The Hidden Pousada Brazil Travels Begin: Porto Seguro

Best laid plans…..Alison had found us an inexpensive flight via GOL (now associated with semi-defunct airline, Varig) to Porto Seguro on the northeast coast. The airline called yesterday to say the flight was cancelled and we were rescheduled to go one hour south to Sao Paulo in order to go three hours north to our destination—with a four hour layover in between. Our layover gave us plenty of time to look around the airport. It’s clear that in Sao Paulo you might need some fairly diverse services. On one notice board I found directions to showers and an ‘aesthetics’ center, a dentist, and baked potatoes

We finally arrived in Porto Seguro at dusk (luckily the clocks go back one hour in Bahia), and were greeted by a representative from Avis, which had the best deal on rental cars. Tip: book from the US or UK. We got much better prices than those available to Brazilians. Demonstrating the controls of the first car, the Avis rep managed to punch the air conditioning button right through the control panel, but we ended up with a perfectly acceptable car. It’s a manual transmission (automatics don’t seem to be available), with no power anything, but it’s getting us where we need to go.

Our first challenge was to find the ferry boat to cross the river to the pousada. By this time it was completely dark, the streets were filled with pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, buses and cars, and the streets were cobbled, interspersed with road bumps, aka sleeping policemen. This probably ensures fewer deaths of bicyclists and motorbike riders, because if you go more than 5 miles an hour, you risk a very nasty landing. Since most of the streets in Porto Seguro are one way, and the signs to the balsa (ferry) very sporadic, we missed the turn, which meant going round once again. In the dark, it looked as if the entrance to the car ferry meant driving off the edge of a cliff, but we navigated it successfully and found the pousada a quarter of a mile down the road at the other end. As I mused to Alison that the trip would have been almost impossible if neither of us had spoken Portuguese, she said there was a much easier way to do this: Fly to Porto Seguro, having identified where you want to stay, and ask the pousada for a transfer. I highly recommend the way we did it for local color, and if you want maximum flexibility! For the less intrepid, take Alison’s advice.