Brazil Travel Blog

On our last trip from Congonhas airport, in São Paulo, we were lucky enough to take off on the direction of the Moema neighbourhood, where a high concentration of high-rises is found. On the approach route, we also went through the same neighbourhood. With my compact digital camera I shot two videos of both the take-off and the landing stages. As you will be able to tell, the aircraft shook quite a bit - it was cloudy and with gusts of wind.

Bear in mind Congonhas airport is a bit of an anomaly. An incredibly busy airport bang in the middle of a heavily built city, as you will be able to see on the satellite image:

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The first video shows the first seconds after taking-off from Congonhas on a north-west direction (depending on the time of the day the video might take a while to load; load it first, watch it then):

despegando de Congonhas from tony galvez on Vimeo.

The second video shows the final approach to Congonhas, when it feels as if the airplane wing could be touching at any moment the roofs of the skyscrappers.

aterrizando en Congonhas from tony galvez on Vimeo.

This is the second video from the deviajeabrasil.com collection.

It’s longer than the previous one (5 minutes) as it portrays a Brazilian festival that is hardly known outside Brazil and even inside the Brazilian boundaries. I’m talking about the festas juninas -very popular all throughout Brazil- they way they are lived in São Luís, capital of the state of Maranhão. The video presents three different folk displays:

• the tambor de crioula, an Afro-Brazilian dance practiced mainly by descendents of African slaves. Three drums, each one with a specific function, dictate the rhythm.
• the quadrilha, a dance of English origin, present in the festas juninas of all Brazil.
• and the bumba-meu-boi, of which I gave quite a lot of information a couple of days ago here.

The soundtrack for each of the three blocks corresponds to the music played during the events.

You can watch the video on the YouTube screen provided below. This time I haven’t been able to make a high-resolution version available, as the file is too big and I haven’t found a provider that will host the file for free. A pity as the version hosted by YouTube leaves quite a lot to be desired in terms of quality.It is an audiovisual presentation, so make sure your computer speakers are on! Hope you enjoy it.

I am beginning to publish today a series of videos on Brazilian destinations. I am producing the short presentations (less than 3 minutes) under the deviajeabrasil.com name - the Spanish branch of this blog. The video that inaugurates the collection is about the Zu Lai Buddhist temple in Cotia, near São Paulo. An unlikely Brazilian gem.

You can either watch the video on the YouTube screen provided below or download a high-resolution version of the presentation from de viaje a Brasil/videos.

It is an audiovisual presentation, so make sure your computer speakers are on! Hope you enjoy it.