Overnight in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, Debarkation, & Return Home

            Saturday, 14 Mar 2020 – The ship was scheduled to dock at Rio de Janeiro at 8:00 AM.  Rio de Janeiro is a huge seaside city, famed for its Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, 124-foot Christ the Redeemer statue atop Mount Corcovado and for Sugarloaf Mountain, a granite peak with cable cars to its summit.  The city is also known for its sprawling favelas (shanty towns).  Its raucous Carnival festival, featuring parade floats, flamboyant costumes and samba dancers, is considered the world’s largest.

 Rosmos, Omlet Cook, Terrace Cafe

 Juvelyn, Server, Terrrace Cafe

            Although we had visited Rio during our 2011/2012 cruise around South America, Sally wanted to visit the Christ the Redeemer Statue again, so we had signed up for an afternoon excursion,  “Highlights of Rio.”  After breakfast, we took our suitcases from under the bed and started packing.  Jesse became concerned that we had not received our airline tickets and went to check on them at the concierge’s desk.  When it turned out that our flights had not been booked, the concierge sent an inquiry to Oceania’s corporate office.  Apparently, Oceania had not booked our flights home.  In fact, the Oceania corporate office didn’t seem to know that we were on the ship.  We were booked on two back-to-back segments, and the corporate office had called Sally’s son, Mark, attempting to notify us that the second segment was cancelled due to the coronavirus!  

Claudine, Server, Terrace Cafe

Christ the Redeemer Statue

            After a light lunch, we met our tour guide, Louisa, ashore.  Although we loaded onto a full-sized bus, many of the passengers had cancelled the excursion to pack for their flights home.  Therefore, we had our choice of seats.  We could have cancelled also, but the cost would have been refunded for even more cruise credits!  From the port, we rode through downtown as we worked our way to the Cosme Velho district to reach the base station of the historic cog railway.  After arriving at the station, we rode the cog-rail toward the top of the Corcovado Mountain, and then rode two escalators the remainder of the way to the top.  It was a very cloudy day, so we could barely see the statue.  We were there for about 45 minutes.  Just as we started to descend the first escalator to leave, the sky cleared completely.  Then, we rushed back to the top, arriving just as the clouds returned!  After rejoining our bus, we rode through the São Conrado district and past Rio’s legendary beachfront, including Copacabana and Ipanema beaches.  We had distant views of Sugarloaf Mountain, although we did not take a cable car to the top as we had done on our 2011/2012 cruise.

            Soon after we re-boarded the ship, and resumed our packing, we received a phone call asking if we still wanted Oceania to book our flights home, which we replied in the affirmative.  That evening we went to our final dinner in the Terrace Café.  A little later, our stateroom steward delivered our luggage tags.  They were a number and color indicating that we had made our own air arrangements, which was not correct.  When Jesse went to the destinations desk to get it all sorted out, he was told to keep our luggage in our stateroom for the night and to check on our tickets in the morning.  Most likely, he was told, our flight home would be in the evening, as were all the flights back to the USA.

            Sunday, 15 Mar 2020 – As soon as he woke up this morning, Jesse went to the concierge’s desk.  We finally got our airline reservations, along with our luggage tags.  We were scheduled to depart Rio to Miami at 8:45 PM on American Airlines; then to Dallas at 7:20 AM, 16 Mar 2020, and finally to Moline at 10:45 AM, arriving in Moline at 12:46.  The ship would be providing bus transportation to the airport at 4:00 PM.
            After breakfast, we returned to our stateroom to finish our packing.  At about 11:00 AM, the cruise director announced that the ship was having an open bar throughout the ship, but since we don’t drink very much these days, we didn’t take advantage of this.  In fact, we had already packed the bottle of wine that the ship had provided, plus the bottle that Canute & Julie had given us.
            At about noon, we realized that we might not have assigned seats for our flights, so Jesse attempted to go online to check.  That’s when we realized that our internet access had been deactivated!  We contacted customer service and were told that our seats would be assigned at the airport.  We weren’t very happy!  (This happened once before and we were both assigned middle seats on different rows.)  Jesse regretted that he hadn’t checked on our seats much earlier.  
            When we went to lunch at about 1:00 and sat at a table next to Velma & and Billy.  Velma suggested that we go to the Internet Café and ask that our account be reactivated, which she had done a little earlier.  That was great news!  Getting assigned seats was difficult since Oceania Cruises had made our reservations.  However, Jesse was finally able to get us seats on all three flights!
            Although we had been assigned to the “Red 3” group for disembarkation, we hadn’t quite finished packing when they called for our group.  We quickly finished stuffing the last items into our luggage (which was difficult because the new suitcases that we had purchased in California in January were not as large as our old ones had been).  As we started out the door with all our luggage, our steward and stewardess saw that we were struggling and ran over to assist us.  Then other ship personal helped us get our luggage off the ship and loaded onto carts.  They continued assisting us until we got to security, where they were no longer allowed.  Soon we were boarding our bus to the Rio de Janeiro Airport.  Since the airport was quite a distance from the cruise terminal, a tour guide narrated the trip.  He pointed out the shanty towns, where outsiders, not even he, could not safely visit.
            The airport was very crowded and service was very slow, with the additional 600 or so passengers from the Oceania Insignia trying to check their baggage for their flights home.  Since we were scheduled to cruise for only 74 days, we were checking three bags; however, some of the around-the-world cruisers checked as many as eight bags!  Somehow, we ended up being the last ones on our flight to check our bags, even though we had not been the last ones in line.  Then we had a long walk to the gate.  Finally, we got a ride on one of those airport golf carts, which helped a lot, but we were still the last to board the plane.  When we got to our seats, one of the flight attendants told us that we would have to take our carry-on luggage back to the front of the plane, since all the luggage racks in the back were full.  Jesse wasn’t very happy and thought that the flight attendant should have assisted Sally, which she finally did.  (Later, Sally was cold during the long flight because her heavier sweater was in the bag stored in the front of the plane!)
            About two-thirds of the way through our long flight from Rio to Miami, Sally passed out just in front of the lavatory.  Since our seats were in the next-to-last row, not far from the restroom, Jesse ran there as soon as he heard the commotion.  Sally didn’t feel it coming.  The last thing she could remember was thinking about how to open the restroom door.  At least, she didn’t fall hard and didn’t get hurt in falling.  It seemed dark, but Sally heard someone say, “What happened?  Did you fall?  Are you hurt?”  She felt weak, cold, and tired because she hadn’t slept.  At any rate, a doctor was nearby in the back of the plane; he was there almost instantly and held her hand and asked how she felt.  He seemed very kind. 
            Monday, 16 Mar 2020 – The flight attendants arranged for a wheelchair to meet us when we landed in Miami.  Jesse’s bad Achilles tendon was hurting a lot; then, just after we passed through customs, he tripped over the carryon and laptop that he was pulling along and fell, hitting his bad Achilles tendon on the carryon.  Three security guards ran over to help him up and wanted to call medical, but he told them that he was okay.  After that, the woman pushing Sally’s wheelchair had to slow down so that Jesse could walk beside them and hold on to the back of the wheelchair.  But we got through all of the stops with passports, picking up luggage, security, rechecking luggage, etc., much faster than we would have without the wheelchair getting special attention.  In Dallas, we both rode on a airport golf cart to the next gate, which was very helpful to Jesse too; he was really dragging by then and had a very swollen ankle.  Even at the Moline Airport, we rode a golf cart to the luggage claim.
            Since our friend, Katie, wasn’t able to pick us up from the airport this time, we first tried calling an Uber, which was not available, and then a taxi.  As we were riding across the I-74 bridge, it didn’t seem that there had been much progress on building the new bridge.  The driver told us that the coronavirus had really been slowing down the progress.  We arrived home at about 2:00 PM.
            By the way, although we started a 74-day cruise, what we actually accomplished was a 49-day cruise, from San Francisco to Rio de Janeiro. 

Anyway, it’s great to be home!