News from Brazil, where the nuts are from: February 2008

Curitiba is a fabulous city. It’s very pleasant with lots of parks and tree-lined cobblestone pedestrian walk-ways. There is an old historic square with a cathedral, like you would imagine, and old colorful buildings - very charming. It’s known for being extremely organized and Brazilians think it is a model city, but not Brazilian:) Actually, most of its immigrants were from Germany and Italy. There are a lot of blond people and it really did feel different from the Brazil everyone imagines.

They have a tourist bus that leaves every 30 minutes – on time!! It goes to all the attractions in the city and outside as well because they have German, Ukrainian, and Italian memorials/parks to visit, as well as a botanical garden and Opera house that were very nice. You could get off and visit and then get on the next bus that came by. The famous architect here is Oscar Niemeyer. He designed most of the buildings in Brasilia (the capital of Brazil) and has a museum in Curitiba too, in the shape of an eye. The outsides of his buildings are always very modern and unique. They are not my style, but they are definitely interesting.

From Curitiba you can take a train down to the ocean and then a ferry boat on to Ilha do Mel (Honey island). This is what I really wanted to do. Unfortunately, the weather was not cooperating to go all the way to the island. But I did get to take the train, which was gorgeous! They built it in the 1870s in order to get products from the plateau, where Curitiba is, down to the water. In order to do this, they had to build right through the rain forest. The train swerves through the Sierra do Mar mountains past huge banana leaves, lush vegetation, and rivers/waterfalls. It’s not exactly the same as the Amazon rain forest, of course, but it was a wonderful way to be able to see something similar and have spectacular views at the same time.

Things I've noticed so far:

The breakfasts at the hotel are usually included and are wonderful! They have lots of fruit and cakes, yogurt, bread, cheese, meat, coffee, etc. I've eaten lots of mango, papaye (pa pa pa paye!) and pineapple already.

Cappuccinos in Brazil mean chocolate as well. So they are basically like mochas with whipped cream - not the traditionl way.

There are lots of cafes that sell coke in glass bottles instead of plastic ones or in cans - great!

People put KETCHUP on their pizza! To be fair though, this is because there is no tomato sauce on the pizza to begin with. I'm sure there are some great traditional Italian restaurants where we can find wonderful pizzas, but so far I haven't found one. I miss real pizza.

The napkins are SUPER small! They have these little plastic napkins that you need to take 5 of if you want to cover your lap - you wouldn't like this mom:)

To be a young Brazilian woman you must have long hair and long hoop earrings.

Overall, Curtiba is an excellent city; I hope to go back several times.

Murder on the Parangua Express!

Oi todos!

I am a few days behind so I’ll just write about Rio in this message. Wow, what can I say? Rio is an amazing city, one of the best I’ve ever visited - maybe even the best. I’ve never been to another city that has mountains and gorgeous beaches right in the city like Rio has. Ipanema and Copacabana are beautiful, as are the beaches further out from the city. I guess Rio has a weekend average of 3 million people on their beaches stretching from North to South! I always thought that the prettiest beaches were the ones that were more secluded and surrounded by lush greenery (I still do), but my Brazilian friends thought I was crazy, as they noted that the more people on the beach, the better! Even on the beach, everything is a party and a people watching experienc e here. This was fun too, but I don’t think it would be my constant preference for beach-going. However, during Carnival, it was great. I was never approached on the beach by swarms of children trying to sell things, as I thought I would be, but instead vendors of all sorts came by constantly selling everything from beer, soft drinks, snacks, and bikinis! You have a whole store coming right to you – you never have to get up:)

I was staying with my friend Bruna in Campinas and we drove to Rio with her and her boyfriend. In Rio we were hosted by her aunt and uncle who live in the city. This was terrific because they have a very nice apt. with a huge balcony and splendid views. There ended up being 10 of us sleeping there, though! They just lined up mattresses on the floor in the living room and we all crashed there (cousins, aunts and uncles, etc.). Everyone had come for Carnival, and Brazilians always seem to prefer to stay together rather than get hotel rooms. This would be more expensive, of course, but also I think families (extended families and friends included) just like to be together, no matter how many people:)

Everyone I was with had a staple diet of beer, beer, and more beer. There was no way I could keep up; the men were drinking at least 15 big glasses/bottles a day! It would take everyone hours to get ready in the morning because they wanted to stand around on the balcony and drink a beer before we left. We could never get out of the apt. until 12:30 or 1:00pm. Then, when we finally got to our destination - beach or some fair, etc. we would sit for another couple of hours and have more beer – frustrating for the active tourist in me:) The best thing is the breakfasts they eat here. Similar to Germany , they have bread and cheese and meat with fruit and coffee and always some sort of cake too (my favorite!).

The first day we arrived was gorgeous, and we went to Leblon and Copacabana beach, along with Pao de Acucar (Sugarloaf hill) in the evening. By this time the weather had changed a bit and it was drizzling, but still very nice. You can take a teleferico (enclosed ski lift) up to the top of the mountain and you have views of the whole city – just beautiful (see photo). Also, for any movie fans, my friend’s uncle pointed out to me that this teleferico was where they filmed the James Bond movie with Roger Moore where “Jaws” was trying to kill Bond on the way down from the mountain:)

For the next four days, it rained non-stop, which made it very difficult to do anything in the city since most things are done outside. We went out regardless since it was Carnaval (Portuguese spelling). We went to a couple of the blocos (street parties) where they have a truck playing music and slowly making its way down the streets while everyone is dancing and drinking Skoll (the obligatory Brazilian beer that is consumed by bottles of 10 or more during the day!) These parties were not all that spectacular; I think the ones in Bahia and the Northeast with more traditional African dancing would be much better. Here there were just a lot of tourists with not much rhythm:)

Sunday night of Carnaval we went to the Sambodromo, which is the Samba parade you see on tv. This begins at 9:00pm and goes until 6:00am the next day. It was fabulous! Completely crazy and crowded, but the energy and the ambiance of this place were incredible! It’s like a long football stadium and each samba school has an hour and a half to parade through the stadium with their different costumes and music (see photo). Some of the costumes were SO impressive. I’m sure they spend all here planning for the next Carnaval. It was raining during this time too, and I have to say that after 5 hours of listening to Samba, I was ready to leave. It starts to look and sound the same after a while, especially when you are standing the whole time on bleachers in the rain! But the first three hours were magnificent and I’m very glad I went. You can’t recreate on tv how it is to be there in person.

Since we didn’t get home until 6:30am, we didn’t do much the next day except sleep. The next couple of days, we visited downtown a little bit, which was great. There are a lot of old European style buildings that I wasn’t expecting to see. We visited the old courthouse and a 19th century café with two floors, a piano player and floor to ceiling mirrors and lamps. It looked like what you would see in France or Austria , but even all the more impressive somehow in Rio because you are walking down an alley with run down buildings, and then suddenly you step into this place! (see photo). We also took the last running cable car ( San Francisco style) up into their old cobblestone neighborhood, Santa Teresa, up in the hills, which was also very fun. The last few days I was there, everyone else had left and Bruna’s aunt toured the city with me. Both her aunt and uncle were so nice to me and I really got to see and experience Rio much more thoroughly than if I had just been there by myself. Plus, the weather was perfect by then, and we were able to visit the Christ Statue (amazing!), more beaches, and several different neighborhoods of Rio – a terrific last few days.

The one thing that was really depressing to see was all the trash on the beach. There were garbage cans all along the backs of the beaches, but still people just put their trash in the sand. I was constantly walking by and picking things up, but it’s an endless process and you can never clean up everything. It’s just sad, because if the city were a little cleaner and safer, I think it would be the number one tourist destination in the world. It has so much to offer. But the city has a ways to go to be on that level. There is still the smell of urine on many city streets and an overall lack of respect for property with lots of trash and graffiti on beaches and buildings. But all of this is intermixed with beautiful apartment buildings for the wealthy - quite an interesting contrast. What’s amazing is that Rio has some of the richest people in the world, wealthier tha n most Americans, and they are living right next to some of the slums, sometimes only a half a block away. I think it would be hard to live in such comfort knowing that right around the corner, there are 8 people to a run-down shack.

You can’t really avoid seeing the lower classes because the neighborhoods are all intertwined. But you can easily stay in the touristy section or nicer restaurants and not have much to do with anyone else if you wanted to. The one place were everyone comes together is on the beach and at Carnival. The favelas (slums) are the ones that put on Carnival – they run a lot of the parades and sew the costumes. The sad part is seeing these favelas everywhere! Rio must be one of the only places where the poor live high up with the best views. Usually, you can find mansions in those locations, but here it’s just one house on top of the other. I expected to see that in the city somewhat, but I wasn’t prepared to see how far they stretch out of the city. When we were driving into the city, all you could see where these shacks with clothes hanging out to dry just off of the high way.

I have to say, though, Rio gets lots of bad press for its violence, but we took the metro and the local buses, as well as walked many places, and I never really felt unsafe during the day. I was also with locals most of the time, which helps, but still I would recommend it to anyone. I’m sure Rio is dangerous, but I didn’t feel any different than being in other big cities such as New York or Rome , and I certainly don’t think it should make you hesitant at all to travel here. Overall it’s a magical and beautiful city, and a great tourist destination.

I’ll send another message after this one with short videos I took of Rio with my camera. And also another from my last trip to Curitiba with my impressions of Londrina too , my final city, where I am now (just arrived Sunday night).

I hope all of you are doing well, and for those of you in the freezing cold of the mid-west, it’s in the high 80s here:)

Take care.
Love,
Margaret