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Hidden Gems of South America

By Witt Sparks on May 23, 2016

Sometimes travel is all about expectations. If you go somewhere because travel websites or guidebooks talked it up and you’re expecting amazement, beware – it may not be all you’ve built it up to be!

Here are some places that for us were just the opposite – we stumbled on them because we happened to be nearby or someone mentioned them to us in passing. You probably wouldn’t fly all the way from North America or Europe to visit some of these spots, but if you’re in the area they’re worth a detour!

Salinas, Ecuador

If you Google Salinas, Ecuador, you’ll get images of a seaside resort city billed as the “ultimate retirement destination.” I’m sure it’s nice there, but that’s not the place that I’m talking about. Search instead for “Salinas de Bolivar” or “Salinas de Guaranda” and you’ll find a tiny hamlet nestled in the highlands of Central Ecuador.

Many of the locals here work in cooperatives making cheese, chocolate, and salami. There are no campgrounds in town, so we camped in the parking lot of the cheese factory, and the next morning saw the farmers from the surrounding countryside delivering milk jugs strapped to donkeys and llamas. The factory offered a variety of yummy European-style cheeses. Some have even dubbed this town “The Cheese Capitol of Ecuador“.

Morning milk delivery

Chocolate is also made in Salinas, and we stocked up on several bars of dark chocolate for about half the normal price.

Instead of going back the way we came, we continued on the dirt road as it climbed higher into the Andes, eventually crossing Highway 491 to enter Chimborazo National Park. This was a pretty drive, even though it was an overcast day. On a clear day the views of the volcano would be spectacular.

Villa de Leyva, Colombia

Located a few hours from Bogota, Villa de Leyva is a popular weekend destination for people from that city. With a sunny, cool high altitude climate and lots of nearby attractions including hiking in a nearby national park, mountain biking the back roads of the valley, and several cultural and paleontology attractions, Villa de Leyva is a great place to unwind for a day or a month.

Villa de Leyva is set in a rural valley, surrounded by mountains with great hiking as well as cultural attractions.

The Salt Cathedral — Zipaquirá, Colombia

This mine has been actively exploited since pre-Columbian times, and is still in production today using modern automated techniques to extract salt from the underground rock structure. In colonial times the work was done using traditional methods, and miners began carving altars and crosses out of the rock to help increase their likelihood of surviving this dangerous occupation.

Over time these carvings became more and more elaborate, and eventually evolved into the tourist attraction that it is today. The underground setting is spectacular, and the lighting makes the whole thing a stunning underground tour.

The cross in the background is 170 feet high.

Colonia, Uruguay

Just across the river from Buenos Aires, Uruguay is like a diamond in the rough. High fuel prices and an apparent relative lack of corruption mean the highway quality is consistently top-notch.

The town of Colonia is a great place to visit for a day or two. A well-preserved walled city in the center features shady, cobbled streets, waterfront restaurants and lots of museums. It’s the kind of place that invites an afternoon of strolling the streets taking in the sights and wondering at the inexplicable derelict cars from the fifties and sixties that dot the roadways.

The streets of Colonia feature sidewalk restaurants, shade trees, and classic cars

Urubici, Brazil

We spent a few rainy days here, and enjoyed ourselves none the less. Located in the highlands, this region is one of the few parts of Brazil that receives snow in winter, and people visit here just to have a one-in-a-lifetime chance of seeing the white stuff, even if it is just an inch or two of heavy wet snow.

Even if folks from the US, Canada, and Europe might scoff at the snow, Urubici is still worth visiting for its great hiking in beautiful scenery.

This overlook is near the highest point in Brazil. It was foggy and overcast, but beautiful nonetheless.

San Martin de Los Andes, Argentina

This was one of those places that just felt like home to us. Located in the mountains of Central Patagonia along the Argentina’s famous Ruta 40, San Martin, according to locals, is what Bariloche was 30 years ago.

With a ski area nearby, hiking trails, and judging by the number of bikes for sale, lots of mountain biking, San Martin would be on our short list of places to visit again.

With mountain biking and skiing, San Martin felt just like home.

The Carretera Austral, Chile

Stretching 770 miles through rural Patagonia, this mostly unpaved route passes through some of the most picturesque scenery found anywhere. The area is remote and very sparsely populated with farmers and ranchers who must be largely self-sufficient due to the long travel times in the area. There are fantastic camping opportunities everywhere, and numerous hikes access alpine lakes and glaciers.

The area is also known for as a world-class fly fishing destination, and an handful of high-end lodges cater to foreigners on fishing holidays.

If you go, budget at least 10 days to explore this amazing region!

Between the rough roads and the nonstop photo opportunities, progress was slow, but it gave us time to enjoy the amazing scenery.

Trinidade Beach, Brazil

We originally planned this as a one or two night stopover, but between the beautiful beach and enjoying time with our friends from Adventure Trio, it quickly stretched into four days.

We believe that this section of Brazil’s coastline is littered with many more beautiful beaches, but we couldn’t pull ourselves away from this one to find out for sure.

One afternoon we walked to a restaurant and enjoyed a 3 hour meal with our toes in the sand.

Casa Nacional de la Moneda — Potosí, Bolivia

Potosí has been a silver mining town for hundreds of years, and it’s said that enough silver was pulled out of the mountain there to build a silver bridge all the way to Spain. Coins minted at the Potosí mint found their way to all corners of the globe.

Today co-op miners still risk their lives to pull out enough ore to support their families, but the mine’s heyday is long past. One of the best museums that we visited in South America pays tribute to that heritage. Located in the building that formerly housed the mint, the giant mule-driven silver pressing machines can still be seen. An excellent guided tour explained the regions history in detail.

This museum makes a trip to the otherwise somewhat bleak town of Potosi worthwhile.

This complex wooden gearing is a mule-driven press dating back 250 years. It’s still in the same location as when it was constructed.

Parque Cretácico (Dinosaur Park) — Sucre, Bolivia

Sucre, just a few hours from Potosi, is a much nicer place to spend time. It’s the constitutional capital of Bolivia (La Paz is home to most government administrative functions) and is the source of most of the political activism in the country. With a sunny climate and markets featuring a variety of fresh foods, Sucre is a good place to relax for a few days.

Dinosaur footprints were discovered during excavation at a local cement factory just outside the city, and a museum was built to showcase this amazing find. The story goes that roughly 70 million years ago, a flat muddy plain was traversed by all types of dinosaurs, including the gigantic brontosaurus. As layers of mud covered previous tracks, new tracks were laid over the old ones. Eventually geological forces folded this plain, and today visitors can stand at the bottom of a 300 foot high vertical wall and visualize dinosaurs walking across the ancient mud flat.

This is the rock face where the footprints are. Imagine this as a mud plain 70 million years ago with dinosaurs walking across it. Then through geological movements it was crushed into a V shape. There’s no telling how far down it goes, and the other half exists somewhere nearby.

This entry is filed under Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador. | 1 Comment

The Best of South America

By Witt Sparks on April 17, 2016

This post was prompted by someone filling out the contact form on our website. It always makes us feel good when we hear that other people find our travels interesting, especially those planning their own trips!

So without further ado, these are some of the highlights of our travels in South America

Galapagos Islands

Wildlife so thick they have to stack it.

Investigating whale bones

Yes, it was a lot of money (about three months worth of our normal budget) but it was so cool. I’ve never been anywhere before that you had to be careful where you walk because you might accidentally step on the wildlife. From arid moonscapes of hardened lava covering entire islands to lush, cloud covered volcanic peaks, the archipelago is justifiably famous.

We lived aboard a smaller tour boat with about 10 other guests for a week. It was great to relax and not have to worry about shopping and cooking for a little while, and the tours on the islands were varied and educational.

Quinn enjoyed a week out of the van, and the other guests on the trip were very friendly and welcoming toward him. It’s definitely a part of the trip we’ll always remember fondly!

Traveling with Friends

Time with friends and family is precious

Long term travel can be lonely at times, even for a family. We treasured the times we were able to spend time with new friends, meet up with old friends, and especially when our families made the extra effort to join us for a part of our journey.

Patagonia

We weren’t the only ones enjoying the views.

Being from Colorado, we love the outdoors. We’re most at home in the mountains, hiking, biking, or just soaking the alpine sun and fresh air. You’d think that when the time comes to take a vacation, we’d want to do something we can’t do at home – go to the beach or experience city life. On the contrary, some of our most enjoyable vacations have been when we travel somewhere to be in the mountains.

It’s no surprise, then, that we loved Patagonia. With another beautiful lakeside camping spot around every turn and small mountain villages that made us want to rent a house and move in, Central Patagonia reminded us of home. And perhaps that’s what we needed after two years away.

Peninsula Valdez, Argentina

Another sunset from our campsite.

One of the best things about overlanding is the ability to camp in remote places – you never have to get back to your hotel at the end of the day because your hotel is with you all the time. And some of the best places are wild camps. Just find a level spot on the beach and call it home for the night. Or for the week.

Peninsula Valdez is one of our favorite such spots. Somewhat remote and desolate, its numerous sheltered bays serve as home to mother whales and the calves while the babies are taught how to be whales. We spent four fantastic days camping on a beach on the peninsula. We played in the rocks, went for walks on the beach, and yes, watched the whales.

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

With the cold air and the white salt, you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for an actic landscape.

With the cold air and the white salt, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for an arctic landscape.

“Like nowhere else on Earth.” That’s the official tagline for a destination I’ve heard advertised on TV. But that’s exactly what comes to mind when you experience the world’s largest salt flat. Let your 7 year old drive? Sure. Leave your car in gear and jump out to walk alongside it? No problem. Get a 4 ton van up to 85mph? Yep – It’s the smoothest, flattest surfaced we’d driven on in months.

When the sun begins to dip below the horizon, the cold bites at your nose, and all you can see for miles is salt plus the occasional hill rising from the plain the scene looks like nothing so much as a frozen lake with islands in it. Bundle up in your down and walk out onto the salt to marvel at the bright red sunset, then retreat into to your cozy sleeping bag. It’s a harsh, yet spectacular environment.

Rio de Janero, Brazil

The view from the top of Sugarloaf Mountain makes it obvious why Rio is considered one of the world’s most beautiful cities.

Set on Brazil’s coastline and justifiably famous for it’s amazing beaches and backed by thousand foot jungle-clad cliffs, Rio is stunning. Views abound from the many lookouts including the famous Christ the Redeemer statue and Sugarloaf Mountain. On the subway it’s common to see people clad in business attire alongside beach-bound surfers. Topped off by a wide variety of international food and yet maintaining it’s laid-back atmosphere, Rio should be on every traveler’s hit list.

Iguazu Falls, Brazil/Argentina

$This is a small fraction of the falls.$

This is a small fraction of the falls.

Off the beaten path it is certainly not, but there’s a reason why Iguazu is considered one of South America’s biggest tourist attractions. It’s not one single waterfall, it’s thousands of them covering a huge area. We spent two days there – one on the Argentina side and one on the Brazil side. Sure it was crowded and touristy, but we’re very happy to have seen this natural wonder for ourselves.

Cheap Wine

Aging at Domaine Bousquet

Last but certainly not least is the abundance of cheap wine in Chile and Argentina. Sold in the grocery stores everywhere, we quickly got used to a new price scale. Everyday bottle of good, drinkable wine? Less than $5. Want to splurge on a nice bottle of reserve malbec? $7-8. We visited the Domaine Bousquet vineyard outside of Mendoza and bought their grand reserve for about $10 per bottle after the case discount. We looked it up online while we were there, and a those bottles go for $24 in the States. I was at a liquor store this afternoon and bought an Argentinean bottle on sale for $12 that I paid $3.50 for there. Sigh. Enjoy it while you are there!

Jen and I discussed this post for awhile over dinner this evening and we agree that “best of” memories are very dependent on the situation. A ho-hum place can yield a great experience just by meeting a bunch of really cool people and having a good time together. A place that gets five stars on trip advisor might be the worst experience of the trip if you happen to get ripped off there.

We also, of course, came up with some great experiences that I missed here, including some specific museums and other places we visited. Stay tuned – that will be the subject of an upcoming post!

A big thank you to all of our readers, and especially to Diana who is planning her own trip and was the inspiration for this post! If you have a topic you’d like to see covered here, please let us know in the comments.

This entry is filed under Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador.

Five Things We Loved About Brazil

By Witt on October 10, 2015

Come to Brazil, my son!

It seems like many PanAmerican overland travelers skip Brazil. We get this impression both from reading others’ blogs and by the number of locals there who were very surprised to see a non-South-American registered car in Brazil. (In fact, many people surprisingly guessed that we were from Argentina!)

When we were staying with our friends Rob and Grace in Atibaia (which is just north of São Paulo), we discussed this and wondered why this was the case. Brazil has a reputation for being an expensive country to visit, and while it does charge a reciprocity fee for some nationalities (similar to that charged by Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay), with current exchange rates, day-to-day expenses are similar to the rest of Latin America. The other big reason is probably timing and logistics. For many travelers, Ushuaia is the logical goal for the trip, and with good reason. Being able to see the amazing scenery there in person and making it to the “other end” of the Americas is a worthy goal.

Because our work obligations slowed our pace of travel significantly, we missed our first window to arrive in Patagonia during the summer. Since we had friends in Brazil, we were planning to go there anyway, and the beaches of Brazil seemed a better place to spend the Austral Winter than in the snowy Andean highlands.

In the end we have decided not to visit southern Patagonia on this trip. Had we not seen this area before, I’m sure this would have been a painful decision. But instead we got to see at least some of the amazing country of Brazil. We’re not saying future travelers should skip Patagonia in favor of Brazil – but they should extend their trip and see both!

Here are five things we loved about Brazil.

The Beaches

Trinidade Beach

Brazil is famous for its beaches, and after having sampled a very small number of them we are fortunate to understand why. And, according to our Brazilian friends, the coastline to the North and East of Rio de Janiero are just as spectacular and even less crowded than ones we saw between Rio and São Paulo.

The Culture

Fun at a Beto Carrero World

Brazil is culturally very distinct from the rest of Latin America. The language is the most obvious distinction, but the differences go deeper than that. Towns don’t necessarily have a central plaza (though many do) and the churches aren’t all cut from the Spanish-influenced mold. Brazil has a thriving middle class, and for the most part you don’t see the strong class divide separating tourists from locals. You’ll share caipirinhas on the beach with Brazilians, not other foreign travelers.

The Food

Enjoying a typical Brazilian Saturday lunch buffet

While I have to say that Brazilian food still comes in second to Mexican as the favorite of our trip, it is a type of cooking all it’s own. In Brazil the buffet is king, and it’s good. We adopted the habit of having our lunches at the buffets offered at roadside gas stations – no kidding. It might not be fancy cuisine, but the good ones featured a wide selection of tasty salads, veggie side dishes and desserts in addition to the ubiquitous rodizio, with the guy behind the grill serving up delicious meats.

Rio!

Rio at sunset, from the Pão de Açucar

From its geographical setting on a beautiful bay beneath the jungle-clad coastal mountain range to its amazing beaches and cosmopolitan sophistication, Rio de Janiero should be on every traveler’s must-see list. The vibe in Rio is unique from that of other major world cities and it has to be experienced to truly understand. Where else can you find people in beach attire riding the subway at the same time as well-heeled business people?

So Much to See

One of the roads descending from the highlands through the canyon to the coast

Brazil is a huge country, and in the six weeks we spent traveling there, we saw the southern third of it, from the wildlife in the Pantanal to a couple of busy days in Rio to the best microbrew beer outside the US in the southern regions made by European immigrants. With another few months, it would be great to explore the wild northern coastline and the Amazon region.

Birdlife in the Pantanal

This entry is filed under Brazil. | 2 Comments

Heading Down the Atlantic Coast of South America

By Witt on October 6, 2015

Our last stop in Brazil before entering Uruguay was a visit to the wine region near the city of Bento Gonçalves. Oh, and there also happened to be a steam train there, so of course we rode it.

The grape orchards of southern Brazil. The owners of this vineyard generously allowed us to camp in their parking lot, so of course we had to buy some wine from them.

The next day we rode the Maria Fumaça railroad, a tourist train pulled by a real steam engine.

There was a constant parade of singers and performers parading through the coaches during the ride, but Q was only interested in the train.

Q in his element.

On the way south toward Uruguay, we passed through a large wetland area. The drive unexpectedly turned into a great bird and wildlife watching opportunity.

We saw a fox, capybaras, and lots of beautiful birds.

The afternoon’s rains resulted in a beautiful rainbow just as we crossed the border leaving Brazil.

After we checked out of Brazil, we drove to the coast to camp for the night. Once again we ended up in a deserted, off-season beach town, so we drove right out onto the beach for a blissful night listening to the waves crash.

On crossing into Uruguay the next day, we were unexpectedly surprised by the amazing smooth roads there. Gasoline in Uruguay is very expensive (something like US$6 per gallon), and so if you don’t have a lot of corrupt officials siphoning off the funds, you can have nice roads! Fortunately Uruguay is a small country, so by topping up with fuel in Brazil we didn’t have buy any gas in Uruguay. There’s our contribution to their great roads!

We stopped to see a Portuguese fort on our way into Uruguay. It was very well kept up and contained a nice little museum.

We spent three nights at a campground on the southern coast of Uruguay run by a Swiss couple. We got some maintenance done on the car and caught up on regular life maintenance stuff like paying bills and writing web updates.

We had the feeling right away on entering Uruguay that the whole country was “muy tranquillo.” When we asked the locals about it, they said, yes, it’s very stable, like an oasis of calm between the sometimes troubled giants of Brazil and Argentina.

We noticed that Uruguay seems to have a large population of vintage cars. No idea why we saw so many here.

Our last stop in Uruguay was the town of Colonia. The city features a historic Portuguese/Spanish historical center, and we spent a day wandering it’s tree-shaded streets.

Our first night in Colonia was spent at a tourist farm just outside of town.

The farm is home to the world’s largest collection of pencils (as verified by Guinness.)

The cobble stoned streets of Colonia are lined with restaurants, shops, and small museums.

We enjoyed a wonderful lunch including the local Tannat wine varietal at one of the town’s restaurants. (Quinn is drinking the locally-made white grape juice).

From Colonia we caught a ferry across the bay to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Argentina, like Brazil, has some problems with it’s economy. The government has set a fixed exchange rate between their currency, the Peso, and the US Dollar, and makes it very difficult for locals to obtain dollars. Consequently, there’s a market for the US Dollar, and using it to get cash instead of using credit cards or ATM machines results in everything being about 40% cheaper. It’s kind of a big deal. In addition, the best exchange rates are found at the money changers on Florida Street in Buenos Aires.

In Uruguay, it’s possible to withdraw US Dollars from the ATM machines, so throughout our time there we were madly withdrawing cash, since we need enough to live on for about a month, plus pay for shipping our van home. When we arrived via the ferry in Buenos Aires, we stopped at Florida street to exchange the money.

The problem is that since it’s technically illegal to exchange money this way, if someone rips you off there’s no recourse – you can’t go to the police. So it’s kind of scary, but it’s also very common practice, and we decided the risk was worth it.

It was pretty stressful walking around in Buenos Aires with enough cash to live on for a month. This is it in Argentinian Pesos.

Trying to find our Argentina SIM card in our vast collection…

With the cash safely stowed in our safe, we began our departure from the Buenos Aires metro area. Unfortunately we had a mishap at one of the many toll stops on the way. When passing through a very narrow toll booth lane we accidentally drove our right front tire into a cement block which succeeded in knocking our steering column off-center by quite a bit. The van still drives fine — it’s just that the wheel doesn’t sit in a straight position when the wheels are pointed straight ahead. We’ll have to get that sorted out at some point.

We are headed south down the Atlantic Coast to Peninsula Valdez, which reputedly has some great whale watching, and our timing is such that we’ll be there during peak whale season. The trip took about three days’ driving, and we really became aware of how big Argentina really is.

In the process we have discovered that we are nearing the outer limits of the range of our Spot Tracker. The Globalstar satellite network unfortunately doesn’t have good coverage in this part of South America, and unless they launch a bunch more satellites in the near future this will not change any time soon. Many thanks to Sir Todd Arbetter, Loyal and Resourceful Friend of the When Sparks Fly Expedition, who helped us verify this for us. We will continue to set up the Spot device to do daily check-ins but it is likely that the broadcast message that our parents are used to receiving regularly will not go through in most cases. We will check-in via email when we can to attempt to make up for this service gap.

One of the stops on our way south was to see a set of cliffs that is home to the world’s largest colony of burrowing parrots. Who knew there was such a thing as a burrowing parrot?

We’ve had a lot of rain and overcast skies over the past couple of weeks, and it was nice to enter the drier southern part of Argentina.

This entry is filed under Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay. | 4 Comments

Touring Europe, in Brazil

By Witt on September 28, 2015

Since arriving in Mexico back in December of 2013, our Spanish has gotten to the point of being half-decent. When we entered Brazil in July, it was a whole different ball game – Portuguese! Learning Portuguese has been really difficult for us. Jen made a great effort using Duolingo to try to learn the language, and picked up some great tips that were very helpful. I on the other hand learned to say, “Sorry, I don’t speak Portuguese. Do you speak English or Spanish?” Then, regardless of their reply, I’d start yammering to them in Spanish. Mostly it worked out.

When seen in print, Portuguese looks a lot like Spanish, so reading it isn’t too bad. But when you hear someone speak it, you realize that the rules for pronunciation are completely different. I’ve heard people say it sounds like everything from Russian to Dutch to Chinese. For a simple example, take the Brazilian currency, the Real. Okay, it’s obviously not pronounced “reel” – any self-respecting citizen of the Western United States knows that. Okay, so give it a nice Spanish sound, and roll the R a bit – “ray-al.” That sounds better. Now surely I sound like a local! Nope. First off, most (but not all) Rs in Portuguese are pronounced like an “h.” So “Real” ends out sounding like “hay-awl.” Just about everything in the language is like that. But thankfully the locals were very accommodating and treated our attempts at their language with grace and humor.

Speaking of the Real, it’s been sinking against the dollar ever since we arrived. Back in July the exchange rate was 3.2 Reais (try pronouncing that) to the Dollar; by the time we left it was around 4. This has made our stay in Brazil much less expensive for us than we had anticipated, but it’s very hard on the locals who are seeing prices go up for anything imported. This is largely because no one has any confidence in the current government (the president currently has a whopping 8% approval rating, and according to Brazilians those 8% are all benefiting from the rampant corruption). Brazil’s foreign credit rating has recently been downgraded, and that combined with the strength of the Dollar of late has made things tough on the unpronounceable Real.

It’s been about 10 days since we left Florianopolis, and we’ve packed a lot in to that time! Our first stop was in the Vale Europa, the region of Brazil that is home to a large population of German and Swiss immigrants. This area was somewhat isolated until recently, and the immigrants’ home languages and customs have survived to make it an attractive tourist destination.

Our first stop was in the towns of Blumenau and Pomorode.

There are a lot of breweries in the area, and we got to sample some excellent beers.

One brewery had spatzle for the adults and smiley-face potatoes with their kids meals

From Blumenau we drove South to the mountain town of Urubici. There was a lot of rain while we were there, and we spent a couple of afternoons in their visitor center, which inexplicably contained a room with a giant set of kids’ construction materials.

Q had a great time building a train over the course of two rainy afternoons.

This overlook is near the highest point in Brazil. It was foggy and overcast, but beautiful nonetheless.

From Urubici we planned to head South toward Gramado, which we’ve been told by many travelers is a must see stop. First, though, and despite the rain, we decided to take a 4WD track through São Joaquim National Park that had been recommended to us by Rob and Grace (Challenging Your Dreams). The road took us through a very remote and beautiful area, and despite the mud and slow going, we enjoyed the detour.

The region had a lot of these strange, but beautiful looking trees. We’re not sure what they’re called; we call them Pom-pom pines.

The track featured several bridges where Jen had to get out and make sure our wheels didn’t drop into the holes in the decking.

After regaining the pavement, we headed back down to the coast to spend the night. It being winter, the beach towns are deserted, so we camped in an empty beach-front parking lot.

We took a beautiful and precipitous road down to the coast from the highlands.

The next day we had to cross a short section of flooded-out road on our way up to Gramado from the coast.

Our next stops were the neighboring towns of Gramado and Canela, which are popular tourist destinations for Brazilians and have lots of fun stuff to do. Descendants of immigrants from Italy, Switzerland and Germany have settled in this region and their cultural influence is apparent. We spent three days there, and even managed to squeeze in a brewery visit in between alpine slides and train museums.

The churches in this area are decidedly more Northern European than the Spanish influenced architecture we’ve come to expect.

The alpine slide was a big hit. Q and I rode it about 10 times.

The ‘World of Steam’ (Mundo A Vapor) museum was created by a man who built model steam engines of all types as a hobby. Today his creations are open to the public. He has working steam powered models of various industries including a paper mill and saw mill.

The front of the steam museum is a re-creation of a famous train accident that occurred in Paris in 1895.

Of course the model train layout was a big hit.

Yay Beer!

This area of Brazil occasionally gets snow, and Brazilians take a break from the beach to come see it. But just in case you miss the one or two snowfalls per year, there’s a museum where you can play in artificial snow and places to get your picture taken with a snowy background.

This is probably the only snowmobile in all of Brazil.

We visited ‘Chocolate World’ (Mundo Chocolate) which housed this monkey, an Eiffel Tower, and all kinds of other stuff made entirely from chocolate.

As we were leaving town, we noticed a sign for “Mini Mundo” (Miniature World). We’d seen pamphlets for it in the tourist information offices, and it looked pretty cool. We asked Quinn, and he said he’d like to go. It turned out to be the best attraction in town. Started by a German immigrant and his family and built up over the years, the fourth generation is now working on this amazing 1/24 scale replica that features models of various towns and buildings in both Europe and Brazil. It of course had railroads running through it, which was the highlight for Quinn.

The famous Neuschwanstein Castle featured prominently.

This entry is filed under Brazil. | 4 Comments

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