Judith Diane's Amazing Adventures: February 2014

That question was asked by many people. It was the maiden visit for QUEEN VICTORIA and QV is the largest ship ever to dock there.

Fortaleza is the 5th largest city in Brazil, 2.5 million people, and will be one of the host cities for the FIFA. Unfortunately, the stadium is still not finished. Good luck, Guys.

We were warned that the harbor was dirty, dangerous (traffic) and not suitable for walking. All true. What was not told nor visible at first - open railway cars with coal, coal dust not bricks. It was easy to tell the direction of the wind.

There were shuttle busses into town but not enough the line of passengers was so long that we stayed aboard until about 11:30 and then only had to wait about 10 minutes.

My mission from God is to send letters and postcards from every stop. That mean finding both postcards and stamps and/or a post office. And, in this case, changing money as the purser on board did not have the local Brazilian currency.

We drove through town, past hillside slums across the street from the exclusive yacht club, past luxury hotels next to derelict buildings, past people of all shades from blonde to black, to the central market.

Someone once said that, “Hell is a place much like Newark.” Wrong! It’s the Central Market in Fortaleza. Five stories of chaos, with one postcard stand at the opposite end from the entrance, which took us about an hour to find. The vendor gave us a decent rate for our dollars and we bought postcards.

There was a tourist office in a tent and the woman there did not speak English and did not care to help us. Fortunately, the postcard vendor (we went back twice) pointed to a container on the street level of the market, which was the local post office. We had an hour until it opened so we strolled around and were there at 2 pm.

Since it was a government agency, US dollars were not acceptable but the clerk, who spoke no English, gave us the price and directed us to a bank - upstairs, across the street, down 2 blocks or so. I think that’s what he said but neither of us wanted to do that.

So, back to the postcard vendor, who also spoke no English. I held out a $10 bill, pointed to his wallet, where he had put our dollar the first time, and he understood that I wanted to do a black market deal. He gave us the Brazilian real and we were back at the post office container in about 50 seconds. The clerk smiled, knowing we had not been to the bank, and then put on a performance for us.

He got lovely stamps, wet each one very carefully and just as carefully placed one on each card. Then he had cancelled each - ink the rubber stamp, cancel the stamp, examine the cancellation and on to the next one, all the while smiling at us. He was a delight!

The cathedral next door is modern and quite large, with space for 5,000 worshipers and lovely stained-glass windows.

But, it was hot and we were tired. Have I mentioned that I hate shopping? Well, I do!

Later on we found out that one of the crew members was robbed in the harbor. They did tell us it was dangerous.