We are still planning to travel to Chile in our pre-World Cup Trip, leaving New Zealand around the 21st / 22nd of May. We are aiming to start off in Santiago, where Fiona has some family, before heading north to San Pedro de Atacama, where we will hang out for a relaxing week or so, taking in the sites and de-stressing from our hectic lives in New Zealand.
From Chile we head to Brazil on the 6th June to spend 7 days in Sao Paulo. As it’s only a short period of time I have booked 2 apartments in the Oscar Freire Suítes hotel near the Consolacao & Paulista districts, and close to the Clínicas Metro stations to allow us to travel about the city easily. The opening match of the 2014 World Cup is being played during our time in Sao Paulo, and tickets allowing, we aim to be there.
Sao Paulo Accommodation: http://www.booking.com/hotel/br/oscar-freire-plaza-imovel-total.en-us.html?sid=dc147fc41fe2bc2a7b4fb9dfb07dcd7c;hotel_id=373020;lang=en-us
Our original plan then had us jetting north to the Amazon to
a city called Manaus for another week, where we could see 2 of the group round
matches. Manaus is quite a small city and does not have the scale of
accommodation available that we could find in Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. For
this reason it has been difficult to find somewhere to stay, a lot of the
bigger hotels & resorts have already been booked early by the traveling
international media and the organising committee. I am continuing to
investigate options, but this stop on our itinerary may be the first casualty,
as our plan gives way to reality.
Next step of the tour takes us to Fortaleza on the North
Eastern coast of Brazil for an 11 night stay in this historic city. I am currently
working with some contacts in Fortaleza to secure a high rise sea-front
apartment, and am just waiting for the last few details to come through before
making the booking. While we are in Fortaleza there are 3 World Cup games being
played at the newly renovated Estadio Castelo stadium.
Staying in the North Eastern corner of Brazil, I have booked
an apartment in Salavador, where we will be staying for just slightly less than
2 weeks. The main criteria for selecting this property, apart from the fact
that it is pretty cool is that it is in a great part of town, not too far from
the Stadium, and close to where things will be happening. A brand new stadium
has been built for the World Cup, and we are planning to attend 2 of the later
stage World Cup matches at the Arena Fonte Nova stadium.
Salvador Accommodation: http://www.houseguestbrazil.com/
Finally we are planning to head to Rio de Janerio for the
World Cup Final weekend if we can find suitable accommodation and blag some
tickets to the Final. Right now it’s pretty hard to find accommodation for that
particular weekend with so many people from around the world all thinking of
doing the same thing, but I am continuing to keep my eyes peeled over the
coming weeks.
The timeframe and pricing has been released for the World
Cup tickets, and Yates & I are planning our strategy to get the tickets we
want, for the cities we are staying in. The first round of ticket sales starts
on 20th August and is open until 10th October, after
which there will be a lottery draw to see who gets tickets. I am keeping my
fingers crossed that we have better luck that we did in the last World Cup
where we got 1 set of tickets out of 14…!
With the above in mind, our itinerary needs to be pretty
firm before we commit to buying tickets, but we do have up until 10th
of October to get the plan fully sorted. There are 4 further sales phases
before the tournament kicks-off, so we have plenty of opportunities to pick up
the tickets we don’t get in the lottery.
Tickets Sales Phases: http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/organisation/ticketing/ticket-information/sale-phases/index.html
