Tuesday, Day 115 - May 1 - Cruising Brazilian Coast

We had another hot humid night. Neither of us slept well....again. On the way to breakfast Carolyn stops by to see why they refuse to lower the temperature of our room. She learns that, as of Rio, we have the same chief engineer as we did out of LA. She is told by the GM they can do nothing more to cool our room. Carolyn tells the GM she does not believe her. They are simply refusing to do so at this point. It is the current (new) Engineer who got our room cool back in Jan. At this, the GM says she will talk to him again. On to breakfast and the day’s activities.

Lectures today are: Terry Bishop’s “Who Has the Amazon Has Brazil - Into the Unknown,” and “Brazil a Regional Leader,” by a new lecturer, Rob Warne, a Professor of International Relations.  As usual Terry has a good talk and Dick says the new guy does a good talk also, better than the last two.

Sarah is still doing the card classes in the morning so Carolyn goes, but leaves early so she can go to the Cruise Critic Meet and Mingle which starts at 11AM. Dick comes by after the lecture as do several others. Once again, this great meeting is put at a time when other really good events are on also. Several of us complain that if Regent is going to do this they need to treat it like the TA groups meetings and have it in the later afternoon. Since they are treating it like a cocktail party and lots of the staff come, it would be much better attended at a later time. As it is people drop by for a few minutes on the way to and from the other morning events.

Back in the room the temperature has dropped now to 70.5 where it was back in late Jan. and the air out of the vent is a degree cooler....how long will it last?

At noon the Captain tells us what our eyes have already told us; It is a beautiful, mild day with just a pleasant breeze and waves at 3 feet. We are traveling at an average of 17 knots/hr and the ocean floor is 13,000 feet below the keel. The ocean is much deeper since we left Rio. It was between 200 and 800 feet between Punta del Este and Rio. 
Today is the day to get caught up on the blog and pictures. So we work on these off and on all afternoon and manage to get two posts up and some others written.

There is no afternoon craft event this segment which is disappointing for whose of us who have really enjoyed them for five segments, but needlepoint is still meeting at tea time so Carolyn goes to that. The staff member leading it now really knows how to do needlepoint. So maybe Carolyn can do something that isn’t a knotted mess after five minutes! It starts at 3:30PM and runs through Tea Time so it is as much a social time as a craft time. The other sea day activities are the same as before so there is really plenty to do.

We have a busy evening. At 6PM we have our Block Party and meet all the new neighbors, then on to our Travel Agents cocktail party. The Captain and several other officers attend this function. Captain Atanas Kostadinov is back. He was the master from LA to Auckland. Finally we join two other couples for dinner and have a great evening. Seems like everyone is beginning to feel that the end is near! Back in the room the temperature is still blissfully cool, but we have been teased before.