Our port today is Santos, Brazil, which is the largest port in South America and serves Sao Paolo as well as the rest of Brazil. We took an eight hour tour to Sao Paolo which is about 50 miles away, 1 1/2 hours driving each way. It is about 2000 feet in elevation and the drive there takes you through some pretty rain forest on a very modern highway but kind of scary with winding turns and tunnels and lots of trucks. There are 20+ million residents in Sao Paolo. While we visited a couple of nice parks and a museum and we were driven through some of the better parts of town the city is covered with "favelas" which is a nice word for slums. There is a huge homeless problem with people sleeping all over in building doorways and parks, including the better parts of town. Trash litters the city. Graffiti is everywhere, much worse than we have seen in other spots in South America. The graffiti is on homes, businesses, walls, statues. Some was even high on multi-story buildings.
Beautiful sunrise as we entered the port
Huge granite sculpture in a park area
Beautiful old building covered with graffiti
Ten story building with graffiti all the way up. How do they do that??
The highlight of the tour was a typical Brazilian BBQ lunch. It included a great antipasti bar with a very diverse selection from sushi, lasagna, veggies, to cheeses, salads, and steak tartar. After you visit the buffet, servers start coming around with all sorts of meats that have been cooked over a fire and slicing them onto your plate. No sure what all of it was but you could have as much as you liked and it was very good.
The antipasti bar
Lots of meat choices
More meat!
We made a quick drive through the town of Santos and along the nice beach before returning to the ship.
The beach area is about 8 miles long
There are lots of small food stands along the beach
Some of the beach area is more like a park
Just before 6 pm we went up to the Observation Lounge to watch the sail away. We noticed that there were no dock workers to handle the ships lines and just assumed that some of the tours were not back yet, wrong! A little after six the captain came on the PA and announced that we had a problem with an emergency generator not working and we could not sail until it was repaired or they had another solution. We would stay at the dock overnight and the ship would try to arrange some tours for tomorrow. The fun continues.
Lovely view of the favelas from out suite (looks like it will be for three days)
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