Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro

Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro

Our first stop on this segment was at Montevideo, Uruguay again.   We went out to see the city and made the usual stops in the main square with the usual church and old colonial government building, plus a new replacement government building, nothing special.  But there was an enormous monument to their hero of independence, Gral Artigas, about whom I remember nothing.   We drove through a very beautiful park which had a couple of amazing huge bronze sculptures, very elaborate and detailed, one commemorating early settlement by indigenous people, with sort of a wagon train kind of motif and another one of some of the warriors of the fight for independence.  Really very well done representations.  There are some lovely neighborhoods and a long crescent-shaped beach nearby.  At a lookout on the beach we saw hundreds of green parakeets living in giant communal nests in some of the trees, kind of like birdie condominiums.  Stopping in at the Legislative Palace, we saw an exquisite reception hall with 52 kinds of marble and huge beautiful painted walls and ceilings.  We visited the nearby Mercado after lunch but the real attraction there were the many parillas – really nice restaurants where the meat is grilled on huge open fires.  We went back over for dinner and had some really delicious beef, even better than what we’ve been getting on the ship, grilled perfectly to order.  That was great fun. 

We had to use the local tenders from the ship’s anchorage in Punta del Este, Uruguay – they were terrible!  Steep steps on pretty big swells and so hot inside!   It was very slow loading/unloading with nothing to hold on to - one passenger even cut her arm and needed stitches, and another one banged his head resulting in a big knot on his forehead.  So we didn’t have a great start but things improved quickly.  This is a beach resort area so there were lovely beaches all along the coast with high-rise hotels and condominiums on the coast road, so not right on the beachfront.  As we went along our way to other ports along this stretch of coast we saw that this is always the case:  ocean, beach, road, buildings – nothing is ever right on the sand, so it’s really nice that the beach is just for recreation.  There’s a famous sculpture on Brava Beach of a giant hand with just the fingers and thumb emerging from the sand.  It won some competition a few years ago.  Pretty neat.  We went way down the coast road to Barra Beach where they have sort of segregated the area for mainly young people, probably because they go out at 2:00am and get home at 7:00am!  Lots of night spots and restaurants and hotels more reasonably priced.  There’s a very fun bridge over to it that is built with a couple of little hilly parts in it for no reason, except to make you smile when you go over it.  After driving through some very very nice residential neighborhoods, we stopped at the Ralli Museum, which has a large display of Latin American art, about which we know nothing, but they also had about 20 Salvador Dali sculptures!  In this tiny beach town, it was kind of amazing!  Later, we went to an artist’s self-built crazy house clutching on to the side of a hilly peninsula, called Casapueblo.  He just started building it for his home, then added on his studio, then more studios for more artists, and it goes on and on, up and down on different levels, all in white plaster with arches and pointy peaks and spires and patios.  It eventually became large enough that there are hotel rooms and a restaurant.  It’s pretty unique and interesting and has gorgeous views of the coastline.  We got dropped off in town and walked back to the ship, nothing interesting to look at, then had a late sail-away while we waited for the lady to return from the hospital.

 
Well, there’s just not anything good to say about Rio Grande, Brazil.  We don’t know why the ship stopped there, except somebody said it’s the easiest place to get immigration clearance for entering Brazil.  I guess it’s easy because it’s fast, since there is no reason that we could see for anyone to go there.  It’s old, run down, and not pretty.  We had a hot walk around the place which lasted much longer than it should have, and went back to the ship.  On top of that, we have entered and will be in Brazil for the next 3 weeks and there is a real language barrier that we have rarely encountered anywhere else.

After a day at sea, we reached Porto Belo, Brazil, another beach resort.  There was a major swimming competition going on involving a swim out around a nearby island, about 3 miles total.  So we had that to watch while we tendered in to shore.  Seemed to be the only action around the area which was really a pretty small sleepy beach town.  We went on a drive to Florianopolis, a fairly large city about 40 miles away, with a beautiful, wide, crescent-shaped beach with golden sand and great foamy waves coming ashore.  We walked around enjoying it for about 30 minutes, then headed back into Florianopolis, which was not pretty or special for any reason.   Back at Porto Belo, we stayed ashore and had some good fried shrimp, fish, and calamari for lunch before going back to the ship.  We’re wondering whether there will be some great stops on this segment or not!

We docked at Santos, Brazil, the largest port in South America, and the gateway to Sao Paulo, the largest city in South America, 22 million people!  Even Santos had 1.47 million people.  Sao Paulo is 57 miles inland, across some spectacular low mountains, thick with Atlantic Rainforest, on the Anchieta Highway through the Serra do Mar Pass that is an incredible feat of engineering.  We went through 14 tunnels in 6 miles!  It was really really beautiful.  Lots of traffic, as it is the main road from Sao Paulo to the port; our guide told us in summer it takes 6 or 7 hours to travel that section in that direction.  Luckily for us, summer here is over!  It only took us an hour in each direction.  We first stopped in Sao Paulo at the Ipiringa Park where there is a really huge monument to Brazil’s independence from Portugal, as well as a building modeled after Versailles, complete with gardens, which is used as an art museum (closed on Mondays so we didn’t go in).  We had a panoramic drive through downtown seeing the usual major sights:  The Municipal Theater, government buildings, the Metropolitan Cathedral, the main square, and so on and so forth.  Traffic was terrible, no surprise, but what was a big surprise was the vast amount of graffiti everywhere!  Wow, it is unbelievable, completely out of control, everywhere you look, even places where you can’t even imagine what it took to put it there!  Ugly and unattractive, but they have so many problems in a city that size they just don’t even consider trying to run down the vandals doing it.  Boy, does it detract from everything.  And we thought we might get to stop and get off the coach at a pretty square where the main cathedral was, but they said it wasn’t safe with 75 people and only 2 guides.  So there are problems here.  We had a huge lunch at a churrascaria restaurant where they keep bringing meat and slicing it at tableside for you until you put up the little red ‘stop’ card.  After one last stop at another huge monument to the early explorers of the area, we drove along the beautiful highway back to Santos and the ship. 

Ilha do Maia, Brazil was another wasted stop, at least in our opinion.  There was just no obvious reason to go here, except the beaches again, but we didn’t really see any this time that we thought would be justification for stopping, and the town was nothing, so we spent very little time ashore.  Plus, it’s getting really hot again.  I should add that the sail-in was very pretty through a lot of little hilly islands covered in the Atlantic forest, as they call it.  There, that’s something positive!

Finally, we had a pretty visit in Parati, Brazil.  Same kind of sail-in through lots of pretty little islands, to an anchorage about 2.5 miles out from the town!  Longest tender ride yet, maybe ever!  But that didn’t matter too much in the morning anyway because we were picked up right off the ship by our schooner for a trip out to some of the islands and beaches for swimming.  We cruised through the islands for a little while, then stopped at 3 different places where we could climb or jump down into the water right off the boat.  It was warm and sunny and the water was clean and clear.  Lots of fun for about 3 hours, including stops at 2 small beaches we could swim to.  Felt great!  Plus, we could buy the national drink of Brazil on board, the cupeireinha (sp?), made with cachacas Brazilian liqueur, lots of limes and sugar, and vodka.  Tasty!  Al didn’t go on this excursion, so I spent the time with Bob and Tanya Ferguson from Toronto, with whom we have been doing things and eating dinner.  They’re lots of fun.  After lunch I tendered over to the town of Parati, which is by far the best of the resort towns we have been to yet.  It was so different!  Small narrow streets with the hugest cobblestones I’ve ever seen anywhere – actually very hazardous walking.  It’s a wonderfully preserved colonial Portuguese town.  The whole town is made up of white one and two-story buildings with doorways and windows trimmed in bright blues, reds, golds, greens.  They almost look like quaint little horse stables because they’re one-story.  There are shops or restaurants inside each doorway, and they without a doubt the best quality and prettiest merchandise we’ve seen anywhere.  It’s all handmade and original designs.  I tried very hard to come away with something wonderful, but our bank had a different idea and blocked the transaction, even though I had told them specifically where we would be and for how long!   When I got back to the ship there was an email saying “Is this charge OK?”  Too late, I couldn’t go back, but we had a long talk with them and hopefully, that won’t happen anymore.  It was really the first thing I really wanted to buy this whole time (except for the beautiful citrine ring I found in Cusco!), so kind of disappointed.  Guess Parati, Brazil just wasn’t on their approval list! 

Just when we think we’ve been to the nicest beach resort along this stretch, we get to Buzios, Brazil.  Wow, a very exclusive vacation destination with gorgeous beaches on an irregular peninsula with the Atlantic on one side and numerous small bays on the other side.  The town is full of elegant shops and galleries all along the beachfront road.  Lots of restaurants, too, with outdoor seating, and just a ¼ mile out of town, small boutique hotels and condominiums start lining the steep hills and jagged coastline.  They have really strict building codes requiring a certain 3 or 4 story height maximum and a particular design style.  The homes are also required to comply, so there is a real ‘look’ that is typical of the area.  Everything is very well done and exudes elegance.  Buzios was made famous back in the 1960s when Brigitte Bardot escaped to here from Rio with her Brazilian boyfriend at the time, trying to avoid the paparazzi.  There is a small bronze statue of her sitting on a suitcase along the boardwalk just at the end of town.  We took a ride around the peninsula in an open air trolley which turned out to be great and just the best way to see all the secluded beaches in the small bays, and the high rocky crags down to the blue water crashing against them.  It is really really a beautiful area.  We had a really good day here!

Okay…drumroll…..  Rio!  After all the negative articles we had been seeing about Rio before we left (mostly doubts about Olympic readiness), we didn’t know what to expect.  But we thought it was great!   Except for the Friday traffic snarls, of course.  But other than the typical unattractive port area, we thought the city was clean and modern and attractive.  Our Captain messed up our sail-in and sail-away, so we didn’t really get the harbor view of one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World, but we feel like we saw pretty much of what there is to see there in 3 days.  The city has numerous lagoons and mountains scattered throughout, so all the streets have to go around or through them.  This takes some doing and some time, so pack your patience, but there’s lots of great stuff to see.

 We took the cable cars up to Urca and Sugarloaf Mountains for wonderful views of the lagoons, bays, beaches and mountains.  We had sunny weather for it too, so pictures are good.  We took the cog train up the Corcovado Mountain to see the Christ the Redeemer statue and had higher views of everything from there (we preferred the lower views from Sugarloaf, but you have to do it).  We saw the enormous Maracana Futbol Stadium from the Rio Olympics in the ‘60s – wow, it can hold 200,000 people, although FIFA rules only allow 90,000 nowadays for a futbol game.  It still looks great and will be used again for the 2016 Olympics.  We passed some very exclusive clubs in south Rio, the expensive part, i.e., The Jockey Club, The Yacht Club, The Naval Club and more.  There’s a really big race track right in the heart of south Rio.  And the beaches!  They are just beautiful and it is easy to see why they are so famous.  LeBlon, Ipanema, and Copacabana are the most famous, of course.  Wide golden sand with good sized waves curling in.  Copacabana is a gorgeous 2.3 mile crescent of golden sand – looks just perfect.  They are beautifully groomed and safe.  People use them so they were busy but not packed.  At the rear of the beaches are areas reserved for playing futvolley, volleyball played only using feet, knees, and head, like soccer but over a volleyball net.  After the coastal road all the condominiums and hotels rise up packed tightly side by side, but very well kept.  We even went to a beach where the rear part is reserved for hang gliders to land after taking off from a mountain top just behind all the hotels.  We saw 2 land while we were there.  We saw most of the major downtown buildings in the city center which is in north Rio, closer to the pier.

 We had a car and driver with another couple from Camberra on the middle day and we all agreed to go to the Tijuca Forest National Park which is a UNESCO site high up on the hillside above Rio, a dense Atlantic rainforest.  It had been forested and then they planted coffee there over a hundred years ago, but Rio’s water supply started drying up.  So, in 1863, the Portuguese emperor ordered the coffee plantations to be moved out of the city and the forest to be replanted.  Pretty forward thinking for that time, I think.   It is a really beautiful place and we saw a waterfall and had some more great views of the city.  Rio spreads all over the large harbor area and tucks back into the hills and around the lagoons.  It is a very beautifully situated city and seems always to have a great view around every turn.  After Tijuca, we went to the large Botanical Gardens and walked around for more than an hour.  It seems to be more of an arboretum than a flower garden, but was really interesting and pleasant to walk through.  We saw a lot of examples there of what seems to be a Brazilian tradition:  women about 8 months pregnant go to the Gardens and have professional photographers take pictures of their bare bellies, alone and with their husbands or boyfriends or whatevers.   They were everywhere!

One of the aspects of Rio that isn’t the best part are the numerous favelas (slums) that creep up the mountainsides.  These date from the days the slaves were freed and they had to find somewhere to live, so they started building shacks up there away from the rest of the city. They are very up front about pointing them out and talking about them.  You can even take a tour of one of them!  The government says there are about 800,000 people living in the favelas, but we had 3 different guides tell us there were about 2 million.  Rio has about 12.6 million people (metro area), so it’s a substantial percentage of the population. The favelas exist right alongside middle class neighborhoods and they also told us they are actually fairly safe areas, at least for the people who live in them.  The drug lords used to tell everyone in ‘their’ favela to paint their houses blue, so when the police came looking for him, they could say ‘he lives in the blue house’, and he would never be found because the police would never search all the blue houses. Favelas are all throughout the city, just mostly tucking up the hillsides.  I can tell you this, though, they have great views!

In preparation for the Olympics, Rio is working in all parts of the city to improve roads, the subway system, and the surface bus system. They told us the whole port area is going to be made over with hotels, restaurants, and shops.  If that’s true, they have much work to do there, but it is underway. But we saw them working on Saturday and Sunday while we were there.  Most of the construction of event venues and housing is happening on the other side of a mountain, so we didn’t see any of that.  But it seems like most of the time, no one ever thinks the host city will be ready and they usually get it done.  Let’s hope that’s the case for Rio.  We sure enjoyed seeing it and recommend it.  Get going!