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Stretching Your Dollar in Brazil
Photo © Michael Sommers.
This week, The New York Times’ Practical Traveler section published a timely piece entitled “How to Stretch Your Dollar in South America”. After praising how “hot” South America has become as a travel destination and how inexpensive it is compared to Europe, author Susan S
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Explosive New Tourist Attraction on an Alagoas Beach
Photo © Michael Sommers.
Wandering along the paradisiacal beaches of northern Alagoas – some of the most beautiful in Brazil – one expects to encounter sea shells, sand dollars, fallen coconuts – anything but explosive mines. However, this is precisely what construction workers in Maragogi, a form
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Fire and Rain in Chapada dos Guimarães
Photo © Michael Sommers.
It’s a strange sensation to knowingly set off on a journey into an area under siege by fire, but that’s precisely what my sister, Annie, and I did when we set off for Chapada dos Guimarães, from Cuiabá, the capital of Mato Grosso.
Actually, Chapada dos Guimarães, the forme
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Viva Dilma! Brazil's Optimistic Election
Sunday night, I put on a red t-shirt and went off to Rio Vermelho to meet my friends and “comemorar”. The occasion was historic: the election of Dilma Rousseff as Brazil’s first female president.
That “Dilma” (as everyone in Brazil already affectionately refers to her) is a member of the governing
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Eyes Peeled on the Transpantaneira
Photo © Michael Sommers.
In 1972, the Brazilian military government began concretizing its ambitious if foolhardy idea of building a highway that would cut right through the Brazilian Pantanal. Although pântano is Portuguese for swamp, the Pantanal – which boasts an area the size of Great Britain
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Jaguar Mania, Part 1
When you travel to the Pantanal, there’s a small chance that you might run into a tourist who claims their foremost desire is to catch sight of a giant anteater, a tapir, an anaconda, or a brilliant blue hyacinth macaw. Chances are they’re lying. Deep down, everyone who goes to the Pantanal yearns
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Jaguar Mania, Part 2
Photo © Michael Sommers.
At the Jaguar Ecological Reserve, my sister, Annie, and I spent our first night listening to tables full of travelers buzzing about jaguars during dinner. A group of gringos and their guide, who had spent the day at nearby Porto Jofre, passed around a digital camera with f
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Birds of a Feather in the Pantanal
Photo © Michael Sommers.
I’ve never been into birds and never understood what the big deal was until I went to the Pantanal. That’s because in the Pantanal the birds are BIG – some of them even bigger than me! They are also colorful – and absolutely everywhere.
Among birders, the Pantanal is known
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In Praise of Brazilian Buffets
Photo © Michael Sommers.
After having spent the summer traveling across the American continent, from Brazil to Brooklyn – and blogging about the experience for The New York Times’ travel section – Frugal Traveler Seth Kugel was back in his adopted hometown of São Paulo last week where he wrote an
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Showdown in Rio’s Favelas
View of Favéla do Prazères from Santa Térésa HIll. Photo © dany13, licensed Creative Commons Attribution.
This week, eyes all over Brazil are upon Rio de Janeiro where a showdown of cinematic proportions is occurring between police and military forces and the drug trafficking gangs that for y
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Rituals in Red: The Festa de Santa Bárbara
Photo © Michael Sommers.
Last Saturday morning I donned a pair of white shorts, a blood-red t-shirt, white sneakers, and my trusty red Buff bandana (with High UV protection) and made my annual pilgrimage to the Pelourinho, Salvador’s colonial district, for the Festa de Santa Bárbara.
The Festa de
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Brazil Airports: Too Many Passengers, Too Few Terminals
Photo © Michael Sommers.
In a blog piece I posted a few months ago, I waxed enthusiastic about the general joys of flying in Brazil and discussed the fact that due to a booming economy, and the trickle-down effect on consumers, more Brazilians are flying than ever before.
It turns out that nobody
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Réveillon Traditions: Starting off the New Year White
Some years ago, I traveled to North America in December and ended up ringing in the New Year in New York City. At the time, I had already been living in Brazil for a few years and when I was invited to a New Year’s dinner party given by an old friend, I was mildly horrified when I turned up (in tr
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Enjoying the Little Things as a Travel Writer
Photo © Michael Sommers.
As a travel writer, you end up experiencing a wide range of lodgings, ranging from flea bag to palatial. While amenities and creature comforts are certainly welcome, for me – and for many others I’m sure – the aspects that inevitably leave their mark tattooed into one’s al
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More Rain and More Flooding in Brazil
Funny how time flies when you’re having floods.
I can’t believe that not even a year has passed since I posted about the disastrous rainstorms that wreaked havoc on Rio de Janeiro last April, with flooding and mudslides that killed hundreds and left thousands more bereft, their homes destroyed and
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Introducing Dzi Croquettes
Over the last decade, Brazil’s small but robust film segment has created a culturally significant and surprisingly profitable niche by churning out a number of full-feature documentaries that rescue and pay homage to some of the most important musical figures of the 20th century. Recent stand-out
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Burn-Free in Brazil: It’s All in the Application
Having grown up in Canada, I’ll never forget the sensation of those first days of summer (May? June?) when it was finally warm enough to don a t-shirt and shorts. The discovery of my body after months of bulky layers was inevitably somewhat of a shock – the bleached, sickly pallor of my skin alwa
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Visiting Arembepe in Bahia, Brazil
Head a bit outside the town of Arembepe itself for more pristine beaches. Photo © Ben Tavener, licensed Creative Commons Attribution.
Only 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Salvador, this fishing village was a hippie haven in the 1960s. In fact, the actual “hippie village”—consisting of ingeniousl
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Carnaval Dreams Go Up in Smoke
Not the Rose Bowl Parade, not Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, not even Cher in Las Vegas come within a fraction of the fabulous spectacle that is the desfile (parade) of Rio de Janeiro’s traditional escolas de samba (samba schools) during Carnaval.
Every year, the top 12 schools that make up the G
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Waste Land: Turning Garbage into Gold
A Vik Muniz print on display in front of the St. Charles train station in Marseille. Photo © Jeanne Menj, licensed Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivatives.
Earlier this week, I went with a friend of mine to see Waste Land, a fascinating documentary that won the World Cinema Audience Award
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