Between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro lie some of the most fabulous coastline views on Earth – (including that “Twilight” honeymoon spot)
Brazil (Alternate Take) – Antônio Carlos Jobim
Robert Pattinson and Kirsten Stewart on location in Casa em Paraty
It’s always fun when a movie shows you some impressive, exotic location and you realize “Wait, I recognize that place, we’ve been there!” ( Of course it’s even better when you can go “Wait, I know that place, I live there!”) Such was the case when Ed and I popped the wedding video of the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn Part 1, into the DVD player. The secret island honeymoon getaway for glamorous eternally teenage vampire Edward and his winsome bride Bella had a natural coastline character that we recognized as undeniably Brazilian. A little internet digging revealed that the vacation resort Hollywood rented to stand in for the island hideaway responsible for bed-busting and feather-flying vampire-on-human deflowering was an exclusive holiday rental called Casa em Paraty.
Casa em Paraty is actually not on an island, as suggested by the movie, but along the shore of a lagoon that points deeply inland like a large maritime index finger, south of the town of Paraty along the coastline between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Ed and I explored this same coastline for several days during the first days of our first tour of Brazil together in 2012. It is a fantastically evocative landscape, with verdant mountains undulating to one side, and green islands protruding out of the waters like forested bubbles.
We drove from São Paulo over a mountain road towards the coast. Our first view of the coastline was of the city of Caraguatuba below and the island of Ihlabela across the strait.
Ilhabela is very popular with Paulistas (São Paulo city dwellers) during the summer holidays. But we arrived in August, which is winter in Brazil, so we practically had the island to ourselves.
Ilhabela was formed by volcanoes. The long cooled top of the main volcano dominates the center of the island.
Many exotic plants would capture our camera’s eye. I’ll share just one plant picture, this particularly beautiful banana tree. The banana berries (yes, bananas are members of the berry family of fruits) are bunched like a crown atop, while the massive flower hangs pendulous and heavy below.
Ed and I would also take countless pictures of the countless bird species we’d encounter (OK, enough, or count me out!). I’ve already shared pictures of the eagles, parrots, toucans and the incredible Tuiuius we saw later in the Pantanal.
However the birds that dominate Brazil’s landscape more ubiquitously than any other are the vultures. We would see them all over Brazil. And this picture capturing a vulture in its full Far-Side like essence was one of the first we took on the island of Ihlabela. A few more unexpected vulture sightings will be included later in this piece. But let me just reiterate, just because I didn’t include vulture pics in the other Brazil posts on this blog doesn’t mean we didn’t see them all over, flying around the Sugarloaf, in the Amazon, the Lençoís, everywhere.
Ilhabela is famous for its many waterfalls. That is Ed hiding behind the curtain spray of one of them. Further downstream of that fall the waters created a natural water slide, scooping out a track through the stones. That’s Ed at right zooming down …
… and being deposited into the pond below. It was a fast and bumpy ride. It’s not like nature scooped out a perfectly smooth and safe path in the hard rock following the safety regulations of US water parks. Both Ed and I wound up with a few scrapes and bruises. But no regrets, it was wild and fun.
Yep, Blumenau, founded by Dr. Herrman Bruno Otto Blumenau and 17 other German immigrants 1850 in Southern Brazil and now home to about 300 000 souls, a fifth of which have German ancestry, claims the distinction of playing host to the biggest Oktoberfest celebration in the world after Munich, attracting up to a million tourists to its Bavarian bacchanal. Every other German city can just eat its Brazilian dust.
Quando eu te encarei frente a frente e não vi o meu rosto
Olinda is a beautiful historic town, one of the oldest in Brazil, founded 1535 in the state of Pernambuco. The large metropolitan capitol city of Recife looms just south, contrasting modern high rises at the horizon with the quaint colorful buildings and handsome churches of historic Olinda.
Salvador, in the state of Bahia, is a Brazilian city full of highs and lows. Quite literally, at first blush, due to its topography. The historic center sits on a high plateau separated by a steep cliff from a lower section of town at the shore. Which makes parts of Salvador look like a city on top of a city, like something dreamed up by Escher or Christopher Nolan (see top photo).
For our Brazilian musical selection, it is long past due that I share one of the most famous upbeat selections Brazil has gifted the world. You may not know the title “Mas Que Nada”, but you have surely heard this track’s lively chorus. Possibly no piece of music has been used more often as a shorthand to illustrate Brazilian high spirits.
This is the little 4 seater airplane we hired (with some birthday present “mad money”) to take us on a thirty minute flyover across the whole Lençóis region. The pilot and his trainee sat upfront and Ed and I sat behind.
Around ten years ago Ed and I saw an extraordinary Brazilian movie called “The House of Sand”. It is set in a landscape of endless, blindingly white sand dunes. So unusual and otherworldly the film seemed to be taking place on another planet.
Ever since seeing “The House of Sand” I have wanted to explore this fantastical landscape in person. And this August we did it. It required flying into São Luís, the capitol of Maranhão, then taking a 4.5 hour bus to Barreirinhas, the largest town near the Lençóis Maranhenses, from where most tour excursions originate. But even once in Barreirinhas, most routes into the “Bedsheets” require a long, bumpy trek over sandy roads. On the map below, only the black dotted line represents an asphalted road. The red dotted lines are deeply sandy paths over which four wheel drives slosh and jump and jostle their way for at least an hour before you reach the white dunes. It’s like riding a bucking kangaroo.
Above and beside, these great lily pads are called Victoria Regina. Something tells me it wasn’t a Portuguese gentlemen who coined the name.
Two weeks ago Ed and I flew into Corumba, near Bolivia in Brazil’s southwestern state of Mato Grosso du Sul, the main southern access point to the vast Pantanal region. The Pantanal might be best described, to Americans at least, as Brazil’s version of the Everglades. An immense system of rivers and wetlands, with water levels that rise and inundate the land in the rainy season and fall again in the dry season, releasing some ground from a watery blanket. The Pantanal waters are separate from those that form the Amazonian system.
Harpy eagle.
To the right, that’s Ed and me and our head protection (it’s easy to bump your head making your way through and past the tight corners, low ceilings and odd protrusions of a cave system). Below is the entrance to the Santana cave. It looks rather modest for what would wind up being an elaborate, impressive 12 km cave system. Turns out this entrance was blasted open by dynamite a hundred years ago. Originally the opening was much smaller, just enough for the water to pour out and make a strange grumbling sound, which is why it initially was called the Snoring Cave.
Above and beside you can see some of the walkways we took to get through the cave system. Ed says “I love about Brazil that you can do things here that would be considered totally unsafe for tourists in America”.
There are animals that live exclusively in the caves, like this spider.
Ed is looking at a rock formation which is called the horse’s head for obvious reasons.
Today’s tour through Rio will conclude on Corcovado. And I promise you I will be sharing pictures of Cristo Redentor that are unlike the typical postcard pictures or Google Images you will find of the iconic location. Our visit there turned out to be less than typical, and that will be reflected in my photos.
Notes from a Composer 