Challenges

Often, the decks of the ship provide sun, wind, and beautiful vistas. There can be a connection to nature, to wonder. During our time in Brazil, however, there were some different sights.

On March 2 (Day 47) pulling out of the port of Santos Brazil near sunset, an amazing sight greeted us. The pictures don’t really capture it. About an hour after we left our dock, there were commercial ships anchored as far as I could see.

I counted 50 of them, but know there were more.

Delays in Brazilian ports have been a longstanding issue, according to some sources I found. This source listed the delay at Santos as only one day currently. That was surprising (translation, I question it, but without a lot of information). In any case, it was quite a sight to illustrate the supply chain challenges we all heard about during the pandemic.

We visited Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on March 3 and 4th. It is a huge and busy city, and the only place so far on the trip where the view from the decks of our ship included lots and lots of garbage floating in the water.

This is a longstanding issue and reflects many significant challenges Brazil faces. There are many different perspectives on these political, social, and environmental challenges. Here is a starting point. It can be very hard to get these stories from the cruise ship perspective of travel. But, in this case, the garbage arrived outside out ship, so could not be avoided.

I feel quite uninformed about what life in Brazil is really like and certainly wish the garbage was not in the ocean. But if it is going to be there, I am grateful I could see it as a way to make visible what is happening.