Traveling is one of my favorite hobbies and plotting my next adventure is always something I contemplate in my spare time. I know that it will be quite a long time until I can afford my next international vacation, but seeing my cousin re-ignited my curiosity in Brazil and my desire to visit her sometime within the next few years. I realize that I have very limited surface-level knowledge about Brazil and that significant planning and research will need to be done before I decide to travel there. I begin any quest for answers or information by starting online. I find that searching online is the easiest route to finding what I need because it is quick and there is endless information available, as long as one knows how to filter through it.
Any time I am planning a trip, I start by searching for affordable airfare. My favorite website to search for airfare is www.kayak.com. I start by signing in to the website because members have the option of searching for flights within 3 days before and after the specific dates entered. This allows me to compare the prices of different dates and find the cheapest combination. Kayak searches all of the major airlines and displays the results in both a grid and a list so that the user can decide which format is easier to decipher (I prefer the list). I decide two weeks would be a good amount of time to spend in Brazil and begin my search with January of 2011. The cheapest option for Columbus to Sao Paolo is $924, using multiple airlines. Kayak offers a link to “Modify of Start Search Over” which is convenient if the user is comparing flight dates or destinations. I use this to search for dates in April and June and find that the cheapest option is $905, again using multiple airlines. According to www.wikitravel.com/en/Brazil, the cheapest airfares fall between February to May and August to November. Unfortunately, most airlines do not show fares for flights more than one year from the current date so I am not able to search for fares in Fall of 2011. Based on my findings on www.kayak.com, I decide that April is the best time to visit.
My next step is to find out which cities I would like to visit. I would like to know which cities offer the most activities and sights for travelers, which cities best represent the country of Brazil, and which cities would allow me an opportunity to spend time in nature. These are the qualities that are most important to me. Because my cousin lives in Sao Paolo I already know that I will tentatively spend a few days there. I once again consult http://wikitravel.org/en/Brazil, because the public contributes to writing the information and I like to read first-hand accounts of travel information and advice. I scroll down to the section titled “Cities” and read the concise, one sentence summaries of the major cities in Brazil. I decide that I am most interested in visiting Florianópolis, Manaus, and Rio de Janeiro. Because WikiTravel links to other articles, I am easily able to click on each city to learn more about it. I find that WikiTravel is a very user friendly and easy way to navigate through various topics. Although many question its authority, I have always been impressed with the information that is accessible.
I next want to make sure that April is a good time of the year to visit Brazil. I already know that because it is located in the southern hemisphere its seasons are opposite to ours. I go to www.google.com and search for “Best time of year to visit Brazil”. I scroll through my results and decide on a Frommer’s article because I am familiar with the name as a respected travel authority. I am taken to http://www.frommers.com/destinations/brazil/0813020006.html. I read that April is a great time to visit if you are traveling on a budget because it is after carnival and travelers can find low-season prices. I find the information on Frommer’s to be very helpful.
While I am still looking at Frommer’s, I notice several categories on the left side of the page that provide additional information about Brazil. One category is titled “Food allergies”. I click on the link to see if any of the information found there will answer my question about finding vegan choices in Brazil. Unfortunately this section only offers information about nut allergies. However, underneath this link I see a link for “Tips for Vegetarians”. A small paragraph tells me that Brazil is not extremely vegetarian friendly, but that I will be able to find plenty of fruits, vegetables, and salads. I am not particularly satisfied with this information because I like to make lists of vegan friendly restaurants in the cities I visit. I know that www.happycow.com offers listings of vegetarian and vegan friendly restaurants in cities around the world. I search each city that I plan to visit and find several restaurant options. HappyCow categorizes each restaurant as vegan, vegetarian, veg-friendy, or health store. They also provide an address/map, phone number, hours, price range, and customer reviews. I like the way the information is arranged in a list and that everything I need to know is found in a box with intuitive symbols and brief descriptions. I also like that customers can review the restaurants because it saves me from wasting money on less than satisfactory food.
My next step is to find out what kinds of activities and interesting things I can do in Brazil. I head back to the Wikitravel site because I really like how it is organized. I am disappointed to find that their “See” and “Do” sections are nearly blank, although I can not blame the website when it is to the public that has simply not written on this subject as of yet. My next step is to go back to Frommer’s to see what I can find there. I discover some useful information and make a list of suggested activities and tourist attractions. Next I visit one of my favorite traveler websites, www.matadortravel.com. I have an account on this website and use it often when researching possible trips. Matador is a social network of travelers that allows members to write travel blogs, share photos and advice, and connect with one another. I love to read first-hand accounts of travel experiences so that I know what to expect when visiting a new destination. I go on to read various blogs and visit the forums to gather some practical information and advice about Brazil. Matador also focuses a lot of their information on sustainable travel and volunteer opportunities, which is something I am always striving to support while traveling. I find this website to provide the most interesting information and spend a significant amount of time there browsing through various articles, blogs, and photos.
Overall I am very satisfied with my search to plan a tentative trip to Brazil. I will save all of the information I found useful so that I can access it in the future, when I hopefully will have saved enough money to make this trip a reality. I will also likely visit the library to borrow some literature about Brazil, and perhaps even purchase a guide book to take with me before I depart. As much as I love the ease of researching online, I ultimately like to have a book or two to read about the subject as well.
While searching for this information I learned that I was most pleased with the websites I am familiar with (Kayak, HappyCow, and Matador). WikiTravel was helpful in some ways but was disappointing when I attempted to search for activities and tourist attractions. I also learned that I am very influenced by the ease of websites. If the layout is not intuitive I will not spend much time there. The age of internet research has perhaps made me a bit impatient when it comes to finding answers, but I believe web designers know this by now and arrange their websites to be user-friendly. The websites I visited tended to categorize topically rather than alphabetically, which I feel is true of most websites. In general, I was very pleased my results and excited to continue learning and researching the possibility of traveling to Brazil.
(All images below found through Google Images)
Rio de Janeiro
Manaus
Sao Paolo
Florianopolis
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