Santos, Brazil-City Tour & Orchid Garden

Santos (pop of 520,000), the horse shaped island colonized by the Portuguese in 1500, is about an hour from San Paulo (pop 22 million). Today was a beautiful day (although they get 177 of rain a year.) Today’s trip was the Orchid Garden, the Soccer stadium and the Coffee Museum.

We started with a view of an incredibly large OJ factory (no there are no Orange groves until you drive many hours away) and many other large manufacturers we saw at the port. Besides a large deep water port, Santos has great highways, hospitals and airports close by and a large amount of cultural activities and films made here.

We walked past the aquarium used for research since 1940 and the beautiful but verrrry long beaches of Santos. They have the first surf school in South America here, famous for training some of the best --- if I only knew. Opposite the beaches are many beautiful apartment buildings that are unfortunately slowly "leaning" and have been for 50+ years ... they keep watching them. THe Santos orchid garden is the home of over 5000 species of orchids and quite a serene beautiful oasis in the middle of a busy city. Only problem--- we only saw a few orchids...they are up in the tress and quite hidden and bloom throughout the year so they are a challenge to find. A little strange.Read more