fresh n juicy chunks of oyster :: RTW travel blog

There's only so little you can write about the Iguaçu Falls without just stating the obvious and besides, at that the photos do a much better job. I could write that 1,200,000 litres of water pour down Iguaçu every second but first of all I don't even know what 1,200,000 litres per second is supposed to look like and then it is a pretty dull statistic. I could talk about how the Brasilian side gives you an impressive panoramic walkway along the side of all the Falls while Argentine side is more of a waterfall theme park where you get up-close, wet and personal with a few of them. But again, hardly inspiring. So I'll just admit I'm at a loss for words and won't spoil the experience by waxing lyrical about a bit of water.
With the Iguaçu area being one of the popular border crossings between Argentina and Brasil it is also home to another phenomenon. Here is where I ran headlong into one of the three 'waves' of young Israeli 3-year-military-service absolvents who pass through on their way to the legendary Carnival in Brasil. When I arrived at my current hostels there were 12 Israelis, 1 Japanese and myself and that is of course completely anecdotal and non-representative. The other two 'waves' originate in Santiago de Chile and Cuzco, Peru and by February they all converge on the major carnival centres. Apparently 3000 Israelis will have made the pilgrimage. For a country with a smaller population than London and with some like orthodox Jews and the elderly never or barely ever traveling, that has to be quite a sizable exodus of young people. I myself found it a fascinating bit of social behaviour (if slighly lemming-esque :).
So there, at least I've managed to write about something around here. Next stop BA.

[I never realised no one could download hi-res version of the pictures: if anyone wants any copies hi-res of pics for desktop backgrounds or for printing on a t-shirt for your dog just email me telling me which one you want and I'll make it happen.
Also the new Argentine Falls side pics are in Album Argentina 1 and in Brasil 6 Panoramas.]

When I tried leaving Sao Paulo on Saturday the city didn't let me - all the buses were full-up. Besides, the city was throwing itself a 450th birthday party so I stayed another night and joined it. The location: an intersection of two streets that featured in a classic Paulista song which the songwriter was performing that day. The downside: even though the traffic lights were still trying to impose order it was complete chaos on the ground; moving was nigh on impossible. The only option was to find others likeminded who were seeking a way out. Almost magically such collection of people would coordinate their efforts by pushing the person in front of them with all their weight. We turned into a human ram, wedging the crowd violently apart and stumbling in whichever direction the first person in line could go to escape the flattening pressure from behind.
But we weren't the only ones having fun (and honestly, most in the line had big grins on their faces while getting dangerously close to being trampled to death). As I was being pushed along one smiling guy passing in the other direction firmly planted his hand on my crotch-area before disappearing into the crowd while others, I could swear, were rubbing themselves into me and others. Frotter's paradise!
The next morning I hung around the city and elevatored a tall building and got a nice view of the city from above.
That evening after barely missing my bus I made my way to Foz do Iguaçu, of waterfall fame. So far I've seen the Brasilian side of the falls which were mightily impressive. But since then I've been nastily sick, so much so that under suspicion of having caught Dengue Fever or Malaria earlier I got a blood test at the local hospital.
After an hour's wait they luckily returned negative on both counts. Which unfortunately means there can be less self-pity from now on and I'll have to suffer in comparative silence. However I swore to myself that as soon as I could walk without breaking out into a piggish sweat I would haul my ass to Argentina.
Which I have done today after bidding my goodbyes to Brasil... :*(

[Pictures of Sao Paulo and Foz have been uploaded into Albums Brasil 5 and 6. Album Brasil 6 contains Panorama shots of Sao Paulo from above and the falls from the Brasilian side. The very large panoramas had to be split so I could upload them - piece them together at home on photoshop for a desktop background for your ultra-widescreen monitor. :)
In other news a sicko hit this blog last week looking for 'pictures of foxes with there guts hanging out of there stomach'. For some reason google brings up my blog as the second hit on the query. Hmmmm... ;)]

Sao Paulo is crazy. It is the city to end all cities. It is a hulking metropolis with what must be the highest concentration of bank central offices in South America. The sprawling behemoth stretches for miles in all directions, taking hours (at a bad time) to drive through and housing (or 'shacking' in the case of most favelas here) some 20 million or so people. In short, it's urbanisation gone haywire, concrete replacing trees and people going jogging on the thin green patches running between two 3-lane carriageways. Seemingly neverending multi-lane roads, jammed full of cars, cut through the city above and below each other and multi-story condos and offices rise up everywhere you look.
Concrete jungles may be dead on one level but of course the great thing about a city is that it is populated by human beings. Sao Paulo has everything (even pedestrianised zones to get you away from all the cars), the city's nightlife is said to be the best in South America and a lot of people are hip and young.
However, the people (the Paulistano) are a race apart from the native of Rio (the Carioca), for instance. While in Rio everyone and their dog walks around in flip-flops, lives to go to the beach to relax and works only if necessary to enable said activity, in Sao Paulo people seem to work first and then party if there's time (usually enough), and generally only wear flip-flops in the privacy of their own home (or don't have a pair).
But seriously, stereotypes about the people of the various states of Brasil are amazingly accurate. When moving North to South in Brasil almost every state you enter could be a different country altogether. They almost all have different music, foods, ways of speaking, living and having fun. However, in the end there is still that weird intangible link, that indefinable mix of the essence of Brasil inside everyone.
Anyway, getting back to Sao Paulo, yes, I've had fun here. But the problem with all metropoli (?) is that to some degree they are all similar and you've seen it all before somewhere. Of course all have their unique character but concrete still looks and feels like concrete no matter where in the world you are. In other words (how many ways will I find of saying this by the end of this trip?), I feel the need to move again.
The Iguacu falls will be the next stop and from all I've heard about it you don't need to see another waterfall once you've seen the Iguacu. Which is good because it'll later save me time on this trip and let me stay in Buenos Aires for longer... Ummm, what was that thing I said about cities again...? ;)

[Pics from Rio (statue of Christ) and Sao Paulo have been uploaded to albums Brasil 4 and 5.
Note the dangers of a large capacity memory card and the number of random shots taken... I think I soon have to start editing a little more... :)]

In Rio it's easy to forget time. The luxuries of beaches and a great city all around you are enough to keep anyone occupied for weeks or months and then wonder what happened. And where all the money went - Rio eats money like nowhere else in Brasil - with the exception of Sao Paulo, I hear, so at least I'm prepared for where I'll be heading today. Bye bye Rio. :(
I did see the obligatory statue of Christ the Redeemer though - after we prayed to his Daddy for 20 minutes while he was hiding modestly in thick clouds. Another check on that list of '20 things to do in Rio before you die' - 'before you leave' won't do as I'll definitely be back some day... I may pick a different time of year though, as it's been decidedly rainy and grey.
So, last week, instead of going to the beach I visited the favela again: Rocinha, the largest in Brasil with 200k people. When I first set foot there by myself I have to admit there was a little trepidation in my step, however, my eel was winding happily around (to be continuing with the fishy metaphor).
But slowly, I started seeing it for myself: it is a safe place. People leave their doors open and a shop selling televisions was left abandoned, with the wares right in front of open doors and windows while the owner went out for lunch. Similarly shops with kids playing PlayStation2 were unattended - several months wages just lying around for seemingly anyone to pick up. In London, New York or anywhere else they'd have grown legs within five minutes. There are restaurants everywhere filled with people eating, living their lives, doing their jobs and building existences for themselves and their families. The place is alive!
Dozens of flimsy, home-made but airworthy kites flutter high above the city-within-a-city, each attached by a string to a throng of kids in the street. Children only go to school in either the morning or afternoon which leaves them free to play or make a killing for the drug-lords for the rest of the day.
One by one some of them started getting interested in the Gringo who was watching a footvolley game in a 'square' delineated by crooked houses and a dangling chaos of illegally tapped powerlines overhead. Before long, drawn by my very obviously amusing attempts at Portuguese, I was surrounded by children and their older brothers and friends, everyone chatting happily (weirdly I saw very few girls on the street - I wonder where they hang out...). I made a fool of myself at footvolley (no rocket science: I suck, while they play all day!) and was taken on a tour of Rocinha. Down through the alleys we went, five kids running ahead and behind me. They took me to their favourite eatery (cheap, delicious food in huge portions!), we went shopping for some local music and hung around.
I started understanding what they say about the place: the favela is indeed safer than elsewhere in Brasil where police patrol and enforce the law. Any minor crime within the community must be immediately found out about and dealt with by the gangs more efficiently (read ruthlessly) than the police ever could. A smooth social contract: residents are guaranteed safety and they in turn protect the drug-lords from the police by keeping schtum.
It may not be ideal but it's amazing how efficiently it seems to work, even making the place accessible to Gringos like me.
Then again, I probably only know the tip of an iceberg of problems there. Most street corners are populated by 'watchers' for the gangs and dealers with their tell-tale bleached hair and walkie talkies in hand.
But people still live and lead their lives in the midst of all this, largely invisible to the rest of Brasil, shunned for living in a violent and base world. As ever, I have no answers nor know half the questions that need to be asked but I have found a new respect for the complexities of this world and the lack of blacks and whites. I also suspect, however, that the police and use of state force are out of place there: things would undoubtedly get much uglier than they currently are and they'd have a war on their hands...

[Some pictures of Rio will hopefully be uploaded soon, I'll keep posting.]

Lately my traveling feet have started itching uncontrollably again (yes, I do shower daily!). Actually the feeling is more like a tickling somewhere behind my stomach, probably the nibbling of the peckish eel that is a winding and slithering cohabitee of my innards. It's sharing that space with my many other inner organs including my liver which has lately been heavily punished for what must have been the sins of its past lives.
The nightlife in Rio is great, every night of the week there's somewhere fun to go till the break of dawn. The last few nights I've tended the Gringo-connection, however, which has landed us in English and Irish pubs where weirdly all the Brasilians speak near-perfect English (still working out whether they all go there to practice their language skills or to hit on Gringo/as).
So, the restless eel in my guts has been hungering and nibbling away this time and to appease it I started doing more active things since yesterday instead of just being passively entertained (partly to blame was the weather of course as it had been raining and grey until then - and as I write it has started again...). I went up on the Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf mountain) so I could cross it off my proverbial list and was pleasantly surprised and granted a sudden insight into what makes Rio so special. Up from above the city rests like a giant, sprawled-out starfish, its arms reaching into the Atlantic and creating beautiful, mile-long beaches wherever land and water meet. The beaches are separated where a starfish's armpits would be by chunky, wooded rock formations (like the Sugarloaf) which rise between the jungles of skyscrapers and look as though they have been strategically placed by God to separate the various centres of Rio (presumably when, as they say here, He dedicated His 7th day to the city's creation). Possibly He also had the city's poor in mind with these geological features as clinging to the hills are the impossible constructions of the favelas, Brasil's 'slums', right next to the most expensive neighbourhoods and hotels - and with the best views of the city!
Rio feels slightly unreal and quite perfect from several hundred metres above. And it feels spoilt - how many other metropolis' are there where most of the centres are a mere few minutes walk from one gorgeous beach or another? No wonder most Cariocas (Rio's locals) seem so happy and friendly. Even - or maybe paradoxically, especially - those living in the favelas.
That's where I went today on a guided tour (I won't go into the debate some tourists like to have of whether it's exploitative or not and just settle the case arrogantly by saying that it's not! ;). Favelas are cities within cities housing in total some 1.5m people in Rio. They are tight knit communities with almost all amenities but mostly dirt-poor and with most people living in squalor (the rent is cheap though!). Drug trafficking rules supreme there and the police are twice as bad as the dealers. Few roads exist and the rest of human traffic moves through labyrinthine, tiny alleyways, snaking between houses stacked on top and below of each other at impossible angles and places. The infamous violence erupts when the police and the drug lords in turn try to assert their sovereignty over the favela which as a matter of everyday fact lies firmly with the latter. It is a crazy place but the people there make it amazing. The number of community, NGO and charity projects trying to better the situation of the places are incredible. Many are starting with the kids by attempting to get them educated and off the streets.
And I felt like I was back in Bahia (the state up North with Salvador) where seemingly anyone in the street gives you a smile and returns your thumbs-up or ridiculously elaborate handshakes. It's another world and also unfortunately the one which apparently most Brasilians can only associate with violence and will never dare see with their own eyes, thanks to the constant dutiful brainwashing by the media here (sound familiar?).
Finishing off today I stumbled off the street and into a free concert paying homage to a Brasilian music legend, Ary Barroso (I'd never heard of him either :). It ended up being a mix of Samba, Barbershop Quintet, Jazz and stand-up comedy (most of which went right over my linguistically-challenged head). The great thing was that most of the audience where at least three times my age but they were tearing up the stands, clapping, singing and Samba-ing as you'd only expect pensioners back at home to do after their eighth drink on their annual New Year's Bingo night.
As I've said before, they all know how to party and live in this country!
Meanwhile, the eel inside me still longs to hit the road again (or a favela!). Let's hope no-one gets hurt.

[google for "broccoli eel" for some good reading... if you have a couple of minutes that is...]

The world's biggest beach party's aftermath consisted of a Copacabana beach drowning in bottles, plastic and junk and masses of people who were passed out, sleeping or watching the sunrise.
The night itself in several nutshells: staggering numbers of people populating the whole length of Copa beach. Amazing fireworks going on for a good 20 minutes all being launched from ships out at sea, one of which was carrying a huge lit-up Jesus. There were a couple of concerts but surprisingly no real sound systems between the stages, but in compensation locals drove their beefed up cars with speakers the size of coffins towards the beach and pounded out Funky, the dirty-dancing electronic music of the favelas. At the same time there were religious festivals of worshippers of a popular Afro-Brasilian 'cult', dancing to drums, going into ecstatic seizures and presenting offerings and wishes to the Goddess of the Sea, Iemanja. Very spiritual!
Finally, add some cheap and very lethal Caipirinhas to the whole mixture and you're guaranteed a good night!
They sure know how to throw a party in Brasil.
And Rio being the City of God, the Man Himself has taken it upon Himself to clean up the mess it left behind: it's been pouring it down for the past two days...

[The pictures from New Year are available on gallery Brasil 4, shouts out to Iam who took all of them with his camera. My current weapon of choice is a disposable Fuji cam :)]