The Tops

Since I haven´t given many updates and leave later today, and since it is pouring in Sao Paulo - and there really isn´t much to do here anyways yet alone when it rains - I figured I would give a small tribute to those things that have been best here thus far.

Best City:
Big - Rio
Small - Floripa
Tiny - Trindade (near Paraty)
Nowhere- Mococa (Croce´s farm)

Best Food:
Dish - Moqueca (Bahian prep of fish)
Snack - Açai (sorbet like snack)
Ingredients - Croce´s farm (all organic yummyness)

Best Guys Met:
Sam/Arch/Jack (English Rugby boys)
Nick (Attack of the Ginger)

Best Activity:
Party - Boat BoozeCruise, Floripa
Nature - Horseback Ride (Croce´s farm, NOT Pantanal)
Culture - Carioca Final (Futebol)
Chill - Post9, Ipanema Beach

Best Beach:
People - Ipanema (specifically post9)
Chill - Itacaré
Isolated - Trindade

Best Girls:
Floripa.
Rio

Welcome to the Jungle

Before writing anything, I'd like to congratulate Ari on having kept such a good blog while travelling, apologize to Sam for giving him shit for never posting (and tell him I understand now why he never posted), and just say that it's not that I'm constantly busy but just that it's real hard to convince yourself to sit down and type at a computer. But so it goes.

After Floripa I went to Iguacu Falls on the Argentinian/Brazilian border, but since I've seen it before and had my camera stolen a while back, I ditched it for Paraguay - the land of no travellers (it's not that it's bad, it's just that every other place in SAmerica is better so people go to those instead). Since no one probably understands why I'd go to a third world shithole to buy a new and advanced piece of technology, it might help if I added that Paraguay pays no import duties, so products cost virtually the same as the US. Unlike US stores, Paraguay more resembles a Hong Kong version of a Moroccan market. The streets are filled with tiny little huts that house clothing stands, and in the few places where its possible to walk, you are almost guarenteed to get hit by a motorbike or van. Between and slightly in front of this constant bustle, street vendors sell the shittiest meat you can imagine, always with more grease than your digestive system can handle. But behind and under these stalls, the magic stores hide. Finding them is next to impossible without a guide (I paid a guy to walk around with me for 3 hours), and once you've been to 4 or 5 of these tiny, hidden, electronic stores, they all blend together and you can't find any of them again. Despite constantly being lost, and after much searching and painful negotiations, I got most stores to hate me for being a cheap Canadian; I did however get a Canon SLR for 10 bucks less than its list price on Amazon.

The trip was lovely and had absolutely no culture involved, but my illegal crossing to Paraguay finished with me ripping up the receipt (so the Brazilian border checkers couldn't prove I purchased the camera) and not even being checked (yet alone showing a passport). The one problem is that I had no idea of the exchange rate, and its possible I was charged double for this act of stupidity. In retrospect, since the rate is approximately 5800 to the dollar, any number they had showed me (since it was about 1.5 million pretend coins) sounds about right, I hope. Having taken a 15 hour bus and then had a long day of bustle, I
decided to get a nice night's sleep... on another 15 hour overnight bus. For those of you that don't know, a nice overnight bus is an oxymoron and is practically impossible, except on Argentinian buses, which weren't available, and won't be at all this trip. I got to Campo Grande in the morning, far from refreshed, and booked a tour into the Pantanal with some Vikings (Danes that fill all physical stereotypes of Scandinavia).

At approximately 25x the size of the Everglades, the Pantanal is the largest wetlands in the world. It's basically a massive flatland surrounded by a few large mountain ranges, and every wet season the rain all floods in, filling it to approximately a 3 meter deep lake everywhere. Now, there is no water and it looks like a massive corn field in Iowa, filled with cool trees and lovely plain grass instead of boring corn. Plus there are tons of really strange animals that you never see anywhere else in the world. We went on a jeep safari, a nice trek, an interesting boat tour, and a painful horse ride... which basically sums up 4 days of totally unique exploration into about 15 word. I also caught a baby piranha and ate him too. From the Pantanal I traveled 2 hours by Brazilian van (as in 5 hours where I couldn't feel my feet) to Bonito (which means beautiful in Portugese and lives up to this name), the eco-tourism capital of Brazil. The guide books are totally correct in their description of these rivers: imagine throwing 10000 exotic fish into a river of crystal clear water, and then going snorkeling with them. It's really cool.

So that's basically a super quick summary of what I've been up to the past week. As bad as it is to remove all humor from my writing, especially when that means removing all details too, I sorta am short for time and am watching cartoons while eating breakfast (the latter is happening with the former as background noise). It's really nice to have a camera, even though most of my pictures from the Pantanal sucked (that's what happens when you put a $1800 lense on a camera and try to use the manual settings which you miserably experiment with), but just having 5 cool ones is worth it in itself. I'll be going back to Campo Grande (the launch point for the Pantanal) Friday night, and will probably decide at the bus station Saturday morning what comes next. Happy July 4, and hope everyone is having as much fun as I am!

The Magic Hostel in the Magic Island

So first off I apologize for the lack of posting, but in truth, I really haven't been going anywhere either, so it almost cancels out. I left the city of Rio but stayed in the state, arriving at a tranquil beach suburb known as Paraty. It's pretty much also known for its cachaca distilleries, producing the best yet least known ones in the country. But after a quick 4 days, I hopped on a bus to the Sao Paulo station - which if anything reflective of the massive financial capital of Brazil, proves that the entire city of Sao Paulo must be lovely and quite newly developed. However - instead of going to the Pantanal from there - I met some cool gap year kids and joined them for a trip down south to the magical island: Florianopolis.
As amazing as anyone may tell you it is, I assure you its even better. I have thus followed in the footsteps of the bartender at the hostel I am currently in by not leaving (Steve is a kiwi who came here 3 months ago and has yet to leave). This island takes only an hour to drive north to south and 20 minutes east to west, but has mountains, beaches, lagoons, sand dunes, and probably more. We get the sunset over a lagoon (as well as over the bay connecting it to the mainland), and would get the sunrise over the ocean should we wake up in time. Its got massive parties and chill bars, cheap eats and fancy restaurants. The south has farms and fisherman villages, the north has luxury suburbs and surf bum beaches. For 12 bucks a night I get a hostel that could go for 100 euros a night if it had private rooms and an elevator, and (if i ever splurged on this expensive of a meal) for 10 bucks I could get more fresh food than I'd know what to do with. Did I mention that the world surf championships are being held here starting Friday?
And this is just the physical island. The people are a whole different story. Every single woman on this island could be a model. Literally every single one. You can even tell that all of the moms, who are all still beautiful, used to be knock outs. Every single person who has been travelling here, every one, has come close to hurting his (or her) neck from staring at people. Even the British girls that I'm travelling with now were checking out the girls because they are amazed too. And going to a party sponsored by the fashion school - which put on a runway show - definitely did not help me want to leave here. Nor did meeting pro-kitesurf girls, or my friend having met a TV presenter, or just meeting people who invited us VIP into clubs.
As far as the Pantanal is concerned, I have no doubt that Ill make it there, but I just still have no reason to leave here yet. My guess is that the far north of Brazil will have to wait for another trip.

Stuck Back Where I Started...

So I´ve been gone a month and it´s been... awesome.  Very relaxed places, very interesting people, very non-chalant.  For almost the entire time, I am in no rush to go anywhere, no rush to do anything.  I have the freedom and ability to change my schedule whenever and as frequently as I want, and I´ve been doing just that.

Last Sunday, while being near Porto Seguro, after discussions with my kiwi friend, I decided to go to Vítoria.  No tourists go there as there is no tourism infrastructure.  There are no sites, no things to do really, other than hang out in a fairly large Brazilian city.  I knew that my Portguese isn´t good, which would have made this quite difficult, but the city is halfway to Rio and has South America´s largest chocolate factory: with free samples.  So after getting my hopes real high to do this, I bailed.  After a few more minutes of thinking and some more discussions about where to actually go, I decided on Bella Horizonte.  Bella is another fairly large city without much tourism, but it does have tourists roll through on their journeys to Ouro Preto (the gold rush town) as well as to some great hiking and trails nearby.  This decision, which also lasted 24 hours, actually took me to the bus station and to the vendor needed to buy a ticket, which, much to my despair, was not available.  Having had enough of Porto Seguro, and with no one else there, I jumped on a bus back to Rio because, quite frankly, I saw Swedes (with whom I had had a 5 minute conversation already) and needed to just be moving.

Flash forward a week, and the need to move is back.  Unlike last time here, there really isn´t much touristy stuff to do, and being in a hostel includes constant interactions with new and different people daily.  I´ve gone out a little more - including the street samba sensation of Lapa which is great - and relaxed a lot more than last time.  My brief stop over in Rio - I honestly thought this would be at most 24 hours - became a week so far, and I am either taking a bus tonight or [probably] tomorrow around noon to the Pantanal. Or so I think.

From that area, I might cross into Bolivia, or just go up north, or even down south.  It´s really too far ahead to actually know what I will be doing, or where I will be going (hence why I didn´t even buy a bus ticket at the bus station today).  With crystal clear water in the north, but probable dirty water falling from the sky to supplement it, and insane animal wildness in the Pantanal, but no idea what I´d do isolated over there, and the best surf in Brazil in the south, but not knowing how to surf (yet), it´s impossible to predict what ticket I might buy next.  But as great as being stuck (literally) in Rio has been, all that I know for sure is that I must get moving again.

Buses bring Mosquitoes

I sat with my knife in hand, passport hidden, and door and window locked last night at 10pm as our intruder alarm took command over my air conditioner. This was a new city, with no more friends, and no one else in my room. I waited and waited, hoping I wouldn´t have to plunge my leatherman into my cab driver who was breaking in to rob me for trying to rip him off (he ended up winning that one because i got so pissed at him). Then it went quiet, so I read and went to bed. Then they came.
Mosquitos. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Maybe hundreds of thousands invaded my locked room. Penetrating my safehouse, they swarmed me and attacked. Well, that probably didn´t happen, but I woke up at 215am with monstrous welts all over and a slight buzzing in the room. After spraying myself with repellant, hiding in my sheet, attacking it with my pillow, switching beds, switching sheets, spraying myself again, and looking at my watch (now 415), I finally swatted the one last mosquito around (also the only one I saw and maybe only one the entire time). At 430 I fell asleep, and woke up this morning with no additional bites.
So this all happened at my HostellingInternational hostel in Porto Seguro, a town I passed through before my 20 minute bus ride after a 10 minute ferry ride this morning to get where I am (d´Ajuda).I only went to the HI hostel - if you recall the swiss german strange guy that was also at an HI - because it was 9 pm when I got off a 7 hour bus (the sun sets at 530 here and it is pitch black by 6). And I only got in that long argument with my cab driver because I´m told not to walk at nighttime near bus stations, and not having realized that the scale of my map was so small, such that I was only 1km from the center of town not 3, I chose to take a cab to protect myself and thus succumb to his demands.
I should also add that I am not in a particularly heavy mosquito area, unlike the Pantanal - an area I will be in later - in which my British friend got 89 bites on her legs because she wore black (she got 3 on her upper body, and Lonely Planet I just learned advises against black clothing).
Anyways the 7 hour bus was from Ilheus, a switch city for me where I left my 3 British, 2 Swedish and Israeli friends who made a last minute decision to stop in Vitoria on their way to Rio. This bus ride was an hour and a half from Itacaré, the city we spent 4 days literally tanning by day and drinking by night (I also read in the sun and we also played cards in the dark). This city was - as I already said - an hour and a half from Ilheus, where we had to stop on our way to Itacaré. And thus that brings me back to last week when we took a 6 hour bus from Salvador. Of course other stuff happened to, but I am scratching the skin off my ankles the way a leper must attack his face, and I thus must get some sleep before my samba and capoeira lessons tomorrow.

Inefficient, but necessary to get to Salvador

Let me make this perfectly clear: Brazil is by no means a Developed Nation. Now, it would be boastful and inaccurate to claim that it as underdeveloped as Africa - hell that's just ridiculous - but for those of you thinking that the romantic and exotic city of Rio deserves to be considered the same as a first world metropolis (and hence believe that the UN considers it developing because of the rural areas of Brazil underdeveloped), you are entirely mistaken. To prove this, I would like to briefly describe public transportation and the infrastructure built to service it. Although the metroes are clean and new-ish, they haven´t really been ideal in where I travel to/from, so I will not discuss them. Instead, let´s take a typical traveller who wants to see a typical attraction. I´ll play that traveller, and we´ll use Corcovado as that attraction (that´s the hill which the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer stands atop). I left at 315, caught a bus, sat in traffic, and got there at 435. Not bad, saying that I am as far south and it is as far north as possible in Rio. The tourist train that takes you to the top of the mountain comes 1-2x an hour, so I waited until 5 to take it up. Thus, from 520 until 6 I was atop the mountain, taking cool photos with my buddy Jesus. Please don´t take this description to mean that I didn´t enjoy going, Jesus´s view was well worth the schlepp. Plus, I got up about 5 minutes before sunset, saw the sunset from the highest point in Rio, then went down about 10 minutes after sunset. This brings us back to about 625 when I came back down the mountain. Not bad still. At 830, however, I finally got home. Granted that Rio is a massive city, this voyage could have taken 35-45 minutes without traffic. Luckily for me, other travellers, and all the students and poor people, the buses take forever, and if you choose the r$2.20 bus instead of the r$2.70 (as in no air conditioning), it can only be described as what it was: a jam-packed bus with minimal ventilation, also known as a sauna of stench and sweat without the amenities or politeness of a spa. Oh yea, and it gets just a tiny bit humid inside. Either way, the buses have been my lifeline around Rio, and as long as they take (even with planning my day around most heavily packed hours), I still have gotten to see most of Rio.
Yesterday consisted heading to the airport between 2 and 3 hours early because as a foreigner, I am not entitled to purchase my ticket online. I got lucky because the price remained constant; I go real lucky because I got an aisle; I got super lucky when I sat down I was next to a baby and his 4 year old brother. Woo hoo for that flight. So I got to Salvador where it has rained for the last week, and instead of continuing, the streak, the heavens decided to stop crying for at least today. That doesn´t mean there is nothing to cry about though, as poverty roams these streets. From starving dogs baking in the sun to children doing tricks in the street to many of the people not having shoes, Salvador does not have the glimmer of wealth that rushes through Rio. As I fried under the hot sky today on my walk from the beach at Barra to the historic city (Pelo), I took a wrong turn and saw the downhill street ahead of me switch from cobblestone road to muddy sewage. As 3 separate people - none of whom had cool graphic Ts, showered recently, or shoes - pointed for me to turn around, I figured I was alittle off the tourist track. I listened to their advise by the way (everything behind them just got worse and dirtier and looked more dangerous), and found my way to Pelo, which was filled with beggars and tourists, most of whom were Brazilian, although all I did was get harassed for not giving them money, which I ended up changing my mind about and donating to the Capoerha guys, but not the beggars.
Anyways, I´m now in my hostel in Salvador, which makes me pay for internet and has no kitchen nor hot water, but at least the included breakfast is real tasty. It´s nice and close to the beach, but there are no tourists (there are like 100 people in like 25 hostels). I have no roommates in my 10 bedroom collective, except my one roommate who is a Swiss German, soft rock guitar player who gets inspired by Jesus, Obama, and nature and often times seems clinically insane. I think I´ll be switching hostels very, very soon.

war is peace

so in terms of soccer, everyone knows that brasil is... well, brasil. But to put it into comparison, I think the only place that might be similar to the Maracana is where Boca plays in Buenos Aires, and I'm not even sure if that is fair to the Maracana. If the intensity of going to a European game could be compared to watching Saving Private Ryan in unbelievable HD quality (and thus watching a game on TV could be compared to watching MASH in black and white with poor sound), I think it would be fair to describe the Maracana (where the Flamengos play here in Rio) as storming the beaches of Normandy in person. To begin, the physical description:

The Maracana used to be the world's largest stadium. Having once held 200,000 people, it was forced to install seats for the world club championships about 5 years ago. Now, it only holds about 90,000, but as we all know, its not the size of the dog in the fight, but rather the size of the fight in the dog. There is a video screen on either side and a score board too, but no clock and no PA system of any sort. The player introductions was really cool beacuse of this. Instead of them being announced and coming out, fans scream a starter's name until he acknowledges with a wave, and then they move onto the next player. Installing seats a few years back was actually a pretty dumb idea because now everyone just stands on the seats and screams, and those who are short stand on the armrests or the back of the seat only (much safer than just cramming too many bodies into a stadium). At all times during the game, including before and after, 2 helicopters circle overhead; every now and then, the 3rd or 4th swoops in from afar just to remind you that they are still there. Although it is general seating by section, there is a barrier separating the fans from the away team section to prevent fights (upon losses, fans have been known to pull the plumbing out of the bathrooms). In addition, in front of the first row, there is a 15 foot drop that leads to the (not filled) moat. Of course there are police guards in SWAT outfit in the stands, and k9 units on the field in case anyone really wants to test the sharpshooters in helicopters. And of course, the Army provides security outside of the stadium too. I forgot to mention that after the game, in the metros (both near the stadium and far), polie officers were making sure that Flamengo fans were in the front half of the subways while the Botafoga fans were in the back half to prevent any post-game brawls.

The internal dynamics are too hard to do justice, and not attempting, will therefore summarize it as follows: everyone is fucking nuts. Any call or foul against the Flamengos led each person in the stadium to react as if his/her mother had been personally insulted in front of them. Any Flamengo mistake led each person to scold the player as if he was their child who ran away. And of course, every goal led to such levels of ecstasy that most of us will unfortunately never comprehend.

Before the game, there was a 150 person band playing for 15 minutes. I didn't hear a single note. During the game, all of Botafoga's fans were cheering as loudly as we were. I didn't hear a single sound (except once everyone was appalled by Bota's goals and was almost in tears). And I had no idea of course about time or calls in the game because there is no clock and the refs whistle can never be heard. In case I thought I had gone deaf from the favella party last night (which I finally got rid of the ringing sound in my ears after 36 hours), this game definitely made hearing extremely difficult. Sacrafices.

Standing in this massive emotional drain, I realized how the Maracana may be the closest actual installment of 1984. No other place has such an egalitarian status - of course the inner-party members are those in skyboxes and the outerparty members are those sitting at midfield on the second level - where the individual is completely absorbed by the crowd. Of course as in 1984, the society must be at war in order to preserve the peace (hence the opponent), and I'm sure in their sections it was the same way. The major difference of course was the necessity of emotion, instead of the removal entirely. Unlike the Orwellian society's complete distate for love, the love of Flamengo fans makes the atmosphere a show in itself, if you so choose not to watch the game. I thus was fortunate enough to get to engage with people with ecstatic smiles on their faces in the 1st half when we went up 2-0. I did have to watch as everyone was on the verge of tears as we let up 2 goals in the second half. Luckily we won 4-2 in PKs, or else the city may have burned down. I forgot to mention that only non-alcoholic beer may be served now because of riots and fights that used to happen (in case you didn't believe the last sentence).

So here is just 20 seconds of people going fairly normal (when in the lead). After going silent when Botafoga scores however, everyone just screams twice as loud to say 'F U' to the Botafoga fans. And just to go back to my last post for a minute, it's pretty crazy how the 2 types of young adults can still interact in the same night club - and how different this night club is from the non-favella night club (which is the exact same as ones in the US and Europe) from the previous night.

gossip girl

I have safely landed in Brasil and enjoyed my first 2 days. On my flight from Sao Paulo to Rio, I met a Brazilian girl who lives in DC; she paid for my cab to the Daniel's residence in Sao Conrado (the Daniel's are Eta's relatives, and Sao Conrado is a good 15-20 minutes from her place in Copacabana). I also briefly made Brazilian national television as a person walking through the airport (I guess Swine flu is good for my advertising).
Although Gossip Girl may sound nothing like Brasil at all, the stark dichotomy between favellas (shantytown slums) and upscale living in RIO makes the relative socioeconomic differences between the Upper East Side's elite and the rest of New York seem minimal. And unlike Mexico- where the tourists have money and the locals don't- and unlike Morocco- where no one has money- in Brasil, the people with money live side by side to those without. By that I mean that those in favellas work for those not in, and those favellas are mere blocks away from hotels like the Intercon and Sheraton.
So everything and everyone is gorgeous here, and I am just 2 blocks from the beach. Oh and for those who didn't know, Copacabana is where whores and old tourists go only.