Our first view of Belem.

The first tender goes ashore to set up for the troops to follow.

We got mixed reviews from the dockside critics.

Getting to the street required navigating through a gauntlet of the local residents and vendors.

Our ship at anchor.

Busses awaited us on a nearby street to take us to downtown Belem.

Traffic was light and the roads were relatively well maintained.

The street scenes included the old and the new. Belem underwent a boom during the time when rubber was still being harvested from trees. When vulcanization made this work obsolete, Belem fell on hard times. There are still many examples of the boom time architecture still standing but much is in disrepair.

We took a walk to the main market but never made it. Our stop here was only to be 2 hours and it was brutally hot and humid.

Donna shows some of the locals some tricky checkers moves. She has placed a checker between her knees and wanted to show these guys how she can walk back to the ship without dropping it.

The old section of Belem was cobblestone paved and very interesting.

This section of the old city also had train tracks which originally served the nearby docks.

The drinks were made of all natural ingredients.

The people were friendly even if they were in the next bus.

The country is lush and fertile. There are park areas and some preserves where the original rain forest was left untouched. You could not see 3 feet from the road in these places.

Murray Weidenbaum, a noted scholar and adviser to many presidents gives a a talk on his experiences in Washington starting with his first service under President Truman.

Donna and I were invited to have dinner with the Staff Captain Philippe Fichet Delavault.

One of the few cloudy, rainy mornings the whole cruise. In a couple of hours it was beautiful again.

Peter and Carol in the computer room. They were writing an email to the boss, Mark Conroy. I was impressed.

One afternoon Donna, Judy, Loren and I were sitting and having a nice quiet lunch when the cruise director, Jamie, came over to our table. Now Jamie seems like a pleasant sort but there is no doubt that he was a used-car salesman in his prior life. It seems he needed to recruit teams to participate in a cooking contest which, was to occur in a few days. Now none of the four of us could be considered joiners in any sense of the imagination, if the activity did not include eating or shopping. So after ignoring him for 3 1/2 months we caved in out of guilt for our history of nonparticipation. We were acutely aware that many of the participants had decades of gourmet cooking under their belts and some had recently undertaken the Cordon Bleu Cooking Classes available on the ship. We were simply not bright enough to have this dissuade us. Jamie then went on to explain the rules. All the teams had their own set of identical ingredients from which to prepare an appetizer, main course and dessert. We had already determined our strongest suit... preparing the printed menu. We were disappointed that taste and presentation would be included in the scoring process in determining the winner. We would have really had a better shot if this were not the case.

Judy and Donna discuss strategy. Actually at this critical time just before the competition started they were discussing Donna's new manicure.

Peter the head chef was not thrilled when all the electric power , including the lights failed just prior to the start of the competition.

Loren explaining the importance of tactics, good logistics and clearly defined rules of engagement in order to limit the number of casualties.

We explained to Donna that food was cooked at times in saucepans. She was amazed!!

The team was ready. If preparation was the key, we didn't have a chance.

Our entire plan was to razzle-dazzle them with the menu. "All smoke" was our motto. Our preparation could best be described as "planning while walking to the competition" and our food as "minimalist cuisine".

The menu as supplied to the judges. It is printed to the right. The internet does not allow for the beautiful french script to be duplicated. This script sadly and unfortunately constituted most of our cooking skills.

Jamie the cruise director (read "ship's cheerleader") interviews the competition. They waxed on and on about non-consequential things like preparation and taste. We were not distracted from our goal of having fun in spite of the taste. we did give the judges a lot of credit, no one in our group would dare taste to food we cooked.

The dishes are shown here ready for the judges. While we were waiting for the the winners to be announced, Loren proceeded to cook all the rest of the ingredients provided to us and had a lovely lunch while the rest of us stood around in anxious anticipation of the judge's ruling.

Part of our skilled staff reviewing the mess they made. At these prices we didn't have to clean up.

Donna reading the menu to the judges and the audience while Jamie, looks on happily knowing he does not have to taste the food we prepared. She could barely keep a straight face.