Dom Bosco encounter

"You came in with the breeze
On Sunday Morning" No Doubt "Sunday Morning"

I had only planned to stay an afternoon in Brasilia before heading out on the night but to Belo Horizante...but it did not end up working out that way...

I basically wanted to do Brasilia the same way I did Managua a few years ago...spend an afternoon there, maybe hire a cab to drive me around for awhile, and then get out of town right away since neither city has many tourist attractions...much of Managua´s tourist attractions, if there ever were any, being destroyed by the 1972 earthquake, and Brasilia, well, I suppose it has never really had any...the city being artificially designed and ´opened for business´ exactly 50 years ago yesterday. I just wanted to see Brasilia to see it I guess you might say.

Anyway, I arrived on a Sunday and the town was completely dead. Well, let me explain a bit about the city. Brasilia was designed primarily by a single individual, Oscar Niemeyer, to be the capital of Brazil. The design was done in the 1950`s and construction completed in 1960. The idea was to put the capital in Brazil`s vast interior as a way of hopefully opening up the heartland of this country, since most people live near the coast. Rio had been the previous capital. The city is not the first in history to have been designed to be the capital of a large nation (DC and Canberra come to mind), but it is unique in how it was layed out. From overhead the city looks like an airplane, or so they say. The body or axis of the plane is the `Esplanada` where the governments buildings, bus stations, and things of interest to tourists are located. The `wings` of the plane are the residential sections, north and south. The city is divided up into sectors...banks are in one place, hotels in others (near the banks), residential in other zones, government buildings in another area, etc. I will also mention now that the city is very difficult to get around in on foot. Not only are things spread out, but the city is divided up by lots of little highway-type roads, with on and off ramps, and the city generally lacks sidewalks.

So at any rate, it was Sunday and not surprisingly, the town center where I found myself after getting off the $1 bus ride from the airport was deserted except for the obligatory rough-looking inviduals. When it comes to safety, less means less. Less people, less safety...though I have generally found Brazil to have quite a lot of security around. At any rate, I lugged by bag around for a little while, stopping at the Santuario Dom Bosco, a church whose interior is bathed in blue light streaming through the large stained glass windows along the walls.

While I was at the Sanctuary a woman walked in...the same woman I had sat next to at the airport bus stop a couple of hours before and spoken to briefly in a confused broken conversation with many hand gestures. She looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her, but getting over my initial shock (and doubts...I can be a little paranoid about my personal security, but I ended up quickly deciding this was a legitimate coincidence...and it had been me that approached and talked to her at the airport, not the other way around) I waved her on over and we sat and chatted for awhile. She had come to the Sanctuary to pray for her mother who was having surgery the next day at the hospital across the way.

The young woman told me about Brasilia´s 50th anniversary party coming up in a couple of days, and so...well, whatever my motivations were for staying, the fact is I decided I would go ahead and stay around in Brasilia. And besides, I took the trouble to fly to Brasilia, may as well spend some time there...it is not like I will ever come back most likely. And the idea of traveling on an overnight bus to see Belo Horizante (a town I had no real reason to go to anyway) was not all that appealing to begin with so it was an easy decision. Being in Brasilia a couple of days might give me a better chance at finding a cheap flight straight to Rio, taking the bus completely out of the equation (better).