Brazil 2026

We participated in the first segment (20 days) of the 2026 World Cruise of the Holland America Volendam from Ft Lauderdale to Buenos Aires. Three ports in Brazil were visited as part of our cruise. Botanical gardens or nature parks were visited in Belem and Recife, while in Rio de Janeiro we took an overnight birding tour to the foothills west of Rio. This page describes aspects of these port stops that should be of interest to naturalists.

The basic geography and route of the cruise is shown in the figure below. The lat/long grid is included to give an idea of the latitudinal extent of the traverse from Florida to Argentina. The ports were much fewer than in many other cruises through the Caribbean to South America – world cruises seem to have fewer port stops than most other cruises because of the need to cover longer distances in a manageable (133 day) period..

Ocean items

Here we show a few images taken from between the various ports that might be of interest to naturalists.

Belem

In Belem we took an uber to a botanic garden/ nature park on the edge of the urban area. This ride took a half hour to get to the park and it was very inexpensive. Uber is apparently the way to move around inexpensively in Brazilian urban areas. The ship’s tenders went to a dock about 10 miles north of Belem’s center, so transportation was essential to see anything in Belem itself.

Below are Google Earth views of the Belem area and the Utinga State Park.

iPhone photos

Olympus photos are below

Recife

There was a botanic garden outside of the downtown, so we headed there via Uber. The garden was relatively small – at least the part that was open to walk around. There were other parts with trails, but these required guides that weren’t available. The forest of the garden wasn’t pristine – it had been planted with Asian Jackfruit many years earlier and these were large trees now. But most of the birds and insects were native. I wouldn’t recommend it for a visit (the Belem park was better), but there were few choices in Recife.

Below are Google Earth images of the Recife area (ship’s location and botanic garden are shown with yellow pins) and a closer view of the Botanic Garden grounds. Only a small part of the west (left) side of the grounds were accessible to visitors.

iPhone photos

Olympus photos

Rio de Janeiro

We took an overnight birding tour operated by two Brazilian brothers, one of who had a house about 50 miles inland, at the base of mountains west of the Rio urban area. One brother picked us up near the ship’s dock, and we birded with him in a National Park that day, while we spent the night at the other brother’s house and birded with him that evening and the following morning. It was a productive birding effort, with just over 100 species seen. Also, there were many interesting insects and some amphibians as well.

Basic geography of the Rio de Janeiro area is shown in the Google Earth images below. The yellow pins indicate some of the main places for tourists.