Porto Bello and Santos, Brazil - 2/19 and 2/20

Porto Bello is a very nice seaside resort area with beautiful white sand beaches, restaurants and souvenir shops. We cancelled our scheduled tour after finding out that the tour was a 30 minute tender ride,  45 minute bus ride , 15 minute cable car ride, 30 minutes at a beach and then reverse the order back to the ship.  We took the tender to the town and walked the main street for an hour looking for an ATM and never found one so we returned to the ship in time for lunch.  Our ship seemed to be quite an attraction, we had a steady stream of tour boats, private power boats, sail boats and jet skis circling us all day.  One thing Tom learned while walking around the beach area is:  even though it is Brazil some women should not wear string bikinis.

Beach at Porto Bello

Tom studying the map of the town

The Mariner was a big attraction, some of the many boats that came around for a look

Santos is an old, major port city established around 1545 that is on an island.  We are here during Carnival and most businesses were closed.  There is a very long, wide beach area that is lined with high rise condos and apartments and being a holiday the beach was packed with thousands of  the local people. We saw quite a few of the Carnival parade floats being readied for the major parade that takes place tonight at about 11 pm.

One of the unfinished parade floats

Trading area of the coffee museum

Stained glass ceiling in coffee museum

Just one of the several trophy cases in soccer museum

Santos had served as the shipping and brokerage city for the Brazilian coffee industry so they have a coffee museum that is located in the building that had been used for the coffee trade.  It is a beautiful building and had nice displays.  There was a nice little cafe in the museum where we shared a piece of cake and Tom had an espresso after touring the building. Our next stop was the Santos soccer stadium which houses a museum featuring the local team's awards, trophies and photos.  Pele played for this team (and the national team) for many years and he still lives in the area.  Unfortunately we then visited the Santos aquarium.  The only one we have seen that is worse was the one in Key West.  Overall it was a nice visit in a city that is obviously becoming more prosperous.

We finally saw some penguins, unfortunately they were in an aquarium