A “Muy Caliente” Day in Cabo Frio, Brazil

Early in the morning, we weighed anchor and headed back in the direction of Rio de Janeiro to Cabo Frio, a resort community of about 200,000. This town is less than 100 miles from Rio and is a mecca for those who want to escape the big city for the beach. As we noticed, this is a very laid-back town.
 

 
We anchored off Cabo Frio at about 8 am. There were brilliant white beaches visible from the ship and many colorful umbrellas waiting for beach-goers to arrive.
 

 
The tender ride into the city was quite beautiful. The entry to Canal Itajuru is very narrow and rocky but once through the pass, it was a scenic ride to the tender pier.
 

 
The water is very shallow in many areas and we saw many people seemingly in the middle of the canal standing about waist deep in water.
 

 
There were many, many fishing boats tied up along the canal with piles and piles of nets and equipment. There were also several fish processing facilities along the way.
 

 
We suspect there will be excellent fresh fish at dinner tonight as we saw two of our chefs out shopping.
Frio means cold and Cabo Frio was anything but cold…..more like muy caliente (very hot) with bright sunshine, mid 80’s and very humid. We had a choice of walking toward town and visiting “Rua Dos Biquines” – a street of bikini shops or towards the old district of Cabo Frio, an old fort, and the beach.  We chose the latter.
Did we tell you it was HOT? We walked on the shadiest side of the street through the old district and to the beach. One of our lecturers onboard suggested a route to us, which we took, giving us a panoramic view of the beach, the fort, and our Ship. The beautiful, white sandy beaches were quite tempting. As we were in sneakers, short sleeved shirts and shorts, we were very inappropriately dressed for the beach. The Brazilians, on the other hand, wear as little as possible at the beach. The thong bikinis don’t leave much to the imagination. Do you think the Brazilians could tell we were tourists?
 

 
The fort was reached by a rocky path over a bridge, through some water and up a rocky slope. Many people were doing this barefooted or in flip-flops – at this point we were glad for sneakers. The views were stunning.