Of the 25 days or so I was traveling, I spent about 18 of those days in Brazil. Brazil was the "objective" of the trip from the beginning, since I had never been there and had spent a couple of months studying the language in preparation.
One of the high points was definitely the food. To keep my costs down, I tended to eat a large buffet breakfast (usually included with the hotel), a light lunch, and then a very large and often expensive dinner. (Did I just say something about keeping costs down...? that mantra did not apply to dinner.) The churrascarias (Brazilian steakhouses) were great. A big slab of red meat (often with a fried egg when I'm ordering), with potatoes, rice, bread, and a Brahma is about as a good a dinner as I can imagine.
When we think of things being sold by the kilo, as Americans we probably don't think of food, but rather of other South American homegrown and produced products and exports. Well, if I was not eating dinner at a churrascaria, then I was eating at a restaurant selling buffet food by the kilo. At first I thought there must be some way to game the program when they are selling by the kilo in order to come out full on the cheap, but after a bit of thought I concluded that the weight of food is pretty well correlated with its caloric content. All the kilo restaurants I went to served a wide variety of food, and it was all tasty. Sushi, all different kinds of meats, salad bars, pastas, pizza, desserts, whatever...they had it, and it was good.
I did not find those restaurants to be inexpensive though, for the most part, but then I did not find much of anything to be inexpensive in Brazil. Without any knowledge about relative international currency valuations, I am forced to conclude that the Brazilian real is overvalued. The fact that the real has nearly doubled in value relative to the US dollar just since 2004 might lead one to believe that the real is overvalued...and if that does not do it, then the prices should. A gallon of gas was around $6, a Hyundai Tucson about 50K, my average dinner out around $25, 2.5-star hotels were running me about $85 in Brasilia, $10 for a movie , and clothing and consumer goods...well, I will just saw some high prices like $150 brand polos and 2.5K for laptops. Airline tickets were affordable though...not much more than the buses really, and certainly much cheaper per mile traveled than buses, which were not really cheap for the nicer, air-conditioned ones that I took.
A wide variety of fruits are available in S. America, and Brazil is no exception. I mostly stuck to the mango and pineapple (seems hard to get good mango Stateside...) but many other fruits were available, though their names elude me. The one berry that I have not forgotten is the guarana, which is a stimulating little berry from the Amazon region that the Brazilians drink by the can in soda form. The two varieties of guarana soda were Kuat (made by Coca-Cola) and Antarctica. I preferred the Antarctica, but both were good and both would give you the pickup you wanted. I am not sure why the guarana soda has not been imported to the States (though guarana extract is used in energy drinks).
Brazil is certainly the most modern of the S. American nations. Highways, clean and efficient public transport, lots of international banks, modern airports and hotels, clean food, educated, friendly, and polite people. Brazil is not the United States, but they have some things in common for sure. The size of the two countries and the richness of their lands are the two most obvious things in common, but other commonalities exist: Brazil has lots of shopping centers in the bigger cities, the people eat lots of meat and large portions, and the people themselves are from all over. (For example, Sao Paolo has the world's largest community of Japanese outside Japan and nearly half the population has mixed white/black heritage). It is not hard to imagine Brazil's stature on the world scale continuing to increase...they have a good thing going on down there.
Girls. Can't ignore that subject if we're talking about Brazil. They are cute. No question. The girls come in all varieties, but the common denominator is their nice backsides. If we accept the theory that the girls in Brazil accentuate the parts of their bodies that they think will appeal to the local men, then Brazilian men must value the rear end the way American guys like breasts...or perhaps more likely, the girls are just naturally a little more robust in size...but then it's a little ridiculous to generalize about populations as large and diverse as Brazil's and the US's. Personally, well...never mind what I personally like - let's just say the girls are attractive, with especially round and enticing bodies on them. Any further commentary on that subject I will keep to myself for now.
As for security, I didn't have any issues, but I tended to stay in fairly nice parts of town and was not out late often, if ever. The only time during the entire trip I drank a significant amount and was out late was in Paraty, but in small towns you can get away with being out and about and not in full command of your faculties. I tried to blend in as best I could, but it's not at all easy for me and I often felt a little exposed. I tried to dress in as non-descript a manner as possible (I would say that if black is the absence of color, then I am the 'black' of style.), which comes naturally for me and seemed to work well enough.
What my trip to Brazil certainly did more than anything else was give me a desire to go back. I liked Brazil a bit more than Colombia, simply for the incredible things available to see and do, though Colombia was about half the price of Brazil and I could communicate much better, so the two rate about even for me as far as which I go back and see more of. You know, for some reason, I kind of had it in my mind that I was going to "do" Brazil during this trip...but clearly a country as large and culturally rich as Brazil can't be explored in a few weeks. I did not get to the northeast of the country at all...and the NE is considered by some to be the "real" Brazil, with its African influenced culture. I also did not get to see the south, which has much more of a European influence than other parts Brazil, and has much to offer. I will get to those places in due time though. I have no doubt of that.
