The Best of Brazil

In a typical fashion of mine, I create smorgasbord travels: I see many places of different varieties and only dabble in them and take a taste without savoring,

I started traveling this way because I was so unhappy in my first two study abroad trips, especially to Shanghai. I did not living in Shanghai and resented staying there for so long in a place I did not like and where I thought the pictures were deceptive and misleading. I also did not like living in Bangkok either and thought Thailand could be done in a 2 week backpacking trip and not a study abroad trip. I also hated living in Daegu, Korea for my ESL job.

The only time I enjoyed studying and living abroad was through a summer law program in Tel aviv. It was easy I had been to Tel aviv previously and knew I would be happy living there. There is a huge difference between passing through for a few days and living in a country.

I engineered my Brazil trip based on all my past experiences. Most places get boring after 2 days and you just want to see something relevant and do not want to linger there. Also, you need an extra third day to adjust from the flight and transit tiring you out.

I do agree with myself for structuring the Brazil itinerary the way I did, but it is definitely a first timers itinerary to Brazil and not a second timers. Most people enjoy their second trip to a foreign country they loved much more than their first trip because they did not make the same mistakes nor do they have the same pitfalls as the first time.

My itinerary was as follows:

1. 2 days in Lima, Peru.
2. 4 days in Sao Paulo.
3. 3 days in Iguazu Falls at the famous Belmond hotel.
4. 2 days in Serra do Cipo and flying in via Belo Horizonte.
5. 3 days in Itacare beach flying in via Ilheus.
6. 2 days in Salvador
7. 1 day in Sao Luis
8. 3 day tour of Lencois Maranhenses
9. 4 days in Rio de Janeiro

 

The only places I would go to again are Lima, Sao Paulo, Rio, and Serra do Cipo. The Lencois was the best part of the trip, but because it is so difficult to get there, it is most likely a once in a lifetime trip and something I will never return to. I wanted so much more time in Rio, Sao Paulo and Serra do Cipo and felt so rushed the whole time being there.

Sao Paulo is a super city. According to the Wallpaper City Guide, it is the second biggest city in the world, (Tokyo is #1) in terms of greater area and that is three times the size of London. Sao Paulo accordingly has the worst nightmare traffic I have ever seen in any city due to its size. The traffic in Bangkok is a nightmare both because of over population (the original city was planned to sustain a much smaller population) and because of roads that do not connect and uneven public transit because of economic crisis that led to them not being completed whereas Sao Paulo has enormous highways and roads that connect and a good public transit system but there is still too many cars on the road due to the city’s grandiose size.

Sao Paulo also has an urban legend to it that it is so dangerous, you can not walk down the street let alone visit there. Sao Paulo was more safe than LA, at least where I was. I was in Brentwood and Bel-Air type neighborhoods, only better, the whole time. The two hour drive I had from the airport to the hotel saw only large estates, functional high rise buildings and chic boutiques. I did not drive past any slums or see any slums anywhere. However, I have been told by the locals that there are slums in a far away part of the city and they are dangerous and where you buy drugs. I can infer most of the crime and the violence is centered around the drug culture like it is here in the US.

There is a common sense rule anywhere you travel in a major city: You do not go to certain neighborhoods at all and you do not go to some places after dark and you do not wander around certain places getting lost. This rule certainly applies to Brazil as it does to any other country in the world. I felt safer in Brazil than I did in most parts of LA. I do not know some people need to make and perpetuate urban legends, but they do. Brazil has an undeserved reputation for being violent and dangerous. The people who become victims of crime were probably asking for trouble and not following the common sense rule.

Sao Paulo is one of my favorite cities in the world. I think Tokyo is my favorite city in the world, then London, then Sao Paulo, then Rio de Janeiro. Other cities I also liked are Tel aviv, Reykjavik, Porto, Seoul, Sapporo, Taipei, Kathmandu, Fez, Marrakech, Ubud, Ragusa, Noto, Siracusa, Modica, Erice. I am yet to see world famous cities: Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, St. Petersburg, Edinburgh, Stockholm, Florence, Milan, Turin, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Beijing, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Zanzibar’s Stone Town, Mombasa, Lamu, Valetta, Muscat, New Delhi. I can not tell you if I liked those cities I have not seen yet.

Sao Paulo was a Labyrinth of art, culture, sophistication, urban elites, world class cuisine and black swans swimming in Ibirapuera park along with a youthful skate park. Sao Paulo had a very Portuguese touch to it, with it perfectly manicured parks for lover’s to frolic in all day and its triumphant statutes of men conquering the world on horseback and boat with crew.

Sao Paulo:

 

 

I had some of the best meals of my existence in Sao Paulo. The top 3 restaurants were DOM, Mani and Tuju, in that order. The Grand Hyatt where we stayed also had a surprisingly good Japanese restaurant with a perfectionist sushi chef who took pride in his creations, friendly waiters and good cold beer. Typically hotel restaurants are not that good and it is something that will always stain my memory. Unfortunately, we canceled out reservations to Kinoshita due to exhaustion from walking around too much and not being able to tolerate another 30 minute cab ride (see above about nightmare traffic). Kinoshita was awarded its first Michelin star two weeks aFTER we canceled our reservation and missed out. Kinoshita tops my list of places to go to if I ever return, besides retiring to the other three top restaurants I fell in love with.

DOM is the best restaurant in the world I have ever been to. It is easily my #1. There is a genius to everything Alex Atala and his staff of chefs touch. I have never had anything so unique and creative and delicious all at once. Also, the restaurant is exquisite and the service is great and the whole experience is like no other I have ever had in the world. I had the honor to meet Alex Atala on one of the two occasions I dined at DOM. I remember originally thinking he was Italian because his name sounded Italian, Sao Paulo is a city mostly built up and made up of Italian immigrants and because Italians have such a good reputation as chefs. I watched a video of him before I left where it explained that DOM was a Roman word for the gloriousness of God and that Alex Atala was son of Irish and Arabic immigrants and that “Atala” meant something in Arabic I can not remember. I asked him about his last name and what it meant and he looked very nervous, like you could almost see sweat dripping from his forehead and babbled on about how “Ata” meant fire in Portuguese. Then I asked about the rest of it and his nervousness increased and he said “That is in my native language”, and I said, “Arabic?” and then his anxiety dissipated and he said “Yes”. I felt sullen he was ashamed to tell guests he is half-Arab and it scares him and makes him nervous. My guess is he is aware how many dislike Arabs and that he is a stigmatized ethnicity and that it could potentially ruin his career as Brazil’s #1 chef is word gets off he is half Arab. It is too bad because I thought part of his masterhood of cuisine was in his Middle Eastern roots as I noticed pomegranate seeds in one of his desserts.

In conclusion, if you can only try one fine dining restaurant in Sao Paulo or even in South America, try DOM. DOM lives up to its legends and hype.

This is almost hard to imagine both Mani and Tuju are runner ups because they are also among the best meals I have ever had anywhere in the world. It is almost like comparing which diamond is more glorious than the next.

The next stop was Iguazu Falls. When you read about them in travel guides, you get hyperbolic and sweeping statements about them. They are also named the new 7 wonders of nature. The falls were the most disappointing part of my trip because they were overhyped and the product of a very efficient marketing scheme. I have seen waterfalls in various other parts of the world and I am of the belief once you have seen a few waterfalls, you have seen them all. The Iguazu Falls were not special at all and they are just a big waterfall. Imagine any waterfall you have seen and imagine seeing a bigger one.

The Hotel Belmond Cataratas is a famous ad enviable hotel because of its location and reputation. I thought the Belmond was disappointing too and that it was like a giant luxurious prison with a superlative pool. Nothing is special about that Belmond except for its prime location across the street from the overhyped falls. The food was also terrible for a hotel that expensive and well known. The best part however were the tropical rare birds flying freely along the hotel grounds.

There is a general trend of travel books and also the national parks and countries themselves to overhype their attractions and make everything seem like a Top 10 must see place in the world and you are missing out on life itself if you did not go there and spend loads of money there. Truth to be told, Iguazu Falls is not a top 10 place to see in the world and is more like a top 100 place to see.

Also now I will take the time to remind my readers all of my opinions are my own subjective viewpoints based on my own personal experiences. You do not have to agree with anything I say but I think the best value of my blog is you get my opinion, which you cannot get from a commercial travel guide. I do not have a pecuniary gain in this blog and use it more as a public service to help guide my readers towards places worth seeing and spending on money to get to. Travel books are not useful at all at making decisions because they need to market their guides in a  way that makes you want to spend money on their guides now and in the future. They need to market every destination as the best and a must see to keep you spending your money and time on them. I do not have that in mind.

I personally know one of the worst feelings is when you went broke traveling to a place that was not worth it at all and you could have just stayed home instead and seen pictures of it online. I am of the belief Iguazu Falls is one of these places and also that it is a place you go to see when you have already seen other places that are more important and you are running out of new places to see.

 

 

The next stop was Belo Horizonte. We only saw the airport and the drive to the Serra do Cipo national park. We drove through a ghetto neighborhood where there were run down buildings and car mechanic shops and tire shops and people with booty shorts and pot bellies hanging out that were noticeably low class. If I had guess, we were in the downtown seedy Harlem area passing through to the park. Belo probably does have nicer more affluent areas, but we did not pass through them.

Serra do Cipo is certainly off the beaten path and many Americans do not go there. In fact, many Brazilians do not go there and it is something most citizens of Belo see as a weekend trip. I only know of Serra do Cipo and the hotel we stayed at because of the social media website Pinterest. The pin for the hotel and the national park showed up on one of my searches on Pinterest. I saved the pin for the hotel we stayed at for over 5 years. I fell in love with that hotel and dismissed at someplace I would never see in real life and would only dream of and ooze over looking at a pin off.

SIDENOTE: Social media has changed the way we have traveled. I remember growing up people used to make slideshows of their travels and wanted to show the slideshows to their friends and relatives. Other people always dreaded watching those slideshows and no one wanted to look at pics. Nowadays, all of that has gone out the window and the opposite effect has occurred: people become insanely jealous of other people’s travel photos online and want to outdo them somehow and even trigger the urge to travel as a way to eliminate the jealous feelings they have looking at other people’s social media accounts. This is a 360 to the old slideshows everyone hated. Nowadays people spend hours a day looking at and getting jealous of other people’s travel photos online. I think when its at your finger tips and on your own time and not being imposed on you by someone else it gives you a sense of control you did not have before.

Serra do Cipo was incredibly beautiful in winter time when I went and I would love to return one day in spring when more flowers are in bloom. Serra do Cipo was like nothing I have seen before because it is only hiking trail I have been on where the landscape changes a dozen different times.

Serra do Cipo was wonderful in and of itself for its beauty but also because it was over hyped or put into a clean shiny marketing package like the Iguauzu Falls were. When you go off the beaten path to lesser traveled to places, there is often more joy in seeing them because no false expectations were implanted into your head for you and you could enjoy the scenery as is.

 

 

Capim do Mato was the name of the hotel we stayed in. I could have spent a whole week at that hotel and it is one  of my favorites in the world. the architecture was a masterpiece of blending urban living and hard woods with nature and landscape. I hope to live in a home that looks like Capim do Mato one day. There was an excellence and superiority to everything that was done and designed there. I also love how the owner Moreno takes a pride of ownership in his establishment and he takes his time to make sure the guests are catered too. I also loved how his mom traveled around Africa and brought back reliefs and relics to decorate the hotel grounds with. I was call Capim do Mato of the essence of the earth element.

 

The next stop was Ilheus and then Salvador, both in the state of Bahia. Bahia was my least favorite part of Brazil and I do not care to return to it at all, even if there is still some relevant places I did not see the first time, such as Chapada Diamantina and Transco. Bahia is a noticeable stupidity and dysfucntioanlity to it. You really get a sense of being in a third world country with uneven development when you go from Sao Paulo to Bahia. In Bahia, people are selling pineapples in the street in front of run down slums and the best colleges you pass are professional chocolate schools.

Itacare was a very difficult beach to gain access to and the only good hotel I saw online developed around it was Txai. Txai is a gorgeous property that is terribly managed. The food and the service were terrible and it took me 3 hours to get water bottles in my room after calling the reception. The best part was the location and that they have their own private segment of an unadulterated beach.

Salvador is the archetype of a city that looks magical in the pictures and then once you arrive, you see its all a facade for tourists. A tourist trap does it justice because they do charge entrance fees to see the churches and the entire historical part is full of knick knack shops to capture your tourist dollars. The rest of the city of Salvador is high rises that are of no interest to tourists. Salvador is a place I am glad I saw once to see the famous historic churches there and have no interest in ever seeing again.

 

 

 

The next stop was Sao Luis and the legendary Lencois Maranhenses. The Lencois used to be a place of obscurity and esoteric people alone knew of its existence. The old ways to get there were to ride horses to see it and only a few people in the know even knew those sand dunes were there. In time of old, someone rough and tough, bold and dangerous use to travel to places like this with no hotels, cars or any civilizations setting it up. I think humanities roots are being semi-nomadic hunter gatherers and that people are born to travel and explore.

The Lencois got to be that way because it rains for 6 months straight a year. The sand dunes are sand from he beach that drifted in the wind to be there. The Lencois is 30km below the equator. When the rain season ends, the pools stay there and do not evaporate into the sky because of a rock in the sand dunes that keeps them there. The water is ideal for swimming for humans and contains minerals in the water, so you feel refreshed and revitalized after swimming there.

The Lencois are a once in a lifetime and are incredibly challenging to get to. We had to spend one night in historic Sao Luis, which smells like piss everywhere, even the cathedral smelt like piss. The locals spit in the streets and dog poop is everywhere and people play games of chicken dodging cards coming that way and no one can help give directions. Sao Luis is the worst cesspool I have ever been to and never want to return to. Not to mention the airport smelt like fish and the only flight to Rio left at 4 am.

Some of the most gorgeous and dramatic landscapes I have seen were at the Lencois and neighboring Atins beach. I see tremendous potential for the state of Maranhao to develop a more robust tourism industry and also some local industries to grow as well. For now the state of Maranhao is a backwater place that only adventurous travelers dare tread on, but in ten years, I think it will be more economically vital and prosperous once word gets out of its extreme and rare beauty and desolation. What tourist doesn’t dream of having crystal clear beaches on a crimson horizon all to themselves?

 

 

Unlike the Iguazu Falls, the Lencois are in my opinion a top 10 must see place in the world. They have been found out yet, but will be soon, so get there before its crawling with tourists and you need to reserve tickets to swim in the ponds.

SIDENOTE: I do not how urban legends spread about travel, but they do. Brazil being dangerous is both a big fat lie and an urban legend. Also, so are the hype around some places. The biggest  tourist trap I have ever been to was the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. People get extremely jealous of the pictures they see on social media, but once you get there, it is very expensive, the water is bad for you, you can not swim in it too long because the water is bad for you and you need to wear your hair up in a hair net because the water is harmful to your hair. You pay lots of money just to swim for 20 minutes and take pictures of it. I think some people love rubbing it in they saw it and you did not and love lying about how amazing it was because they get off on make others jealous and creating urban legends about far away travel destinations. There are many hoaxes out there and they seem to be created about Brazil in particular.

The last destination was Rio. Before I left Rio, the usual hoaxes and urban legends about it being too dangerous to travel to and you can not walk down the street without getting robbed and under no circumstance may you wear jewelry because it is lying honey for robber flies to victimize you was all bullshit. Rio was yet another city where the common sense rule applies and I felt safer there than in LA.

I personalyl expected Ipanema to be over-crowded, touristic, dirty water and full of scam and rip offs hucksters. I was dead wrong. Ipanema had crowded but manageable beaches and very clean waters, only with some muck at along where the water breaks into the sand. Ipanema is also as if Rodeo Drive in LA were developed along a paradise beach and had fancy French restaurants that were actually good and you actually wanted to go to. Plus, Rio citizens, also called Cariaocas, dress in a noticeable flair and hipness that is delightful. I do not know why even in upscale neighborhoods like Brentwood, Malibu and Beverly Hills that the restaurants are all terrible, pretentious and some do not even try to be pretentious and are just flat out mediocre. This is not the case in Rio. Ipanema was a paradise location.

Joatinga is also a beautiful beach, but it was hard to get to for most people but near our hotel. You have to climb up rocks to get to a small inlet on a semi-secluded beach.

I was lucky enough to rock climb in Rio. I climbed up chains on rocks to get up the hill and grabbed on and climbed on roots of old trees. It was the hardest hike I have ever done and was a real testament to my perseverance and athletic abilities. It was the most rewarding thing I did in Brazil, as I couldn’t believe I made it to the top without quitting.

Rio is an urban wonderland built on an Atlantic rainforest. It has the most beautiful skyline of any city in the world and it is a beautiful disaster strewn with slums next to high rises. Rio is hip chaos meshed with boutiques that would make Beverly Hills blush. It is a city of contradictions, nonsense and ever prevailing coolness.