Sep 29th, 2008 at 1:30PM: South America's destinations are hard to travel to. For people with samba fever outside of a few major hub cities (like Miami), a trip to Brazil means at least one connecting flight in the US. Anyone who plans to spend time outside of the major cities of Sao Paulo or Rio will have to catch another flight once they arrive in the metropolises. These extra flights can add up. Soon, it will be easier ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
brazil posts
Airlines Touting Brazil as New Hotspot
Sep 29th, 2008 at 1:30PM: South America's destinations are hard to travel to. For people with samba fever outside of a few major hub cities (like Miami), a trip to Brazil means at least one connecting flight in the US. Anyone who plans to spend time outside of the major cities of Sao Paulo or Rio will have to catch another flight once they arrive in the metropolises. These extra flights can add up. Soon, it will be easier ...Orlando Gets Closer to Brazil
Sep 2nd, 2008 at 1:00PM: In the past, most people flying from Orlando to Brazil, or most other country in South America for that matter, had to first catch a connecting flight to Miami. Therefore, the recent announcement by Brazil's top airline, TAM, was a welcome one. The airline will provide a direct flight from Orlando to Sao Paulo. Given major airlines' current aversion to adding new flights, this is big news, ...Talking travel with the notorious Thomas Kohnstamm
Jun 22nd, 2008 at 9:00AM: Thomas Kohnstamm is the author of this year's most talked about (i.e. controversial) travel memoir, Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?,The book centers around his recent days as a Lonely Planet writer on assignment in Brazil--shortly after its release earlier this year, press reports surfaced all around the world that he supposedly admitted to plagiarizing large chunks of his Lonely Planet write-ups ...New luxury train: The Great Brazil Express
Apr 16th, 2008 at 12:00PM: You know a service is for rich Western tourists when: in a non-English speaking country the name of the service is in English, the website is only in English and prices start at $3,500. Their video-promo has nice imagery but is full of clichés and sounds like a monologue for retards. Welcome to Brazil's first luxury train service: The Great Brazil Express. The website still lacks ...Drug lord's personal items on sale in Brazil
Apr 10th, 2008 at 1:30PM: Talk about a fun auction!
Brazilians have been flocking to an auction of goods confiscated from Colombian drug baron Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia, who was arrested in Sao Paulo last year and given a 30-year sentence last week. According to BBC, about 5000 people turned up for Tuesday's opening and 80% of the items had been sold within three hours.
As far as I know, no drugs were for sale, ...Outbreak of dengue hits Brazil
Apr 3rd, 2008 at 5:40PM: Seriously, are mosquitoes good for anything? I am a believer in the ecosystem and all that, but I could easily support a plan in which mosquitoes would be replaced with some nicer insects.
CNN reports today that Brazil has reported more than 55,000 cases of dengue, which can be a deadly mosquito-borne disease, in the past four months. Dengue has killed 67 people this year in Brazil's Rio de ...Brazilian busted for performing illegal plastic surgery
Mar 20th, 2008 at 12:00PM: Plastic surgery tourism has been thriving in many countries around the Globe, namely Brazil, Venezuela, Thailand, Hungary, Costa Rica, Czech Republic....really, anywhere healthcare is somewhat affordable.
A couple of months ago, Abha blogged about people going to Brazil both for the Carnival and for plastic surgery. Why go so far when you can get a Brazilian doctor perform one right in the comfort ...Yellow Fever: Vaccine Deaths and Outbreaks in South America
Feb 6th, 2008 at 7:00AM: Most travelers to Africa and South America have heard of Yellow Fever, even if only because there are countries within that have mandatory vaccinization requirements. People that live in these "Yellow Fever Zones" (an estimated 508 million in Africa alone) know this disease as a killer. This is also what is happening in Brazil.
ProMED mail, from the International Society of Infectious Disease, ...Sights Unseen
Dec 8th, 2007 at 12:59PM: Don't you just love when you seem to have hit the zeitgeist moment for a trip? We had been planning a trip that would take us through Rio when U.S. News & World Report ran its cover story on Sacred Places in the World with the Christ the Redeemer statue on the cover. Brazil trades as heavily (arguably, more so) on this iconic statue that literally lords over Rio's beachfront as it does on 'The ...Headed to Sao Paulo? Try The Pizza
Oct 2nd, 2007 at 11:34PM: Want a taste of traditional Brazilian food, something that you'll have trouble finding at home? You might be out of luck in Sao Paulo -- their signature dish is pizza, according to this article. In fact, July 10th is widely known as 'Pizza Day' in Sao Paulo -- a day when the citizens of South America's largest city pay homage to their favourite food by overdosing on cheese and dough and every ...Drivers Beware: The Most Dangerous Roads in the World
Aug 30th, 2007 at 8:07AM: Living near the Rocky Mountains, I thought I had some experience with dangerous roads. The ones I frequent twist and in turn around, over and under the huge, jagged mountains, through avalanche plains, with only a guardrail protecting your car from plummeting off a cliff's edge. It wasn't until I started travelling that I realized that the most dangerous road that I've encountered in Canada would ...Caipirinha Recipe
Aug 18th, 2007 at 6:14PM: I took a lot of guff in the comments section for my light-hearted examination of male-oriented libations. Seems some folks took me a little too seriously. But that's OK, at least we know you're reading. But this time around, I'll stray from making any kind of off-color or otherwise homo-phobic remarks as I bring you a post from sister-site Slashfood on the magic elixir that is the caipirinha. I ...World's Sexiest Beaches 2007
Jul 20th, 2007 at 12:38PM: Each year, our friends over at Concierge.com put out a list of the world's sexiest beaches, featuring the best places to "flirt with millionaires, lick the salt off a margarita glass, siesta in a hammock, and gaze at blood-orange sunsets night after night." If these don't make you wish you were somewhere else, you've either got your toes in the sand right now, or you're dead to the world. Here is ...Runway in Sao Paulo Too Short? Too Wet?
Jul 18th, 2007 at 12:15PM: Almost 200 passengers are suspected dead after the TAM airlines Airbus-320 (en route to Sao Paulo from Porto Alegre in southern Brazil) skidded on the rain-slicked runway in Sao Paulo and slammed into a gas station and TAM building yesterday, USA Today reports.
This is apparently the second major airline disaster in Brazil within a year. In September, 154 died when a Gol Aerolinhas Inteligentes SA ...Brazilian Fashion from Japan: The Jeankini
May 4th, 2007 at 2:30PM:
Yes, this is a real product. You can really buy it, if you want to. But why would you? Aside from serving no practical purpose, this jean-bikini hybrid available from "Brazil Fashion" store (located in, um, Japan) Sanna's for ¥ 9.240 (about $80 US), is proabably the trashiest piece of clothing I've ever seen. You can't even swim in them! [via cynicalc]
...Cape Verde: Rich in Heritage and Beauty
Mar 5th, 2007 at 10:40PM: Cape Verde, made up of 10 islands off the coast of West Africa, boasts the oldest European settlement in the tropics. I didn't know that. All I knew before I did some searching is that one of my Peace Corps friends went to Cape Verde on vacation once and sent me a post card of its beautiful mountains.
Unfortunately, the reason for Cidade Velha was the slave trade. Back in 1462, the place was ...
