Brazil

I spent 2 approximately 2 months in Brazil. The places I chose to visit were Sao Paulo, Ouro Preto (for carnival), Florianopolis, Foz do Iguacu, Rio de Janeiro, and Manaus. If you are an American ever wanting to travel to brazil, keep in mind you will need a visa, which can take around 3 weeks to process and will cost you somewhere between $100-$150 (I don’t know the exact amount because I got mine in London).

I first arrived during carnival time, which was spent in Ouro Preto, a UNESCO World heritage site and also home of one of the best carnival street festivals.

Afterwards, I spent 20 days in Sao Paulo but had been staying with a now good friend of mine that I met in Berlin. We had a blast together, but I spent a lot of my time as a local and not as a tourist. My highlight was probably getting cosmetic surgery done (I got a mole removed just so that I could say I had cosmetic surgery in latin America…I know, flawless logic). The city is fairly dangerous and so incredibly large that you could get kidnapped or murdered and no one would EVER know. In the time I was there I had learned that a friend of the girl I was staying with had gotten ‘flash robbed’ a year prior, which basically entails that a person comes up to you with a weapon when you’re in your car and he (or she) makes you go to the bank to withdraw money for him (or her) and then leaves you on the street as he drives away in your vehicle. I also heard stories about friends getting kidnapped, but that was not too common. The father of the girl whose house I was staying at had told me how he had never gotten robbed in his entire life, but then about a week later while I was still staying there, he, too, was held up at a stoplight and had to hand over his belongings. As for tourists, well the worst part is that it is so hard to know which streets/areas are safe and which ones are not (as they sometimes will look exactly the same!). Don’t let this scare you, though…just ask around and be sure where you will be safe and also just keep in mind that this definitely IS one of the cities that you really should not be walking around at night by yourself. Nothing happened to me while I was there and I actually did have to walk by myself at night one time, but I was gripping onto my pepper spray the entire way.

As far as tourism in Sao Paulo, you can visit the Japanese market and maybe go to the villa lobos park to rent a bike and ride around. There are also apparently TONS of museums you can visit, as Sao Paulo is considered Brazil’s cultural arts center. Other than that, there is not much to do in Sao Paulo tourist-wise. If you are not there to visit any friends, I would advise you just to skip it or just spend a day there.

Florianopolis

This city was fun…for a day or 2. I stayed 5 days and that was WAYYY too long. Really, all there is are the beaches and for me, personally, all I could stand was 2 days max at the beach. Other than that, there is a nightclub called the confeteria or something like that. It is an incredibly posh nightclub where all the most attractive of brazil go to mingle. Honestly, the combination of having recently been exposed to plastic surgery for the first time along with being surrounded by such beautiful people in Florianopolis never made me so eager to have more work done. They sucked me in!!! I swear the mentality of Brazilians makes it seem so normal to have plastic surgery…

Foz do Iguacu (Iguazu Falls)

Foz do Iguacu, also known as Iguazu Falls, contains huge waterfalls on both the Brazilian and Argentinean sides of the border. I didn’t care all that much for it only because there were so many tourists. Itaipu Dam, the world's second largest dam (behind 3 gorges in China), is also located here and can be reached via local buses. Tours operate daily and will not cost you too much (can't remember exact price).

If you are planning on visiting the falls and only have enough time to visit one of the sides, visit the Argentinean side. When I was there the waterfalls looked brown on the Brazilian side and there are all these raccoon type animals that you constantly have to keep your food and bags away from (as they may jump on you to get your food). In contrast, the water on the Argentinean side appears much clearer and there are not nearly as many of those raccoon type animals. Also, this side is much larger and has butterflies everywhere. The sights are much more beautiful and it will be really hard NOT to get a photo of the falls without a rainbow in it.

I cannot recall the exact costs of each but they were somewhat comparable (Argentina side might be slightly more expensive). However, if you are residing on the Brazilian side, you will have to cross the border and take a few separate buses which may be confusing, but not that expensive. It will be much cheaper for you to do this yourself rather than go with a tour from the hostel (cough hostel bamboo, cough). The guy at the counter there had lied to me and was telling me how expensive it would be to go to the Argentinean side because he was saying some of the costs in Argentinean pesos and some in reais, but had made it sound like all the costs were in reais, which therefore made it appear more expensive. The cost of enterance on the Argentina side is $85 argentine pesos, which is approximately $22. If you are traveling on the Argentinean side and would like to visit the falls, you probably won’t be visiting the Brazillian side anyways because unless you intend on going into Brazil afterwards, you would need to pay for a visa, which, as I have previously mentioned, costs a buttload. If you want to stay in iguazu falls, I know many people stayed on the Argentinean side at this hostel with a pool out front. I think it may have been a HI hostel.

As for me, I ended up staying at Hostel bamboo the whole time and the place was nice but the men that worked there were super perverted and machismo. One of the girls in my room got sick and the male taxi driver offered to help her wash herself…gross. This same taxi driver kept trying to lean over and buckle my seatbelt instead of letting me buckle it for myself…as if I am too weak or too stupid to do it on my own. On top of that there was another girl, around my age (early 20s) who needed this Douchebag to pick her up at the airport and when they got to the hostel he kept trying to hit on her and get into her room when she was clearly not interested. As for the bartender, well to put it bluntly, he’s got nothing to offer (looks-wise and other-wise) and he spends his nights getting girls much prettier than him drunk and then taking advantage of them. During my stay, there was another guy there (who didn’t even work at the hostel) and would come and hit on me and make me extremely uncomfortable to the point where I couldn’t even leave my room at night because I knew he would have been up there. I am telling you, if you are a single female, DO NOT go to this hostel.

Rio de Janeiro

First off, Rio (or rather, the rio where you want to be) is TINY. From the airport, you can get a bus called the real bus (big blue bus) that takes you right down to the Copacabana area. Copacabana and Ipenema are right next to each other and in walking distance.

I stayed in Rio for a total of 8 days and chose Ace backpackers for the first part of my stay before being kicked out because the rooms were full and I was without reservation. This hostel is a good deal but you will need to take the metro if you wanted to go anywhere. During my stay at ace backpackers I became really sick (I think I got it from the girl in Foz do Iguacu). The people at the hostel were really nice and helped me get to a free clinic, where I was forced to take a shot of penicillin into my ass cheek. The worst part is that it was administered by a man who I swear enjoyed doing it way too much. It was so degrading. After that I did get better though and was forced to move to the mellow yellow backpackers hostel. If you are okay with walking up 6 flights of stairs approximately 20 times a day and if you like rooms that are hot and look like concentration camps with beds 3 stories high, then you should go there. Otherwise, I would look for a different hostel. If you do go there, try to claim a bed not on the top, as you might wake up in the middle of the night bracing for your life thinking you are about to fall off a building…seriously. The reception is also really horrible there. The only good part about hostel is the breakfast and the fact that they attempt to put on activities at night (though they usually suck). When I was there, which was back in mid-late march, the Jesus statue was under construction but you could still visit it.

The city seemed fairly safe so long as you stay out of the favellas and so long as you are careful about where you put your belongings. The only instance of theft that I experienced during my time there was when a group of 20 of us went down to the streets of lapa at night, the clusters of little favella children came up to a guy in our group and took his wallet…but I mean, he was drunk and had his wallet in his back pocket. In regards to the beaches, they were somewhat anticlimactic (looks-wise) and when you’re on the beach, you will not be able to relax because there is an ongoing constant swarm of people trying to sell you crap. The city is beautiful overall, though, and you will be sure to run into other tourists and make a lot of new friends with them, which I really appreciated.

Manaus

As I embarked on my journey to Manaus, not only did I have no clue what it would be like traveling to the middle of the Amazon, but also, I had no clue when and how I would be getting out of there (as I had only booked a one-way ticket). It took me three separate flights that lasted all day to get from Rio to Manaus. Once there, I was able to take a local bus into the city (which is MUCH cheaper than a taxi). The bus stops around midnight though.

What is amazing about manaus is the fact that in the middle of this sooo incredibly large rainforest, you have this HUGE city…I mean just imagine how much work went into transportation of construction materials, alone. It is honestly an amazing concept to bear witness too. The reason this is the case is because in the early 1900s, Manaus was the center for the rubber boom that was going on in the Amazon. Since then, the city has expanded even though rubber production has diminished.

For travelers to Manaus, they have 2 to 4 or 5 day jungle treks. I had heard that you can do cheaper ones in Santarem (if you are traveling down the amazon towards the mouth). I opted not to do a jungle trek because #1 it was too expensive (something like $300 reais or $173 USD for 2 days) and #2 because I’ve already been to the jungle before (in Nicaragua) and would be going into the jungle some more in other countries (Where it would be cheaper/free in those cases).

Apparently, for those who are jewish, there is even a synagogue and a rabbi that lives in Manaus. We celebrated Passover at the rabbi’s house. He’s from texas and has only recently moved to manaus with his Brazilian-jewish wife. It was interesting to hear Passover spoken in Hebrew, English, and Portuguese.

You can visit the merging of the rivers and then see the town (including visiting the theater) all in one day.

If you are really efficient, you can even visit IMPA, which is a research center for Amazonian floura and fauna. If you want to learn firsthand about this topic , what we did is we visited around lunch hour and spoke to some of the researchers during their lunch break in the cafeteria area. In addition to its research, this institute also houses manitees, electric eels, fresh water otters, turtles, crocodiles, and other animals and is open for tourists to visit. Entrance fee is $5 reais and you can get there via local bus transport.

In total, I spent 10 days in Manaus, which was perhaps far too long. I would say most people could do Manaus (including the jungle trek) in 4 to 5 days.

Now getting out of Manaus, well that is a whole other story. If your ultimate destination is Colombia, you have 2 options. #1: You can travel up the river to Leticia/tabatinga, from which you can take a fairly inexpensive domestic flight to the other cities of Colombia (check domestic flight listings on Wikipedia). The boat will take you approximately 5-7 days depending on weather and boat condition. Ticket prices vary but should be purchased down at the docks. I believe compared to other river route prices this route was one of the more expensive ones (cannot remember exact amount). Peru is also on this route if you continue on to Iquitos, but from there you might need to take a possibly expensive flight out of Iquitos to get to the rest of Peru. The other option for Colombia would be to take a long bus ride through Venezuela. You may or may not need to change buses in Venezuela, but according to word of mouth this option would take around 48 hours and cost around US $90. If your ultimate destination is the Guyanas, see the Guyanas section of this blog. If your ultimate destination is Bolivia, you can take a long boatride down to Bolivia which does not cost that much. I believe it was around $150 reais. If you want to see the rest of Brazil, I would suggest going the same way as for the Guyanas but changing the destination from Macapa to Belem.

Keep in mind these boatrides are long and boring. Bring a book and buy a hammock, as that is what you will be sleeping in!!! If you have binoculars, you might want to use them, but really you probably won’t see much, as the mainland is usually quite far from the boat (at least while traveling downstream). Since there really aren’t many opportunities for you to part from your hammocks and backpacks, I would say that it would be really hard to have your stuff stolen during your time on the boat. For me, I was paranoid at first and kept my tiny backpack (with all of my electronics and valuables) with me all the time and slept with it in my hammock. Probably wasn’t necessary.

All in all, Brazil is an incredibly diverse and HUGE country. I opted not to travel the northern coastline, as I had heard it was fairly dangerous and was not willing to risk it (and also pay for the airfare, which can get expensive). Bus transport around northern Brazil is also more dangerous than in the south, so be aware. For all of Brazil, I would say based of personal experience that whether you are a boy or a girl, single or with a friend, you run the same level of risk. Aside from the perceived dangers and horror stories from friends, the country really is interesting and definitely worth visiting.