The Southern Corridor: São Paulo to the Falls
One corridor out of a country the size of a continent — São Paulo, then Curitiba and the bus network the rest of the world copied, the 1885 railway down the Serra do Mar to the Paraná coast, an island with no cars on it, and 640 kilometres west to Iguaçu and the Itaipu dam. Brazil is about 4,300 km across at its widest; this is the southern route, and there are five or six others that share almost nothing with it.
São Paulo, the centre
In from Guarulhos and straight into the old city. Pátio do Colégio, where Jesuits founded the place in 1554 and where the whole of this metropolis of twenty million began; the Theatro Municipal; the Mercado Municipal for a mortadella sandwich that is a construction rather than a snack; Niemeyer's Edifício Copan, finished in 1966, curved like a wave and holding well over a thousand flats. Be specific about the geography rather than nervous about the whole district: the Sé, the market and the Paulista end are ordinary and busy by day, while the blocks around Estação da Luz and Praça Júlio Prestes are an open drug market that the city has been moving around for thirty years. The Pinacoteca and the Sala São Paulo sit right on its edge and are entirely worth going to — you take a taxi to the door rather than walking the last six blocks.
Paulista, Ibirapuera and Liberdade
MASP first: Lina Bo Bardi slung the museum between four red pillars in 1968, clearing a seventy-four-metre span so the square underneath stayed public, and inside she stood the paintings on glass easels so you meet them from any side. The easels were taken out in 1996 and put back in 2015, which tells you how long an argument about a display case can run. Then Ibirapuera, opened in 1954 for the city's four hundredth birthday, with Niemeyer's pavilions and marquise threaded through it. Evening in Liberdade, the São Paulo quarter of the largest Japanese-descended population anywhere outside Japan, or in Vila Madalena if you want bars instead.
South to Curitiba, and a first ride
Out of Tietê, which is the largest bus terminal in the country, and six hours down the BR-116. Do not check into the hotel and stop. Buy a fare, walk into one of the glass tube stations on a structural axis, and ride a bi-articulated Ligeirão from one end of the line to the other — you pay at the turnstile in the tube, the platform is level with the bus floor, five doors open at once and the thing is gone in about a minute. That is the entire point of Curitiba and it is best understood by standing in it. Jardim Botânico afterwards for the 1991 glasshouse, at dusk when the coaches have left.
Curitiba on foot
Rua XV de Novembro was closed to cars over a weekend in 1972, kerbs and planters in before the shopkeepers could get an injunction, and it is still the spine of the centre. The Museu Oscar Niemeyer occupies a government building he designed in 1967, with the eye-shaped annexe he added in his nineties; the Bosque do Papa is immediately next door in the Centro Cívico, a group of Polish log houses moved in from the immigrant colonies outside the city — Paraná took a very large Polish and Ukrainian migration and has never stopped saying so. The Ópera de Arame, a tubular steel theatre put up in a flooded quarry in about seventy-five days in 1992, is a separate trip a few kilometres north-west and worth the taxi.
Down the Serra do Mar
The railway from Curitiba to Paranaguá was cut between 1880 and 1885 through a wall of forested granite: 110 kilometres, thirteen tunnels, and viaducts standing on legs in a valley with no floor. The tourist train takes about four hours down to Morretes. Sit on the left. At the bottom, eat barreado — beef sealed into a clay pot with manioc flour paste and cooked for the better part of a day, served with farinha and sliced banana, which sounds wrong and is not. Most people come back up by road over the cobbled Estrada da Graciosa rather than by train, and the schedule is the reason: check which days it runs before you build a week around it.
Paranaguá, then out to the island
Forty minutes east to Paranaguá, which is one of the great grain ports of the southern hemisphere and looks, on its waterfront, like a decayed colonial town that happens to have gantry cranes behind it. The eighteenth-century Jesuit college on the quay has spent years under restoration — check whether it has reopened rather than assuming. Then on to Pontal do Sul and the half-hour boat to Ilha do Mel. There are no cars on the island, no roads and no bank, and everything you own goes onto your back for the walk from the jetty.
The island on foot
Sand tracks and a couple of hours of walking between the two villages. The Fortaleza de Nossa Senhora dos Prazeres went up in 1767 on the north-west point, when the Portuguese crown was worried about Spanish ships in the bay; the Farol das Conchas, on the eastern hill, has been lit since 1872 and the climb to it is the best view of the Paranaguá estuary you will get. The Gruta das Encantadas at the southern end is a sea cave with a legend attached. The state caps how many people may be on the island at once and the cap is reached over New Year and Carnival, when this is a different and much louder place.
Back up and west
A travelling day and there is no way around it. Boat to Pontal do Sul and road back up to Curitiba, then 640 kilometres west across the state to Foz do Iguaçu. The flight takes an hour and five minutes and costs about what two nights of your accommodation does; the overnight bus takes ten hours in a reclining semi-leito seat and saves you a night's bed. Both are entirely normal here and Brazilians do the sum in front of you at the counter.
The falls, Brazilian side
The Brazilian park holds about twenty per cent of the falls and all of the view of the other eighty. A single walkway runs a kilometre and a half along the gorge with the whole system opening in front of you, and it finishes on a catwalk pushed out into the spray below the Garganta. Entry is timed and booked online, the free double-decker shuttle runs from the visitor centre, and everyone is wet by the end. Parque das Aves is directly opposite the gate: a private breeding operation for harpy eagles and other Atlantic Forest birds, and a serious one rather than a sideshow.
The falls, Argentine side
A different country and a different experience: where Brazil gives you the panorama, Argentina puts you on top of the water. Upper and lower circuits of steel walkway run out among the individual drops, and a narrow-gauge train carries you to the head of the walkway over the Garganta del Diablo. That walkway has been closed for repair more than once after floods, so check the park's own notices the day before. Take your passport — you are stamped out of Brazil and into Argentina at the Tancredo Neves bridge. Validate your ticket at the exit and the second consecutive day is half price, which is worth knowing if the walkway is shut.
Itaipu
Twenty generating units of 700 megawatts, 14,000 MW installed, built jointly by Brazil and Paraguay under a treaty signed on 26 April 1973 and generating since 1984. Ten of the turbines run at 50 hertz because that is what Paraguay's grid uses and ten at 60 hertz because that is what Brazil's does, and Paraguay's share is converted to direct current at Foz and sent 800 kilometres to São Paulo on a ±600 kV line built for the purpose. The panoramic tour looks at it from outside; the technical tour goes down into the machine hall and needs booking, photo ID, closed shoes and a minimum age. The Ecomuseu and the Refúgio Biológico at Bela Vista cover the other half of the account: the reservoir that filled in 1982 drowned Sete Quedas, a set of falls on the Paraná that people who saw both say were larger than Iguaçu, and moved about forty thousand people off the land it covered.
Three rivers, and out
The Marco das Três Fronteiras stands where the Iguaçu meets the Paraná, with an obelisk on each bank in each country's colours and Paraguay and Argentina both a few hundred metres of brown water away. Go early or go at dusk; the middle of the day is hot and the view is the same. Then Foz do Iguaçu airport, which is fifteen minutes from the centre and connects to São Paulo and Rio for the flight out.
Good to know
Brazil reinstated visas for American, Canadian and Australian passport holders on 10 April 2025 after three postponements — it is an e-visa applied for online, costs around US$80 plus a service fee, is valid for ten years and allows up to 90 days a year, and you should allow a couple of weeks rather than a couple of days. EU citizens still enter visa-free for 90 days in any 180 under the EU–Brazil waiver; UK nationals get Brazil's general 90-day exemption, extendable once by the Federal Police to a maximum of 180 days in a twelve-month period. Day ten leaves the country: the Argentine side of the falls means a passport, an exit stamp and an entry stamp at the Tancredo Neves bridge, and most European, British, American and Australian nationals need no Argentine visa. Yellow fever is not demanded on arrival in Brazil, but vaccination is recommended by both the Brazilian and Argentine health authorities for Paraná and the Iguaçu region, some onward countries will ask for the certificate if you have been here, and the vaccine needs ten days to take effect — since 2016 the certificate is valid for life and no country may require a booster. Money: the real, cards accepted almost everywhere, and Pix — the central bank's instant transfer system, launched in November 2020 — is how the country actually pays for small things, except that it is keyed to a Brazilian tax number and most visitors cannot use it, so carry cash for Ilha do Mel in particular, which has no bank and patchy signal. Tap water in São Paulo and Curitiba is treated to standard but essentially nobody drinks it unfiltered; filtered water is free in almost every pousada and restaurant. On safety, be specific rather than general: São Paulo's centre is ordinary and crowded by day around the Sé, the Mercado Municipal and Paulista, while the blocks around Estação da Luz and Praça Júlio Prestes are an open drug scene and the sensible move there is a taxi to the museum door; phone snatching from the hand is the standard risk in both big cities and the local habit of keeping it out of sight on the street is worth copying; Curitiba and Morretes are calmer than either. Foz do Iguaçu is a border town with a large contraband economy, and that shows up in the freight traffic rather than on the tourist strip — the centre, the Avenida das Cataratas hotels and both parks are unremarkable. The exception is the Ponte da Amizade into Ciudad del Este, a crowded wholesale-market crossing rather than a sight and the one place here where visitors routinely get their pockets emptied; this route does not use it, and the Argentine crossing at Tancredo Neves is a quieter and entirely different proposition. Book long-distance buses online in advance and pay the extra for semi-leito on the overnight; Tietê is the largest terminal in Brazil and it is not a place to improvise. Entry to the Brazilian side of the falls is timed and booked online, and the park shuts in the late afternoon; the Argentine park sells a half-price second consecutive day if you stamp your ticket at the exit. Itaipu tours must be booked ahead. Season matters more than usual here: the falls run hardest roughly December to March, which is also when it is hottest, wettest and most crowded, and when the Serra do Mar train frequently descends through cloud with nothing to see; Curitiba sits at about 930 metres and is the coldest of Brazil's state capitals, with nights near freezing between June and August. The Serra Verde train does not run every day outside high summer. Portuguese is the language and English thins out fast away from hotel desks. Brazil uses the type N socket, which almost nowhere else does, and mains voltage varies by state, so read the label on anything without a universal power supply. Finally, the distances: this route covers one corner. Manaus is reachable from here only by air or by a boat that takes days, and the northeast coast is a separate trip, not an extension of this one.
Shorter or longer?
Three or four more days east and south from Foz into the Guaraní-Jesuit country: San Ignacio Miní in Argentine Misiones, Trinidad and Jesús de Tavarangue across the Paraná at Encarnación in Paraguay, and São Miguel das Missões back inside Brazil in Rio Grande do Sul. They are the same seventeenth- and eighteenth-century project, split three ways by borders drawn long after it ended, and all of them are World Heritage sites.
The first seven days of this route — São Paulo, Curitiba, the railway down to Morretes, two nights on Ilha do Mel — and then the boat and the road back up to Curitiba to fly out, which is the eighth day and the one people forget to count. Cuts the 640-kilometre westward leg, both park fees and the internal flight — which is also most of the cost — and keeps the part of the route that almost nobody flies in for.