Author: Chris

Our last stop in Brazil was in the city of Balneario Comboriu that has a gorgeous skyline!  Brazil is far more built up than I expected it to be.

We had to anchor out here as it doesn’t appear they have the infrastructure for cruise ships.  We met our excellent guide Cynthia from “Top Private Tours” just after getting off the tender.  She advised us that since it was a Sunday it was best to visit nearby Unipraias Park before it got too crowded.  This mountain park is accessed via a very modern gondola system.

This thing moves WAY faster than the chairlift in Santos, and delivers amazing views!!  There’s our ship, the Oceania Marina in the harbor.

This map depicts everything available via the gondola system, including zip lines, a mountain coaster and even a kids train ride.  There are also some hiking trails at the top.  Best of all there is a bar serving excellent Caiprahinas!!  It was close enough to noon for me!

The gondola has two stops, at the mountaintop and Laranjeiras Beach, which is only accessible from the water or the gondola, and was the reason the gondola system was conceived in the first place.

Had to get a shot of us with the ship in the background.

Here is a view of the same beach from the top of the mountain.  The steel ropes at the bottom of the photo are for the very long zip line!

Kenton, MP and Devona decided they had to do the zip-line, so I shot a short video.

You can see the gondolas heading down to the beach stop.

If nothing else make sure you take the gondola up just for the views!

Another view of our ship from the top.  In the far background is the city of Itajai, our next stop of the tour.  Interesting to note how much suspended mud is visible in the water around our ship.

One last photo from the top.  This unique store was selling a vast assortment of knives, what appear to be baseball bats of various sizes and beer on tap.  It must be a Brazilian thing?

At the bottom of the gondola ride you could see the line waiting to go up had grown to several hundred people, so if you visit make sure you do this early in the day, as it’s very popular!

We hopped into a van and started heading towards Itajai along the city’s waterfront boulevard, Atlantic Avenue.  If you want a churro this is the place for you!  There were churro booths seemingly every 100 feet along the beach!   I never connected churros to Brazilians.

Our guide Cynthia asked if we wanted to visit their fish market, and after the previous day in Santos our entire group chimed in unison “no!”.  They are seemingly very proud of their fish markets.  As we entered the city of Itajai we drove along the ocean and Cynthia pointed out Parrot Rock.

We then visited Blessed Sacrament Parish, the main Catholic church in Itajai.  Stunning building from the outside, it was built fairly recently with construction completed in 1955.

Beautiful ceiling!

The altar has some impressive stained glass windows.

As well as this devotional setup depicting Our Lady of the Navigators/Seafarers (one of many titles held by the Virgin Mary).  She is the protector of the local sailors and fisherman.  The boat is named “Esperanca” (Hope in Portuguese).

After arriving back in Balneario Camboriu, a smaller group of us was led by Cynthia across the river via this pedestrian bridge.  I was shocked with how beautiful the wooden flooring was!  It was a hot day but the breeze blew right though this bridge making it quite pleasant.

On the other side and up a flight of stairs is this little church, Capela Santa Amaro.  This was the first church in the city, dating back to 1758.

This is the only remaining colonial-style building in the city.

It’s got a more modern paint job on the altar.

The sign on this bell indicates it was cracked during intense continuous ringing on May 13, 1888 – the day Brazil’s Golden Law abolished slavery.  The free slaves rang the bell for 24 hours straight!

Here is another view of the pedestrian bridge crossing the Camboriu River from just outside the church.

That night while walking to dinner I saw this incredible view on the shoreline!  It looked like the beach was on fire…I’ve never seen anything quite like it!

Here is a closer view.  A definite “wow” moment!!

Coming up next, we visit Montevideo, Uruguay, check out the beautiful city, and visit an AMAZING winery!!

 

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!!