Brazil Travel Blog

Finding out what’s the time difference on a given moment between, say, New York and Rio de Janeiro is not that difficult. But to be able to tell the time difference for each region of Brazil throughout the year is no easy job. Brazil has several time zones and, to make matters worse, some regions of the country do not have a summer time - others do.

Instead of trying to make sense out of the different time zones, I’m going to leave here a series of links to Worldtimeserver.com, pages that will show you the exact time at the time of opening the page in all the Brazilian states. You just have to click on “the current time in… is”. In brackets, the capital of the sate:

- Acre (Rio Branco)
- Alagoas (Maceió)
- Amapá (Macapá)
- Amazonas (Manaus)
- Bahia (Salvador)
- Ceará (Fortaleza)
- Distrito Federal (Brasilia)
- Espirito Santo (Vitoria)
- Goias (Goiania)
- Maranhão (São Luís)
- Mato Grosso (Cuiabá)
- Mato Grosso do Sul (Campo Grande)
- Minas Gerais (Belo Horizonte)
- Paraiba (João Pessoa)
- Parana (Curitiba)
- Pernambuco (Recife)
- Piaui (Teresina)
- Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro)
- Rio Grande do Norte (Natal)
- Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre)
- Rondônia (Porto Velho)
- Roraima (Boa Vista)
- Santa Catarina (Floriánopolis)
- São Paulo (São Paulo)
- Sergipe (Aracaju)
- Tocantins (Palmas)

The state of Pará has two different time zones, for the eastern and western areas of the state:
- Para (Belém)
- Para (Santarém)

The island of Fernando de Noronha, in the state of Pernambuco, has its own time zone:
- Fernando de Noronha

The Brazilian government’s agency responsible for fuel, the Agência Nacional do Petróleo, Gás Natural e Biocombustíveis better known as ANP, has a useful tool on its website where you can look up the average prices for fuel all throughout the Brazilian territory: Levantamento de preços.

[As usual on the websites of a government that calls itself champion of free software, the page does not work in Firefox]

It is quite simple to use. You need to indicate the period of time (Selecione o mês, usually the current month), the geographical area (Brasil, Regiões, Estados, Municipios) and the type of fuel (gasolina [petrol/gas], álcool [ethanol], diésel, LNG or LGP). Click on Processar to get your results.

The results page is simpler than it looks. The column that interests you is the one with the title Preço médio (average price). Happy look-ups!

Two pages with tide charts for a sizeable number of places along the Brazilian coast:

Tablas de mareas (aondefica.com) and Portal Oceánico. Here, search for the Tábua de Marés section on the bottom-left-hand side of the page.

Very useful for those intending to dive, surf or any other type of activity involving the sea.

What’s the distance between…? How far are…? Many end up here on this blog looking for an answer to questions like these ones. I want to introduce to you today a tool that will allow you to find that information effortessly on your own.

Three months ago I wrote about the new features introduced by Google for their Google Maps: My Maps!

And now the relentless flow of ideas from the Google factory brings us a new feature. We can add interactive content to our very own GoogleMaps page. While not essential, having a Google account is a good idea, as it allows to keep all changes made to your pages for future return visits.

We are going to add a distance measurement tool to our Google Maps. For that, you need to access Google Maps, and on the Results/My maps tab (Resultados/Mis mapas in Spanish), on the left hand side of the screen, click on My Maps:

[the default language on my Google account is Spanish, and all the screenshots are in that language. I'm providing translations for all the steps]

Next, choose Add content (Añadir contenido in Spanish):

You will be presented with an extense list of all sorts of tools you can add to Google Maps. The one we are after is called Distance Measurement Tool. Once you find it, click on Add to Maps. On the message window that will pop up, click on yes.

On the left sidebar of your page you will now find a line with the title Distance Measurement Tool:

Tick the box before the title to active it, and off you go!

The tool allows you not only to calculate the distance between two points, but also to calculate a path containing several points. For that, you only have to keep adding points to your map, you will see right away how the distance is being updated as you add more points.

Last week I wrote an entry on the Brazilian National parks and today I’d like to share with you an interesting - albeit limited - resource I’ve just come across.

It’s a series of brochures edited by Philips in partnership with the Brazilian publisher Horizonte Geográfico. The series is very small, in Portuguese, but it’s worth knowing about its existence. The following brochures are available:

• Parques Nacionais do Brasil
• Parque Nacional de Aparados da Serra
• Parque Nacional do Caparaó
• Parque Nacional da Chapada Diamantina
• Parque Nacional da Chapada dos Veadeiros
• Parque Nacional do Itatiaia
• Parque Nacional Marinho dos Abrolhos
• Parque Nacional da Serra da Capivara
• Parque Nacional de Ubajara

The PDFs are available for download at the site Sustentabilidade Philips. The list of brochures is found on the bottom part of the middle column.

At the website of the publisher Horizonte Geográfico you will also find a brochure for Fernando de Noronha. It is found under the Folders heading, on the bottom part of the middle column.

If Brazil as a whole is not that well served in terms of tourist information (concentrated in the sub-standard page mantained by Embratur), the same thing can’t be said of São Paulo, that has two excellent institutional pages full of information.

The first one is Cidade de São Paulo, mantained by the local authority, and with a version in English. A basic entry point for anyone searching for information on the Brazilian megalopolis. It includes a section with aerial photographs, for those who enjoy that kind of images, and of panoramic photographs as well. As well as a wealth of information organized in different categories, the page includes a download section where tourist can download leaflets in PDF format, including the lovely guide “São Paulo, fique mais um día”.

The second site is Visite São Paulo, with a version in English as well - a page run by a non-profit foundation, São Paulo Convention & Visitors Bureau. In the section 3D Virtual Tour there are some interactive 360 panoramas of different parts of the city.

Two excellent resources for anyone looking for information on São Paulo.

This is a first of a regular round-up of the most interesting material published in a few Brazilian travel blogs. Do bear in mind that the links point at blogs in Portuguese written for a Brazilian readership. For reasons of quality and interest, I’m going to focus on Ricardo Freire’s Viaje na Viagem and Rodrigo Purisch’s Aquela Passagem, blogs I wrote about here.

During the last few weeks, Ricardo Freire has published posts with information on a handulf of interesting destinations:

• a trip from São Luís to Fortaleza, going through the Lençóis Maranhenses and Jericoacoara
• information on the Praia dos Carneiros, in Pernambuco
• the rota ecológica between Pernambuco and Alagoas
• from Salvador to Boipeba
• from Ilhéus to Boipeba
• Corumbau

As for Rodrigo Purisch, he’s brought us the following interesting stuff:

• Star Alliance announces its tariffs for round-the-world trips leaving from Brazil
  
• partnership agreement between TAM and LAN
• short news: OceanAir will fly to Mexico, LAN to Rio de Janeiro, and Aerolíneas Argentinas to the U.S. and Europe from Brazil
• Varig promotion to fly between Río and São Paulo during the Corpus Christ bank holiday (June 8 and 9) for R$75 each way.

A good while ago I mentioned on this blog the website of the ANTT (a Brazilian government body) with information on Brazilian bus companies and the routes they operate. A very useful page though quite hard to explore - I’ve mentioned several times that top-notch information is not seen in Brazil as a priority when it comes to helping tourists.

Today I want to mention an equally interesting resource, the page of Socicam. If you get over the inital shock (the design of the site is dead ugly) you will be rewarded with some useful information. Socicam is a company that runs several bus stations in Brazil and its site contains information on the bus routes operating from those stations. This is the list of bus stations run by Socicam: Angra dos Reis (Rio de Janeiro), Aracajú (Sergipe), Fortaleza (Ceará), Guarujá (São Paulo), Mogi das Cruzes (São Paulo), Niteroi (Rio de Janeiro), Poços de Caldas (Minas Gerais), Ribeirão Preto (São Paulo), Río de Janeiro, São Carlos (São Paulo), São João da Boa Vista (São Paulo), São José dos Campos (São Paulo) and the three bus stations in São Paulo (Barra Funda, Jabaquara and Terminal Tietê).

For as long as your starting point is one of those bus stations, your search will be succesful - your destination doesn’t need to feature on the list. For instance, you will find information on the São Paulo - Florianópolis route although the Florianópolis bus station is not run by Socicam.

To search for a route, choose Consulta de partidas de ônibus on the left sidebar. Choose your starting point from the Cidade de origem pop-down menu, and your destination from the Cidade - UF de destino menu. Quite straightforward, specially if you compare it with the ordeal that a consultation on the ANTT site is. If you are lucky, your search results will show the webpage and contact details of the company operating the route you were searching for.

Unlike the ANTT site, Socicam only informs the details of the companies, no information on timetables or prices to be found here.

Many of you will have realized that, when it comes to blogs on travel and Brazil, the blogosphere is wanting in interesting material. That’s why today I want to mention two Brazilian travel blogs that have consistently managed to offer useful information to its readers. Two blogs written by Brazilians for a Brazilian readership. For those that read Portuguese, here are the links.

The first blog is Ricardo Freire’s Viaje Na Viagem, who was mentioned in this blog when I wrote about his Beach Guide. Ricardo is one of the best known and more respected Brazilian travel journalists, and his blog reaches a wide and loyal audience. In his blog, he deals both with international and local destinations. The Brazilian content of his blog is invaluable. As a result of a close collaboration between Ricardo and his readers, a vast amount of information on Brazil is published every day.

The weakest side of the blog is the non-retrievability of information - this is a weakness that needs to be addressed sooner than later. Most of the information is found in the form of comments; the blog has become a kind of unestructured travel forum. Can you imagine a travel forum with no structure whatsoever? Without even a label identifying the subjects being discussed? An entry on his blog can be about Italy. But the comments can soon turn to a debate on a wonderful pousada in Pernambuco to switch shortly after to the latest fare promotion by TAM. This poor information management turns the invaluable information of the blog into a disposable affair. If you don’t read a comment the day it’s published, you will never find it. There are days with a hundred comments on the blog. My suggestion would be to consider seriously the setting up of a travel forum for the large and active group of followers of the blog. On a forum the information would be much easier to find. I don’t know whether if I’m acting as if I were still at work, but in the field of lexicography the most modern trends seek to ease the way dictionaries are consulted. To the point where ease of access sometimes comes even before content. What’s the use of the best content in the world if the reader can’t reach it?

To ease the life of readers of my blog, I will publish a regular summary with the most outstanding finds both in Ricardo’s blog and in the second Brazilian blog I will be reviewing today. The second effort is Rodrigo Purisch’s Aquela Passagem!, a blog focused on airlines and airfares. If you want to find out about the latest airline promotion, turn to Rodrigo’s blog, the information will certainly be there. As well as information on promotions, fares and new routes, Rodrigo has made a commendable effort putting together a series of invaluable blog entries explaining to lay readers all about tickets, fares, consolidators, alliances and other similar stuff. Rodrigo has done a brilliant work on a subject that couldn’t be of more interest to the traveller: how to find the cheapest fare.

I’d like to thank Ricardo and Rodrigo from these lines for the work they are developing on their blogs. Like I said, from now on you will hear about their whereabouts in this blog.

It doesn’t trouble me the slightest bit to publicize the existence of a website that covers a similar ground to the Brazil Travel Blog.

I am talking about Backpacking Brazil, an excellent resource for all things Brazilian, the work of Gavin Raper, a well-travelled Aussie. Gavin’s endeavour is not a blog, though.

In this age of the copy-and-paste style of blogging there are information pages on Brazil aplenty. Pages with original, reliable and independent information, and with an acute awareness of what is likely to be of interest of visitors are much rarer to find. Gavin’s Backpacking Brazil is one of them. Go find out!