Edmond Chan

     After a couple of days in Sao Paolo, we headed eastwards to Rio de Janeiro or as the locals nicknamed it with incredible self-confidence, A Cidade Maravilhosa, or “The Marvellous City”! We arrived at a hostel in Botofogo that was determined to make obscene profits out of New Year’s revellers; trebling its normal rates. Botofogo is in the centre of Rio, and from here, one can see the famous Pao de Acucar (Sugarloaf Mountain) and, high above the city, the immense mountain-top statue of Christo Redentor or Christ the Redeemer; it‟s also only a short bus ride to the iconic beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana.

Rio is an unbelievable place that defies comprehension. It is a place of sharp contrasts; such as the gaping chasm between rich and poor; from the extreme beauty of the landscapes to the ugliness of the favelas (the shanty towns around Rio); from the absolutely delicious caipirinhas to the surprising blandness of its food. (Caipirinhas are Brazil’s national cocktail, made with cachaça, sugar and lime. Cachaça is similar to rum and is the distillation of the fermentation product of sugarcane juice. It‟s a bit like a mojito and is prepared by putting lime and sugar into a glass and mashing the ingredients. Add crushed ice and the cachaça.)

However, Rio is also a place of exciting fusion; from the wide ethnic variety of the people (meaning that it‟s difficult to describe a typically Brazilian face) to the music (samba, reggae, bossa nova) to the ever-present feeling that absolutely anything goes. Rio is a place whose reputation is airmailed before it: a mercurial city of violence, of beaches, of favelas, of classic views, of the beautiful people and the desperately poor. It‟s a melting pot of influences as vibrantly displayed in its people, its music and its food. It‟s a place of beauty and a place of menace: it‟s utterly unpredictable, and perhaps because of this, it‟s impossible to feel 100% at ease.

One of the first things we did in Rio was to head straight for the beach. The main beaches in Rio, Copacabana and Ipanema, stretch for around 12km and are divided into sections (postos). We followed the guide book and headed for Posto 9 on Ipanema, supposedly the spot for the beautiful people; well of course! Normally, I‟m not really one for the beach (I get bored) but, in Rio at least, it‟s a good time. The views were spellbinding; just another occasion where we were sitting in a place that we had previously only known from pictures, and yet here we were – just sitting here; to our right were forest clad mountains (Dos Hermanos – the Two Brothers), to our left was Copacabana Beach, in front was the tropical Atlantic Ocean with small forested islands not far from the coast and above was a merciless sun, who had become our god. We later found out that it hit 36 degrees that day, and the six hours I foolishly spent without sun protection meant that I burned for the first time in my life (I didn’t think that I could burn! I didn’t stop peeling for weeks! It was disgusting! I’d be in the shower and suddenly I‟d peel a huge single sheet of skin from my chest; horrific). On Rio‟s beaches, you just pick a refreshment stall that you like the look of and, with a nod, a guy will pull up two lounge chairs and a large parasol. He takes your drinks order and you start a tab. So for hours you just sit in a chair drinking from icy coconuts, gulping cold lager (Skol – which was discontinued in the UK for being rubbish; but somehow, amazingly, it‟s the most popular lager here!), going for a cooling swim and, mostly, looking at everyone around you! The internationally famed Brazilian women seem to have a certain look; I think over here, they look for a certain amount of booty, and big „Shake it! Shake it!‟ asses are highly prized. In the spirit of Rio beaches, I had my eye on buying a pair of sungas; these are the miniscule trunks that the men wear here which, to be honest, are nothing short of obscene. When in Rio and all that…! They are, however, eye-wateringly tiny! I shrank from the challenge!

New Year‟s Eve in Rio is a huge deal – apparently 2 million people were expected to descend onto Copacabana that night. We were expecting great things; after all, Rio is supposed to be one of the greatest New Year‟s celebrations in the world. This was one of the things we were most looking forward to; a big, spectacular fiesta. Families and friends set up their camps on the beach with chairs, tents, makeshift bars and barbeques; everyone eats and drinks until midnight waiting for the huge firework display. It was raining gently that evening which did little to dampen revellers‟ spirits. Music was pumping out of huge speakers. We‟d move from arena to arena, polishing off beers and caiprinhas. Unfortunately, in the early hours, after a few too many rums and beers, I had a little nap on the beach whilst waiting for the sun to come up. I woke up to find that an audacious and enterprising urchin had actually cut through my jeans and stolen my camera – bastards! I mean, who the fuck brings scissors to a New Year‟s Eve party?! Right I‟ve had a shower, clean shirt on, bit of wax in the hair, phone, wallet, keys, what else do I need? Oh yes! Can‟t leave the house with a pair of scissors to go on the rob! Silly me! On reflection, it was my fault really for being daft enough to fall asleep on a beach in Rio at night, but it was the sort of thing that tarnishes memories somewhat. I‟d been warned by the manager of the hostel where we were staying not to bring anything valuable with me. All the advice is to be on your guard in Rio, but you never think anything will happen to you. To be fair though, if the only bad thing to happen to me in Brazil was losing my camera, with most of the pictures backed up, it wouldn‟t be that terrible; it could have been a lot worse. I bought a new camera the next day.

The rest of our stay in Rio was spent sightseeing. We went to the Maracana, once the biggest stadium in the world. The final of the 1950 World Cup was attended by a record 199,854 people. Today, its capacity is a much reduced 88,992 and, despite capacity being more than halved since those heady days, it‟s still the largest stadium on the continent. We took the tour of the stadium but it was slightly disappointing; it‟s not in good condition and there were no games on; unfortunately, the season was yet to start. Outside the stadium lay the impressions of famous Brazilian players‟ feet cast in bronze. I stood in my namesake‟s footprints, the Beast himself, Edmundo, and also those of perhaps the greatest footballer of all time, Edson Arantes do Nascimento, otherwise known as the legendary Pele.

I had to visit the Pao de Acucar, the incomparable and iconic Sugar Loaf Mountain, only a short bus ride from Botofogo in the district of Urca. The summit is only accessible by a cable car which stops halfway before continuing to the peak. Unfortunately, that day it rained, something I‟ve been told only happens a few times up in summer! At 396m, the view from Sugarloaf over the city and sea is mind-blowing! When I was up there, there was a huge thunderstorm adding to the spectacular views. You can see Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado Mountain in the far distance; to your left you can see Copacabana and below, the bay of Urca. It was dark and, from here, Rio looked like one giant, lit-up, forested, urban island, and, from this height at least, a glimpse of paradise.

We also set about exploring the local nightlife. Rio has a strong culture of botecas, a kind of bar/pub/drinking-hole-in-the-wall serving tiny snacks such as deep-fried pastries and the coldest draft beers, called chopps (pronounced show-pe). My favourite boteca was in the district of Urca, a peaceful counterpoint to the frenetic bustle of downtown, where this ultra-traditional boteca, with its polished tiled interior and bow-tied waiting staff, opened out with views of Urca bay. It‟s an example of something that‟s been playing on my mind as I‟ve travelled: it‟s an example of things just being done right. I don‟t like bashing things in England but when you pay 4GBP for an okay pint in London or 4GBP for a scotch egg (I kid you not!) in a pub with average service, it tends to leave a bad taste in your mouth. By contrast, in this boteca, there was ice-cold beer, great décor, it was well-priced (leaving aside questions of purchasing power parity), had a good atmosphere, a great staff, fantastic views across the bay and seemed to serve a broad cross-section of society as well. This boteca just did things right. It‟s nothing ground-breaking or pioneering; it‟s just something that has been done right, clearly something that the proprietors and staff take pride in and take pride from. It‟s not only botecas; I’ve been thinking along similar lines along my travels whenever I’ve come across anything that‟s done well, properly or right, such as particularly good coffee or excellent service or people who take care of their appearance or bars that don’t serve spirits by the measure or decently sized portions or fresh food cooked simply or clean hostels and so on. It‟s a feeling and a recurring thought that‟s been reinforced the further on my trip I go.

The best night out I had in Rio was in the districts of Santa Theresa and Lapa with samba, hip-hop, salsa and live bands dominating the playlists. Wherever you turn in Rio, there‟s always a party, great views and a cold beer!

We took a tram up to Santa Theresa, which takes you up over the Arcos de Lapa, a huge viaduct. We hit a bar with awesome live bossa nova and excellent feijoada and rice. It was rampantly busy with tables seating up to around ten with people crowding the bar to try and get seated. We sat out at the back on a balcony looking over a thickly forested hill and crumbling houses at its foot where children played and women did their washing. We then found a great open-air bar outside an enormous, dilapidated but magnificent house perched on a hill with the friendliest waiter in the world, serving splendid beer, delicious fried chicken wings and ferociously strong caiprinhas. From quiet beginnings, it quickly became more crowded and, as a large live band with huge bongos started crashing out the music, became a hedonistic, sweaty mass of revellers. After a few hours, we headed down to Lapa where we eventually got separated in a pool hall and the rest of the night was a lost memory. The next morning, we discovered that Grant had lost his sunglasses, his camera and his flip-flops!

From Rio, our next stop was Argentina, at the Iguazu Falls. We bought a bus ticket to our next stop at the rodavario; I was keen to get out of Brazil. Five days in Rio is quite enough as a tourist and I had an itch to get out of the city. It’s strange; I really thought I was a city boy at heart and yet I had a burning need to see the Falls. I missed Bolivia and Peru, their mountains and their wildernesses, their deserts and their snows. I was unexpectedly and strangely pleased to be leaving Brazil. I suppose when travelling, there’s a certain pressure to love and be excited by every country you visit, but I was left cold by Brazil, which I suppose is slightly odd given its reputation for all things „passion‟. However, there’s a lot more for me to see within Brazil, not least the eastern coast and, of course, the Amazon, the greatest river in the world. That‟s another trip for sure: down the Amazon from its source at Iquitos in Peru to its end at Belem on the Brazilian coast.

From Campo Grande, we jumped on an 18 hour bus ride overnight eastwards to Sao Paolo, the first major city since our arrival in Lima. It was like being back in the developed world; well, the Mediterranean part at least. Sao Paolo is one of the world’s biggest cities and, with more than 11m people, has the most inhabitants of any city in the Southern Hemisphere. Sao Paulo residents (called Paulistas) often seem to get a bad press from the people of their fierce rival city, Rio de Janeiro (who are called Cariocas) for being dull and obsessed with work. Paulistas instead see themselves as the hardworking architects of Brazil economic ascendancy and view their rivals as self-obsessed, lazy slackers. As with most things, the truth is somewhere in between (I certainly saw more people dressed in suits striding around purposefully in Sao Paolo than I did in Rio, where people mostly seemed to wear tiny shorts and flip-flops, but then again, that could be because I was in Rio over the New Year period).

Sao Paolo lacks a certain magic. We started a day of sightseeing on the Avenida de Paulista, a long street of uninspiring high-rise buildings and advertising boards. Sao Paolo is huge and sprawling, with nothing, bar the massive Gothic Catedral Metropolitana in the city centre at Se, of any beauty or elegance. It was in the square at Se that the chasm between the rich and poor in Brazil is at its most stark. This square is Sao Paolo‟s equivalent of London’s Trafalgar Square but at Se there are at least 200 people living permanently on the square; the people who live there don’t seem to disperse during the day and many have built cardboard shacks to live in. We made our way to Vila Madelena, supposedly the hip part of town to go drinking. Unfortunately, most of the bars we found were unjustifiably pretentious, particularly given how lame they were. We did, however, find a decent bar, one with thousands of bottles suspended from the ceiling, with excellent cold chopps (a half pint of lager) and pastels (tiny little parcels of meat and vegetables).

Campo Grande has its seductive charms; low-rise buildings and a lazy, relaxed atmosphere. We immediately got to work practicing our non-existent, phrasebook-butchered Brazilian Portuguese on an unsuspecting and long-suffering bar staff. Having just acquired embarrassingly rudimentary Spanish, Portuguese was like gibberish. Brazilian Portuguese, despite having a slight overlap with Spanish, has an incomprehensible pronunciation to its words (frequently finishing with an “ow” sound).

We found a great bar that played recently released DVDs such as Never Back Down (think Rocky meets The Karate Kid) and where the friendly bargirls treated us to bitter, cold drinks which I would later discover was like the Argentine drink, mate (pronounced “mat-eh”). It was here in Campo Grande that I tried the Brazilian national dish for the first time; feijoada, stewed Brazilian black beans eaten with rice and greens; hearty and delicious. There’s plenty of debate as to the origins of feijoada; some say it was brought over by African slaves who made the best of the cheap cuts of meat. Others say that it’s similar to European dishes such as cassoulet which also uses fatty cuts of meat such as pork belly cooked with beans. I can see the similarity; every culture seems to have a version of the slow-cooked pot dish. Feijoada uses black turtle beans, salted pork cheap cuts, at least two types of smoked sausage, all cooked over a slow fire in a thick clay pot. The final dish has an unctuous finish, with beans and meat in a thick, dark broth; it’s delicious.

Don’t ask (it’s forbidden to know) what end

The gods will grant to me or you, Leuconoe. Don’t play with Babylonian Fortune-telling either. It is better to endure whatever will be.
Whether Jupiter has allotted to you many more winters or this final one Which even now wears out the Tyrrhenian Sea on the rocks placed opposite; Be wise, drink your wine, and scale back your long hopes
To a short period. While we speak, envious time will have already fled
Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the next.

Horace, Odes

 

EL TREN DE LA MUERTE pulled in at a border post not far from the town of Quijarro on the Bolivian border and we crossed by foot into Brazil at the city of Corumba. Any minimal Spanish we’d picked up in Peru and Bolivia was going to be useless for the next couple of weeks; we‟d entered Portuguese-speaking country.

Brazil is absolutely enormous and it dominates South America. Take a look at it on a map: it covers nearly half of the continent. It’s the fifth largest country in the world by land-mass, and it‟s the fifth most populous country in the world. It shares borders with almost every country in South America, being bordered by Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana to the north; by Colombia to the north-west; by Bolivia and Peru to the west; by Argentina and Paraguay to the southwest; and to the south by Uruguay. Bar the odd French-speaking nation, Brazil is the only country on the continent that doesn’t speak Spanish as an official language, all due to its colonial history: Brazil became a Portuguese colony in 1500, following the landing of Pedro Álvares Cabral, and eventually won its independence in 1822.

Brazil is often described as a true melting pot and a quick breakdown of its citizens explains why: as at the last official census, Brazilians were 49.4% White, 42.3% Pardo (people with a mixed white, black and Amerindian ancestry), 7.4% Black, 0.5% Asian, and 0.4% Amerindian. Most Brazilians can trace their ancestry to the country’s indigenous people, the Portuguese settlers and African slaves. Due to huge waves of immigration in the last century or so, by people in search of the good life, Brazil can claim such little known facts as the largest Lebanese community in the world, the largest Italian community outside Italy, and the largest Japanese population outside of Japan.

Our first impressions of Brazil weren’t glowing; we were skanked by the taxi driver taking us to the border control station in Corumba, charging us 30USD for a journey that should have cost no more than 10USD. Things here were immediately more expensive than in Bolivia and there were hardly any ATMs anywhere. The global credit crunch may have been in full swing but when it came to choosing which bank’s ATM to use, I wasn’t worried about the bank’s creditworthiness, so much as I was worried about the safety and security of the network the ATM relied upon. It was 26 December and we were racing to reach Rio for New Year’s Eve, so we decided to hop on the bus to the next major town eastwards, six hours away, Campo Grande, the largest town in the Pantanal, a famously inhospitable jungle region.

    

After the serious disappointment of Huayna Potosi, we went back to La Paz for an almighty drinking session. Bolivian lager and rum make for excellent session drinks.

As with Cusco, Bob featured heavily in the playlists of La Paz. We started in a sprawling bar called Mongos, with huge fires and generous spirit measures (i.e. none!). We asked a taxi-driver where the best club in town was; “Donde este la bueno discotheque?” He took us to the local Hard Rock! To be fair though, it wasn’t that bad! We got completely hammered and danced like idiots. The place was filled with locals and travellers alike all intent on getting spangled. We got dragged off by some local girls to a random bar on the third floor of a housing block where we danced until dawn. Unfortunately, whilst a great night, it also meant we missed our bus to our next stop, Santa Cruz de la Sierra. After a day spent recuperating, we made sure we caught the bus the next day, which took about 20 hours and arrived in the bus station at around 3am. Not wanting to wake up our hosts, we stayed in the bus station where the rains came down in sheets until 6am and where we met an interesting young woman called Heidi, who was a soldier in the Bolivian Army. She seemed concerned that we had no Spanish and ostensibly nowhere to go. She laid out her travelling blanket and shared her food with us. She stayed chatting until sunrise having fun with our Spanish phrasebook, with mutual butchering of each other’s language; lovely woman.

Santa Cruz de la Sierra is a major city in the prefecture of Santa Cruz in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia. It’s vastly different to the western and southern highlands of Bolivia, with its lush vegetation, humidity, and abundance of palm trees; a welcome change. The two halves of Bolivia are almost two different countries. In Santa Cruz, there’s none of the postcard Bolivian women in ponchos and bowler hats; instead it’s urbane and modern. It was like being back in Lima.

We were staying with the family of a friend of ours from London, Paula Aviles. They didn’t know us, nor could we communicate, but their hospitality and warmth was tremendous. After three weeks of travelling, it was great to be staying in a house and amongst a family. There was Senora Chela Aviles, her son Freddy and his wife, and two young kids, Juset and Jonathan – all of them extremely welcoming and immensely kind.

Freddy, a medical student, took us out on our first night in Santa Cruz and, being the perfect host, promptly invited a bevy of his beautiful lady-friends to come out with us. Again, communication was difficult (damn our lack of Spanish again! “Donde esta los banos?” might help with calls of nature but doesn‟t really cut it when talking with women) but Giomara, Vanessa, Carlita, Diana, Bianca, and Monica were excellent company both in the pub and on the dancefloor. We started in the Praca de 24 September district and ended up in the downtown Santa Cruz district rich in nightlife. It was a bit like how I imagine Miami or LA to be with heavy doses of The Fast and the Furious thrown in: souped up cars with throbbing sub-woofers, sultry, sticky evenings, super-hot girls dressed up to the max and serious amounts of attitude – really good fun. For a fairly conservative country, the strong sexual vibe the girls throw out here is slightly incongruous. The dancing in the clubs is highly charged as well but, strangely, interaction between men and women is relatively chaste. I‟ve grown very fond of the music I‟ve come across on this trip and, in Santa Cruz, I discovered a real like for reggae-thon, a mix of hip-hop, house music and, I suppose, salsa. It‟s very fast and involves a lot of hip and ass wiggling (Beyonce and Shakira-style – I‟m not too good at it yet but practice will make perfect! We weren‟t too sure (damn our Spanish yet again!) but it looked like we were staying in Santa Cruz for Christmas.

The next day, Christmas Eve, we met Freddy and the girls again and went for lunch at a typically Santa Cruz experience, a parillada barbecue specialising in nose to tail eating; we ate steak, chorizo, liver, kidney, intestine, udder and tripe all with a very fiery, piquant sauce – delicious! I would find that this type of eating is popular all through Brazil and Argentina.

That night, we went with la familia Aviles to Freddy‟s tio‟s (uncle) house for a midnight feast. Eating at this time of night is a Bolivian Christmas tradition and we were overwhelmed and incredibly thankful to be welcomed into the heart of a family who didn‟t really know us on Christmas night of all nights. Muchas gracias to the Aviles family! It was my first ever Christmas away from my family; I missed them and I called them from a street phone. It was good to talk to them; they were in high spirits and were out delivering presents.

The next day, we waved goodbye to the Aviles family as we embarked on the train eastbound to the Brazilian border at Quijarro, on a train affectionately known as El Tren de le Muerte or the Train of Death, named so, not because it‟s particularly dangerous, but, thankfully, because it‟s incredibly slow (it would take about 17 hours) and very, very bumpy. We were in the rear carriage with probably the loudest Australians ever. The journey was like being in the Wild West. When you walk from carriage to carriage, in between, you can stand on the connecting part watching as the track and the Bolivian countryside sped past.