Thursday, June 15, 2006

Photos from the "Cidade Maravilhosa"

Here is a coast; here is a harbor;
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery:
impractically shaped and--who knows?--self-pitying mountains,
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,

with a little church on top of one.

- Elizabeth Bishop, Arrival at Santos

I know its been a long time since my last post, but I'm going to use the fact that I'm travelling in Brazil, with much better things to be doing than sitting in an internet café updating my blog, as my primary excuse. Since Farah is doing such a good job with her daily-log format (albeit a little behind), I'm going to give you guys some photos from Rio de Janeiro and a very short update about where we've been and where we're going.

Right now, we're in Olinda, an old colonial town just outside of Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, the most populous state in Brazil's North-East. Since we've increasingly realized how little one month is for seeing and doing everything in our truncated but still ambitious itinerary, we've travelled as much as possible by plane instead of bus. We've been fortunate to have flexible dates, meaning we've gotten some pretty cheap flights, but the downside is that we just hop from big city to big city without seeing much of anything in between.

After spending about a week in Rio de Janeiro, Farah and I flew north to Salvador with four friends we had met at our hostel in Rio: Ida and Aleksander, from Norway, and Tania and Steve, from Toronto. Salvador is the capital of the state of Bahia, and the Afro-Brazilian cultural capital as well. We had a great time in Salvador, and had a chance to get just a taste of the city, before we flew even further north to Recife, and took a bus the same day to Porto de Galinhas, a little beach town. We spent a few days there, waiting out the rain for the first day, and then spending the next couple days on the beach, and the nights listening to forro music in the main square as part of the Festas Juninas. We caught our last bit of sun at the beach, headed by bus to Recife, and found our way to our hostel in Olinda where we've been spending the last couple days. That catches us up the the present, but Farah and I will do our best to fill out the details and satiate your curiosity with some more in-depth coverage in the weeks to come. Tommorow morning (early enough that it really shouldn't be called morning) Farah and I are flying to Foz do Iguaçu, the Brazilian town nearest the Iguazu Falls. We'll spend a day and a half on the Argentinian side of the National Park before flying to the last stop of our trip: Buenos Aires, a city we're greatly anticipating.

I won't have time tonight to give you my impressions from what was my second visit to Rio, but I can include some photos which I hope you'll enjoy:


A view of the "impractically shaped hills" among which Rio is built, from Pão de Açucar, Sugar Loaf



Some houses in the Rocinha favela in Rio's Zona Sul



Farah, Me, Rapha, Gilberto, Marina, her mum, her brother Bernardo, and Mike at Grumari beach outside of Rio


Ale had to shrink himself a little for this photo, here he is in Santa Teresa with Ida and Farah wearing his signature cap and grin

Eating fish moqueca with Tania and Steve at the Mercado São Pedro in Niterói, across the bay from Rio


The Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, designed by Oscar Niemeyer, with Rio and the Pão de Açucar in the background

I'm sorry to say that's all for now, but look forward to me getting my act together sometime in the near future.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Photo update

Farah and I have arrived in Rio. We arrived safely with fewer mishaps than last time. Our hostel is great, it was recommended to us by some Scottish, Irish, and "fake Irish" (i.e. from Northern Ireland) backpackers in Rio who came on the walking tour of Centro with us. This hostel really has a great feel, and is a very social place, there's lots of common area with couches and TVs, and most pleasing to the guests, they serve huge bottles of beer for 3 Reais! Here are some photos from São Paulo with quick captions because I'm really tired. Enjoy...

First some pictures from around Centro:

In front of the Municipal Theatre, a miniature replica of the Paris Opera House by a very prolific Brazilian architect

The Cathedral Sé

Just a street in São Bento

A picture from the metro:

Farah in Estacão Sé (its even bigger than it looks)

And one for the Escher fans:


Boa Noite!

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Obrigado Brasil!

Greetings from Brazil! Me and Farah (whom I will now take a second to introduce as my older sister and co-blogger) arrived from Vancouver in São Paulo via Houston yesterday morning. We had planned to spend a couple days in the city, despite many recommendations that it was "just a city" and not worth the time, for a few reasons: firstly, although last summer I spent most of my stay in five-week Brazil in São Paulo state, I only passed through São Paulo's airport, and didn't spend any time in the city, it also seemed like a good idea to spend time in the Brazil's largest city (and one of the largest in the world, by most accounts well over 20 million people!), and finally because I had a couple friends in the city whom I wanted to see. So far, we haven't disappointed, its a huge city, and its unlike any city I've ever visited before.
From the time we left Vancouver, we've run into our fair traveling difficulties, or as I like to think of them "adventures": flight delays meant that we had to run to our gate in Houston to make the plane being held for us, we arrived in São Paulo without baggage, and the international phone card I had gotten specifically for this trip will not work despite our best efforts. Luckily, Brazil, and more specifically Brazilians have treated us extremely well, we've encountered so many helpful people: the flight attendant on our Vancouver to Houston flight, who made sure our connecting flight was held for us, the airline agent near the baggage claim in the São Paulo airport, who was extremely flexible and nice (a welcome and unexpected disposition for someone who probably spends their day dealing with angry and frustrated travelers in similar situations to our own,) who took down the name and number of our hostel and my email address, the staff at the hostel, who communicated with the airline, and enabled me to be sitting right now in clothes from my checked luggage, as well as helping us out with orientation in the city and neighborhood, and have really made our introduction to independent traveling an easy one, and finally the agents at a little travel agency/tour operator outfit, who were extremely sweet, and who helped us book our flight to Rio de Janeiro at a great price, and who also guided us on a walking tour of São Paulo's historic centre yesterday morning. Muito Obrigado Brasil!

I'll return now to why São Paulo is unlike any other city I've visited and why it was so different from what I expected. In short, I expected São Paulo to be like Shanghai, but with Brazilian culture and people. The surface similarities are many: both are the largest cities in developing countries with huge populations and growing economies, and both are capitals of the region, but not of the country, and both have had most of their development in the last half centuries. The aspect which surprised me most about São Paulo was not really the immense sprawl, or the juxtaposition of luxury and squalor, wealth and poverty, which were all very striking and a definite difference from Vancouver, but the lack of centralization. The two downtowns: Centro and Paulista, which I would not describe as close to each other, are little more "downtown" than many other areas. The view from the top of the Banespa building looking towards Avenida Paulista to the south-west looked the same as looking in any other direction. Avenida Paulista, the newer downtown area which neighbours some affluent residential areas, and is home to the central banks and corporate head offices, but not always to government buildings which are mostly in the older Centro, is the strangest downtown I could imagine because it is pretty much just one street. The street seems not to end, and Farah and I got very tired just walking a little portion of it, but to either side of the road, along most of the length, it quickly looks like Vancouver's downtown east-side (i.e. very run-down, and somewhat sketchy.) The only explanation that I can come up with bizzare urban landscape, is that this is the natural, uncontrolled, way that a city which would be absolutely unrecognizable to a Paulista from 50 years ago, develops. I think that the key difference between São Paulo and Shanghai, is the incredible amount of planning and lack of conscience, on the part of the national, regional, and city governments in Shanghai. Whereas in Shanghai, giant skyscrapers are heavily subsidized, and slums and historic neighbourhoods are destroyed on a daily basis, it was possible to create a neat efficient city instead of what is simply a mess of a city. However, The one thing I need to commend the São Paulo for (apart from that conscience thing) is the best, cleanest, most intuitive, and most streamlined metro sytem I've ever experienced. Without any preparation, Farah and I could figure out exactly how to pay for tickets, which trains to take, how to transfer, and how to exit the first time we rode almost as if it were part of our regular daily commute. The stations are huge caverns with tall ceilings, which I still have some difficulty believing are underground, and the most we've waited for a train to come is 2 minutes. It's simply astounding and trumps the New York Subway System, Boston T, Montreal Metro, and Shanghai Metro, and of course the metro system in my my home city, which I'm too embarrassed to mention by name here.
Today is our last day in São Paulo, we're not leaving till the evening, so we're planning on going to Liberdade, São Paulo's Japantown, which also now is home to plenty of Chinese and Korean people and establishments as well. I'm really glad that we came for 3 days, I've had a chance to see a good part of this intriguing city, have a smooth transition into the trip, where I've been able to call home, and get online easily, and I got to have a drink with my friend Cacao last night. Now I just can't wait for Rio de Janeiro!

Sunday, June 04, 2006

The start of something...

Friends and strangers,
Hello and welcome, you have arrived at what will be, for now, a log of my wanderings. My first documented adventure starts today and I will soon be posting from Brazil and Argentina. As both my dedication to this medium and my access to the internet are at present unknowns, I'm not sure how frequently I will post. I don't yet have a very clear picture of what form this blog will take, but look forward to updates on the progress of my trip, photos, and some of my thoughts. I've enabled comments so feel free to leave your own thoughts, recommendations, or anything else. Since this is really my first foray into the production side of blogging, if you have any specific advice or pointers about any aspect of the blog, whether they be about content or layout, I'd be happy to hear them and get your help as I find my voice. That's it for now. Até logo!