Hello Silvio& Lilian,
Finally, I have taken the time to write my comments on
our visit to Brazil. We are just about
to arrive in Bermuda. Our plans are to
stay there for one week and then set sail for Canada. We are all very excited
to get back home. Hope all is well with
both of you!
General
One aspect of our preparation to visit Brazil (which
we did not fully appreciate until we arrived on site) was the word translation
exercise that we did with you on our SSB NET underway. It is essential to enjoy
a visit to Brazil to have at least some knowledge of the basic words in Portuguese
because we rarely found someone that would speak either French, English or even
Spanish. We carried our word list with
us everywhere and it proved to be extremely useful.
We obtained our visas from the Brazilian consulate in
Cape Town and the process, although long (10 days), was easy to follow.
Fernando de Noronha
It is a nice place to stop en route from
St-Helena. The only problem is that they
now charge outrageous amounts of money to cruisers to visit the island. A detailed list of charges can be found on
noonsite. I have talked to many cruisers
while there and they all cut short their visit because of the price of
visiting. We were supposed to stay there
5 days and only stayed 2!! The anchoring
fee is the most expensive I have ever seen in the whole world for one of the
swelliest bay I have visited!!!!
There is a bus to get to the closest town for shopping
but renting a dune buggy is the best way to get around. When we rented the dune buggy we realized
that to get to the nicest beaches you had to have another permit, which you had
to purchase for around $50 US per person.
You could only buy a 10 day pass, (nothing for casual visitors) so we
ended up not visiting those beaches. It is a little sad considering that
cruisers we met did not stay more than 2 days.
Although far from mainland Brazil, it was fairly easy
to get fruit and vegetable from the main store, nicely welcomed after this
passage from St-Helena. It is a shame
that Fernando has become expensive this way because it has so much to offer,
but you can't appreciate it because of the overall price to visit.
Natal
We decided to visit Natal because we had to bring our
crew back so he could catch a flight to go back to Canada and chose to stop
there based on Silvio and Lilian’s good comments about that place. When you are around 30 NM from Natal, you
start meeting a flotilla of fishing vessels and it is essential to be on the
lookout when you arrive at night, we met many of them anchored in 120 feet of
water. It was an easy entrance into the
river. The anchorage close to the marina
is very safe security wise and offers good holding.
The marina staff were very helpful and we were allowed
four days free usage of their facilities which included showers and
internet. Starting day five you had to
start paying to use their facilities and it was not cheap. There is a fresh fruit and vegetable market
within walking distance but to do some serious shopping you have to take a bus
which is taken just outside the gate. We
were told that it was unsafe to walk around the neighborhood at night so we
didn't. It is a large city with
everything one may need, as long as you can make yourself understood.
We visited a fort close by and got there walking
during the day. Our best experience was
the dune buggy ride in Genipabu. We
organized a trip for the seven of us that lasted all day. They picked us up at the yacht club around
09h00 and we came back around 17h00. It
cost 300 Reais (R$) per buggy and was a
day well spent being driven by a
chauffeur in the local dunes. Thanks for
the advice!
Conclusion
We really enjoyed our visit to Brazil and wished that
we could have stayed longer. This visit
was just our first visit and we will be coming back but this time with a better
knowledge of Portuguese. Away from the
cruising routes, Brazil is worth exploring but one has to keep in mind that it
is not a cheap destination.
René, Dany and the Cat Mousses
No comments:
Post a Comment
Enter your comment here: