Amazon Adventure

We flew to Manaus and spent 2 nights at the wonderful downtown oasis, Hotel Villa Amazonia. We needed a chill day and we got it. Let's face it, Manaus is just another ugly, Brazilian city that doesn't warrant much of a stop. They are trying to gentrify the colonial centre but we were done in an hour or 2. We did enjoy dinner at Caxiri Manaus and on the second night we ate at Fitz, our hotel's on site restaurant.

Finding the right Amazon tour is tough. Many of the lodges closer to the city aren't even in the jungle anymore and lower end boat trips have you sleeping in hammocks or pitching tents.

In the end we paid quite a bit for Juma Jungle Lodge but it was worth it. Boat, Bus, Boat to get to the wooden lodge,  built on stilts in the river.  We loved our room and the view. The food was good, as were the cocktails. We did our birding and sightseeing trips by boat, loved seeing the river dolphins, including the pink dolphins and enjoyed more piranha fishing. The jungle walking was also good. The tour to a cultural village was condescending and we skipped the night caiman spotting trip. Back to Manaus for a night, then on to Sao Paulo and back to Johannesburg.

Foz Iguazu and the Pantanal

We hit the road again, this time heading towards Foz Iguazu. We stayed overnight in Fransisco Beltao at the Palace Hotel and arrived at Foz Iguazu by noon the next day. Once again, the downtown had no appeal at all. We stayed at San Martin, the closest resort to the National Park. Very nice, with grounds for a bit of birding and a good pool. And buffet meals! We survived. It's super value at less than 100 USD per night.

Early next morning, we walked up to the falls. It rained on and off all day. The whole place is super touristy and it gets crowded so we were lucky to arrive early. You catch a bus from the entrance to the Falls, where there are various stop offs. Most people follow the same route, so we did the opposite and virtually had the Falls to ourselves for the first hour. These falls are truly spectacular, not as high or as wide as Victoria Falls but with many cascades.

 Viewing platforms allow you to get very close. When walking along the paths against the flow of tour groups got too crowded, we bailed and headed up to the Belmond Hotel. This is an iconic, old hotel with wide verandahs and comfy cane furniture. It's the only hotel within the National Park park and a room would have set us back over 500 USD a night. We drank great wine and had a lovely lunch on the terrace, watching birds with a view of the falls in the background.

On 15 March we drove to Bonito. This is a town that offers lots of adventure activities and is popular with backpackers. We enjoyed the birdwatching, especially the parrots and toucans.

After a night in Miranda, we were to transfer to Pousada Sao João for our Pantanal Safari. Being the wet season, we expected a 4x4 but instead were met by a lady in a VW Polo, who already had 2 tourists in her car! We loaded up our SUV and followed her all the way to Passo de Lontra, in the Pantanal. We were left here to wait for the Pousada truck, which we then followed all the way to the farm. There's a major drought this year, so the roads were easily passable.

The Pantanal is really beautiful. It's the largest wetland in the world, about the size of Germany. It's a protected wildlife area with strict conservation rules but all the land is privately owned ranches. 13 million head of cattle are farmed here. Some ranches, like Pousada San João, where we stayed are tourist lodges. A 3 or 4 night stay includes game drives and walks, boat cruises, horse riding, night walks and piranha fishing. Home cooked meals are provided and luckily we had our own wine with us. 

The bird watching was awesome, the capibaras and caimans were plentiful but the rest of the wildlife was quite scarce.

We drove back to Sao Paulo with a stop in Presidente Prudente.

Paraty and the Sierra Gaucha

Another World Heritage Site, on the coast and 5 hours drive South of Rio, we spent a night at Pousada Arte Colonial, an historic guest house in old town Paraty. The cobbled streets are car free and at high tide some streets near the estuary flood. So we find ourselves driving our Hertz SUV in a "canal" to find the nearest carpark. The afternoon heat and humidity are unbearable as we drag our wheely cases over the cobbles. As charming as historic buildings and antique furniture are, ancient,  drippy aircon units blasting warm air are not. 

Out in the streets there's no breeze at all but we wander happily from bar to ice cream stand. It's a really quaint seaside town and we'll worth a stop over. We find a pirate themed restaurant with outside tables and live music for dinner. 

The drive the next morning is beautiful. Driving South we waste at least an hour in slow traffic through the outskirts of Sao Paulo, and after a full day of driving through amazing forests and greenery, we make it as far as Curitiba and the Rio Hotel.

Another full day of driving and we roll into Bento Gonzales by sundown and a day ahead of schedule. This is the main city in the Sierra Gaucha, the premier wine region of Brazil. It's ugly and souless and like most of Brazil's cities can be avoided. The Pousada Cantelli in the hills outside town, however is charming and comfy.

They have a restaurant but we are served home-made pasta in our converted loft apartment for dinner. This area has a great Italian influence; Italian immigrants planted the first vineyards here.

It's easy to cover the different sections of the wine region in one day. The most picturesque area is Val de Vinhedos and there are lots of places to do wine tastings and have lunch.

 Our first stop is at Salton, a fairly large and commercial operation. Next we visit Giesse to taste their bubblies and we end up at Casa Valduga for a wonderful lunch; an extensive pasta tasting menu. This vineyard has some award winning wines, so we stock up with a few bottles for our journey.

Road tripping in Brazil

So we like road trips, self driven. Neil will drive almost anywhere, the only countries we've opted for a car with driver in the past are India and Sri Lanka. You don't really know a place until you've driven off the tourist route and seen how ordinary people live. This trip he's driven in Colombia, Panama, St. Lucia and now Brazil. We started in Rio, went to Paraty and then drove all the way down to the Sierra Gaucha Wine Region. Next stop Iguazu Falls, then Bonito. Our in-between stops included Curitiba and Fransisco Beltrao; regular towns that aren't touristy at all.  And that's how we find ourselves in Miranda. It's the gateway to the Southern Pantanal but tourists don't stay in town. They usually pick up their safari trips in Campo Grande or Bonito. 

So this is how we ended up in a 2 star motel, eating pizza take-out in bed and drinking Leopoldina Chardonnay 2017( decanter magazine -  93 points) which we had purchased on the Estate some days before and watching episodes of  The Simpsons on the phone. None of which would have been possible without google translate and a very helpful lady on the front desk to order the pizza ( she did get herself something that made it onto our bill) and provide the glasses and opener. After our Pantanal trip, we'll be driving all the way back to Sao Paulo too. Brazil is great for a road trip. I have never seen so much beautiful green countryside and the farming is on a grand scale. Have loads of cash for all the tolls, stick to the silly speed limits to avoid fines, load up on podcasts, pack snacks and water and have a good trip.

Rio Carnival

Wow! Rio Carnival 2019! So you've asked for tips and advice on how to do it -  best as I know, here we go!

Plan A. Go with a local. If you have a friend in Rio, use your connection. Local knowledge counts a lot.

Plan B. If not, here's what we learnt. There are different aspects to carnival.

1. Samba School Parades. A competition held in the Sambodromo. The best nights are Sunday and Monday before Shrove Tuesday when the top 12 samba schools take part. It's hard to get a ticket directly, so we used the official resale site RioCarnival.net, paid via credit card, well over local price and at least 6 months in advance. Tickets are only released on the day of the event either delivered to your hotel or as we did it, collected from a ticket office in Copacabana. This process was simple. They advised getting to the Sambodromo on the Metro but it's located in a super- dodgy part of the city, so we used Uber. Our driver found a route - there's lots of road closures in the area - that dropped us one block from our entrance.

The parade starts at 9.15 pm and ends at about 5 in the morning. Each school has about an hour of parade with at least 6 massive floats and a few thousand dancers!!! It's mind blowing!! We made it to about 2.00am!!

2. Balls - These are fancy affairs at hotels or clubs. Not our scene.

3. Blocos - or street parades. Over Carnival season Rio has over 500 different parties in different neighborhoods. Here again, local knowledge will be most useful. The bigger parades are crazy and crowded and we witnessed crime and gangs clashing with armed riot police a few times. We would find a restaurant or bar with outside seating and enjoyed the parade in comfort and safety. At other blocos the atmosphere was relaxed and a lot of fun. You must dress up. Imagine the entire population of the city in fancy dress or swimwear out on the streets for 48 hours of revelry.

4. Stay in Copacabana. We stayed at Rio Othon Palace, a really big, generic hotel with a wonderful rooftop bar. The beach will be very convenient from your hotel and your hotel will provide beach chairs and umbrellas. It's really hot so you probably only want to spend a few hours a day down on the sand. In the evening it's relatively safe to walk to the local restaurants and bars.

5. Visit Centro, Lapa and St. Teresa during the day but not at night. Be alert, leave valuables in your hotel safe and wear a money belt under your clothes.

Our favourite stops in Centro were the Colombo Confectaria, a beautiful,  historic tea-room and the Portuguese Reading Room, one of the most beautiful old libraries in the world.

7. The view of the city from the Christ the Redeemer lookout is amazing but the selfie-taking hordes will drive you nuts.

8. Uber is fantastic and a very safe way to get around in Rio.

Sao Paulo

Panama to Bogota, Bogota to Sao Paulo. Early check-in negotiated at the Intercontinental in Jardim Paulista , a nap, a walk to the mall to buy a SIM card, an afternoon at the MASP. Really great modern art displayed rather bizarrely with the info on the back, so you had to circle each piece to read about the artist. In the end we had fun guessing each artist before checking on the back. Can you tell your Modiglianis from your Legers? We were surprised at how good at it we were. Traveling teaches you all sorts of things. We are most privileged to have been to very many of the world's best Art Museums. Something's rubbed off.

And then to art and genius of another kind. In pouring rain, we ubered to D.O.M for dinner. Alex Atala is a colourful and amazingly talented Chef who cooks with traditional Amazonian ingredients.

Watch his episode of Chef's Table to learn all about him and his cuisine. D.O.M has been rated in the Top 20 restaurants of the World for over 10 years. We had a fabulous food and wine pairing. Call me a blog- pooper, but I decided not to try and take photos of everything. It detracts from the sheer enjoyment of the evening. I never want blogging or taking pics to become the reason for traveling. If I happen to take a pic I can add to the blog, great, otherwise it's too bad.

On Sunday, we headed to the suburb of Pinheiros to a Carnival bloco. What fun, walking and dancing in the streets with locals; drinking fewer beers than everyone else due to a lack of public toilets. Fogo de Chao  is a chain of upmarket Brazilian steakhouses. Dinner of buffet style sides and salads and as much red meat as you can possibly eat, brought to your table on skewers by waiters dressed like gauchos. Raise the white flag when you can eat no more!