Rio de Janeiro

Rio is like San Francisco on steroids, with Miami`s climate

The above was how a friend described this place to me. And having had a brief look at it today, I have to say I like what I see so far. The flight in gave me a great panoramic view of the city since we landed at the domestic flights airport, which is right there in town. The plane overflew the city from the north, flew right between Sugarloaf and Cristo Redentor mountains, over Copacabana, made a turn over the bay and then right in to the airport.

More later

Brasilia

I managed to get a nice deal on a great hotel on Sunday in Brasilia...Brasilia being much busier during the week than on the weekends. Cheap accommodation is really not to be found though...you are only going to get a ¨deal¨ if you are willing to spend a fair amount and stay somewhere nice. When I decided to stay Monday night I was told the price would be double, so I promptly moved out into a place that was not nearly as nice, but cost the same price R$130 (about $75).

As for Brasilia itself...the area of tourist interest (the Esplanada where the government ministries, cathedral, theater, etc. are located) is made up of very wide boulevards separated by vast open spaces with few trees to provide respite from the sun which shone every day I was there. Walking around the area during the day, on sidewalks devoid of shade, which were placed immediately next to the road full of cars screaming by, is not the most peaceful place to enjoy the ¨modern¨ architecture of the buildings and scultures about. As for the design of the buildings themselves and the layout of the city, I suppose it is all interesting as a study of what someone (namely, the designer of all this, Oscar Niemeyer) 60 years ago thought the future would look like, but it is not a lot of fun to actually be there and be on foot. The Esplanada itself has the many different government ministry buildings, which are all identical looking towers of non-descript design. Nearby are the more interesting buildings like the theater, cathedral, and branches of government. Some of those buildings do have a space-age look to them...but only if you think of the 60´s as the space age.

The city was designed for cars...or you might say it was designed for its 50th anniversary party, because the huge open spaces between the boulevards on the Esplanada proved to be the perfect place to put thousands of young people celebrating the anniversary. The 50 anniversary was celebrated by seemingly every young person anywhere near Brasilia, as walking around the area in the early evening during the fiesta I saw hordes of young people, but very few older folks, with the exception of the omnipresent security and medical forces on hand. Being around that many potential, well, assailants, did not make me overly comfortable since my physical appearance limits my ability to blend in, but staying amongst the crowds and close the the police posts worked out well for me. Several different concers were being put on at different stages around the area, and the shows were pretty entertaining, though it was a little hard to enjoy myself when I was spending most of my attention on watching my back and getting out of the way when a group of young people would come running toward me (which I was told later was because they had likely ripped a bag away from someone). I cannot say I saw another person out there that I could clearly identify as being not from S. America.

At any rate, the cleanup must have been fun, as the day-long party had already left enough garbage by early evening in some areas to nearly completely cover the ground...it was almost as if a landfill had had a volcanic eruption nearby. In the end, Brasilia was notable mostly for the strangeness of it and its unfriendliness to people on foot, though I do not regret going there at all, as it was enjoyable simply for the uniqueness of it.

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).

Hammocks

I bought my hammock for 30 reals in Tabatinga, which was probably not the best price, but the lady was so nice and enthusiastic that I decided not to really bargain with her. And the hammock turned out to be a pretty good one compared to some of what I saw, although the orange dye did come off a bit, staining my clothes (came off later in the wash though). At any rate, after spending 5 of 7 days sleeping in hammocks, I learned a couple of things. For one, make sure you get a hammock big enough for you. Being a little bigger than normal, I got a good size hammock and that worked well. Second, hang it as flat as you can. If you can string out the ends far away and not leave much, if any, slack in the ropes connected the hammock to whatever it is hanging on, so much the better. The flatter it is, the flatter you sleep. And lastly, sleeping diagonally, if you can, across the hammock will flatten it and help you sleep. Lastly, if you are sleeping next to other people, as I was, it's probably best to get your hammock above theirs if possible. Being higher not only makes the hammock lie flatter, but also helps you stay out of their way when they are moving in and out of the area.

All in all, I actually slept fairly well most of those nights, and very well during naps.

Manaus

Most of my fellow travelers and I managed to find a pretty decent hotel for the price about a km from the port in Manaus up by the Amazon Theater. By this point, we had become a pretty tight group and we not in any hurry to say goodbye to each other. I will mention that two of these traverlers were 18-year olds from London travelling together, which is something I cannot imagine having done at that age...but then these two had been traveling with their respective families all of their lives.

Manaus was a little dirty and grungy, but not that bad. It was a Saturday and most of the town was occupied with shopping at the many stores and sidewalk kiosks. Prices in Brazil, by the way, are high. While I realize the real has appreciated ridiculously against the dollar since 2006, I am really not sure how Brazilians afford to live here. I paid the equivalent of $4.50 for a what amounted to a small milkshake at one of the ice cream shops that sold ice cream by weight (much like many of the restaurant buffets that charge by kilo). I have to conclude the real is overvalued, but then currency valuations are not my field.

I did take a brief tour to the Amazon Theater, which was interesting for the artwork on the cupola. I had hoped to actually be able to attend a show of some kind since it was Saturday, but the next show was not until the following week. A show not being an option, I opted instead for a final night out with my fellow backpackers (who had decided to do on the following day what most people who come to Manaus do, take a jungle trip), where we all got our fill of caiprinha, Brazil's most notable alcoholic beverage. I did not care too much for it, but some of the others did, so drink them we did. The next morning it was an early awakening for an early three-hour flight down to see Brazil capital, Brasilia.

Tabatinga to Manaus, conclusion

At one point around 8pm one night we came to an abrupt halt, which did not seem to be normal behavior for a ship. We quickly found out we were stuck. I asked the bartender how long we would be stuck for, and he shrugged as if to say, “who knows”. He didn’t seem too worried about it, so we sat back and watched as the boat handlers attempted to shake her free somehow. The most surprising part of the episode came when they shined the spotlight on the shore and the forest was only a hundred meters or so away on either side. Being accustomed to seeing the boat in the middle of a very large river, it was strange to be in such a tight channel and see the forest right there in front of us in the dark. At any rate, after about 20 minutes they shook her free somehow, and off we went.

After about 66 hours on board we arrived in Manaus, right on time at 6 am. All in all, a very pleasant trip down the river, made even better by the great company of the other travelers. The only negative for the whole three days came at the very end, when one of my fellow travelers awoke to find his netbook gone. He had a four digit lock that connected into the computer, but somehow the thief had managed to open it in the night and abscond with it. We quickly got together to try to figure out a way to retrieve it before everyone disembarked, but there was really no way, and we had no good suspects as it really could have been any one of 50 people nearby. Using that laptop in front of the other travelers during the journey was probably not the best idea, but then, you buy things to use them, not to be owned by them and watch them every moment of every day. I have had enough things stolen from me over the years that I tend to let my worry over my things bother me a little more than a probably should, which is something that I mitigate by not bringing much of anything of value with me on trips, although this trip (and especially this blog) would be better if I had my laptop with me, as wi-fi is fairly ubiquitous these days, even down here.

Tabatinga to Manaus, part 2

The boat itself was a little smaller than I had expected...under 50 meters end to end, with three decks; the were passengers crowded in on the lower two decks, the top deck being reserved for the bar area, with plenty of open space to stand around up there and watch the river go by. I would guess that the boat had roughly 200 passengers on board at its max, though that number would diminish over time as more passengers got off than got on after the first couple of stops just after Tabatinga. With the help of his GPS, the French-Canadian figured out that the boat was making about 26km/hour on average. Given the current of the Rio Solimoes (the Amazon proper does not actually start until Manaus) at about 5km/hour, the boat goes roughly 20km/hour. Not too bad, but would not want to be on board when she’s going upriver.

The boat staff kept things pretty clean, and the bathrooms and showers proved to be enough for everyone. Even the food was pretty good, with a good balance of vegetables, meats, and grains. We were served three meals a day. The cooks would blow a whistle and everyone would line up outside the dining room to eat. Roughly 20 persons would enter at a time to eat, eating in the style of a family with plates of food being passed around to each other. The meals proved to be a good time, and the whole eating experience generated a nice feeling of camaraderie among everyone. I can only imagine what the local travelers were thinking as we (the eight backpackers) practiced bad Portuguese amongst ourselves and sometimes with the local travelers (always with Viktor’s help).

My time on board was spent napping, reading, planning the rest of my trip, conversing with the other backpackers and some of the other Spanish or English speaking travelers, and drinking, playing cards upstairs at the bar, and just looking at the beautiful scenery. The first couple of days had intermittent rain, but the last day was just perfect with huge billowing clouds towering over the thin green line of rain forest along the banks of the muddy brown river. With such uniform flat ground and such a clear day, we were able to take in the huge horizon with the big river and bigger sky, with the layers and layers of clouds visible for many miles outward. The river itself varied in width from several kilometers to several hundred meters I would reckon. When the river got narrow, this was often the result of us passing by one of the great many islands, large and small in the river. At different points where the river would link back in to another part of the river after we passed a large island, the immensity of the river would really strike you. It almost seemed more like an inland lake than any kind of a river.

We did not see much other boat traffic out on the river, and saw no wildlife to speak of on the river itself…and by the way, mosquitoes were thankfully not a problem, though at night playing cards under the lights we would occasionally get ambushed by moths, crickets and other insects.