Lost in the Center-West: Campo Grande, MS

It has been a mildly frustrating week, in that calls weren't promptly returned and it looked as if I was going to be stuck only interviewing myself in the mirror, at best. Things have turned around since, and I have a healthy schedule next week.

It is hot. Oh my, is it hot. I imagine what this is what summer in Texas feels like: hot, dusty, occasional lightning storms, then hot again. There are breezes, but they're coming straight off the Chaco. I think they both help evaporate the sweat from my forehead, and heat me up to produce more sweat. I've walked to two interviews so far, and arrived a little sweaty. Nothing too bad. We'll see if that changes.

I now understand why I put so much effort into buying synthetic fabrics and breathable clothes. Good planning, and thanks mom! After the new year, I'm moving progressively closer to the equator, as spring turns to summer. It's not going to get colder. Consider this a first exposure to interviewing-while-sweaty. (I've been informed that Cuiabá, the next stop on the trip, is on average two or three degrees Celsius hotter than here in Campo Grande.)

I saw the following sign on my walk today and had a "We're not in Kansas anymore" moment. In one direction, civilization and the biggest city in the hemisphere. In the other, well, the road goes on.



I took the advice of an interview subject I previously met in May in Rio, and planned to leave "bem cedinho" ("very early") to walk to the Parque das Nações Indígenas, the largest enclosed urban park in Brazil. (This designation probably excludes the Floresta da Tijuca in Rio for being a) a national park and b) not completely enclosed by Rio's urban areas.)

Early, it turns out, has a different meaning here. The sun rises around 5:15 AM, and by the time I left after breakfast at 6:45 AM, the sun was at about 20 degrees in the sky, and it was hot. I was also walking eastbound, trying to snatch all the shade I could. Campo Grande could use more shade.

My mission was to photograph capybaras, the largest rodents in the world, who don't like the mid-day heat and only come out of the water from the late evening to the early morning. As I walked and baked, I understood this habit. I also started planning when I would have to come back; surely there wouldn't be any capybaras left when I arrived (6 km and an hour later).

But no; success!

An elderly couple paused their run - by an odd set of circumstances, I was the only one in the park not running or in a running outfit; weird, right? - to tell me that there was a capybara family on the other side of the bridge. And there they were.

I don't know how they fight off predators. They look like large, juicy, stubby-legged morsels to me. They're like warthogs without tusks, or beavers without tails.







There was also a juvenile capybara, who scampered away from the pack and into the sun to get his Kodak moment.



And birds, including two that made a sound akin to the whirring sounds that old CPUs, back in the days when a 486 machine was faster than a 386 machine, used to make. Two bright blue-and-yellow macaws flew out of a tree alongside me, but I wasn't fast enough with the camera.




I thought of the excursion and park as a poor man's visit to the Pantanal. To the west of here is a giant swamp/grassland, which contains some ridiculous amount of biodiversity and is great for sightseeing. I won't see it on this trip, and I'm still only toying with the idea of an excursion to Bonito, an ecotourism destination in which abundant lime deposits in the soil make the water crystal clear and host a number of beautiful, exotic fish. Still to be determined.

More park below. I thought, "oh, it would be nice to live alongside the park here, and go running on the many paths and see capybaras!" Then I remembered that there are many other nice places in Brazil where I'd rather live, most of which have beaches. Still, parabens (congratulations), Campo Grande.






In other news:

1. There is a large Japanese immigrant community here, mainly from Okinawa and the north of Japan. (They mostly arrived at the beginning of the 20th century.) A large central market about one kilometer away offers soba and yakisoba, which is a refreshing change from the typical Brazilian rice-and-beans-per-kilo-or-buffet places. I went there for dinner last night, and may go again for lunch today. That means I can probably have sushi tonight - there are sushi joints that are less pricey than the places in Rio.

The central market - Feira Central de Campo Grande - also has a faux-Asiatown entrance and stores with every knick-knack you could find on Canal Street.

2. The Brasil-Venezuela game played here in Campo Grande was hard to watch. It was almost as awful as Argentina-Peru the previous week. So much disorganization, so many missed chances. I looked into buying tickets, but they started at R$115. I passed, and watched it on the hotel TV alongside yelling Brazilians.

3. Brazil also lost to Ghana in the final of the Under-20 World Cup yesterday. I pass the TV every time I enter and leave the hotel lobby, and I can usually hear it from my room. There is almost always football on TV here; it just never stops. On Thursday, lacking a live game, Globo instead re-broadcast the US - Costa Rica match from Wednesday.