Back in 2009, Aaron and I spent 2 1/2 glorious months backpacking all over South America. Because we spent the months leading up to our trip studying for the California bar exam, we didn’t have a lot of spare time to do any travel research in advance – all we had were flights into Peru in August and out of Argentina in October.

Superclasico 2009: Boca Juniors v. River Plate at La Bombonera, Buenos Aires

Looking back on it, I can’t believe how unlike me it was to go into such a big trip practically blind! I remember emailing some friends who had been to South America before to see if they had any recommendations for us, but Aaron and I just figured that we’d make decisions for the most part on the fly once we arrived. This uber-casual spontaneous travel strategy worked out for the most part, but we probably could have saved a lot of money if we had made some of the major decisions in advance.

One of the things that we knew before our trip was that we wanted to spend a lot of time in Brazil. Americans need to get travel visas in advance to visit Brazil, so Aaron and I made a few trips to the Brazil Consulate in San Francisco with our bar books in tow.

We spent about 5 weeks total all over Brazil, and I feel very fortunate that we got to see so much of the country. By no means does that make us Brazil experts, but in honor of the upcoming FIFA World Cup I want to share what we learned about our time there. In the upcoming weeks I’m planning on publishing a serious of posts about each of the World Cup host cities that we visited: Manaus, Fortaleza, Natal, Salvador, and Rio de Janeiro.

For more information about the World Cup, check out this amazing FourFourTwo Guide.