Part 1 of The Discerning Travelers’ Marvellous Adventure in Brazil and the Amazon series
After all these years, you might think there were no places left on our travel bucket list. You would be wrong. Art had always wanted to do two things: visit the Christ the Redeemer statue soaring high over the city of Rio de Janeiro and take a cruise into the Amazon River. We have done all of that and more. Here is where we began our most recent adventure: in the mega metropolis of Sao Paulo, the gateway to our adventure.
After a ten-hour non-stop flight from our home in Toronto to the city of São Paulo, we were ready for our adventure. As usual, we treated ourselves to Signature Class, so we began our holiday the minute we arrived at Pearson International Airport with a lovely dinner in the Signature Class Suite.
Then we settled ourselves in our pods, watched a few movies, slept, had breakfast, disembarked and were greeted in the jetway by a host from AssistAnt, the international company we’ve used before to whisk us through customs and immigration in major international airports. Well worth the $$$.
We had arranged with Tours-by-Locals, our go-to tour company for day trips, to have a guide pick us up at the airport on the morning of our arrival and give us the day-long tour of the city, taking us to the highlights.
We had only two days and wanted a taste of Sao Paulo, the mega-metropolis of over 20 million people. Yes, it’s that mega.
Our guide hit the highlights, even providing us access to points where we could get a view of the spread of the city. He also introduced us to mortadella sandwiches that we enjoyed as we perched ourselves at a table in a bustling city market.
When he dropped us at the São Paulo Renaissance Hotel in the Jardins district of the city, we were ready to relax. Of course, what does one drink on one’s first night in Brazil? A Caipirinha—Brazil’s most famous drink (cachaça, lime juice and superfine sugar).
Before we‘d even left home, we’d been warned by anyone who had ever been to the cities of Brazil that we should be extra careful about safeguarding our belongings—no visible signs of money such as expensive watches, rings, jewellery, and cell phones hidden as much as possible. We also checked to see
that the district where our hotel was located was a relatively safe one. It was. And the Jardins district is a bit like what the French name says: gardens. A lovely place to walk, which we did—without jewellery or expensive watches.
Language is a bit of a barrier in Brazil since their Portuguese is so difficult for us to pronounce and understand. Patty speaks enough French to get by in a French-speaking country, and we’ve acquired a bit of travel Spanish. Brazilian Portuguese, though, was something else entirely. However, although English is not widely spoken outside the most touristy establishments like hotels, the people are warm and understanding. Patty even managed to do a bit of shopping, making herself understood by a lovely young sales associate.
On our second day, we walked—for twenty kilometres or so and saw as much as we could of the area where we were staying. The following day, another guide that we had arranged from a company called Day Trip picked us up at the hotel promptly at eight in the morning, and we began our journey to Rio de Janeiro.
We decided that rather than go directly to Rio, we would add a trip into the mountains to a unique village called Campos do Jordão. Our driver dropped us off, and we walked around this odd little place in 35-degree Celsius heat along streets that looked like they had been plucked out of an Alpine village. The place seemed to be almost entirely made up of restaurants with massive outdoor patio areas. We were soon ready to continue on to Rio.
We arrived on the outskirts of Rio just at rush hour. Our driver pulled over on the highway to change from Waze as his GPS guide to Google Maps because, as he told it, Waze would take us through the favelas, a situation he wasn’t interested in. Darkness had already fallen when we pulled onto Avenida Atlantica.
This street in Copacabana runs parallel to the beach, which is the location of our hotel, the JW Marriott Hotel on Copacabana Beach.
Once we got settled, we took this photo from our hotel room. Copacabana at night.
We had three days ahead of us with plans to see Christ the Redeemer and go to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain.
We’ll tell you about that in Part 2 of our Brazil and Amazon River Adventure Series.
Our Resources
AssistAnt: https://assist-ant.com/airport-vip-services/gru-sao-paulo-brazil/
Tours-by-Locals: https://www.toursbylocals.com/
Day Trip (International): https://bit.ly/3X4QkIz
The Discerning Travelers 