Rio Amazonas, Brasília and Praia do Forte
In only two weeks we visited Rio de Janeiro, the Amazon River, Brasília, the modern capital of Brazil and Bahia with its beautiful beaches and the region’s capital Salvador. We did this via plane as Brazil is such a huge country, it would probably take years to really get to know the whole place.
Every single destination was special in its very unique way. We enjoyed this motorbike-free trip with Isabel’s parents a lot!
In the Amazon region we stayed at a beautiful Eco-lodge in the Anavilhanas archipelago and did several boat and canoe trips throughout this amazing region. We fed pink dolphins, saw tarantulas, snakes, caimans and beautiful birds, swam in the Rio Negro, fished piranhas and visited traditional Indio villages.
In Manaus we visited the beautiful opera house “Teatro Amazonas” inaugurated in 1896, a relict of the “Belle Epoque”, a wealthy period during the rubber boom. It came to fame through its unique location in the Amazon region, the great logistical efforts that had been undertaken to build it and movies like “Fitzcarraldo”.
On the way from Manaus to Bahia in the Northeast we had a stop-over in Brasília, Brazil’s capital since 1960. We stayed for one day in this “artificially-founded” city and had a tour of the sights and the unique cityscape which was super-interesting. The city was built in the undeveloped geographical middle of the country, in the middle of nowhere, to become Brazil’s capital. Nowadays more than 2.6 million people live there. The city is very clean and you can see impressive modern architecture and churches. However a real atmosphere was missing and compared to the rest of this country the city seemed very controlled and a little boring.
The last four days we spent in Praia do Forte, a beautiful beach resort in Bahia, relaxing on the white sand beaches, surfing and sailing in warm water.
We spent one afternoon in Salvador which actually was quite shocking. Salvador obviously had been a beautiful city years ago with colourful houses and more than 170 churches. Now – unfortunately – large parts of the city are pretty run down and plenty of kids stroll around heavily drugged up, trying to get some money to buy more drugs. So sad to see 10-year olds on crack.
We are now back in Florianópolis at our friend Anastacio’s house who welcomed us with a great family Churrasco! We will pack our stuff and get ready to cross the continent via the Iguazu Waterfalls, Paraguay, Salta/Argentina to Iquique in North Chile.
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