Everywhere

South America

156 photographs · 21 venues

Photographs

Places worth going

Arraial do CaboDon't missTownsThe water here is unreal, properly turquoise, and the whole town is built around getting you out into it. Stay in Arraial rather than Cabo Frio - every boat leaves from Praia dos Anjos and you want to be walking distance from it. Climb the hill behind the town for the view down onto Prainhas do Pontal do Atalaia, all cactus and white sand and boats sitting on their own shadows, and go back up in the evening. Four days felt about right and I would go again tomorrow.Cabo FrioDon't missActivitiesThis is the dive, and it is the only reason I have any photographs of Cabo Frio. Green water rather than the blue you get on the boat trips, maybe ten metres of visibility, rock and weed rather than coral - and then a green turtle that hung around long enough for everyone to get their picture. It is colder than you expect for Brazil, so take the thicker suit if they offer you one.Canyon de FurnasDon't missOutdoorsWhat you are looking down into is a reservoir, so the water sits deep green between pale sheer walls and the whole thing is much bigger than any one photograph of it. I did it from the viewpoints along the top rather than from a boat, and that turned out to be the right way round - you get the shape of the canyon from up there, and you can walk between four or five of them in a morning. Go before midday. By the time the sun is overhead the water goes flat and loses the colour completely. There is a waterfall on the way in that drops into a pool so green it looks lit from underneath, and the lake on the drive back at sunset was worth stopping the car for.Cristo RedentorDon't missLandmarksYou go, and you should, and then you spend most of it looking at the back of other people's phones. Get there as early as you can manage - by mid-morning the platform is shoulder to shoulder and everybody is lying on the floor trying to fit the whole thing in one frame. The statue itself is worth it from directly underneath, which is the angle nobody puts on a postcard: enormous, plain concrete up close, and much more impressive for it. Give it half a day by the time you have queued at both ends.FlorianópolisDon't missTownsGet a car. The island is far bigger than it looks on a map and everything worth seeing is at a different end of it, so without one you will spend the whole time on buses. The east side is dunes and long empty beaches you walk in to, the north is flat and shallow enough to stand around in the water for an hour, and the lookout over the city is worth the climb for what the place actually looks like. Eat at the Mercado Público. Three days and I still did not see half of it.MaresiasDon't missTownsLong beach with the mountains standing right behind it and water warm enough to stay in until you are bored. Stayed at a friend's place on the sand with a pool and a lawn running down to it, which is the way to do this - the sunset from the grass with the palms in front of it was as good as anything on the beach itself. It is a few hours out of São Paulo, so treat it as a weekend rather than a day.Mercado Municipal de São PauloDon't missFood & drinkGo for the mortadella sandwich and do not pretend you are there for anything else. It is a genuinely stupid amount of meat in a bread roll, you will not want dinner, and it is famous for a reason. Eat it standing up at the counter upstairs where everyone else is, and get a pastel de bacalhau too if you can still move afterwards.Mirante do Pontal do AtalaiaDon't missViewpointsDrive up for the sunset and nothing else. The cliff faces the right way, the sun drops into the sea behind the islands, and you can see the whole coast from up there. It is ten minutes out of town and everyone has the same idea, so go early enough to park.OstradamusDon't missFood & drinkEveryone comes here for the oysters and I ended up ordering the seafood pan, which arrived still spitting - prawns, a scallop the size of the potatoes, white fish, all of it in the same dish. It is a drive out to Ribeirão da Ilha and worth booking before you go. Best meal of the whole trip and I am not sure it was close.Pão de AçúcarDon't missViewpointsGo up for sunset and then do not leave. Almost everyone rides the cable car back down as soon as the sun is gone, and the twenty minutes after that is the best part of it - the whole bay going navy, the boats still out on it, and Rio switching its lights on underneath you one district at a time. Buy the ticket for late afternoon so you get both, take something warm because it comes up off the water, and let the first two cable cars down go without you.Parque Olímpico do RioDon't missLandmarksI went for the Paralympics, which is not something you can go back and do. Sitting volleyball one evening and another session the next morning, both of them full, both of them louder than I expected, and the tickets cheap enough that you could just turn up and pick something. Walking around the park after dark with all of it lit up was worth an hour on its own. Whether the place is worth anything now that everyone has gone home I genuinely do not know.Praia BravaDon't missOutdoorsA walk over the headland from town and then nothing - white sand, turquoise water, and on the morning I went about six other people on the whole beach. The trail starts up by the road and drops down through the scrub, and it is worth doing slowly because the view along the coast on the way down is half of it. There is no kiosk, no shade and no anything, so take water. Easily the best hour I had in Arraial.Praia das ToninhasDon't missOutdoorsWhere I stayed in Ubatuba, and the evening I remember is not the beach at all - it is standing around the churrasqueira (barbecue) in the dark waiting for the meat to come off. Toninhas is a long curve with green hills coming right down to it and it is calm enough to swim without thinking about it, which after the surf beaches further up the coast is the appeal. Come out of season if you can. Ubatuba is a São Paulo weekend town and the whole road down fills up in summer and at New Year. Get the churrasco going before it gets dark.Praia do FarolDon't missOutdoorsYou can only get here by boat and that turns out to be the best part. The trip runs around Ilha do Farol under the granite, into the cave, past the lighthouse on top, and the water goes from deep navy to a turquoise I did not really believe until I was in it. The beach at the end is white sand and shallow and busy in the way a good beach is busy. Do not try to be clever about the boats, just take the one from Praia dos Anjos with everyone else.PrainhaDon't missOutdoorsWell out west of the city and worth the drive on its own - the coast road gets better the further you go and people keep stopping to look at it. The beach is small, in a horseshoe of green, with surf and a fraction of the crowd you get anywhere near Copacabana. Time it so you are driving back at sunset.São PauloDon't missTownsThe thing nobody prepares you for is the scale. From a window on the western side at night it is houses and streetlights to the horizon in every direction, and it keeps going long after you expect it to stop - and that is a suburb, not the middle. Flying out is the same story from above: you are over it for ages. It is not a beautiful city and it is not trying to be, but it is the one with the food, the markets and the best night out in the country, and I would rather have a few days here than an afternoon on the way somewhere else. Stay somewhere central for the walking, and go up something tall on a clear evening.São Roque de MinasDon't missTownsA small town that exists as the front door to Serra da Canastra, and worth staying in rather than passing through. The park is the reason - the big waterfall where the São Francisco comes off the top of the chapada (plateau), and then the chapada itself, which is grass, rock and sky for as far as you can see with nothing built on any of it. The best bit for me was not the famous waterfall but the stretches where the river runs flat over bare rock shelves and steps down in a dozen small falls at once. Take a car you do not mind rattling, fill up before you go in, and eat in town afterwards - I had a bowl of feijão with torresmo (pork crackling) that was exactly right after a day in the wind.Vista ChinesaDon't missViewpointsWent up the first afternoon and could not see the railing in front of me, the whole mountain was sitting inside a cloud. Went back the next day and it was the best view I got of the entire city - the lagoon, Ipanema and Leblon behind it, Dois Irmaos, the sea going on past all of it, and almost nobody else up there. If it is in cloud when you go, just go back another day. It is worth the second trip.BrotasWorth a stopTownsWent out for the waterfalls and got them at full volume and completely brown, which is what the rain does to that river in January rather than the clear green you see in everyone else's photographs. Still worth the trip, and the town is entirely set up for this sort of thing - rafting, abseiling, all of it. Ask what the river has been doing for the last week before you commit to anything on it.Catedral da SéWorth a stopLandmarksEnormous, neo-Gothic, with the palms lined up in front of it and the square always full of people. Ten minutes is enough unless you go inside, and you should - it is a lot cooler and a lot quieter in there than the front steps suggest. Worth folding into a morning in the centre rather than going out of your way for.Praia de IpanemaWorth a stopOutdoorsGrey and blowing the morning I got there and it had not put a single person off. Dois Irmaos at the end of the sand is the shot everyone comes for, and the beach works whatever the sky is doing - chairs, umbrellas, and someone offering you something every couple of minutes. Go, but you do not need to build a day around it.