Farewell to Brazil

Well folks, I'm back in the good ol' US of A now. But before I get too caught up in the swing of things, I'd probably better finish my Brasil chronicles. But first, let's go to Viewer Mail: Question #1: Paraag, you're my idol. But something is troubling me. Was Spongebob Squarepants on TV in Spanish or Portuguese? Please let me know how I can be as cool as you. - AV, New York Answer #1: Ahh... yes. Good question indeed. The problem is that they were speaking so fast that I couldn't tell if which language it was, though I suspect that it was indeed Portuguese. I did happen to catch the opening line though - "Ohhhhhhhhhhh, Quien vives en la pina de bajo del mar? SpongeRoberto SquarePantalones!" (okay I made that last part up) Question #2: What is a sasquatch anyway, a type of squash? I adore the ground you walk on. The next kid I have named Paraag will be named after you! - SL, California Answer #2: No. A sasquatch is a very hairy creature from the depths of the jungle or arctic or other fully unexplored area - kinda similar to a Yeti or Bigfoot. Question #3: Did you get a passport stamp when you went to Argentina? I wish my brother were as cool as you. - NGM, California Answer #3: I tried to get a passport stamp, but instead the Argentinian mounted police (well okay, the border patrol folks) decided to put a cheesy stamp with a toucan on it saying "Recuerdo Argentina Cataratas Iguassu", which means "Remember the Argentina Iguassu Falls". I think I should sue them for ruining an otherwise rather spectacular passport, if I do say so myself. And I do. Sunday, November 23rd Woke up early this morning to hop on a bus for a supposedly 12 hour bus ride to the town of Curitiba. I spent my waking hours on this bus trying unsuccessfully to go to sleep. Even though I was prepared this time for the shock of super-duper air-conditioning, I could have still used a sweater. Fortunately, I had my mp3 player with me to help pass the time by - about 3-4 hours of pretty darn good music, if I do say so myself (I just did). I'm thinking that perhaps I should add Radio DJ to my list of potential careers. After the Great Perfume Fiasco of 2004 occurs, I might be on the street looking for a new career path. Who knows? Somewhere along the way, we were stopped by the Brazilian Highway Patrol, who went through all the luggage and pulled a couple off of the bus to further inspect their luggage. Two hours later, the couple re-boarded the bus with a far lighter load. From what I could gather (from watching and wildly guessing), these folks brought some stuff over from Paraguay (where goods are less expensive) and were trying to smuggle them through and sell at a higher price elsewhere in Brazil. It was all confiscated. But at least I did get to watch a really bad Japanese film with Portuguese subtitles at an unnecessarily high volume level. That's always a recipe for a good time. In Curitiba, I walked into my hotel and was pleasantly surprised at just how beautiful and elegant the place looked. Which probably explains the look of shock on the receptionist's face when she saw me walk in with my backpack, baseball cap and sandals. The room was really amazing (comparatively speaking) - I wish I had more nights here just for this! It even had 4 movie channels (2 HBO, 2 Showtime) on the TV! Monday, November 24th By now you're all wondering why the heck I'm in Curitiba. Well, I'm not going to tell you. Okay, I'll tell you, but you have to let go of my arm first. There's a highly-lauded 4 hour train ride from Curitiba, which sits high up in the mountains, to the town of Paranagua, which is a small city on the coast - a 4 hour train ride, a 4 hour train ride (think Gilligan's Island). The reason for the lauds to be high is that the track was constructed many many years ago (late 1800s) when the equipment didn't exist to carve up the mountainside for a direct path and the technology didn't exist to build very long stretches of bridge. The result? A train that weaves in and out along the incredibly steep mountains through the jungle. While beautiful and spectacular, it actually just reminded me of My Old Kentucky Home, and the Appalachians therein. Though I suspect that these mountains were a tad taller. Well, the Paranagua train station is being rehabbed, so all the train passangers had to get off halfway at the town of Morretes instead. Many passangers simply turned around and took the train back to Curitiba. Not me. That would have been kinda drab. So, I took a public bus (with a bunch of other random backpackers) down to the coastal Paranagua. Since all those backpackers were headed down along with the locals, the bus was packed like peanuts in a Snickers bar. Simply maneuvering my arm to reach a distant handrail with which to brace myself was an adventure in itself. I was just thankful that no one had any rampant out-of-control B.O. issues. Paranagua was a small little town that had that distinct coastal smell and feel to it. It was a rustic town - I don't know what that really means, but trust me. Rustic. After spending a few hours walking around the town and then randomly ordering and eating some lunch (I have no idea what the waitress was saying!), I found a shady perch next to the mostly uninhabited little beach where I just sat and read a book and wrote in my journal for about 2-3 hours. Very simple pleasures. I returned to Curitiba and spent the late afternoon walking all around this city - it's a pretty good size city with lots of young people in it due to a few universities. I had a nice time people-watching and window-shopping along a 6-7 block pedestrian mall and a few small city parks. It's a very clean and developed city as well - it felt like any other small Western city might feel. They even had a McDonalds kiosk solely dedicated to ice cream. Alas the time had come to board an overnight bus to Rio. This really sucked, since I had been in the sun (the sweaty sticky sun) all day and didn't have a hotel room where I could shower and feel Zestfully clean again. A wet-wipe would have to do. In case you've never tried it before, it doesn't really work too well. But it works better than nothing. It didn't take me long to realize that I didn't do well booking a comfortable bus for the overnight journey. This one was your standard bus - no extra legroom and no lower leg-rest pad. And, as expected, it was freezing. Needless to say, I didn't sleep too well. And it didn't take long to get sick of my mp3 collection - there's only so many times you can listen to Coolio's "1,2,3,4" and that Apache Indian song "Boomshakalak" (theme song to Dumb and Dumber). Well, okay, you can only really listen to those 2 songs once without getting sick of them. Then you realize how little song-writing capability Humpty had with his "Humpty Dance" song, and suddenly your DJing aspirations have vanished. I guess I had better make sure that the Great Perfume Fiasco of 2004 never materializes. Tuesday, November 25th I returned to Newton's Rooftop Hostel this morning to finish out my stay in Rio. I entertained the idea of going to a proper hotel with the standard amenities, but was leery of spending my last few evenings by my lonesome (try not to cry too much). After cleaning up and settling back in a bit, I went on a tour of the other major tourist trap in the city - the Cristo Redentor statue (or Christ the Redeemer). This is a huge 100+ ft tall statue that sits atop one of the prominent mountaintops in the area, and is visible from most areas in the city - it's by far the Empire State Building of NYC, or the Gateway Arch of St. Louis, or the crackpipes of Detroit, or the ummm... we don't really have a defining edifice in Cincinnati, do we? Before making our way to the statue, the tour van took our small group to a favela tour. Favela is the Portuguese term for slum. There's plenty of little shacks and shanties covering the mountainsides. After all of the available land was taken to build these shanties upon, the residents built upwards, adding another shanty level to their shanty. This new level most often looks nothing like the level below and the transitions are far from seamless. The result? It looks pretty darn shanty. It was still neat to see though - they all still had electricity and water and the basic amenities. But it's really hard to describe without showing pictures. After stopping a few times on the ride up the mountain for some beautiful postcard picture views, we were at the top of the mountain at the statue. As expected, it was swamped with tourists. And all the tourists (myself included) were taking their turns in front of the statue doing the Cristo Redentor pose. Oh yeah - let's see, the Cristo Redentor pose is similar to a tightrope walker with arms outstretched. There was one little boy from somewhere in the States who refused to do this pose because he didn't want to look like a bird, instead he opted for a Statue of Liberty pose. Kids. Once again, there was a storm brewing in the distance and we had to leave or get soaked. The rain was accompanied by some very strong winds - several of us had to get out of the van at one point to help move a large fallen tree out of the way so that we could get down the hill. Good thing I'd been working out. When I got back to the hostel, I quickly realized that there were only a handful of people staying there at the time, and only one person was to be found anywhere. Though I was hoping to go hit the bars and check out the local scene, it was not to be this evening. Wednesday, November 26th After catching on my sleep, I took the subway and a local bus to the entrance of the the Tijuca Forest, which is an impressive National Park right in the middle of Rio. The object for today - see a bit of nature by way of hiking. Before I go too far, I must say that the subway ride was surprisingly comfortable and enjoyable (as far as public transportation goes). The trains were very frequent, spacious, clean, quiet, and hobo-free. Another neato-keato aspect was that the floor was covered in a rubber mat material, which allows a rider to not have to hold on to a handrail as the train is starting or stopping. This fascinated me, perhaps more than it should have. One of the primary rules of hiking is to not do it alone, especially in an area where you have no cell phone, can't speak the language, and have no one who will look for you if you don't show up. But I was still determined to see a bit of nature, so I pressed forward. After getting a trail map, I selected a trail that was relatively close to the road in it's entirety - the major attraction on this route were several grottos (rock formations of some sort). The forest was gorgeous, though I was continually focusing on evading insects and anything that sounded like a snake. Had I come to a Rio a few months later, I am told that the forest would be full of very colorful butterflies and flowers. But, as you know, I was here now. About 30 minutes into this trail, I walked into a clearing next to a pretty steep cliff. I would have sat down and relaxed and soaked it all in for a bit, but there were some teenagers making out and I was ruining their lack of adequate parental supervision. Problem was that I couldn't figure out where the trail went from here, and helping me out was clearly not in the forefront of the teenagers' minds. I spotted a trail and took it. It followed the rock cliffs around quite a ways and then seemingly disappeared. I had no idea where I was, and so I was tempted to turn around and make my way back, but there were a few rather challenging stretches of mountainside that were easier to climb up then get back down. Finally, I heard a stream and a small waterfall, spotted it on my map, and just headed in that direction. From there, I still couldn't find the trail, but I stumbled upon a few locals who gladly offered to lead me back to the road. I was fortunate in that one of them spoke English - she was a ex-ballerina/stage actress who had spent several years in Ft. Lauderdale developing her second career as a "healer" (using crystals and stuff like that). She had recently returned to Rio and was working on opening her business here. The world is full of interesting people. After making it back to the roadway, I decided to stop giving my dear old mother heart attacks and stick to simple trails from here on out. There was a 5 hour trail that I wanted to do, but I was a little too worried about getting lost, especially since I had forgotten to bring my headlamp along. When I returned to the hostel, I was fortunate in that there were new travellers who had joined. I was unfortunate in that they were all lame and didn't want to go out. And it was raining, so it was hard to argue with them. So a small group of us sat around and drank beer - me, Fernando from Peru, and two Swedes. Unfortunately, the Swedes were not members of the bikini team, nor were they female. Actually, those fellas told me that they had never heard of the Swedish Bikini Team. I refuse to believe that the SBT is a figment of American imagination. Hold strong. So this just means that I'll have to come back someday to partake in the almost-legendary club scene in Rio. Thursday, November 27th My last day here! I spent the morning packing up, and then headed out to the beach with Tamara, a girl from Holland who had just come into the city. We walked along the Copa, Copacabana beach, and then went over to the Ipanema beach right around the corner and plopped down to enjoy the beach. Since I am not in much of a need of a suntan, I decided to brave the ocean a bit and try my hand at bodysurfing since the waves were a pretty good size. I caught a few good ones, and had my shorts almost ripped off by a few others. The sky was cloudy and overcast, but it was still shockingly bright and hot outside - I could feel my skin burning. So after a few hours, we walked back to the hostel. My original intent was to go hang-gliding this morning. Rio is awesome for hang-gliding because there are mountains so close to the beach, and so you can launch off from high off of a mountain and land on the beach. This is exactly the type of activity that you know I live for. But, they shut the site down due to high winds. The bastards. I wasn't able to go with Option #2 either - scuba diving, since there was not much available in the area. Argh! I did get my heart rate up for the departing flight though. After a taxi scheduling fiasco at the hostel, I finally got into a cab 2 hours before flight time with a 30 minute average taxi ride to the airport. But there was un-average traffic on the road - I ended up reaching the airport 45 minutes before flight time for an international flight. In the States, I wouldn't have been permitted on the plane. Fortunately, the standards are not as strict in Brasil, though they were very close to closing the United counter. So, does that count as an extreme sport? Tidbits: 1. Getting food at a restaurant in Brasil for one person is difficult - the portions are huge and enough for two. So, there is a proliferance of "by the kilo" self service type places, which are pretty good. For my final meal in Brasil, I had a good-sized filet and lots of tuna sushi for about 4 bucks. 2. By the numbers: # nights spent away from home = 11. 4 of those were in a hostel with no air-conditioning. 3 were spent in a proper hotel room. 2 were spent in a bus. 2 were spent in an airplane. Net? I'm a idiot. Okay, that's all for now. I hope you've enjoyed the latest installment of my chronicles. I'll be headed back down to South America next year for a few more weeks, hopefully, to do some hiking in Peru on the Macchu Picchu trail. If anyone's interested... -Paraag