Brazil Adventures

Kate was invited to a conference in Rio de Janeiro at the end of November. We had been to Recife in Brazil about 10 years ago and were not that keen to go again. Nevertheless strange travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God so we packed our bags and off we went.

Photo albums for the various stages of the trip including day by day albums for the Rio Negro boat trip are found in nearby blog pages (the picture at left is me on the Tucano trolling for wildlife).

We stayed off Flamengo Beach in the Catete neighborhood of Rio for a few days while at the conference. Kate was busy with colleagues while I tramped around the area - Catete, Gloria, Lapa, and the Castelo areas. Rio can be a very beautiful city -- there are parks and public art all over the place. It can also be a bit rough. I understand the city is being spruced up a bit for some coming international events. The thing I find distressing, which was my experience in Recife as well, was the threat of being robbed. I'd be tramping around with my camera taking photos and people would come up to me in the street and tell me to put things away in case I got robbed. I never felt I was going to be robbed but was continually told that I would be. I gave up on exploring with my camera and used a small pocket camera instead. Nevertheless I would still be told to protect that camera as well.

After the conference we rented a flat just off of Copacabana Beach. Kate and I rented bicycles and explored a bit of Ipanema. Our neice Eva, who had been teaching English as a second language in Chile, arrived in Rio on her way back to Canada and shared the rest of the adventures with us. We did the "Christ the Redeemer" (on Corcovado Mountain) and the "Sugar Loaf cable car" one day. I'd advise getting to both very early in the day. We were tardy and found the crowds a bit off putting. We rented bicycles again another day and the three of us biked on Ipanema and then the length of Copacabana to Leme Beach. One morning Eva and I tried to explore the Favela at Morro do Pavao (a short walk from our flat). There's a new glossy two stage elevator to take you up into the Favela ... but the elevator was broken at the second stage, and people kept herding us away. The "look out, you may be robbed" problem I mentioned earlier.

The beaches are lovely and there's lots of them. I understand that water quality varies quite a bit -- e.g. we were told the water quality at Flamengo Beach and Botafogo Bay is bad but Ipanama and Copacabana are fine. The one thing we weren't warned about was the water temperature -- gosh it's very cold. Lots of folks come to the beach to sun bathe and never enter the water.

We had some nice meals at sea side beach restaurants where we rediscovered the simplicity of black beans with rice. Add some seafood and you're in business. We had a couple of dinners with conference colleagues. One at a at the "Meat/BBQ" restaurant - Porcão Rio's, overlooking Sugarloaf & Botafogo Bay. Kate took advantage of the copious salad bar. On the beach and at the restaurants we enjoyed good beers and plenty of caipirinha's (squish a lime with sugar, add plenty of pinga -- it's a raw white rum, shake with ice and serve).

After a week or so in Rio we flew back to Manaus which is in the middle of the Amazon basin. It's the capital city of the state of Amazonas. Manaus is (or was) known as the "Paris of the Amazon". That may be a bit of slur on Paris. It's an old city which had a hay-day at the turn of the last century when rubber was king. These days it's a large and very busy sea port. There are some very grand new buildings around the Ponta Negra where we stayed but most of the city is hard scrabble.

We went to Manaus not to explore the city (gosh Rio is probably the prettiest city in all of Brazil) but instead to explore the Amazon. We went on a 7 day boat cruise up the Rio Negro on a small boat called the Tucano. Our good friend Cindy met us in Manaus and shared a cabin with Eva. In total there were 15 clients on the boat so it was a cozy little adventure far from civilization.You can read about the trip in this letter to the agency where we booked our trip. I'll not repeat myself here. Suffice to say it was a great adventure, good people & staff with lots of things to explore. Time flew by. If you're in that part of the world do try the boat tour up the Rio Negro.

From Manaus we returned via Panama City where we had a 12 hour lay-over. We took advantage of the time there to explore (via taxi) the new and old city, the Panama canal and Flamengo Island.

Again, I have posted photo albums for all of the above on nearby blog pages. Browse those at our leisure.