South American Tour: Paranagua, Curitiba, Sao Paulo, Santos Brazil

Sunday, February 21, 1965 - Paranagua Brazil

Early Sunday morning we arrived in Paranagua, Brazil lying on a lagoon like harbor. The port is 18 miles from the open sea and is approached via the bay of Paranagua. It is a town of 18,500 and not too well known but it is the main seaport for paraguay which does not have one of it's own. At 1 PM we took the train for Curitiba, a city of 360,000 inhabitants and 3,000 feet above sea level. The trip took eight hours. It was a beautiful day. The train windows were wide open. The railroad is built mostly over bridges and considered a major engineering feat. We took Taxi to Hotel Lord where the ship's agent at Paranagua had phoned for reservations

Monday, February 22, 1965 - Curitiba, Brazil

In the morning we toured the town by taxi. It is the capital of the state of Parana which determines its economic prosperity from expensive coffee plantations in the North and East, timber forests in the southwest. At 12:30 PM we took the bus for Sao Paulo which is 250 miles away, all of it over mountain highways. We arrived at 8:30 PM.

Tuesday, February 23, 1965 - Sao Paulo, Brazil

Sao Paulo is the fastest growing city in the world - a house is built every 8 minutes and the largest metropolitan in South America - 3,850,000 population. Here there are 8000 restaurants and 184 movie houses. The city occupies 627 square miles of a high plateau, 1,675 feet above sea level which gives it a pleasant temperate climate. We stayed at the Excelsior Hotel - excellent accommodations. We took several tours and still did not get to see it all. Our Portuguese being nil, we had our language barriers all over again. We did have a car driver who could speak good English.

Wednesday, February 24, 1965 - Santos, Brazil

Packed, had breakfast, taxied to bus station to take bus to Santos where we could rejoin ship expected to leave at 10:30 AM, but bus was sold out so we waited for the 11:30 one, which left at 11:45.

The distance is only 40 miles and over good roads. The highways are usually much better than city streets. The highways are not wide but are paved an city streets are cobblestones. Try that in a 1940 taxi.

As we entered the city the bus was caught in a terrific traffic jam, caused by two trucks colliding, one turning over on a Volkswagen and spilling its load of heavy cases all over the street.

Finally, got into town and the bus driver put us off quite close to our dock. We didn't know that, but a five minute taxi convinced us.

Thursday, February 25, 1965 - Santos, Brazil

Santos is the leading coffee port of the world and is the gateway for Sao Paulo. It handles 24.4% of all Brazilian shipping traffic. Santos has a population of 300,000. The business area is somewhat decrepit, but the residential part is a real surprise with a large number of apartments facing a beach at least 20 miles long. After a tour we returned to ship and sailed at 5 PM for Rio.