For Travellers, Poa is a convenient stop off point to the rest of South America, lots of people come through here by some means or another on their way to Terra del Fuego, the end of the world. A few years ago Dave Barr, the motorcycle traveller stayed at my house a couple of days on his way through (I'm in his book "Riding the Edge", beginning of Chapter 26, 'cept he spelt my name wrong!). If you're coming by motorcycle, PoA has a great bar with contacts for places to stay, contact me for info about this.

By road, motorbike or otherwise: From Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo the road is a little under a thousand miles, you need to follow the BR101 or the BR116. The 101 follows the coast down so if you're not in a rush you can stop off at various beach resorts on the way. A nice stop off point around about half way is Florianópolis, which is an island with some wonderful beaches. From Osório you then take the BR290 for the last 60 miles or so to Porto Alegre. The roads have tolls and you'll go through about ten tolls gates, depending on your route, with a total cost of about 12 UK pounds sterling

Backpacking: any major airport within Brazil has domestic flights to PoA. from Rio and São Paulo the flight is about 1 hour and a half. Only a little cheaper is by coach, there are direct coaches from Rio and São Paulo, the coach trip takes about 24 hours from Rio and 22 hours from SP. From further afield you'll have to change in one of the bigger cities. The coaches are fairly comfortable with air condish and loos and they stop every couple of hours or so. I say only a little cheaper because there are now an increasing number of discount airlines that offer good prices especially on night flights, it's well worth paying just a little more and cutting hours of an otherwise long boring trip.
There's no major rail network in Brazil.

Once in the city getting around is fairly easy. There's a pretty good bus service, the buses have a unique price and run to and fro all the neighbourhoods. There are some air condish buses but most are regular and can get pretty hot and crowded at rush hour. An alternative is the "Lotação" these are red mini-buses, no standing so you'll always get a seat (if they're full, they won't pick up) and they're air-conditioned, and you can hail them from any point in the road, they are about twice the price of the buses: Buses about 45p and lotação about 90p to a quid.

If you are by motorcycle or even car: Beware the PoA driver! They don't use their indicators too often, they think they should always be ahead of you so if YOU use your indicators to pull out into a road or out of a parking space or to over-take, they WILL NOT let you in, they do in fact increase their speed a little in order that you absolutely cannot get in. Quite frequently they accelarate to pass a changing traffic light. If you are at a red light do not simple wait until it's green before moving but check that there's no car trying to fly through. Late at night they normally don't stop at red lights (there's risk of getting the car-jacked) so check before you go ahead