It may not come close to Africa, but South America is a fantastic continent to see wildlife. Not only can you see animals often and at many different locations, at some places you can touch them, caress them, connect with them (in a responsible way!).
In fact, one of South America’s great travel attractions is wildlife.
Every afternoon, boats sail two hours from açaí-palm growing islands in the Amazon River to the açaí market in Santana, to sell the berries that became world-famous after they were claimed to be a superfood.
From a bridge we had a perfect view of the river dwellers’ arrival.
After 2,5 years of Amazon Coen and I are happy to have returned to the colder and drier climate of South America, the Andes Mountains.
We are cold-weather people.
“Why would you want to visit Brasília? It is an ugly city that lacks a soul,” is the most common remark I have heard from Brazilians about their capital. Despite these discouraging words I decided to visit the city for its modern architecture by Oscar Neimeyer and judge for myself.
My verdict: “Brasília is an ugly city that lacks a soul.”
Yet I stayed a midweek and enjoyed every single day. What happened?
Even we can’t beat this slow pace in our Land Cruiser: 1300 kilometers in 7 months; an average of 6 kms/day. Yet, even if they wanted to, these people couldn’t travel any faster, for you see, these 9 tropeiros and 1 woman have to lead 1376 cows from the breeder to their new owner.
Here, slow living isn’t a modern concept; it’s an age-old way of life.
We arrived in Manaus with a list of places I wanted to visit, but Providence ruled differently. In the past I might have had a fit. I had made a list, damn it, and we were going to stick to it. We had to visit Manaus properly.
After all, wasn’t that why we were here?
Amidst a crowd of typical, T-shirts-and-jeans-wearing Brazilians, a black woman stood out. She wore an intricate, white, lace bodice covered with necklaces above a dark-blue, billowing skirt and a white piece of cloth artistically wrapped around her head. She was deep-frying some sort of snack.
Meet Salvador da Bahia’s famous Baianas de Acarajé.
It was Sunday, late afternoon. The weekend vacationers from Manaus had returned home and peace reigned once more over the small tourist town of Novo Airão. I was the only one to go swimming with dolphins.
What a stroke of luck!
Amidst the flooded forest of Anavilhanas-Archipel, I am looking up at a meters wide trunk of a tree. It splits into three immensely thick branches that reach high into the sky, as if they are on their way to heaven.
I feel as if I am looking at a scene in the cartoon of Jack and the Beanstalk.
One of the most unexpected sites I ever did in our 16-year journey was visiting a soccer stadium and actually watching a soccer game. Traveling is full of surprises, and here I stood in what ‘everybody’ considered to be the most famous stadium in the world:
The Maracaña Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.
Thick traffic and having to watch my back had made me wary of Rio de Janeiro. But after a leisurely walk up the Sugar Loaf I took in the view and suddenly understood the spell that visitors as well as Cariocas (Rio de Janeiro’s residents) fall under.
And I wondered, what’s there not to fall in love with Rio de Janeiro?
“Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Why did I not think of this before? I’ll just buy tapioca and we’ll make beiju,” I concluded.
It was such a simple solution to such a simple problem: staying in a village where I couldn’t find bread but needing something for breakfast.
If only it were so simple…
“Life is not measured by the breaths we take but by the moments that take our breaths away.”
After more than a year of living and traveling in the Amazonian Rainforest in the Guianas and Brazil, the contrast with the landscape we encountered in Lençois Maranhenses (Northeast Brazil) couldn’t have been bigger:
1500 square kilometers of dunes.
In 1873 Colonel Simião Jurumenha bought a sugarcane farm and built the cachaça factory of Douradinho in Redenção. 10 years later slavery was abolished here – 5 years before the rest of Brazil.
130 years later, I visit the still functioning factory-cum-museum.
Running through a town? What kind of way of exploring a place is that, you may ask. Did I get to see anything at all?
Yes, I did.