Santos, Brazil; City sights, a Very Slow Chairlift, Snake Island and Bat Poop Coffee

Our next stop was another Brazillian spot at the seaside city of Santos.  At first glance from the ship I was surprised with how built up this city was!  It’s about a 90 minute drive from Santos to Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city with over 13 million people, and based on the fact we aren’t big fans of large cities we opted to stick to the city on the beach.

Once again we opted for our own private excursion versus the ships.  Our first stop was the obligatory Santos “sign” photo.  These city name signs just scream “Instagram”, and they are literally in every city we have visited over the last 10 years.

I liked this more subdued photo spot nearby.

I’m not entirely sure why but our guide decided to stop at the obnoxiously smelly fish market.  If your guide says “do you want to stop at the fish market?”, the answer is always a resounding “What??  Why??”.  Lesson of the day.  I think my shoes still stink a bit!

Across the street from the fish market is this painting of soccer great Pele.  Pele played for Santos at the age of 15, and the Brazil National Team at age 16.  There is an entire museum dedicated to him in Santos, which we didn’t have time to visit unfortunately.

In the center of Santos is the “Monument to the  Andradas”, a tribute to three Andradas brothers who were instrumental in Brazil’s independence from Portugal in 1822.  All three were born in Santos, and the monument was constructed in 1922 as part of Brazil’s 100th anniversary of Independence.

We stopped along the waterfront to take a chairlift up the mountain (lift in the background).  Santos is very bicycle oriented, to the point they even have statues of cyclists.

We hopped on what must currently be the worlds slowest chairlift.  It brought me back to my early days skiing on the bunny slopes, although I don’t think Santos has ever seen snow.

A view down the waterfront as the chairlift slowly climbed the mountain.

At least we got a little bit of a breeze as we climbed further up, as it was yet another hot day in Brazil.

We had some excellent views from the top of the lift!

We watched a paraglider take off from the top of the mountain.  Please click on the link for the video.  I will embed it later once I have full internet access.

On the beach below was this statue representing Snake Island!

Just off the beach from this statue is the actual Snake Island, so named as it is supposedly covered in venomous “Golden Lancehead Pit Vipers”.  With a name like that they definitely sound dangerous!!  People are not allowed on this island since it’s so dangerous, which means every Instagrammer in Brazil heads here immediately.  We can only hope nature takes its course!

Here is the view coming down the slowest chairlift in the world!!  Fortunately the view made up for how slow it was.

Kenton got a shot of us as we were approaching the end of the lift.  Kenton takes a LOT of photos!!  Thank goodness Instagram wasn’t around when he was young.  Don’t we look excited here?  Did I mention how slow the chairlift was??

We then went to lunch at a restaurant with an incredible view of the city!  The weather was looking quite threatening!

Here is a view of the restaurant as we look towards the east and the open ocean.

After lunch our last stop was the Coffee Palace.  Such a gorgeous building!

This is the entrance to coffee greatness!

I actually tried the most expensive coffee in the world, coffee made from beans that were eaten by bats and then shit out (I kid you not!).  It was interesting, with a very earthy flavor that tasted nothing like coffee.  Gotta try it at least once!  Here is the tin you can buy if you  want to try it yourself!

Inside the Coffee Palace is the :Coffee Stock Exchange”, where the coffee of the day was traded!  This was an active trading floor until 1950.

Our guide for this trip had zero idea of what “time control” means, so I won’t even mention their name here.  They kept saying we could stop for 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there, but in the end we were late getting back to the ship for a cooking lesson which we told her about at least a dozen times.  Fortunately, even though we were nearly 20 minutes late, we didn’t get kicked to the curb.  Here is Kim intently focused on her lessons!  I’ll have you know that lessons or not, she is an excellent cook that our son is missing greatly right now!

My Miso Glased Seabass turned out pretty damn good!  Yummy!!

Shortly after our class, and on the way to dinner, we saw this amazing rainbow!

Coming up next we visit out last Brazilian city, Balneario, Camboriu, with super guide Cynthia!!