Hats off to Larry ! BRAZIL (PART 1)

BRAZIL (PART 1)

DECEMBER 2005

Salvador: Capoeira is a unique martial art dance created by slaves from this region

Brazil: The fifth largest country in the world, in both size and population is a world unto itself. Traveling the country from top to bottom by land requires a great deal of time and patience, since it’s about the same size as the 48 contiguous states.

Some observations:

I’ve now crossed into Brazil twice – both times from the north. In both cases officials asked for my yellow fever vaccination certificate. Obviously, this is something really important. I read somewhere that Brazil has the biggest AIDS problem outside of Africa. Wouldn’t it make a little more sense to hand out boxes of condoms at immigration posts rather than obsess over the whole yellow fever thing?

I completely underestimated the strength of Portuguese, the national language. Few people speak anything else. I foolishly assumed some people would speak a little bit of Spanish or maybe a little English. Nope. It’s amazing how much you can say with nonverbal language.

There appears to be a great deal of pride and patriotism here. People just seem to be proud to be Brazilian. Maybe it comes with size of the country or the obsession with football. I just don’t know.

So far, I have visited these cities:

Belém: The biggest city in the Amazon River basin is located just south of the Equator. This is a great place to go if you desire a truly Brazilian experience. With 1½ million people and few foreigners or tourists, it’s just interesting to walk around and absorb it all.

Belém is supposedly one of the rainiest cities in the world, and it rained a lot – hard and fast. What I couldn’t figure out...why do so few people carry umbrellas? Most people waited patiently under storefront canopies for the rain to stop, but the wait at times was quite long.

Salvador: The third largest city in Brazil has a heavy African influence traced back to the times of slavery. The historic center does not disappoint, and it is deservedly listed as a UNSECO World Heritage Site. Unfortunately, this great city’s reputation has been tarnished by rather intimidating crime warnings. The heavy police presence in the Pelourhino (historic center) is more than adequate.

Salvador is building a new Metro System. It’s supposed to be up and running in 2007. It’s weird to see overhead tracks that end suddenly. I almost half expected to see a train fly off and crash into the street.

Make sure you try Brasil Legal, a decent buffet where you can eat until you burst for about US$5.00. It’s located near the beach in Barra.

Some of the traffic lights had a countdown timer next to the green light. This was to display exactly how many seconds until the light turned yellow. It looked helpful for planning how much speed you need to avoid getting stuck at the red.

BankBoston has branches in Brazil. This is something I don’t quite understand. As I recall, BankBoston merged with Fleet which later merged with Bank of America. Maybe the Brazilian branches haven’t gotten around to putting up the new signs, or maybe B of A just doesn’t care.

Brasilia: Oh, man, I really don’t want to trash this place, so I’ll try to be gentle...

The capital city of Brazil was created from scratch in the middle of the 20th century. That means all the architecture is from that time. Think boxy. Think uninspiring. Think Cold War. Maybe in 200 years Brasilia will be a jaw dropper. For now, well, let’s just call it “a unique city in the world.” That’s Brasilia’s only selling point.

The churches are really the highlight of this city. Even if you have no interest in religion, the interior and exterior designs are different from other churches of the world

The street layout was designed to resemble a bird, or an airplane, or a bow and arrow. Call it what you want; you can only see it on a map or from the sky.

Walking distances are long. The Metro is useless. The busiest roads are really wide...certainly enough to keep them from being obsolete for at least the next hundred years. Buses are your best friend. They are the fastest way to get around and they’re really cheap

There’s way too much open space. Brasilia can often seem surreal and creepy...kind of like being trapped in a giant modern art exhibit.

The address system is so overly logical, it’s actually self destructive. The city is divided into “sectors” which are divided into “quadras” which are divided into “blocas” which are then listed by building numbers. Are you still with me? I didn’t think so. So let’s just discuss this over a cold beer. You can meet me at the pub located at Setor Comércio Local Sul (SCLS), Quadra 403, Bloca B, Loja 34. Ok?

Bus ride from Belém to Salvador: A lot can happen when you spend 36 hours on a Brazilian bus, especially when your 36-hour ride ends up being a 43-hour ride...

Within an hour of the departure, a young boy barfed up about a two gallons of beets. He then trampled his beet vomit through the aisle while simultaneously smearing it on several seats.

A young, attractive girl two rows in front of me kept applying cream to what appeared to be one of the saddest acne conditions I’ve ever seen.

A mother and her twenty-something Down’s Syndrome son were told to leave the bus when all the seats filled up. I don’t speak Portuguese, so I can't honestly say what happened. Ever watch a foreign movie without the captions? You get about 10% of the story if you’re lucky.

Okay, so at one point on that bus ride, I really needed to pee. I walked to the back of the bus to use the toilet. As I got to the rear of the bus, a woman was leaving the toilet. She obviously did more than just pee, because I found her steaming Christmas present waiting for me. This all happened near the end of the trip, and people had been using the toilet nonstop for two days. For reasons I’ll never fully understand, at the exact moment I left the toilet, the whole bus began to fill with chemical toilet stink. Passengers were sprinting for the front of the bus and gasping for air. Naturally people began pointing at me. Of course! The dirty foreigner did it, right? Oh my God, you have no idea how hard I had to work to convince fifty, furious, Portugeuse-speaking people that I was NOT the culprit. If only I had those pleas on tape, it would have been classic comedy.

Belém: Fishermen at a small pier near the city center