Highlights & Lowlights:

Highlights:
- premium economy with British Airways
- Table Mountain tour
- shopping in Stellenbosch
- Robben Island tour & guide
- meeting the ladies at Diaz Coffee Shop in Luderitz
- riding the sand dunes in Walvis Bay with Ben, "I'm not a Cowboy" (he was)
- meeting Chris & Nancy, Dennis & Maribeth
- our day in St. Helena
- Terry Bishop historian, comedian, folk singer
- the sea days weather
- a Texan & fries for lunch
- drinks package, 400 free internet minutes, $300 credit
- sailing into Rio
- The Belmond Hotel (location, style, room, staff)
- Iguazu Falls
- the views from Sugar Loaf & Christ the Redeemer
- the Rio Samba Show
- visiting the Maracana Stadium
- the company of Sue & Dennis
- Mohammed & Isobel
- Vivian (Marina waiter)

Lowlights:
- Cape Town logistics and all the queues
- the patronising Marina reception staff
- Stevie-Jo, comedian (not)
- onboard internet
- Trivia
- no room at the Rio Sofitel for Sue & Dennis
- the Aquila Game Reserve
- Alles Bleue wine tasting
- The Belmond Hotel (prices, restaurant)
- the rain at Iguazu
- our lack of appreciation of tour itineraries in Brazil; too much assumed
- the twice visited Rio restaurant
- the Caesar Park hotel rooms
- the lack of good manners of too many people onboard ship
- the traffic in Rio

Thoughts & Observations:
- Our first experience of the larger Oceania ships, we would return to the smaller ones if/when we cruise again.
- We left too much to the travel agent with regard to our Rio experience
- Oceania not quite as good as we first experienced, or or we just getting more fussy?
- The cost between turning left and turning right in an unknown town can be enormous.
- It continues to be great to meet new people

Thursday 17th December;

Well our amazing trip comes to an end today, and we will leave for the airport around 7.30pm this evening. This morning we head of to the Maracana Stadium for a tour, the Macarana as our friend Judy thought. A private car is hired on the basis of waiting and returning us as well. The hotel doorman suggests this might be better than trying to hail a taxi outside, given that it's opposite a favela, well I guess he would say that, gets him some commission I'm sure, but it certainly made it easy for us and the driver spoke pretty good English as well.

With 30 or 40 others we join the one hour guided tour of the stadium, visiting the press area, the VIP area, the dug-out and one of the dressing rooms; it's an impressive place with plenty of ghosts, especially the loss to Uruguay in the 1950 final. Interestingly the 2014 semi-final lost 1-7 to Germany was not played here, only the final between Argentina & Germany.

Lunch back at the roof top bar/pool and it seems guests take second place to the renovation work going on and the photo-shoot going on. Folks from the US Track & Field management team are here also, checking out accommodation in readiness for the Olympics next July/August. I suspect they will not be recommending the Caesar Park. For a supposed 5* hotel the overhaul and decoration is incredibly sloppy, worse than DIY, ;et alone professional decorating, but hey this is Brazil as JB kept reminding us, Rio is "jerry-built".

Wednesday 16th December:

Botanical Gardens, a stroll along Ipanema beach, and Rio by Night are the days treats. The gardens are somewhat jaded, there's not too much colour, and the Rose Garden contains a single rose, maybe the wrong time of the year, but it's all pleasant enough. A good lunch before we leave makes up for it and we cab it back to the hotel.

The management team at the hotel are on the case of the cancelled rooms and they seem to be taking it quite seriously. Sue & Dennis hear a little more, and find yet another booking agent seems to have been involved in the chain, which makes you wonder how much of a cut each of these agents take.

I take a stroll along the beach, take a few snaps and watch some beach "keepie-uppie", played like volley ball, three touches allowed to return the ball over the net. Not surprising that the Brazilians have such ball skills if they learn them on the beach like this.

We are collected late for our evening's entertainment, and endure a meal at the same restaurant where we had lunch yesterday. The place is very rowdy with a birthday party next to us making an awful din, definitely not impressed. The show is brilliant however, the costumes, the drummers, the acrobats, and the guy "with all the moves", much better than expected, oh and I forgot the girls were pretty hot as well.

The lovely Isabel finds us waiting to go out and confirms that we can have a late check out which is great, time for a shower and a change of clothes before we leave for the airport.

Tuesday 15th December:

A ten hour day touring the sights of Rio, well three of them anyway. Most of the day is spent on a coach though as we collect people from various hotels and navigate through the heavy traffic. A mild day by Rio standards for this time of year, but the thermometer reaches 38 degrees C, and the humidity is high.

John the Baptist is our guide for the trip to Rio Cathedral and then up Sugar Loaf Mountain, or JB as he more modestly prefers to be called. A lawyer in a previous life he thinks Margaret Thatcher should come and sort his country out, as we discuss the process of impeachment for corruption that the Brazilian President is currently undergoing. He despises the corruption and explains that is why he gave up the law and became a tour guide. He also explains that he will be in Germany for three months whilst the Olympics is on in Rio, as he is convinced that there will be a big terror attack. He waxes lyrical and talks about the "jerry-built" buildings that are going up, but that will crumble not long afterward. An interesting guy, but he hands us over to Louis, our lunch host.

The trip up Sugar Loaf is by cable car, and in two parts. The cars travel very quickly, must faster than the ones on Table Mountain. It's not crowded at all and we stroll around the top for 45 minutes and stare at the spectacular views across Rio harbour.

Lunch is in a large restaurant and is an impressive affair with an amazing array of salads, with which we all overfill our plates, except Sue who manages a stick of celery and a lettuce leaf. Once we have tucked into this feast the meat arrives, and continues to arrive at one minute intervals for the next half an hour. The meat is roasted on skewers and carved at the table, chicken, lamb, fillet steak, sausages. JB had advised us not to take too much salad, and save space for the meat, did we listen, of course not.

We are regaled through lunch by an Australian couple on a two month tour of South America, finishing off with Christmas in the Antarctic. An evening out the night before got quite frisky when they witnessed a shoot out between police and other unspecified bad boys, assault rifles the lot, and people stood there and took photographs, must say I didn't see that tour advertised anywhere.

Lorna chats to two separate girls from Tokyo, and introduces them to one another, and yes, two new Facebook friends are born.

The afternoon tour is led by an anonymous guide who takes us on the tour up to visit Christ the Redeemer, over 700 meters high above Rio. The journey is by a rack and pinion railway, and although pretty crowded is fantastic. The views across the whole of Rio are stunning, and the statue is some 40 metres high so no one can stand in front and get in the way.

After the large lunch we stay in the hotel for a snack supper, and join a boisterous crowd on level 23 to watch the sunset.

Monday 14th December:

Many days to remember on this trip, today was a day to forget. Neither of us in a great frame of mind, mostly driven by the value for money, or lack of it from The Belmond Hotel; our meal last night costing not far shy of £100. We checked out before breakfast and were asked if we had enjoyed our stay. to which we replied Yes & No. Great hotel, fantastic location, very friendly staff, but overpriced, particularly the restaurant, and on top of that very poorly organised service.

As if to prove our point Lorna's ordered eggs never arrive, and although you can get champagne or Buck's Fizz free with your breakfast, you have to pay for a bottle of water, now that's taking the piss; I just bloody hate being taken for a ride.

Transfers are on time, but the plane is delayed an hour, and we are given the fright of our lives when we think Sue & Dennis have not got on the plane. Is this the Rio flight I ask, yes is the reply, but our friends are supposed to be in row 28 and it's empty. The flight attendant puts a call out for Mr & Mrs Carter, and we find they are sitting up the front, having been called before going through the departure gate and told row 28 has technical problems, the cushions have been removed, probably because someone puked on them on the inbound flight.

We get separate rides into Copacabana, only to find the Sofitel has not managed to resolve the cancelled room for Sue & Dennis. Our timing is good however, because Mohammed is the Duty Manager, and he's raring to solve our conundrum, which in the end he does, getting all of us transferred down to Caesar Park, a sister hotel of The Sofitel. He explains he is sitting on -19 rooms for the next day, so many other problems need to be resolved. We are never to know what the standard of our room would have been, especially as we're told we both have upgrades at Caesar Park.

Caesar Park flatters to deceive and although it's had a coat of paint, in fact our floor reeks of paint, the rest of the room is shabby, the bathroom is shabby and the safe doesn't work. Lorna makes friends with Isabel and we get a move, a little better, but with a stunning view looking down Ipanema Beach. We dine in the hotel restaurant, at half the cost of the Belmond, and with better service.

Anyway we're settled back into Rio after a trying day; at least the weather is fabulous and so is the outlook for tomorrow.

Sunday 13th December:

The forecast was not good, rain was promised, and rain it did, in stair rods between 10.00 and 14.00. By 10.00 we had completed our tour for the day, a walk of the Brazilian side of the falls. When we booked, Dave at Savvi told us that the Brazilian side was best for viewing the falls (not sure), and had the best hotel, the Belmond (almost certainly true, a beautiful hotel). Sue & Dennis we find have a tour that takes them to both the Brazilian side and the Argentinian side.

We hook up with Neto our guide, and decide that at $160 for him and the car to take us to the other side, is not worth it, and given the oncoming rain, probably the right decision. Sue & Dennis enjoyed the tour, but were continually soaked, in the rain complete with thunder and lightening, and unable to get their camera out.

We sit by the poolside, under a large umbrella, with a cappuccino, and watch the rain hammer down. We lunch on the veranda and sit there most of the afternoon. As I forecast the cloud clears and the sun comes out again, and I do this morning's walk in reverse. This time I ensure I stay dry, unlike earlier when we found the places where the spray drenched you in seconds, all to record the visit appropriately.

By any measure, Iguazu Falls is a monster.It spans an area 2.7 kilometers wide. It's made up of a system of 275 waterfalls or cataracts, with the exact number depending on the season. The tallest of these waterfalls, called the Devil's Throat, drops by more than 80 meters into a milky abyss that creates a permanent cloud of mist.

To put that in perspective, Iguazu Falls is nearly twice as tall as Niagara Falls and rivaled only by Zambia and Zimbabwe's Victoria Falls, which is taller at 108 meters. It's nearly three times as wide as Niagara Falls and significantly wider still than Victoria Falls.

The amount of water pouring from these falls to the Iguazu River is equally staggering. On average, about 1,500 cubic meters of water flows every second. Depending on the time of the year, the rate of water flow can be as much as 13,000 cubic meters per second, enough to fill five Olympic swimming pools, especially during the rainy months of November to March.

It's little surprise then that the river that the water flows into, as well as the waterfalls, are both named Iguazu, which literally means "big water" in native Guarani Indian language.

Saturday 12th December:

A farewell to the folks we have met, Dennis & Maribeth, and Chris & Nancy. Both have offered us accommodation should we visit either Oklahoma, Florida or Colorado; we just need an itinerary, and one that takes in Mission Viejo as well.

We also say farewell to a plethora, is that the correct collective noun, of gay male couples on the cruise. I can't remember quite so many, may be a cruise presents a pretty safe environment for them. We are even on quite chatty terms with the Austro/German couple.

As expected chaos surrounded the terminal with hundreds of people trying to find their contacts, and their contacts trying to get their vehicles anywhere close to load people and luggage. Our man Carlos does a good job and gets us to the Sofitel at the end of Copacabana beach. They are happy to store one case for us until we return from Iguazu in two days time. Irritatingly Dennis & Sue arrive to find their accommodation has been cancelled.

The only noteworthy item on the drive out to the airport is the young men who sells food items on the motorway, 10-20 of them weaving their way through speeding traffic, and some of them probably no older than six or seven years. Also of note is the bare chest syndrome, it seems that in Rio "skin is in" and the more you expose the more current you are, especially along the Copacobana.

A fairly uneventful flight from Rio down to Foz dos Iguacu, and arrival at the fabulous Belmond Cataratas Hotel, the only one inside the National Park. We upgrade for a room with a view of the Falls, or more accurately, a view of the spray and mist generated by the Falls. Some confusion over what the time is as we have put our watches back again on the flight down, only to find the plane is on Argentinian time, and of course we're still in Brazil. A rush out to see the sun set over the Falls, and then to dinner, which almost reaches Faulty Towers heights with a large number of seemingly incompetent waiters.

The food is good, but expensive, and for the first time we have to look at prices of both food and drink following two weeks of giving a hoot on the Marina. Our meal, two courses, and three bottles of Stella, served as if it was wine by being returned to the ice bucket, costs us 340R, or nearly £70.

The Belmond is a fabulous hotel, reminding us of The Victoria Falls Hotel, there's a connection there somewhere, old, spacious, colonial and expensive, oh for Cape Town prices.

The day gets even better when we watch the final minutes of Tigers great away win in Munster on Lorna's Twitter feed, 19-31, can't wait for the return at Welford Road next Sunday.