Fernando de Noronha
About 350 km offshore from the Brazilian coast you can find a true paradise, the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha. We stayed there for a couple of nights, rented a beach buggy and explored the main island with all its' beautiful beaches.
Ilha Grande
A couple of hours by car from Rio de Janeiro you can find the peaceful island of Ilha Grande. There the main activities are hiking, snorkeling, swimming in the sea and relaxing. :-)
Rio de Janeiro
Our next stop was in Rio de Janeiro. There we went to see the statue of Christ the Redeemer and we also went up on the Sugar Loaf Mountain. Both places offer an amazing view over the city. We stayed one night at the luxury hotel Copacabana Palace and then three nights in a hotel in Ipanema.
Iguazu Falls
The next stop on our journey in Brazil was in Iguazu Falls, where we stayed at the beautiful Hotel das Cataratas. The hotel is located inside the national park, which gives you an opportunity to walk to the waterfalls before the park gates open and the crowd comes in.
Pantanal
If you want to come close to wildlife in a very convenient way, Pantanal is definitely the destination for you. Here you can explore the wetlands by boat and you will see millions of birds. A bird watcher's paradise!
To reach the wetlands you have to travel along a 150 kilometer long gravel road with hundreds of wooden bridges. The road is called Transpantaneira. You will spot a lot of wildlife from the car.
We spent one week in the area onboard a house boat and during the days we travelled up the rivers in a smaller boat, searching for jaguars. We were so lucky and spotted two jaguars!
Storks
A tucan.
Another species of tucan.
Howler monkey.
The one and only jaguar.
A tired jaguar is yawning.
A capybara family. The world's largest rodents.
Mr. Cayman.
A playful giant otter.
The house boat that was our home for one week.
A capybara mom with her babies.
An ocelot, which is a nocturnal animal and we spotted him during the day!! We were in other words extremely lucky!
Kingfisher.
Iguana.
Amazonas
Our Brazilian adventure started in Amazonas. We spent some days onboard a river boat and travelled upstream on Rio Negro. The accomodation was rather simple and it was a bit hot during the night, so I struggled a bit with the sleep. During the days we did excursions in a smaller boat to come closer to the nature and the wildlife. The rainforest is dense, which means that it is a bit hard to spot wildlife in Amazonas. We saw mostly birds, but they are very colourful. We also met the funny looking pink river dolphins and tried piranha fishing.
Before leaving the Amazon region we spent one day in Manaus. Manaus is a city with more than one million inhabitants in the middle of the rainforest. Here we visited Teatro Amazonas, which was built during the city's glory days in the 1800's, when the city was rich from rubber production.
Brazil
This summer we spent one month in Brazil. During our Brazilian adventure we visited the Amazonas, Pantanal, Iguazu Falls, Rio de Janeiro, Ilha Grande and Fernando de Noronha. It was an amazing trip packed with experiences and activities. One month is definitely not enough if you want to discover Brazil. We decided to pick some destinations and concentrate on them. Now I'm going to show you some photos from the trip.
(Map from MapQuest)
The Galápagos Islands
The island of Santa Cruz was our first stop in the Galápagos archipelago. Here we visited Charles Darwin Research Station and learned more about the giant tortoises, Galápagos most famous inhabitants. After the visit to the research station we travelled up in the highlands and there we met the wild giant tortoises. On Santa Cruz we also saw the first marine iguanas and the red sally lightfoot crabs, which can be seen everywhere in the archipelago.
Sally lightfoot crab.
Sally lightfoot crab.
Marine iguana.
Giant tortoises.
A rare species of giant tortoise.
Santa Fé was our next stop. This island is one of the oldest in the archipelago. Here we met sea lions and land iguanas. I also had the best snorkelling experience ever here. I saw a white tip reef shark chasing a sea lion when I was snorkelling, and I was so lucky and managed to capture the moment with my underwater camera. Just before the camera broke down...
Sea lion babies.
Land iguana.
Land iguana.
A white tip reef shark chasing a sea lion!
Green turtle.
The cruise continued to South Plaza, but before we arrived there a frigate bird came to greet us and landed on top of one of the cranes onboard the ship.
Frigate bird.
A gull with its' chick.
Outside the shoreline of San Cristóbal you can find two vertical cliffs known as Kicker Rock or León Dormido, "the sleeping lion". Before we landed on San Cristóbal we went snorkelling around Kicker Rock.
Kicker rock in the horizon.
On the beach with the sleeping sea lions.
Lava gull.
On the island of Española we met colourful marine iguanas. Here the marine iguanas have a reddish skin. Between March and December Española lodge a colony of waved albatrosses. Majestic birds! We also met some funny looking blue-footed boobies here.
Marine iguana.
Waved albatross.
Waved albatrosses.
Waved albatrosses.
Blue-footed booby.
Sombrero Chino, the "chinese hat" got its' name because the island resembles a hat. There were less animals and birds here, but we were lucky to see a lonely Galápagos penguin swimming close to the island! The northernmost species of penguins.
Sombrero chino.
A little lava lizard is climbing the sea lion mountain.
Galápagos penguin.
The island of Santiago is a barren lava island and almost the only things that grow here are lava cactuses. Impressive that they manage to survive in this lava landscape.
Tine is photographing a lava cactus.
Lava landscape.
The island of Genovesa is home to thousands of birds. The island is sometimes called booby island, because of the many boobies which are living here. We saw both red-footed boobies and nazca boobies. The red footed boobies live up in the trees and it looks a bit strange to see birds with webbed feet cling to the branches.
Red-footed booby.
A nazca booby with its' chick.
This was a rather short summary of an amazing trip to a true paradise on earth! I spent one week cruising around in the Galápagos archipelago and visited a number of islands and landing sites, but there are still more places to discover and I hope I will come back one day!
Ecuador
The highlight during the trip to Ecuador was without doubt the week we spent on the Galapagos Islands, but both before and after we were there, we spent some days in mainland Ecuador.
We travelled by bus to Otavalo, an indian village famous for the market which is held every week. They also have a tourist market, open every day. We went to have a look and I bought two knitted ponchos there. A typical thing to buy in South America.
We travelled by bus to Otavalo, an indian village famous for the market which is held every week. They also have a tourist market, open every day. We went to have a look and I bought two knitted ponchos there. A typical thing to buy in South America.
Before we travelled out to Galapagos we spent a day in the capital Quito. Like almost every tourist in Quito we visited the equator monument.
About two hours drive from Cuenca you can find Ingapirca, which is the best preserved Inca ruin in Ecuador. I have been to Peru before and have seen Maccu Picchu, and Ingapirca is not even possible to compare with that, but still it was a nice place to visit. We had lunch there and for dessert I tried tree tomato, which was interesting. It tasted more like a fruit than a tomato.
Falkland Islands
After we left the Argentinian coast we had two days of sailing ahead of us before we reached the western parts of the Falkland Islands, or Islas Malvinas as they are called in Spanish.
In a historical point of view the Falkland Islands might be most known for the Falkland War that pestered the islands during the year of 1982. The islands were governed by Great Britain, but were invaded by Argentinian forces because Argentina wanted to have the islands under their territory. That claim is still present today and you can still find mine fields on the islands.
(Map from mapquest.com)
Our visit to the Falkland Islands started with a landing at Carcass Island in the western part of the islands. Here we saw gentoo penguins, magellanic penguins, caracaras and different kind of geese.
One couple is permanently living on this island and they had invited all of us to their home. They had baked 16 different kind of cookies for us! It was a very hard choice to pick the ones that we wanted to try, since it was not possible to try them all!
When we were back on Ocean Nova is was time for lunch. I'm guessing that not all of us were hungry at that point. :-) On our way to the next destination I went out on deck and was lucky to spot some dolphins playing very close to the ship. They were black and white in colour and later I heard that the species is called Commerson's dolphins. Beautiful and playful creatures!
After lunch it was time to go on shore again. This time we stopped at Saunders Island. This island showed out to be inhabited by gentoo penguins, rockhopper penguins, a few king penguins, blue-eyed shags and the very majestic black-browed albatrosses.
Our visit to the Falkland Islands ended with a day in the capital Port Stanley. The weather was nice and sunny and the temperature quite okey, but it was extremely windy!
In Port Stanley we got the opportunity to visit war memorials, a little museum, the post office and some souvenir shops before we continued our trip.
The shopping in Port Stanley went under the theme penguin! I bought penguin stamps, a penguin pin, penguin candy, three miniature penguins and a book about penguins written by the Swedish photographer Brutus Östling. Brutus was actually travelling together with us on this trip and he wrote a personal greeting to me in the book, so it became a very good memory from the trip.
The nature on the Falkland Islands is really breathtaking and to be able to get so close to the birds that are living here was a memorable experience. I was so happy already after our landings here. At that time I couldn't know that our next destination; South Georgia was going to be even more breathtaking.
