STILL SAVE MONEY ON BRAZIL TRAVEL, EVEN WHILE OIL PRICES SKYROCKET

I just found this post on another interesting site about Brazil Travel (In the lovely state of Rio de Janeiro).  Check out Shon's site, it is pretty cool and informative!

Written on April 12, 2011 by Shon Starr in BrazilGeeks.com

Even While Oil Prices Skyrocket, You Can Still Save Money On Brazil Travel.

With major conflicts going on in some of the world’s most oil rich nations, speculation has caused oil prices to skyrocket.  This means one thing for travel to Brazil and most of the world for that matter – more expensive airline tickets.


Airline tickets to Brazil right now are almost double what i’m used to seeing this time of the year.

BRAZIL, CHINA, INDIA TRAVEL INDUSTRY BOOM

Travel industry looks to China, India, Brazil for boom

• 
  

AFP/File – A group of Chinese tourists look for sourvenirs at the National Palace Museum in Taipei in 2009. China, …

by Jim Mannion –  Tue May 17, 4:59 pm ET

LAS VEGAS (AFP) – China, India and Brazil are poised to fuel an explosion in international tourism in the coming years, showering money and jobs on countries ready for it, and trouble for those that aren't, industry leaders say.

With an estimated two billion new middle class consumers expected to come into the markets from those emerging powerhouses over the next two decades, the travel industry sees a potential gold rush ahead.

"The growth of China outbound travel is moving at a huge pace -- it is about 20 percent increase every year. And the number of outbound Chinese travelers hit 58 million last year," said David Scowsill, CEO of the World Travel and Tourism Council, an industry promotion group.

"And if you look ahead, (with about) 1.6 billion coming out of China and India, they are a huge amount of people coming in with money to burn," he told reporters.

BRAZIL LEADS THE PACK OF EMERGING MARKETS WORLDWIDE

Brazil Leads as the Preferred Emerging Property Investment Destination

The latest survey undertaken by members of the US-based Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE) pointed to Brazil’s market leading the ranking – putting the country in front of China and India.

James Fetgatter, chief executive officer and panelist at the ADIT conference  in Forteleza (May 10^th-12^th), commented that there ‘has not been any other country in Latin America that has shown the results that Brazil has – in 2007, the country was not even mentioned.’  He also, however, commented that the main obstacles that need to be confronted are a lack of transparency, issues over investment security and heavy bureaucracy.

At the same conference, Gary Garrabrant chief executive officer and co-founder of Equity International pointed to the issues the country still faces with regards to infrastructure and the high rates of interest on real estate loans.  In his talk, he stated that, despite the challenges: ‘our goal is to change this situation with positive results which will compensate the constraints.’

Source

BRAZIL: THE UK VOTE

Brazil: The UK Vote

By Mark Hillary March 8, 2011 I just moved from London to Brazil at the end of last year. I‘ve managed to negotiate my way through the various cartorios to the point where I now have my permanent residency stamp, my CPF card, and my first bank account. Not bad going for the first few weeks of the year. But one thing eludes me, my right to vote back in the UK. I downloaded the forms I need from the Electoral Commission website. That‘s all easy enough. But I need a witness to watch over me as I sign the documents and that person has to be a British passport holder. Suddenly I realised that I don‘t know a single British person in São Paulo.

THE INTERACTIVE TRAVEL GUIDE

Source
Article by VacationRentalPeople

Lonely Planet may very well have given up. So it seems anyway. In the burgeoning (some zealous journalists seem to think ‘revolutionary’) world of travel apps, their offering seems fairly meagre. Yes it’s free to download, and by yesterday’s standards may have been sufficient, but it pales in comparison to other apps.

It seems that the company may be naively holding on to the idea of selling book travel guides. While the travel book market may not be dead, they are likely to see diminishing returns if they don’t watch what their
competitors are doing.

Smart phones seem to be leading the way in most technological matters, offering a new way to access and consume information, half way to an autonomy device to rule them

INFORMATION ON CHAPADA DIAMANTINA NATIONAL PARK IN BAHIA, BRAZIL

Chapada Diamantina is a short plane ride or drive from Salvador, Bahia.  Below is a great description from a traveller to the national park.

Natural Beauty
by Andre

The National Park of the Chapada Diamantina is one of the most fascinating natural parks of Brazil. The mountain scenery contains an extraordinary variety of ecosystems, like Cerrado, Mata Atlantica, and Stone fields, Caatinga. The bromeliads and orchids find a privileged ambiance, adapting themselves to the differences in climate and altitude. The mountain tops reach a height of 5,660 feet and they offer shelter to the Jaguatiricas (local breed of feline) pumas, mocós (local rodents), deer’s, teiús (local reptile) and seriemas (local little ostrich) .



The massive quartz pieces, have undergone and resisted erosion, forming towers of minerals known as “TEPUY” by the local Indians of the Maracas and Cariris tribes, who dominated the region before the arrival of the first settlers or bandeirantes, around the year 1750. The most astonishing tepuis reach a height of 4,830 feet and they run across the municipalities of Palmeiras, Lençois e Mucugê .

BRAZIL: EXPAT SALARY PURCHASING POWER PARITY

Brazil: Expatriate Salary Purchasing Power Parity

By Jim Shattuck April 15, 2011 Let me start out by saying that I am neither an economist nor a human resources professional. I'm sharing here some information I have learned from mining the depths of Google, trying to stitch it all together into a coherent post. Learning about the comparative realities of living here or in the USA (I'm sticking to just one country for simplicity's sake) is both fun for the expat ("I knew I wasn't crazy - that shit is expensive!") and cautionary for the lovebirds contemplating a move figuring it will all work out somehow (goddess bless them!). The first thing to understand is that economies are different on many different levels: the price of things, the salaries people can earn, the taxes one pays, the non-cash (and deferred cash) benefits people earn over time, how value depreciates over time, how the banking and credit systems operate, what services are provided by the government, etc. In the case of Brazil and the USA - believe me - they are two different worlds that do not easily equate/translate. Most travelers think in terms of the currency exchange rate: "Oh Brazil will be an affordable vacation destination; the exchange rate is in our favor, unlike London (for example)." Which may well be true, but moving here to live, work and retire is another matter altogether. For the new resident, the impulse is to do a quick calculation in your head converting currencies to decide if something is expensive or not. But currency exchange rates give misleading