Fans travelling to Brazil for the World Cup have been advised to add internal travel arrangements to their plans so they do not become stranded when they arrive in Brazil.
Unlike recent World Cups which had excellent public internal means of transport such as trains and buses and which also had easy-to-move around cities, Brazil is a very vast country and moving from one location to another is not that easy.
Madam Irene Vida Gala, the Brazilian Ambassador to Ghana, gave this advice as it had come to the embassy's attention that most World Cup visa applicants had not catered for their internal trips.
“There are no inter-city trains in Brazil as there were in Germany, and it is not easy to travel by bus, especially to watch the games which are spread over the cities. The best way to travel is by internal flights, but so far almost all the applications we have received do not have any internal travel arrangements”, Madam Gala told the Daily Graphic in an exclusive interview.
“The distances between the cities in Brazil are also not like the distances between Accra and the other parts of Ghana so it is important for people to take note of all these before making their final arrangements,” the Ambassador advised.
According to the Ambassador, she foresees a situation where people would travel to one match venue and not be able to make use of their other match tickets because they would not have the means to travel to the next match venue. She thus urged people travelling to secure those arrangements so they could avoid going through any inconvenience.
"I will advise those who are successful with their visa applications to also book and secure their internal flights right now as the flights may be fully booked if they wait till they get to Brazil.
“The World Cup period is also a holiday period in Brazil so it will be a very busy time”.
“I will advise the travellers, particularly those who have tickets for the Ghana group games, to take that extra precaution because it is not easy to travel around by road to the match venues and the trips are also not ones to be made within a 24-hour period because of the times the matches are scheduled to be played,” she explained.
