After having a lovely time in Paraty on Brazil's Costa Verde, we
caught a bus that took us south along the coastline to São Sebastião, a place known for its beautiful beaches, and historic township.
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| Main Church in the old town of São Sebastião, Brazil |
But our bus driver was terrible. He screamed around corners with us all hanging on for dear life! On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the worst for bruising while being on a bus (our bus-bruise scale), our driver was about a minus-1.
The experience helped form a bond with fellow bus travellers, who included a German couple and a guy from our home town of Wellington, New Zealand. By the time we reached São Sebastião, we had all agreed to share a taxi in order to get to the balsa (ferry).
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| The Ilha Bela balsa leaving São Sebastião, Brazil |
The balsa is a car ferry that carries foot passengers to Ilha Bella, and does it for free. Ilha Bella is an island in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil.
So skipping São Sebastião for now, we took the quick 20-minute balsa ride to arrive on Ilha Bella (Beautiful Island). Then we grabbed a taxi
to our accommodation, the Ilha Deck Hotel, and were ready for a nice holiday.
The hotel had a fantastic restaurant, as well as a café that sits right on the beach.
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| Leigh on the beach opposite our hotel on Ilha Bella (UNESCO), Brazil |
It was a great location as we were halfway between the ferry port and Vila Township, the main centre on the island.
Ilha Bela is known for its
volcanic hills, clean and sandy beaches, unique Atlantic rainforest, and for being a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We found it a great place to do lots of walking and relaxing by the water.
One walk was to Vila
Township, around 5 kilometres away.
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| Marg in the historic centre of Vila township, Ilha Bella (UNESCO), Brazil |
It's a small but interesting town. While there we saw the blue and white Igreja Matriz (main church), blue and while City Hall, and some very colourful shops.
There was also some interesting Art-deco architecture, mixed with the colonial and more modern shops. We had a lovely time wandering around there.
A big feature on the island was art by
Brazilian artist Gilmar Pinna.
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| Leigh with work by Gilmar Pinnar on Ilha Bella (UNESCO), Brazil |
His interesting work included huge sculptures made of pieces of stainless-steel welded together to form a whole piece. We walked past many of his works dotted along the beachfront.
On one day, we jumped on a local bus to the
top of the island and walked back along some lovely sandy beaches. There are 41 beaches here, and although many are sandy with gentle waves, those on the ocean side tend to be more difficult to access and have rougher water, although still beautiful.
The next day, we caught the bus to the bottom
of the island. However, it was a rather nerve-racking trip.
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| Marg waiting at a beach bus-stop on Ilha Bela (UNESCO), Brazil |
By about half way along the route, all passengers except us had left the bus. The bus driver then seemed to want to do the rest of the route at a fast speed along the narrow, winding clifftop road.
We zoomed down hills, and swerved around corners, with us clutching the seats with dread as we looked down at the sheer drop to the water below.
While only about a 6 out of 10 on our
bus-bruise scale, he was right up there on the fear-factor! We lived to tell this story, but were a bit
nervous about the return trip. Luckily there were quite a few passengers to
pick up on the way back, which slowed him down as he had to stop fairly often.
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| Beach and boats on Ilha Bela (UNESCO), Brazil |
Yachting and boating, as well as other water-related sports are big on Ilha Bela, and every sea vista showed some kind of water vessel, either on, or anchored off the beach. It's a very attractive island.
Many of the beaches look out across the water to São Sebastião. Oil is exported from these Atlantic shores and
big tankers are moored in São Sebastião harbour to load oil. They did spoil the
scenic island view somewhat!
But the weather was kind to us and we had a
good relaxing break, before moving on.
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| Street in the old town of São Sebastião, Brazil |
Riding the ferry back to São Sebastião, we
decided to explore the historic centre a little more as we had rushed through there on our way over to
Ilha Bella.
Although quite small, there were many colourful
colonial buildings, and nice plazas.
After a few hours of walking around São Sebastião, we headed to the bus
terminal for our next adventure - São Paulo, our last stop in Brazil.
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| Big and busy São Paulo, Brazil |
It was a long drag in the bus to São Paulo as it is a
huge city with a population of over 20 million. We think 18 million of them
were on the road that day.
We finally arrived at the São Paulo bus
terminal to discover it was the largest in South America. After wandering
around not quite knowing how to get to our hotel, we found the Tourist Information Office.
Helpful staff there told us we could catch the
metro train to Praça da República in the centre of the city, and have a very
short walk from there to our hotel. We did that and it proved to be very easy, even with
our luggage.
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| Us in São Paulo Plaza in the old centre of São Paulo, Brazil |
After settling in, we headed out for a walk
around the old city, finding that a large part of it is pedestrian-only. It was easy walking and we managed to see some really interesting sights.
The architecture of the city is eclectic. We saw Colonial, Neoclassical, Baroque, and Gothic architectural styles, all mixed up with modern steel and glass skyscrapers.
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| Top: Municipal Theatre. Bottom: Casa Caetano de Campos. Right: Edifício Copan, São Paulo, Brazil |
Some architectural highlights for us were the ornamental Municipal Theatre with its gold and marble interior, the Neoclassical Casa Caetano de Campos, and the modern and curvaceous Edifício Copan, the largest apartment building in the world, at 118.44m high.
With only one more day to
explore this huge city before flying out, we decided to grab the hop-on hop-off bus.
We have found them good for giving an overview of a big city.
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| São Paulo hop-on hop-off bus dance group |
We arrived early to catch the 9 am bus, only to discover we were at the end of a long queue. It was made up of a women's fitness-dance group on a visit to the city. What a boisterous, fun-filled and infectious bunch
they were.
They were first onto the bus, then cheered
everyone else as they boarded. As we came up, they started chanting "New
Zealand, New Zealand" Very funny and very noisy!
The bus trip took us around areas we would never have been able to walk to, so it was a great use of our limited time.
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| Some of the street art in São Paulo, seen from our bus tour |
We saw some wonderful street art, many parks, and quite a few monuments. Unfortunately, and as with many of the cities we had visited in Brazil to date, there was also lots of graffiti.
After a great bus tour, we returned to our hotel ready to fly out that same evening. We then asked the hotel receptionist to call us a taxi to the airport. He called Uber, but when it arrived the driver said he would not take suitcases, then left.
After much time-passing, another taxi was called. It took ages, but eventually arrived and off we went.
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| Monumento às Bandeiras seen from our bus tour, São Paulo, Brazil |
By now, we were about 40 minutes later than
planned, then the unthinkable happened – we got stuck in horrendous traffic! We
began to see what it was like living in a city of 20 million, all heading home
after work.
We were beginning to panic, as it was getting later and
later, and past our flight check-in time.
Finally, we arrived at the airport and made a mad dash to find our
check-in counter. This was not easy in such a big airport, but we spotted it and ran the last 50 metres, arriving just as the staff were
closing it down.
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| Big city São Paulo, Brazil |
Thank goodness we had checked in on line, as
they returned to the counter and were able to quickly organise boarding passes for us. They put our luggage on the
last-minute conveyor-belt, and we then ran to customs and scuttled through.
In all our years of travel, this was the closest we've ever come to missing a flight!
Then.........after all that mad rush, the plane was
delayed due to technical problems. Finally, we took off over an hour and a half
late, heading to Buenos Aires.
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| View of São Paulo from our plane as we leave Brazil |
Goodbye Brazil.
We'd had a fun-filled and interesting six weeks of travel in some of Brazil's most fascinating places. We loved the culture,
the people, the scenery, and the laissez-fair attitude of this huge and diverse country.
However, we must move on. We're now looking forward to our next adventure, which will be driving around Argentina, Patagonia and Chile in a motorhome.
The above blog is part of our 4-month tour of South America. The first blog on this tour is called "Buenos Aires here we come".