en Portuguese?’ and she told me how to say spouse in her language. It seemed like she was having fun and I know I was. As I’ve said many times before, one of the most under appreciated aspects of travel by people from the USA is mixing it up with the locals. The other great word to know in Portuguese is (again phonetically) ‘A-bri-ga’-do, which means ‘Thank You’. It’s funny how Spanish has helped us in both Italy and Brazil. Not so funny I guess, as all three are Romance Languages.
Back to the touring. We are taking a free tour here courtesy of our travel agent. In total, CSI has given us 7 free tours on the trip. It’s a city tour of about 3.5 hours. The weather here is hot and humid but there is a nice breeze and it’s not nearly as bad as India and Thailand. It might get that way up the Amazon in the rainforest but here at the coast it’s not really that bad as long as the breeze can get to you. The busses are the nicest we’ve had on the whole trip. Fairly new, clean, great A/C and very roomy.
Leaving the port we drove along the coast. They have a great beach here, wide and long, lined with very rustic bars and restaurants. Mostly a kitchen area with the tables set out under palm frond shelters right on the beach. Looks like something out of a 1950s black and white movie set in the South Pacific. Very attractive. Every now and then there would be a more modern restaurant or club in a building but on this beach there is no high-rise development. In fact the tallest building I saw in the beach as two storey.
After turning inland and heading down to the center of the old town we stopped at the Teatro José de Alencar (left). It was built in the early 1900s and is still in use today. It is named for a famous 19th century author from this city. The building is constructed of ironwork made in Scotland but it still remains fairly cool because of its open design. It has three arches across the roof at the front, two small flanking one large, all three have fancy ironwork and colored glass panes. The first floor under that has colored glass panes across the entire front. Then next two floors down have entirely different ornate iron balconies with flanking straight stairways leading up to the second floor. A very unique and attractive building. The inside was an central seating space open to the roof with bordering balconies wrapping around it on all three upper floors. The balcony railings were also made of very unique ironwork.
Immediately to the left as you faced the building was a very nice little park area being enjoyed by the townspeople. There were flowering bushes and plants everywhere. One of the prettiest was a large hibiscus tree that was full of very big yellow flowers with a burst of orangey red at the center of each petal of the flower. Off in one corner was a father teaching his daughter to walk on stilts (right). Not the kind that you hold under your arms, buy the kind you strap to your legs. They were only about 18 inches tall but I wouldn’t have wanted to try them. He was walking backward holding her hands until she got going then he would scoot back about 4-5 feet and wait for her to catch up. Usually after one step or two she would falter and he would rush back to grab her hands and keep her steady. Once she made it all the way to him and I shouted, ‘Bravo, bravo!’ Her father turned to me and grinned and she laughed so hard she almost fell off the stilts. They were obviously having a lot of fun. This tour is off to a great start.
Our next stop was at the Sé Cathedral (left). The cathedral was originally designed to be a smaller copy of the one in Cologne, Germany, but the architect died during the construction and the design was changed to incorporate elements from many different cathedrals. The basic shape of the front elevation is very much like that in Cologne. The stained glass windows are the true beauty of this building. It has large rose windows on the front and each end of the transept. All around the building are tall, arched top, rectangular windows, each depicting a different Biblical character or saint or story from the life of Christ. Over, around and between these are scattered small round windows. It’s a bright and sunny day so the windows are spectacular.
The glass for the windows was made in Murano, Italy famous for it’s glass. The money came from a German firm that wanted to build an electric generating plant in one location but couldn’t get approval because the politicians from the other states wanted it to be built in their state. To get the approval the company donated money to each of the other states. Part of that money was used to buy the windows for this cathedral.
Some of the spaces were partly filled with clear glass. Our guide told us that these were broken windows that couldn’t be repaired because the company in Italy that made them was no longer in business. He said that some glass experts in Sao Paulo were working on duplicating the originals. The cathedral was very stark if you don’t count the windows. No fancy tile or color at all except for small statues that were mostly very subdued.
Our next stop was at the old jail. It was a one block square building that was shaped like a large rectangle, only one storey tall. You enter through gates in the building and once you get beyond the wall, which is about one room thick, you enter a courtyard that runs the entire length of the building. Across this courtyard there’s another wing of the building that is two rooms wide.
Passing through this you come to another courtyard that you cross and come to another one room thick wall that leads to the street on the other side. So the shape is actually like a hollow rectangle with a line across the long way. Kind of like an H with the top and bottom closed. In the middle of all the sides there are gates through the walls, including the center wall. The black lines represent the walls. The outer walls have a hall with cells on one side. The center wall has a hall with cells on both sides. The cells are now craft shops.
There was a lady in one shop tatting. I hope that what you call lace making, I seem to remember that it is. She had a large doughnut shaped cushion in front of her setting so you could see the hole looking at her from the side. Around this doughnut she had put a paper with holes in it for the pattern. Into the holes she places straight pins, at least 50 of them. The tatting is done with 26 sticks with balls at one end and the lace strings attached to the other end as though they were spools of thread (right). She takes six of these sticks in each hand and uses the balls attached at the end to weave the threads around the pins. In essence, she’s juggling the 6 balls in each hand in a pattern that makes the lace.
Every now and then she takes one ball from her right hand and puts it beside the doughnut, takes a ball from her left hand and puts it in the right hand and picks up a ball from the left side of the doughnut and the whole juggling act starts again. When all the balls are on the right side of the doughnut the process reverses until all the balls are on the left side again. When all the balls reach one side of the doughnut she places some new pins at the bottom of the pattern and removes some from the top end. She did all this so fast it was hard to see exactly what was happening. I have some video I will be able to watch in slow motion to see the exact sequence of events.
After the stop at the old jail the bus was headed back to the ship. Diana wanted to go to the Mercado Central for some handicraft shopping. It’s sort of a four storey oval shaped building empty in the center except for a series of walkways that cross the center section and allow you to cross over on the same floor or go up or down to a new floor. There’s also an elevator if you don’t want to walk. Each floor circles the entire building and has a walkway with a railing looking over the center area and shops on the outside of the building. The shops are mostly open stalls and they all sell locally made products. Lots of leather goods, textiles, pecans, sugar cane liquor, baskets and other items woven from cane or reeds, etc. We were there for about two hours. Diana shopped and I watched and interacted with the locals. The building is open and that provided a good breeze in most places making the temperature tolerable.I found a stall selling international calling cards and boug
ht one to call the US. I called my dad, Diana’s mom, and our brother and sister-in-law and got an answering machine at each place. This was fairly discouraging but I did get to leave messages. After that it was back to the ship and on board for sail away. Our Cruise Director, Gary, has brought another local folkloric dance group aboard for an evening show. They are a Quadrille dance group. The French brought the dance style here but the Brazilians quickly made it their own and called it the quadrilha. In Brazil the dance tells the story of a wedding complete with townspeople and soldiers. It was a very lively dance that required Herculean energy levels on the part of the dancers. They went full speed ahead for at least 45 minutes. After the dance, the participants posed with the tourists for pictures. They were excellent. At the right you see Diana with a soldier and a village girl.
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(c) Rod Longenberger - 2005
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