Being unaware how to navigate tour offerings in a country where few people speak any English, I booked to visit Vila Velha through the Tripadvisor link. From the description I was expecting to spend a few hours on a less-than-appealing bus tour with 30-40 others, but was in the end delighted to find that I was the only person who had booked for that day, so got a private guided tour from an excellent local host (Vivian), who drove me to the site in her own car, spoke good English, was highly knowledgeable about all relevant topics, and great fun to spend the day with. The day was cold and the rain was relentless, but this hardly mattered, apart from the fact that the second half of the visitor trail at the great sandstones was unadvised, due to being dangerously slippery. We started with coffee at the visitor centre. I then walked the first half of the trail in the rain, experiencing the magnificence and other-worldliness of the rock formations, whilst Vivian took the road below, collecting me at the end of the trail to ferry me on to the furnas (sinkholes) and the golden pond, where we saw biscutate swifts ducking and diving over the water, presumably seeking out water-borne insect prey. In the teeming rain the pond was green and silver-grey rather than golden, but still beautiful. After lunch back at the visitor centre cafe (vegetarian options provided) we drove back via Witmarsum Menonite German colony, visiting the local deli selling cheeses, beers and jams. The only negative for this excellent tour was the fact that the contact details to confirm pickup venue and time given by Tripadvisor were unhelpful – just a phone number offering an automated menu announcement in crackly Portuguese, for which I selected a random number to press and eventually got connected in stages to a rep who spoke enough English. I had earlier attempted to send an SMS, which was not replied to. Tripadvisor should provide a proper suite of contact options in English language: email, SMS, WhatsApp as well as voice. I wonder how many visitors fail to make the necessary contact and miss out.