The Brazil election result was announced the day before we were due to dock at Porto Belo. The result was 50.9% for Lula (far left) and 49.1% for Bolsenaro (far right and the incumbant). The result was that Bolsenaro refused to concede, riots were started by his supporters who claimed electoral fraud, and road were cut with road blocks of burning tyres. After taking advice from local agents, Silversea decided that it was best to avoid Porto Belo - a Lula stronghold that had been cut off from the rest of Brazil by some 50 road blocks.
Instead we were to go to a nearby city - Balneario-Camboriu. Not a name that rolls off the tongue, and I still cannot pronounce it. Its advantage was that it was a Balneario stronghold and would nat be subject to demonstrations - though we did we Balneario supporters gathering in the city centre. Anyway I think we were all flabbergasted by what we saw when we arrived offshore. It was a city of the same architecture as Benidorm, but several times larger,
Nobody knows for sure what the city's name means, but the most acceptable explanation, according to the city's archives, is "River filled with Snook (Robalo)", which is a very common type of fish in this region. The city also has a statue similar to the Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, called Cristo Luz. Another common sight in the city are paragliders over the beach, alongside the tall buildings, from the gliderport in nearby Praia dos Amores, located 1 km ) to the north of the city - this is where our walk took us, but thee were no paragliders the day we were there.
We signed up for a walk described as "easy" but turned out to be more in the vein of "difficult" . It was a not too difficult, but energetic, hike up a road to a high viewpoint. The the fun began on the steep descent via unstable sand steps to a beach. When we got there the beach turned out to be cut off by the tide. There were only two ways out - either wade through crashing breakers to round a high rocky promontory, or climb up and over the same high rock promontory. I probably made the wrong call in opting to climb rather than wade, and Chris had extreme difficultly in doing the up and over the rocks, even with the additional help of two of the expedition staff
After a lot of huffing and puffing the beach on the other side was reached, and it was a straight forward walk back to the bus
Click on any thumbnail photo and get a larger photo
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |