Brazil: An initial exploration
I have a nephew and a cousin who have spent considerable
time in Brazil and love the country and its people, but I had not yet had an
opportunity to visit. So, I selected the
extended cruise I am currently on partly because it included stops in ten
Brazilian ports along the southern coast of the country. Prior to this trip, I had not realized that
Brazil is as large as the continental United States. This cruise, therefore, would be the
equivalent of sailing up the eastern coast of the US to Maryland and saying
that I have seen all there is to see of the country. We have an Amazon River cruise scheduled in
early 2027, so we will see a bit more of Brazil then. But at least this was a nice introduction to
the country.
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| Balneario Camboriu as seen from the ship: Rain forest and beaches |
My shore excursion involved riding a cable car up one of the city’s mountains, hiking about a mile through the rain forest, and riding a second cable car down another mountain to a popular beach. We were promised time to enjoy the beach, but the cable car lines had been very long, so our time was cut short. However, the beach was so crowded that most of us didn’t mind. I did take time enough to guzzle down a very cold, very large, and very refreshing Brazilian brew. Three hundred people from our cruise ship were herded onto a pirate ship for a ride back to the port. As we sailed, our tour guide pointed out a statue of Jesus on top of one of the mountains. She claimed that it is just a few meters shorter than the famous Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, but boasts a nightly laser light show. (You can almost make the statue out in the above photo.) Unfortunately, we sailed away before we could witness the show.
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| Top left photo was taken from the hike between cable cars. Others show the rain forest, my beer, the beach, and the pirate ship. |
We dropped anchor outside the third oldest city in Brazil, Sao Francisco do Sul, which was founded in the 16th century by the Portuguese. This port provided a stark, but welcome, contrast to our visit to BC the day before. Few people were out, so we were able to easily explore the town. We found a small farmer’s and artisan’s market along the harbor and brightly painted houses lining the cobblestone streets.
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| The port and some of the colorful houses. My shipboard friend Krista and I thought our clothes fit right in. |
We docked next in the busy port town of Santos, which is near Sao
Paulo. According to our shore excursion
guide, Santos is the most important port in Brazil and the largest in Latin
America with sixty percent of the nation’s exports—cars, coffee, sugar,
etc.--going through this port. The
city’s claims to fame appear to be its role as the center of the Brazilian
coffee trade and as the home team of the famous soccer player Pele. We stopped first at the Pele Museum and then
walked to the Coffee Museum which was housed in what had once been the Coffee
Exchange. Our last stop was at a
botanical/zoological garden in the center of the city. While the city has some beautiful examples of classic architecture, it is showing its age and lack of love and care (and funds for renovation). Here are some photos of Santos.
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| The Coffee Museum photos are on the top row: outside, trading dome, seats for growers Bottom left is a fountain in the botanical garden, parrots, Pele the great soccer player |
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| Santos sights: church built in 1640 (left), Portugese building (center), Portuguese tile (inset) Train station (top right) and decaying building (bottom right) |
I decided not to visit the ship's next port, the 300-year-old gold rush town
of Parati. The weather throughout this
voyage has been hot and very humid. As an
Arizonan, I am used to heat, but not the humidity.
I was exhausted from the previous few days of sweaty sightseeing, and getting
to Parati required a long tender ride, so I elected to stay on the ship for the
day. Those who ventured into town reported finding colorful houses and cobblestone streets similar to those in Sao Francisco do
Sul.
Next on our itinerary was Ilha Grande, an island off the
coast of the state of Rio de Janeiro.
The “Big Island” is about 75 square miles and is undeveloped. It had previously served as home to a leper
colony and then as a prison. There are
no paved roads; the only vehicles allowed are the police car, ambulance, and
garbage truck. People get around by
walking or riding bicycles. The center
of the island is a dense rain forest where exploration is discouraged. There are a number of villages scattered
around the circumference of the island, whose total population is about
3,000. Getting from village to village or to
the mainland is easiest by speedboat. My
shore excursion involved walking through town and up a trail into the rain
forest.
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| Left photos show the town, top right is of rain forest walk and bottom left of swimmers at the beach. The only animals on the island are howler monkeys (bottom center) |
The ship docked in Rio de Janeiro for two days. Scott joined me here for the next legs of this lengthy cruise. (I’m on for 63 days.) It was cloudy and rainy so we decided to wait to explore the city the second day. Unfortunately, the rain and low cloud cover continued, making excursions to the main tourist sights—Christ the Redeemer statue, Sugarloaf Mountain, and the beaches—potentially disappointing. We did take an afternoon walk around the port area when the skies cleared.
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| Clockwise from top left: Scott at the Science Museum, old and new buildings, wall art, Art Musuem, palm trees in the rain, bridge connecting islands of Rio |
Our next port was another beach town—Buzios. Scott and I rode the tender to the dock and walked along the promenade. It was another crowded town and another hot and humid day, but we did enjoy some sights. This is a working fishing town as well as a vacation spot for boaters. Its claim to fame was that Bridget Bardot lived here for a couple of years.
One of the ship’s experts lectured on the history of
Brazil. As most of us know, the initial European discovery
of Brazil was made by the Portuguese. What I didn't know was that the
earliest settlements were inhabited by shipwrecked sailors and convicts. Since there were no Portuguese women, the men
mated with native women producing a mixed-race population. The Jesuits arrived in the mid-1500s to
convert the natives and established the town of Sao Paulo.
The Portuguese cleared the green fertile lands and planted
sugar cane. They initially used the
natives as forced labor on these plantations and later imported slave labor
from West Africa. Because Brazil is
relatively close to Africa, it became the fastest trade route for getting sugar
across the Atlantic and to Europeans, where it was so prized as to be worth as
much as gold. The slave trade brought thousands
and thousands of Africans to the country; slavery was not outlawed here until
the 1880s. According to our shipboard
lecturer, half of the current Brazilian population has some African
ancestry.
One of the cities we visited was Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia. According to the tour guide, this is the most African of Brazil's major cities. She told us about the uniquely Afro-Brazilian music that uses drums and is called Samba-Reggae. When we docked in Salvador, we were greeted by some of these drummers. Our guide told us that Michael Jackson and Paul Simon had both visited Salvador in search of this unique music. She also took us to visit a church that had been build by the black community in the later part of the nineteenth century. There is no organ as the music is provided by drums. There are statues of several black saints around the church, and the stations of the cross feature Black Jesus.
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| Our guide (top right photo) talks with a local woman dressed in old Portuguese plantation costume, Statue of Zumbi (left), leader of a slave revolt, and inside the Black Church (center) with drums and Black Jesus carrying his cross (lower right photo) |
The other thing that interested me about Salvador is that this was where my father had been stationed as a gunnery instructor for more than a year during World War II. In April of 1944, he wrote a letter to his parents, saying, “I’m not supposed to, but I’ll tell you where I’m going. Just don’t talk about it and burn this letter. From here we report to the commander of Fleet Air Wing 16 at Recife Brazil. . . From there we’ll be reassigned to either Bahia or Natal.” He was sent to the Brazilian state of Bahia, somewhere near the capital city of Salvador. There he directed the building of firing ranges and tried out all sorts of guns on the range as well as in planes, before instructing American and Brazilian troops in gunnery techniques. I found some photos he had taken during his time in Salvador and compared them to ones I took eighty years later.
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| Top row (left to right): Dad's photo and my photo of the same historic church; Dad's photo of Lower Town, and my photo of Lower Town; Left center is Dad's photo of the bay, bottom left is my photo of the same scene; streetcars in 1945 and motorcycles in 2025; Dad's photo of a street and my photo of another street. |
Another small town, Maceio, and another shore excursion was up next. The description of the shore excursion we had booked included these enticing details: “Board a catamaran. . . Stop at Prainha Verde where the lagoon meets the sea. Enjoy free time for swimming and sunbathing in this amazing stretch of sand that is ranked among the ten most beautiful beaches in Brazil.” We enjoyed the pontoon ride down the lagoon, where the houses are built along the waterfront and the major economy is based on fishing, but we were very disappointed in the “beautiful beach.” Evidently, the ocean beaches are indeed quite beautiful, but those on the lagoon, where we spent a long two hours, are not. Scott spent most of his time listening to an audio book. I did some wading but had to dodge plastic bags and other trash that floated by my feet.
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| Houses along the lagoon where the main industries are fishing and lace making |
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| Cruising the lagoon by catamaran and trying to enjoy this most "beautiful beach" |
The last Brazilian port for this cruise was Recife. Scott and I walked around the area of the city near the port and found some lovely buildings. We wandered into a huge artisan market and were charmed by many of the creative items for sale there.
Leaving Recife, our ship set sail for Africa. In four days, we will dock at Cape Verde and then Dakar, Senegal. Stay tuned for reports of our next adventures.
