Sailing into Santos

On the morning of Monday March 10, 2014, we found ourselves docked for a change. Since Rio, we have had to use tenders to visit the various venues and here, we simply got to walk off the ship. Let me ramble a little. When you start going on cruises, tenders seem fun. They use the big, colourful fibreglass lifeboats that hang on the side of the ship as the tender boats.  At first you think of it as a bonus amusement park ride that comes with going ashore. Later though, as you become more experienced, tenders can become somewhat tedious. We have been on plenty of tenders now and the only ones that are fun anymore are the ones in really choppy waters. I compare the more challenging tender rides to the D-day beach assault you saw in Saving Private Ryan, except we normally don't get wet or shot at.

Santos is a major port indeed! It services much of the southern part of Brazil, which is a huge agricultural area.  Santos is also next door to the major population center of Sao Paulo, the biggest city in Brazil, with some 11 million inhabitants. The main exports from the port are coffee, cars and soybeans. Santos is also a major exporter of orange juice, believe it or not. As for imports, amongst many other goods from around the world, wheat comes in here from Canada. Brazil used to import oil here but they are now self-sufficient in petroleum products, since they pump more than enough from their recently discovered, offshore fields. Interestingly, Brazil has also become the second largest producer of ethanol fuels in the world and all their cars must be capable of burning ethanol which is derived from Brazilian sugarcane.

Santos is a beautiful port city built on an island. On one side there is a natural deep water channel that is ideal for the big ocean-going vessels. The neat thing though is that a mile or two across the island from the port facilities, is a Manhattan-like skyline fronted by a 6-kilometre park, which is fronted by a beautiful, sandy beach. So there is a nice modern industrial area on one side and tropical paradise on the other. It was pretty cool when Mrs. Gym and I took a city tour there that included a drive along the entire length of the beach, a visit to a beautiful park at one end of the island and a tour of the Santos Coffee Museum.

The people of Santos are a seemingly odd mix of the global community. The largest ethic group is Italian, followed by Portuguese and then by a large group of Japanese. How did that happen? Well, my guess is that the Italians came for the coffee because we learned that all best coffee produced in Brazil goes to Italy to be made into espresso. The Japanese actually came to work in the fields but now they own some of the coffee plantations and soybean farms, and guess what, Japan imports coffee and soybeans from this area. The Portuguese were there because they owned the place.

Our guide for the day was Piero. He is the source of most of the facts I have written about. He was the best english speaking guide so far on the trip and he had a wealth of knowledge. He took us from the port on a drive along the beach front road, then to a municipal park/zoo and finally, through the Coffee Museum.

At the Coffee Museum, in the warehouse district, we got to see where the market was made for coffee at the beginning of the 20th Century. The building itself is a wonderfully ornate, heritage building which was decorated on the inside with beautifully crafted hardwood fixtures and an very fancy, inlaid marble floor. The trading floor of the coffee trading room was very impressive. It was built in a rotunda with a  second storey veranda. From the second floor onlookers could view this very important market being made each morning. Now all commodities are traded in the Sao Paulo Exchange, which is the largest in South America.

Busy Port Santos

Beautiful wide road from the port to the beach with bike and walking
paths in the middle.

Santos beachfront condos from the park between the
beach and avenue

Portuguese fort guarding the harbor in Santos

The wide beach with the park behind it and then the skyline of
Santos in the background

Monument to the Japanese immigrants to the
that came to the Santos area. It is located in a
beautiful park at one end of  the beach

Two reptilian friends at Orchid Park, a botanical and
zoological park that we toured

This is not a gopher! It is about a 15 pound cousin called the Agouti.
These were running all over the park

This is the Cathedral of Santos on the left and
City Hall on the right. The cathedral was designed by a
guy with unlikely name of Maximillian Hehl

This is the Coffee Museum of Santos

the street in front of the Coffee Museum

The roof above the coffee trading room

looking down to the "floor" of the coffee trading area.
This was the most important export of Brazil at the
turn of the last century, so this was an important place.

Another view from the side showing the elaborate marble floor and the
hand-carved wooden chairs that the European coffee buyers sat in to
 bid on the various allotments of coffee. The president of the exchange sat
behind the red desk and adjudicated over the proceedings.