Day 12 21st January

Another beautiful warm day and after 12 days when we have only seen one other vessel, today, there has been a stream of them plus oil platforms and some islands on the horizon. This is probably not surprising since we are sailing parallel to the Brazilian coast.  The oil platforms also brought pollution in the form of oil drifting alongside.

The ship was surrounded briefing by dolphins this morning and someone claimed to have seen a whale. We will see more as we sail further south. Normally when they see a pod of dolphins they announce it over the loudspeakers but inevitably by the time you get outside they have gone. You need to be on the right side of the ship and outside or on a balcony to see them.

On a large ship like the Aurora with 3000 passengers and crew you would expect always to be in a crowd but the opposite is true. Most of the time, you can see very few other passengers and often you can go days before you bump into someone you know. It is only at the theatre shows or in the main restaurants that you see a lot of people.

Tomorrow (very early) we arrive in Rio but since there are also two other liners arriving then it is likely to be congested. They have already warned us that the landing terminal we have to enter the country though will be 500 metres from the ship and the bus a further 300 metres away. I expect some chaos tomorrow with queues.