2/16/2008 On The Way To The Amazon River

From: Sherman Rootberg
Date: Sat, Feb 16, 2008 at 6:25 PM
Subject: 2/16/2008

2/16/2008

On The Way To The Amazon River.

We crossed the equator at 4:00 this afternoon. We should cross back to the south, tomorrow morning, as we sail up the Amazon. I forget what time they said. Who cares. We have done that many times except on the Voyager we had wild parties on the pool deck when this happened. As we get closer the water in the ocean will become the color of the river. At the lower part, that color is the color of coffee with cream in it. Further up the river, it gets black in places.

Before I forget, I must mention dinner last night. I don’t care if you are tired of reading about food. Read it anyhow.

We went up to the Veranda restaurant on the eleventh floor. For ten nights it is having Churrasco Dinner. What that means, at least here, is to kill with food. This was not dinner. It was a food orgy. First there was an appetizer bar, or make that, many appetizer bars with about thirty different items. I’m not about to type the whole menu but I’m talking really good stuff like fried bananas, shrimp, crab legs, and the list went on and on. If you took a really big dish you could not get even a drop of everything there was and everything was so good you had to try to taste it all. We never got to their special Black Bean Soup.

Next there was a bunch of these guys walking around with pans full of stuff they are forcing on us like onion rings, fried potatoes and many dishes like that.

After sitting for far too short a time, trying to digest some of what we already shoved down our throats, they now start marching around with huge skewers of marinated, barbequed stuff.

The steak was filets. There were two different kinds of sausage. Chicken thighs, Lamb, Lobster Tails and more. Really, they were forcing us to eat this stuff. There were carts full of cheeses and deserts besides the rest. Besides ice creams, there were at least six desserts we were never able to go near.

We were barely able to roll back to the room and pass out in a food coma. We never even got up to see the entertainment. I think I really hurt myself. I couldn’t even eat breakfast this morning. I can’t remember if that ever happened before.

I don’t think I mentioned what we were told a few days ago. They have definitely ordered another ship to be built. It is scheduled to be ready in 2011. It will be about 60,000 tons. That’s about 20,000 tons larger then the Mariner or Voyager but there will be the same number of passengers and suites. About 700 passengers. The standard room is supposed to be almost 500 square feet. At 350 square feet, these are already the largest standard suites afloat. 500 is very large. I just hope the prices are not too large or at any size, there won’t be enough people to pay prices that are too high.

The only change we can definitely apply to the new owners are the new people renting the shops. This is the first ship I have been on that has no logo items and not much else. I have been cruising since the 60s. There are other things we blame and suspect them for but nothing else for sure so far. We will just have to keep looking. I just hope there will be some good things. So far no evidence of same.

In Fortaleza we were supposed to have a dance troop come aboard and we were supposed to have a tour that went to the theater they dance in. We saw them last year. It is a troop of teenagers form the ghetto that did the most amazing modern dance I have ever seen. Regent/Radisson supported them and gave donations. The stories we were given this year was, first, there had been a flood in the theater and it couldn’t be performed. Next it just was not going to happen onboard either. No reason given. Rumors are, the new company would not continue to donate or support them. Sounds far more like it to me.