Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Second thoughts on São Paulo
First, I should apologize again for not taking any photos of São Paulo.
Second, I don't think I got it right when I noted that São Paulo is bland because it's just a little bit of everything. While running on Praia do Flamengo in Rio on my penultimate day, I came to another conclusion.
All of Brazil has a flavor. In the Northeast, there are lovely beaches and historic colonial towns and the history of a sugar cane boom mixed with the stain of years of slavery. (And in many cases, the Afro-Brazilian culture that came from slavery.) The South has its European immigrants, the efficiently-run cities full of (relatively) well-educated citizens, and the legacy of agriculture. Rio de Janeiro is unique, and was the capital for almost two hundred years. Brasilia is Tomorrowland. The North is properly tropical, centered on rainforests and rivers.
By contrast, São Paulo doesn't really have a flavor. In the national stereotype, people who live there work hard, are rich, and are dull. Parts of São Paulo look like any other large city in the world, especially in Zona Sul. My cousin Chris made this observation as we walked down Avenida Paulista, the Wall Street of Brazil. Aside from the structures at Masp and Fiesp, the Avenida would not be out of place in New York, LA, or Chicago.
In sum, Sampa is generic. It doesn't have anything that makes it stand apart from the rest of Brazil, except that it's big and rich. It's flavorless.
That being said, I'll probably live there again. To begin, it has the best universities and the best libraries in the country.
Second, I don't think I got it right when I noted that São Paulo is bland because it's just a little bit of everything. While running on Praia do Flamengo in Rio on my penultimate day, I came to another conclusion.
All of Brazil has a flavor. In the Northeast, there are lovely beaches and historic colonial towns and the history of a sugar cane boom mixed with the stain of years of slavery. (And in many cases, the Afro-Brazilian culture that came from slavery.) The South has its European immigrants, the efficiently-run cities full of (relatively) well-educated citizens, and the legacy of agriculture. Rio de Janeiro is unique, and was the capital for almost two hundred years. Brasilia is Tomorrowland. The North is properly tropical, centered on rainforests and rivers.
By contrast, São Paulo doesn't really have a flavor. In the national stereotype, people who live there work hard, are rich, and are dull. Parts of São Paulo look like any other large city in the world, especially in Zona Sul. My cousin Chris made this observation as we walked down Avenida Paulista, the Wall Street of Brazil. Aside from the structures at Masp and Fiesp, the Avenida would not be out of place in New York, LA, or Chicago.
In sum, Sampa is generic. It doesn't have anything that makes it stand apart from the rest of Brazil, except that it's big and rich. It's flavorless.
That being said, I'll probably live there again. To begin, it has the best universities and the best libraries in the country.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Winter travels: São Paulo and Manaus
For four weeks, we lived at the center of it all. The expensive, expansive, hectic, maddening and refreshing center of Brazil, São Paulo.
Specifically, I splurged and rented an apartment in an apart-hotel in Moema, a neighborhood on the south side of the center, only a few blocks from Parque Ibirapuera. I had limited time to find and reserve a place, and many places to be. The apartment ended up sheltering Bethany and my cousin Christian as well, so maybe it wasn't a terrible expense.
In reserve order, the ugly, the bad and the good of São Paulo.
The Ugly
Moema is, after Jardins and whichever neighborhood is currently trendy, the third-nicest neighborhood in São Paulo. Or at least it should be; it's certainly expensive enough. (Note: Due to circumstances, it was once necessary to search for lunch in Jardins. I consider myself lucky to have escaped after losing less than R$20.)
We lived five blocks from an Applebee's, and six blocks from a Starbucks. This combination might exist in Barra da Tijuca (and maybe in Brasilia), but otherwise nowhere else in Brazil. (Perhaps nowhere else in South America.)
On every corner, and in front of every decent restaurant, stood valets willing to park your car for around R$10-R$15 for the duration of lunch or dinner. Even the gym up the hill had valet parking. Admittedly, there wasn't much open street parking, but this is true in San Francisco as well. I can proudly say that I ate lunch regularly in most towns for less than it costs to park one's car in Moema.
Bethany and I went to a local joint to eat burgers, fries and Cokes for the 4th of July, in our best ironic manner. We chose a place called America Pasta & Burgers instead of Applebee's. The bill totaled R$88, and we never ate there again.
The above examples illustrate the ugliest part of São Paulo's wealth and inequality. In the finest neighborhood, the rich spend large amounts of money to enjoy a standard of living on par with that of the United States. For the quality of products and services, prices are outrageous. And the streets are stale and soulless. There's very little public space, because everything has to be held behind gates or under vigilant watch or hidden. (Granted, there is more public space downtown.)
Last December, while we walked around Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas in Rio, I commented to friends that I wouldn't mind retiring to a high-rise apartment in Lagoa. Valmore questioned this, noting that he envied the United States, where everyone has a small single-family house with a yard and a fence; why would I want to move to an apartment? His point was taken, though I did later see upper-class single-family homes (most memorably, near the park in Campo Grande) in Brazil. The major distinction between single-family homes in Brazil and the States is that the former are almost always behind guarded walls.
In short, the rich of São Paulo can indeed lived charmed lives, but they pay exorbitant amounts to do so, and to keep that world protected. (This is already widely known; I'm just relating my encounter with it.)
The Bad
In many cities, I've met people who say "Oh, the traffic here in [my city] is getting to be as bad as São Paulo." It's an interesting point of reference, because I didn't find traffic to be too much of a problem in SP. (See above point: this may be due to the fact that I lived in Moema. I admit that traffic did once make us late to the SPFC-Avaí game, but we didn't miss much.) The bus system is not too bad, the metro is speedy, and I don't own a car. (Really bad traffic is in Salvador. F--- you, Rótula do Abacaxí.)
But if the traffic isn't bad, the air pollution is. My eyes stung from time to time, in the same manner that they always sting when we crest the hill up near the new Getty Museum and enter the LA Basin.
And every driver was, of course, sitting in his or her own car, most without passengers. As my mother asked in Salvador (not rhetorically), "Has the government done much to encourage carpooling?" Ha! Crazy lady. The current government is trying to put more cars on the road as fast as they can, with special tax incentives and discounts.
There are some kinks of developed world life not worth imitating, as São Paulo develops.
The Good
But the integrated bus and metro system was great! And two museums, the MASP and the Museu da Língua Portuguesa were lots of fun! And Rua Augusta is a good bohemian/alternative break from the blandness of Zona Sul. Chris especially liked Augusta, aside from the very disappointing Mexican restaurant at its peak.
And yes, one does get the feeling of being in the center of the world. You can take a bus in São Paulo and pass the corporate headquarters for, say, the maker of a brand of urinals that's all over the country. Or the headquarters of a beverages company whose juice you drank long ago at a dark bus station in Goiânia. You can go to the Tietê bus terminal and literally find a bus for anywhere in Brazil. Every touring show or band or exhibition will pass through. (50 Cent played while we were in town, and the Bodies exhibit was open at the MAM. Tickets for Mr. Cent's concert started at R$200, which seemed steep for a hip hop artist who hasn't been relevant for five years.)
And oh, the park. Parque do Ibirapuera, as previously mentioned, has a 6000 meter dirt trail around its perimeter, with three water stations and two bathroom stops, varied terrain, and plenty of shade. There are running routes in Brazil that are more scenic (Aterro do Flamengo, Rio), longer and with more bathrooms (Parque da Cidade, Brasília), shadier (Parque Mãe Bonifácia, Cuiabá), with cleaner air (Praia do Calhau, São Luís), or with more fun wildlife (Parque das Indígenas, Campo Grande), but Ibirapuera wins the all-around prize.
It took two tries to figure out how to manage the course while running clockwise (the direction without signs), but two or three loops could be combined and cut into almost any distance. I think I topped out at 18 km. I don't remember.
Sadly, the park is a slight break, but not a complete break, from the smog and exhaust of the streets.
There was also a fruit market on Saturday up the hill in Vila Nova Conceição. And tofu and yakisoba noodles in local supermarkets. (And peanut butter, but only the Peter Pan sugary type.) We never had very good Japanese food, but did find some good pizza after a search.
Finally, interviewees in São Paulo were just as friendly and helpful as those in other states were. I picked up a little of the paulista r in my accent, which I've retained to the present, but I still find José Serra's accent a little over-the-top. (In a funny coincidence, only after a visit to the Museu da República in Rio did I realize that one of my interviewees was the spokesman who announced Tancredo Neves's death in 1985.)
The Uncategorizable
São Paulo is not soulless. It is just too splintered and diverse to be categorized. I'm sure that if I traveled for the sake of experiencing specifically art, fashion, food, music, architecture, history, or any interest, I could really dig deep into one part of the city and be richly rewarded.
However, in taking a little bit of everything at once, I must admit that I found São Paulo to be bland. Sure, it's the most populous city in the Americas, but it lacks the romantic feeling of "here I am!" that one gets in Manhattan. Even on Avenida Paulista, or in the park, or at the monuments or at Praça da Sé or Praça da República, there's little romance or style in the city. I blame this on the car. In Manhattan, one sees (and gets bumped and shoved by) the multitudes on the streets and the subway. Here, there are crowds on the subway, and people on the street for lunch, but it's all just so mind-bogglingly spread out that it doesn't feel dense. (Disclaimer: Anhangbaú metro station did feel dense at Tuesday, 8 AM.) Many people just get in their cars and pass you by.
There's also no center. The city is too big to concentrate on any one plaza. Not all roads lead to Praça da Sé or da República, or to Terminal Bandeirantes. Corporate office parks are in Chácara Santo Antônio, a good 15 km from where their daily occupants and masters (probably) live in Jardins. Hence the helicopters.
For that reason, with apologies to all readers, I never took a photo in São Paulo. Of anything. It never dawned on me to do so, even when visiting monuments and museums. I don't have a good explanation why.
Will I be back? Rapáz, seria quase impossível continuar estudando o Brasil sem voltar pra Sampa. Of course. And I'll give it another go. (But not that Mexican place, Tollocos. That stunk.)
---
It occurs to me that my reports on places always include complaints about one thing or another. I'll never be satisfied. So let me refrain from detailing my thoughts about Manaus.
It will suffice to say that I prefer Belém to Manaus, and that Manaus will need a lot of work to become an adequate host city in 2014.
It was nice, however, to get back to the familiar signs, sights, and smells of regular Brazil. And we ran into Alceu and his family (visiting from Fortaleza) on the plaza of Teatro Amazonas. The plaza is a lovely public space.
And while I met more than one paulista who explained to me (in SP) how Brazil feeds almost parasitically off the wealth that São Paulo produces, I also met two Amazonenses who explained that the industrialization (and coffee boom) of the Southeast was financed by tariff duties on rubber, and so the rest of Brazil owes Amazonas a debt.
As two small momentos of Manaus, here's a picture of Albert in front of Teatro Amazonas, and a stuck turtle at the Bosque da Ciência.
---
I have a flight for San Francisco in four days.
Specifically, I splurged and rented an apartment in an apart-hotel in Moema, a neighborhood on the south side of the center, only a few blocks from Parque Ibirapuera. I had limited time to find and reserve a place, and many places to be. The apartment ended up sheltering Bethany and my cousin Christian as well, so maybe it wasn't a terrible expense.
In reserve order, the ugly, the bad and the good of São Paulo.
The Ugly
Moema is, after Jardins and whichever neighborhood is currently trendy, the third-nicest neighborhood in São Paulo. Or at least it should be; it's certainly expensive enough. (Note: Due to circumstances, it was once necessary to search for lunch in Jardins. I consider myself lucky to have escaped after losing less than R$20.)
We lived five blocks from an Applebee's, and six blocks from a Starbucks. This combination might exist in Barra da Tijuca (and maybe in Brasilia), but otherwise nowhere else in Brazil. (Perhaps nowhere else in South America.)
On every corner, and in front of every decent restaurant, stood valets willing to park your car for around R$10-R$15 for the duration of lunch or dinner. Even the gym up the hill had valet parking. Admittedly, there wasn't much open street parking, but this is true in San Francisco as well. I can proudly say that I ate lunch regularly in most towns for less than it costs to park one's car in Moema.
Bethany and I went to a local joint to eat burgers, fries and Cokes for the 4th of July, in our best ironic manner. We chose a place called America Pasta & Burgers instead of Applebee's. The bill totaled R$88, and we never ate there again.
The above examples illustrate the ugliest part of São Paulo's wealth and inequality. In the finest neighborhood, the rich spend large amounts of money to enjoy a standard of living on par with that of the United States. For the quality of products and services, prices are outrageous. And the streets are stale and soulless. There's very little public space, because everything has to be held behind gates or under vigilant watch or hidden. (Granted, there is more public space downtown.)
Last December, while we walked around Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas in Rio, I commented to friends that I wouldn't mind retiring to a high-rise apartment in Lagoa. Valmore questioned this, noting that he envied the United States, where everyone has a small single-family house with a yard and a fence; why would I want to move to an apartment? His point was taken, though I did later see upper-class single-family homes (most memorably, near the park in Campo Grande) in Brazil. The major distinction between single-family homes in Brazil and the States is that the former are almost always behind guarded walls.
In short, the rich of São Paulo can indeed lived charmed lives, but they pay exorbitant amounts to do so, and to keep that world protected. (This is already widely known; I'm just relating my encounter with it.)
The Bad
In many cities, I've met people who say "Oh, the traffic here in [my city] is getting to be as bad as São Paulo." It's an interesting point of reference, because I didn't find traffic to be too much of a problem in SP. (See above point: this may be due to the fact that I lived in Moema. I admit that traffic did once make us late to the SPFC-Avaí game, but we didn't miss much.) The bus system is not too bad, the metro is speedy, and I don't own a car. (Really bad traffic is in Salvador. F--- you, Rótula do Abacaxí.)
But if the traffic isn't bad, the air pollution is. My eyes stung from time to time, in the same manner that they always sting when we crest the hill up near the new Getty Museum and enter the LA Basin.
And every driver was, of course, sitting in his or her own car, most without passengers. As my mother asked in Salvador (not rhetorically), "Has the government done much to encourage carpooling?" Ha! Crazy lady. The current government is trying to put more cars on the road as fast as they can, with special tax incentives and discounts.
There are some kinks of developed world life not worth imitating, as São Paulo develops.
The Good
But the integrated bus and metro system was great! And two museums, the MASP and the Museu da Língua Portuguesa were lots of fun! And Rua Augusta is a good bohemian/alternative break from the blandness of Zona Sul. Chris especially liked Augusta, aside from the very disappointing Mexican restaurant at its peak.
And yes, one does get the feeling of being in the center of the world. You can take a bus in São Paulo and pass the corporate headquarters for, say, the maker of a brand of urinals that's all over the country. Or the headquarters of a beverages company whose juice you drank long ago at a dark bus station in Goiânia. You can go to the Tietê bus terminal and literally find a bus for anywhere in Brazil. Every touring show or band or exhibition will pass through. (50 Cent played while we were in town, and the Bodies exhibit was open at the MAM. Tickets for Mr. Cent's concert started at R$200, which seemed steep for a hip hop artist who hasn't been relevant for five years.)
And oh, the park. Parque do Ibirapuera, as previously mentioned, has a 6000 meter dirt trail around its perimeter, with three water stations and two bathroom stops, varied terrain, and plenty of shade. There are running routes in Brazil that are more scenic (Aterro do Flamengo, Rio), longer and with more bathrooms (Parque da Cidade, Brasília), shadier (Parque Mãe Bonifácia, Cuiabá), with cleaner air (Praia do Calhau, São Luís), or with more fun wildlife (Parque das Indígenas, Campo Grande), but Ibirapuera wins the all-around prize.
It took two tries to figure out how to manage the course while running clockwise (the direction without signs), but two or three loops could be combined and cut into almost any distance. I think I topped out at 18 km. I don't remember.
Sadly, the park is a slight break, but not a complete break, from the smog and exhaust of the streets.
There was also a fruit market on Saturday up the hill in Vila Nova Conceição. And tofu and yakisoba noodles in local supermarkets. (And peanut butter, but only the Peter Pan sugary type.) We never had very good Japanese food, but did find some good pizza after a search.
Finally, interviewees in São Paulo were just as friendly and helpful as those in other states were. I picked up a little of the paulista r in my accent, which I've retained to the present, but I still find José Serra's accent a little over-the-top. (In a funny coincidence, only after a visit to the Museu da República in Rio did I realize that one of my interviewees was the spokesman who announced Tancredo Neves's death in 1985.)
The Uncategorizable
São Paulo is not soulless. It is just too splintered and diverse to be categorized. I'm sure that if I traveled for the sake of experiencing specifically art, fashion, food, music, architecture, history, or any interest, I could really dig deep into one part of the city and be richly rewarded.
However, in taking a little bit of everything at once, I must admit that I found São Paulo to be bland. Sure, it's the most populous city in the Americas, but it lacks the romantic feeling of "here I am!" that one gets in Manhattan. Even on Avenida Paulista, or in the park, or at the monuments or at Praça da Sé or Praça da República, there's little romance or style in the city. I blame this on the car. In Manhattan, one sees (and gets bumped and shoved by) the multitudes on the streets and the subway. Here, there are crowds on the subway, and people on the street for lunch, but it's all just so mind-bogglingly spread out that it doesn't feel dense. (Disclaimer: Anhangbaú metro station did feel dense at Tuesday, 8 AM.) Many people just get in their cars and pass you by.
There's also no center. The city is too big to concentrate on any one plaza. Not all roads lead to Praça da Sé or da República, or to Terminal Bandeirantes. Corporate office parks are in Chácara Santo Antônio, a good 15 km from where their daily occupants and masters (probably) live in Jardins. Hence the helicopters.
For that reason, with apologies to all readers, I never took a photo in São Paulo. Of anything. It never dawned on me to do so, even when visiting monuments and museums. I don't have a good explanation why.
Will I be back? Rapáz, seria quase impossível continuar estudando o Brasil sem voltar pra Sampa. Of course. And I'll give it another go. (But not that Mexican place, Tollocos. That stunk.)
---
It occurs to me that my reports on places always include complaints about one thing or another. I'll never be satisfied. So let me refrain from detailing my thoughts about Manaus.
It will suffice to say that I prefer Belém to Manaus, and that Manaus will need a lot of work to become an adequate host city in 2014.
It was nice, however, to get back to the familiar signs, sights, and smells of regular Brazil. And we ran into Alceu and his family (visiting from Fortaleza) on the plaza of Teatro Amazonas. The plaza is a lovely public space.
And while I met more than one paulista who explained to me (in SP) how Brazil feeds almost parasitically off the wealth that São Paulo produces, I also met two Amazonenses who explained that the industrialization (and coffee boom) of the Southeast was financed by tariff duties on rubber, and so the rest of Brazil owes Amazonas a debt.
As two small momentos of Manaus, here's a picture of Albert in front of Teatro Amazonas, and a stuck turtle at the Bosque da Ciência.
---
I have a flight for San Francisco in four days.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Feeling the gravitational pull of São Paulo
I'm in Porto Alegre, after a very long bus ride from São Paulo.
It feels a little out-of-place to be back in the more developed part of the country after several months in the Northeast and North. (Brasília doesn't count. Brasília is Tomorrowland at Disneyland. My friend Bernardo has a good post on the subject, and I think he's pretty much right: Brasília is the dream of upper class Brazil and its chosen self-image: clean, ordered, hierarchical, and proper. Everything in its place, and the poor out of sight and out of mind. For the record, as the bus left Brasília, it stopped in the towns on the periphery, which were very much cities of the interior in the Centro-Oeste. Not poor, but not gleaming and ordered either. The staff who clean, serve food in, stand guard in, and bring people to the shiny Ministérios live there. Brasília is Tomorrowland - with respect to social ills here - like Alagoas is Realityland.)
In any case, I've been to Porto Alegre before, and I'm glad to be back. It's a nice, compact, walkable town with crisp, cool weather and friendly people. I don't stand out as an exceptional gringo, which means only that fewer people watch me pass.
In the land of red meat, I'm back to eating mountains of vegetables and fruits. Hooray for buffet restaurants that have mango, papaya, pineapple, bananas, caquis, and tangerines!
Two observations led me to write this post:
1. Greece right now looks like Argentina in 2000. In a previous life (read: when I was in Brazil three years ago), I was interested in currency crises, and what politicians do to speed them up or prevent them. A post on how austerity measures are just a temporary stop-gap measure without real economic recovery - which means that they usually fail - and how bondholders are trying desperately to avoid paying the consequences for their actions, is here. (Warning: poor writing.)
2. As I mentioned above, I stopped in São Paulo to go apartment hunting. I stayed almost exactly thirty-six hours in the city, but I must say that I'm excited to be moving there. Frankly, I'm excited to be finished with road trips and a new city each week. São Paulo, however, has a big city vibe, a host of things to see and do, and Korean restaurants! I'm not a terribly big fan of Korean restaurants; I just mention them to illustrate the wide variety of cuisines that await. Such a variety of cuisines is not found in other, smaller towns like, say, Rio de Janeiro.
To celebrate the impending move to São Paulo, in homage to a travel series for dumb people with more money than sense, I present
36 Hours in São Paulo
São Paulo is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way from Staten Island to the Bronx, but that's just peanuts to São Paulo.
Friday
8:00 a.m.
1) BARRA FUNDA.
Arrive at the western bus terminal in the city, after a thirteen-hour bus ride from Campo Grande. Feel glad that no one sat next to you and that making another guest appearance at an English language school in Campo Grande on Thursday afternoon didn't make you miss the bus.
Barra Funda is one of three (four?) long-distance bus terminals in the city. You can't buy a ticket for Porto Alegre because those lines are run out of another bus terminal in the city. Barra Funda mainly covers trips to areas west and northwest of São Paulo.
9:00 a.m.
2) JARDINS IS PRICEY.
Get to your hotel (Formule 1 Jardins) and have them tell you that you can't check-in until noon, and that it will cost you extra to stow your luggage for four hours. Immediately regret not booking at another hotel. Put in a text message to the real estate agent recommended by a friend, informing her that you're in São Paulo.
10:30 a.m.
3) SÃO PAULO IS BIG.
Decide to meet the real estate agent at the apartment visit by walking from Jardins to Moema. Arrive late, sweating despite the temperature around 55 F. It takes a long time to walk anywhere in this city, which may explain why few try. Note the bus lines, supermarkets, and Burger King nearby. Resolve to continue to not eat at Burger King.
Balk at how pricey short-term rentals in São Paulo are.
4:00 p.m.
4) WORLD CUP.
Watch the World Cup in your room, after a late R$9.90 all-you-can-eat lunch. Be glad that São Paulo restaurants seem to be cheaper than restaurants in Rio de Janeiro.
Do laundry in the hotel sink. Think about how you have a well-developed, if not perfect, system for hotel room laundry. Buy dinner at Carrefour next door, along with a chip for a São Paulo cell phone number.
Saturday
6:30 a.m.
5) IBIRAPUERA.
Thankfully, the apartment will be near the large Parque de Ibirapuera in São Paulo that has a 6 km dirt trail loop. It feels like an escape from the city in the same way that Central Park does. In both cases, some parts of the park run right along busy streets while other parts are quietly hidden behind trees and next to lakes. Both parks also have museums inside their boundaries.
Go running there.
3:00 p.m.
6) USA-ENGLAND.
Watch the World Cup match in the hotel restaurant with another hotel guest from Ghana who once lived in London. Chat about how cold this part of the country is.
6:00 p.m.
7) TIETÊ.
São Paulo's main long-distance bus terminal is the largest in Latin America. It is remarked that you can get from Tietê to any other city in Brazil by a more-or-less direct route. Buy a ticket for the eighteen-hour ride to Porto Alegre.
8:00 p.m.
8) POA.
Chat with a teacher from Porto Alegre and his family. Board the bus, where there's a copy of Estado de São Paulo in every seat, and remember how much nicer bus rides are in the Southeast than they are in other parts of the country.
Arrive in Porto Alegre at 3 PM on Sunday. The bus had delays because the anti-lock brakes were causing problems. The Serra Gaúcha is winding, green and looks like central California in the springtime, after the rains.
Oh, and that image at top is a planetarium at the Centro Cultural Dragão do Mar in Fortaleza.
UPDATE: Or if you like over-paying for shit in order to feel like an insider, there's always the original guide.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Passing back around: Cuiabá, MT
I'm back in Cuiabá, a city I have previously described as "ugly" where "aesthetics are not necessarily a high priority." I stand by that assessment.
I'm back to see if I can't conduct follow-up interviews and round out my knowledge of these cases. So far, I've been only mildly successful. At this point in the trip, however, I'm satisfied with mild success.
It has been cooler here than it was during my last visit. That time in Cuiabá was probably the hottest visit "on the road," second only to the time around Christmas in Rio when it hit the low 40s. Cooler weather, which failed to last until Friday and won't endure through the weekend, can't disguise the fact that this is still not a pretty city.
That being said, the people are wonderful. I regret that I didn't get in touch with more of them, but my time here is limited. (Thursday was also Corpus Christi, which meant that many people have taken a four-day weekend.)
In any case, I encountered two notable sights.
First, I went running, and found my way up to a track open to the public but maintained by the Brazilian Army, and to Parque Mãe Bonifácia, a shaded park with a few kilometers of running paths. These two great running destinations are only about two hundred meters from each other, in the same neighborhood. I have to run one kilometer to get there.
On my way to and from the park, however, I noticed the following street sign:
This choice of colors strikes me as incredibly poor. Sure, the pale green is the official green color of Cuiabá, "the Green City." In my mind, however, they could not have picked a worse contrast, or have cluttered up the street sign more. I have no idea how drivers at night are supposed to read this at any speed. The use of white-on-blue and big names for streets in Fortaleza (and supposedly São Paulo) is a much better idea.
Oh, and that's the town symbol, with a touch of soccer ball because this will be a host city for the 2014 World Cup.
Second, I'm staying at the same hotel as I did previously. The neighborhood is changing slightly. The motorcycle shop across the street went out of business, and it looks like the car rental place next door is going to follow. But it's not all bad news. Down the hill, a boxing gym has opened.
This gym is only noteworthy in that the name is a transliteration of the English word "knock-out," as it would be spelled by a Portuguese speaker. Literally, one would say the word "knock-out-chee," with the stress placed on the last syllable varying according to where in the Lusophone world you happened to be. The word "blacaute" is used similarly for power outages.
It made me smile.
In two weeks and a few days, se Deus quiser ("God willing"), I'll be in São Paulo, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language. I can't wait.
I'm back to see if I can't conduct follow-up interviews and round out my knowledge of these cases. So far, I've been only mildly successful. At this point in the trip, however, I'm satisfied with mild success.
It has been cooler here than it was during my last visit. That time in Cuiabá was probably the hottest visit "on the road," second only to the time around Christmas in Rio when it hit the low 40s. Cooler weather, which failed to last until Friday and won't endure through the weekend, can't disguise the fact that this is still not a pretty city.
That being said, the people are wonderful. I regret that I didn't get in touch with more of them, but my time here is limited. (Thursday was also Corpus Christi, which meant that many people have taken a four-day weekend.)
In any case, I encountered two notable sights.
First, I went running, and found my way up to a track open to the public but maintained by the Brazilian Army, and to Parque Mãe Bonifácia, a shaded park with a few kilometers of running paths. These two great running destinations are only about two hundred meters from each other, in the same neighborhood. I have to run one kilometer to get there.
On my way to and from the park, however, I noticed the following street sign:
This choice of colors strikes me as incredibly poor. Sure, the pale green is the official green color of Cuiabá, "the Green City." In my mind, however, they could not have picked a worse contrast, or have cluttered up the street sign more. I have no idea how drivers at night are supposed to read this at any speed. The use of white-on-blue and big names for streets in Fortaleza (and supposedly São Paulo) is a much better idea.
Oh, and that's the town symbol, with a touch of soccer ball because this will be a host city for the 2014 World Cup.
Second, I'm staying at the same hotel as I did previously. The neighborhood is changing slightly. The motorcycle shop across the street went out of business, and it looks like the car rental place next door is going to follow. But it's not all bad news. Down the hill, a boxing gym has opened.
This gym is only noteworthy in that the name is a transliteration of the English word "knock-out," as it would be spelled by a Portuguese speaker. Literally, one would say the word "knock-out-chee," with the stress placed on the last syllable varying according to where in the Lusophone world you happened to be. The word "blacaute" is used similarly for power outages.
It made me smile.
In two weeks and a few days, se Deus quiser ("God willing"), I'll be in São Paulo, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language. I can't wait.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Do You Like Concrete? Brasília, Distrito Federal
I came to Brasília in search of nationwide data and to test a few hypotheses about federal-state relations. I can say that I won't leave completely empty-handed. I would call my week moderately productive, and I'm almost certain that I'll have less productive weeks among the next few.
I'm still tired of travel, tired of being in the field, tired of the same routine and of the same loneliness. Yet I march onward. I go running a lot, though I fear that my shoes are barely going to make it to July 3rd. (I left my new pair for Bethany to bring down then.)
Brasília, the capital of the future. Or at least a very 1950s version of the future, built for the automobile, mass urban housing, and dramatic gestures in urban planning.
Brasília, for the uninitiated, is laid out in the shape of an airplane, with the body comprising the Monumental Axis, the Esplanade of the Ministries, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Presidential Palace, and (somewhere) a McDonald's I falled to locate. The wings of the airplane are devoted to zoned residential and commercial areas.
Everything is laid out according to a system of acronyms and numbers. I stayed in the South Wing, at superblock 705, off street W3, in CRS (Residential Center South, I think). I went to a meeting in SRTVS Quadra 701, or Sector Radio and TV South, Block 701. There are separate areas for hotels and hospitals.
There is a logic to it all, which one learns gradually. I don't actively dislike Brasília - though I actively dislike the fact that a decent hotel is out of my budget range, given that hotels are limited to Hotel Sector North and Hotel Sector South - like others do. I just think it could stand for some re-development and new planning after fifty years. It's certainly not a pedestrian-friendly city, despite the fact that cars stop at crosswalks (not always guaranteed elsewhere). Brasília would receive a Walkability Score close to zero.
To get an idea, of just how spread-out and car-friendly it is, see the following photos.
The last picture is of a diorama that's in a small underground museum near the presidential palace.
These photos are all taken within the airplane, an area known as the Pilot Plan. There are other outlying areas, but almost none are adjacent to the Pilot Plan. One has to go down a long road to reach the next developed areas. This movement out of the Pilot Plan is surprising. Normally, in Brazil, as one leaves a big city, one encounters suburbs and smaller developments that are poorer and more run down that is the center of the city. The poverty level seems to increase as you move farther from the city center, until at last you're in the countryside.
Brasília, by contrast, has among the highest wealth and development scores of any city in Brazil. And for twenty-one of its fifty years of existence, it was the site of a military dictatorship. Hence there are almost no visible slums on the outskirts. When traveling out of the city (by newly-built metro or by car), one immediately jumps from city to countryside. In Brasília's case, one jumps right from the buildings into the red-dirt cerrado, the high savannah in the middle of the country. I wish I had photos of this, but alas I was negligent in not bringing my camera along to that interview.
On the first Sunday in town, I took a walk down to the presidential palace in hopes of seeing a tour. I wore long pants, but didn't sweat too much. Although the termperature still hovered around the same 31-32 C it was in Fortaleza and Salvador, the air here is much drier. I almost miss the humidity. Almost.
Along the way, I passed the new national library, which has nothing on the old national library on Avenida Rio Branco in Rio de Janeiro. (Reminder: When Brasília became the capital, all those federal public sector employees had to move out of Rio de Janeiro. Poor them.) Coincidentally, it's named after a former governor of Rio, a master populist.
I also passed the newly-opened National Museum (the hemisphere resembling Saturn) and the Cathedral. The latter bears a striking resemblence to Space Mountain at Disneyland and Disney World, also pictured below. That's not by accident. They were built in the same era (well, Space Mountain in the 1970s), and were both designed to showcase the future of architecture. Space Mountain doesn't have stained glass.
Beyond the Cathedral lie the Ministry buildings. Each building has brass letters outside declaring which Ministries it contains. I imagine that somewhere there is a collection of giant marquee brass letters, ready for the moment the next president rearranges the ministries or creates new ones.
Also, nothing says "bureaucracy" like big concrete slabs, row after row.
The Ministries are also one of the redeeming features of Brasília, in that many of them have restaurants that are open to the public. The restaurants function mainly to feed public employees, of course, but visitors are welcome after 1:00 PM. And the food is cheap!
I visited the restaurants at the Ministry of Agriculture (R$9.46 per kilo, but no credit cards accepted) and at the Ministry of Communications and Transport (R$10.00 per kilo, credit cards accepted), the latter twice. Normally, food is R$17.99 per kilo if it's affordable, over R$20 per kilo at most places in Zona Sul in Rio, and R$30.00 or more at the mall. By contrast, the Ministries are a steal. I would like to personally thank the Brazilian people for subsidizing three lunches for me. I ate 1.38 kilos on my second visit, and 1.02 kilos on my third visit. (Go ahead, convert that to pounds.) Normally, I eat around 0.6 kilos for lunch at a restaurant, and pay more.
Numbers above fixed. Thanks to Amy in comments.
And on my walk I encountered my good friends at the Ministry of Foreign Relations! Hooray!
The building is rather beautiful. It may be a little nicer than the old Palácio Itamaraty in Rio (which I have also visited; see the posts about my visa mix-up). The contrast is between colonial and modern styles.
[On reflection, my best friends are the Federal Police; it was their mistake and slip-up that allowed me back into the country, and thus did not send me toothbrush-less and computer-less back to Argentina.]
Other bureaucratic buildings on the east end of the Axis, like Itamaraty, are more beautiful. I saw the Ministry of Justice building and wanted to jump into the fountain for a swim.
And of course there's the famous Congress. I was surprised by how close I could get to the building. The security-mad United States wouldn't dare let one duck under the awnings and walk on the grass.
At the end of my walk, I was sorely disappointed. The Presidential Palance, the Palácio do Planalto, is under refurbishment and was closed to tours. Oh well.
In conclusion, Brasília falls right about in the middle, out of all the cities I've visited. I'd come back, though I'd try to drive hard bargains to stay at a nicer hotel. I will say that I did enjoy the cheap food, and running in the Parque da Cidade.
Now to return to the Mato Grossos, but briefly.
---
Oh, and the United States can best be represented by a bacon cheeseburger. Obvio. (The US burger is available on Fridays. Other days are McAlemanha, McBrasil, McArgentina, McItália, and McEspanha.)
I'm still tired of travel, tired of being in the field, tired of the same routine and of the same loneliness. Yet I march onward. I go running a lot, though I fear that my shoes are barely going to make it to July 3rd. (I left my new pair for Bethany to bring down then.)
Brasília, the capital of the future. Or at least a very 1950s version of the future, built for the automobile, mass urban housing, and dramatic gestures in urban planning.
Brasília, for the uninitiated, is laid out in the shape of an airplane, with the body comprising the Monumental Axis, the Esplanade of the Ministries, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Presidential Palace, and (somewhere) a McDonald's I falled to locate. The wings of the airplane are devoted to zoned residential and commercial areas.
Everything is laid out according to a system of acronyms and numbers. I stayed in the South Wing, at superblock 705, off street W3, in CRS (Residential Center South, I think). I went to a meeting in SRTVS Quadra 701, or Sector Radio and TV South, Block 701. There are separate areas for hotels and hospitals.
There is a logic to it all, which one learns gradually. I don't actively dislike Brasília - though I actively dislike the fact that a decent hotel is out of my budget range, given that hotels are limited to Hotel Sector North and Hotel Sector South - like others do. I just think it could stand for some re-development and new planning after fifty years. It's certainly not a pedestrian-friendly city, despite the fact that cars stop at crosswalks (not always guaranteed elsewhere). Brasília would receive a Walkability Score close to zero.
To get an idea, of just how spread-out and car-friendly it is, see the following photos.
The last picture is of a diorama that's in a small underground museum near the presidential palace.
These photos are all taken within the airplane, an area known as the Pilot Plan. There are other outlying areas, but almost none are adjacent to the Pilot Plan. One has to go down a long road to reach the next developed areas. This movement out of the Pilot Plan is surprising. Normally, in Brazil, as one leaves a big city, one encounters suburbs and smaller developments that are poorer and more run down that is the center of the city. The poverty level seems to increase as you move farther from the city center, until at last you're in the countryside.
Brasília, by contrast, has among the highest wealth and development scores of any city in Brazil. And for twenty-one of its fifty years of existence, it was the site of a military dictatorship. Hence there are almost no visible slums on the outskirts. When traveling out of the city (by newly-built metro or by car), one immediately jumps from city to countryside. In Brasília's case, one jumps right from the buildings into the red-dirt cerrado, the high savannah in the middle of the country. I wish I had photos of this, but alas I was negligent in not bringing my camera along to that interview.
On the first Sunday in town, I took a walk down to the presidential palace in hopes of seeing a tour. I wore long pants, but didn't sweat too much. Although the termperature still hovered around the same 31-32 C it was in Fortaleza and Salvador, the air here is much drier. I almost miss the humidity. Almost.
Along the way, I passed the new national library, which has nothing on the old national library on Avenida Rio Branco in Rio de Janeiro. (Reminder: When Brasília became the capital, all those federal public sector employees had to move out of Rio de Janeiro. Poor them.) Coincidentally, it's named after a former governor of Rio, a master populist.
I also passed the newly-opened National Museum (the hemisphere resembling Saturn) and the Cathedral. The latter bears a striking resemblence to Space Mountain at Disneyland and Disney World, also pictured below. That's not by accident. They were built in the same era (well, Space Mountain in the 1970s), and were both designed to showcase the future of architecture. Space Mountain doesn't have stained glass.
Beyond the Cathedral lie the Ministry buildings. Each building has brass letters outside declaring which Ministries it contains. I imagine that somewhere there is a collection of giant marquee brass letters, ready for the moment the next president rearranges the ministries or creates new ones.
Also, nothing says "bureaucracy" like big concrete slabs, row after row.
The Ministries are also one of the redeeming features of Brasília, in that many of them have restaurants that are open to the public. The restaurants function mainly to feed public employees, of course, but visitors are welcome after 1:00 PM. And the food is cheap!
I visited the restaurants at the Ministry of Agriculture (R$9.46 per kilo, but no credit cards accepted) and at the Ministry of Communications and Transport (R$10.00 per kilo, credit cards accepted), the latter twice. Normally, food is R$17.99 per kilo if it's affordable, over R$20 per kilo at most places in Zona Sul in Rio, and R$30.00 or more at the mall. By contrast, the Ministries are a steal. I would like to personally thank the Brazilian people for subsidizing three lunches for me. I ate 1.38 kilos on my second visit, and 1.02 kilos on my third visit. (Go ahead, convert that to pounds.) Normally, I eat around 0.6 kilos for lunch at a restaurant, and pay more.
Numbers above fixed. Thanks to Amy in comments.
And on my walk I encountered my good friends at the Ministry of Foreign Relations! Hooray!
The building is rather beautiful. It may be a little nicer than the old Palácio Itamaraty in Rio (which I have also visited; see the posts about my visa mix-up). The contrast is between colonial and modern styles.
[On reflection, my best friends are the Federal Police; it was their mistake and slip-up that allowed me back into the country, and thus did not send me toothbrush-less and computer-less back to Argentina.]
Other bureaucratic buildings on the east end of the Axis, like Itamaraty, are more beautiful. I saw the Ministry of Justice building and wanted to jump into the fountain for a swim.
And of course there's the famous Congress. I was surprised by how close I could get to the building. The security-mad United States wouldn't dare let one duck under the awnings and walk on the grass.
At the end of my walk, I was sorely disappointed. The Presidential Palance, the Palácio do Planalto, is under refurbishment and was closed to tours. Oh well.
In conclusion, Brasília falls right about in the middle, out of all the cities I've visited. I'd come back, though I'd try to drive hard bargains to stay at a nicer hotel. I will say that I did enjoy the cheap food, and running in the Parque da Cidade.
Now to return to the Mato Grossos, but briefly.
---
Oh, and the United States can best be represented by a bacon cheeseburger. Obvio. (The US burger is available on Fridays. Other days are McAlemanha, McBrasil, McArgentina, McItália, and McEspanha.)
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Beaches: Fortaleza, Ceará
I've delayed in writing about Fortaleza because it's hard to construct a narrative or theme. Of perhaps all the cities I've visited this trip, Fortaleza has the least personality. This is not to say that it`s the worst town I've visited. São Luís had plenty of personality, but I'm not itching to go back there anytime soon. Personality often costs money. And it's certainly a nicer town to stay in than were others.
Fortaleza has beautiful beaches. Famous beaches. Long beaches. As I once noted, having observed tourist t-shirts around Rio de Janeiro, Fortaleza is where Cariocas go when they really want to go to the beach. (They also go to Natal, Maceió, and surrounding beaches.)
It's also a town founded by the Dutch, but the founders didn't stay long and there aren't many traces of them. The region is famous for exporting humorists to the rest of Brazil, but my ability to "get" Brazilian humor is still limited.
In any case, I came to Fortaleza to run the 10km race listed below. I finished in a time five minutes slower than my time at the Strawberry Stampede in Arroyo Grande in 2007. I blame the weather, aging, lack of training, the weather again, and my diet. But no matter. I still have three weeks until another 10km run in Porto Alegre.
(Come to think of it, Porto Alegre doesn't have a terribly pronounced personality, besides the perception that "wow, this feels almost Argentine." And I like Porto Alegre.)
So every other morning or afternoon, I headed out to run along Meireles and Iracema beaches, pictured below. The first photos are of Meireles, which has a marked waterfront strand approximately 3km long, from a shipwreck at one end to a fish market at the other. In between, the curving beach and the high-rise apartments and hotels recall Copacabana in Rio.
(Can anyone name beaches more famous than Ipanema and Copacabana, identifiable worldwide just by one name (and two famous songs, interpreted by Barry Manilow and Frank Sinatra)? I can only think of Waikiki as a candidate beach that is equally as famous.)
The other photos are of Praia da Iracema, which I knew from Caetano Veloso's "Tropicalia", which I've probably linked before because it's one of my favorite songs. "Viva Iracema ma ma ... Viva Ipanema ma ma ma..."
Iracema has seen better times. According to multiple locals, it was once the hot nightclub location in the city, with bars and restaurants galore. Then an increase in prostitution drove the nightlife elsewhere, and the area is still recovering. When I ran by, the federal government was working on projects to redo the pier (The English Pier) and rebuild the rock seawall.
The middle photo notes that the federal government owns the beach because it's a piece of national heritage, and... I dunno... it says something else too. Hard to read.
The last photo is some bum in front of the statue of Iracema, an Indian princess after whom the beach and several other spots in the Northeast are named.
Aside from running on the beach and the waterfront, I had tremendous luck in scheduling interviews (twelve letters sent to Fortaleza, and eleven interviews). It was the most successful city of the road trip, in terms of work. And Fortaleza has the same convenient bus system integrated by terminals that São Luís had, which made getting to interviews a snap. (I was lucky to leave São Luís a week before the bus drivers went on strike.) Salvador could use the same system.
Oh, and I finally got to eat sapoti fruit. I first tasted it in the Sunday market in Gloria back in Rio in December. It was rather pricey there, but the lady called it "sapoti baiana" and I was sure I would find it in the northeast.
I did, and I bought the lot of three pictured below for less than two reais. I put them in the fridge to eat the next day.
I consumed them all in less than five minutes. Imagine the sweetest pear you've ever tasted, a pear that tastes almost like straight sugar. Oh my goodness. I had a stomachache for a day afterward, and never bought another. But, oh, my goodness.
Oh, and one hint from Fortaleza: when looking for a bar/restaurant with live music, it's important to make sure that the place has wi-fi.
---
At the end of the road trip, I came back to Salvador for a week, to indulge in access to a washing machine, reliable internet, a stove for making pasta, visits with the Vieiras, and all the amenities of apartment living. The week was not terribly eventful, though I did enjoy passing the time with the Vieiras. Got to go swimming and see the fish at Porto da Barra again.
---
And now I'm back on the road. I just arrived in Brasília, the loathed and loved capital.
Brief story:
I arrived and pulled the usual routine of going upstairs to the departures floor to catch a cab. This technique works to guarantee a cheaper cab at most large Brazilian airports, as you're hiring someone from a post in the city and not from the airport post. Being not of the airport post, that cabbie usually has to go back without a fare. Thus fares are much more negotiable.
Lesson #1: taxis in Brasília only stop at the lower level. No matter.
So I get in a cab with a grumpy mineiro driver, and he drives me to where I think my pousada is. He tells me along the way that the city government is cracking down on unlicensed pousadas. (This is complete bullshit, as regular business hotels in this city are terribly expensive.) He asks me if I've talked to someone there. I mumble something, and we continue. (I made an email reservation.) We arrive at the pousada, and it's abandoned. The driver gets slightly more grumpy upon discovering that I didn't talk to anyone.
We go to the next pousada, where he's dropped a fare off recently. When we arrive, we note that the sign on the door says that the pousada has been closed for non-compliance with the city law. Damn.
We stand there talking for about five minutes about possible hotels in the business hotel area of the city. (In Niemeyer and co.'s design for the capital, there's a specific section set aside for hotels.)
Suddenly, thankfully, the door to the pousada slides open and two guys emerge. They confirm that the pousada is operating, and we arrange a room for the night.
So here I am, typing away. I have a fan-cooled room, which is okay because the city is cool and the air is so remarkably dry.
I panicked for a good hour in looking online for a new hotel, before noting that I perhaps got the address of the first pousada wrong. I wrote down the address, walked down the street, and pressed a buzzer.
An elderly lady came around the side, asked if I was Adam, and mentioned that, although my reservation was good, the pousada had moved since Lonely Planet writer visited.
And yes, despite the availability of a room and a nice innkeeper, there was a sign on the door reading "Closed by the Governo do Distrito Federal." So it goes.
Postscript: As I noted to many people, the combination of grid-like streets, a mix of high-rises and low-rises, palm trees, and a beachfront made Fortaleza remind me of south Florida. It was perhaps the most American-looking city to date. By coincidence, perhaps, Fortaleza is a sister city to Miami Beach.
Post-Postscript: One of the reasons I stopped in Fortaleza was to see a friend, and had a great time at lunch with him, twice. So shout-out to Alceu, and thanks to his family and him for the hospitality.
Fortaleza has beautiful beaches. Famous beaches. Long beaches. As I once noted, having observed tourist t-shirts around Rio de Janeiro, Fortaleza is where Cariocas go when they really want to go to the beach. (They also go to Natal, Maceió, and surrounding beaches.)
It's also a town founded by the Dutch, but the founders didn't stay long and there aren't many traces of them. The region is famous for exporting humorists to the rest of Brazil, but my ability to "get" Brazilian humor is still limited.
In any case, I came to Fortaleza to run the 10km race listed below. I finished in a time five minutes slower than my time at the Strawberry Stampede in Arroyo Grande in 2007. I blame the weather, aging, lack of training, the weather again, and my diet. But no matter. I still have three weeks until another 10km run in Porto Alegre.
(Come to think of it, Porto Alegre doesn't have a terribly pronounced personality, besides the perception that "wow, this feels almost Argentine." And I like Porto Alegre.)
So every other morning or afternoon, I headed out to run along Meireles and Iracema beaches, pictured below. The first photos are of Meireles, which has a marked waterfront strand approximately 3km long, from a shipwreck at one end to a fish market at the other. In between, the curving beach and the high-rise apartments and hotels recall Copacabana in Rio.
(Can anyone name beaches more famous than Ipanema and Copacabana, identifiable worldwide just by one name (and two famous songs, interpreted by Barry Manilow and Frank Sinatra)? I can only think of Waikiki as a candidate beach that is equally as famous.)
The other photos are of Praia da Iracema, which I knew from Caetano Veloso's "Tropicalia", which I've probably linked before because it's one of my favorite songs. "Viva Iracema ma ma ... Viva Ipanema ma ma ma..."
Iracema has seen better times. According to multiple locals, it was once the hot nightclub location in the city, with bars and restaurants galore. Then an increase in prostitution drove the nightlife elsewhere, and the area is still recovering. When I ran by, the federal government was working on projects to redo the pier (The English Pier) and rebuild the rock seawall.
The middle photo notes that the federal government owns the beach because it's a piece of national heritage, and... I dunno... it says something else too. Hard to read.
The last photo is some bum in front of the statue of Iracema, an Indian princess after whom the beach and several other spots in the Northeast are named.
Aside from running on the beach and the waterfront, I had tremendous luck in scheduling interviews (twelve letters sent to Fortaleza, and eleven interviews). It was the most successful city of the road trip, in terms of work. And Fortaleza has the same convenient bus system integrated by terminals that São Luís had, which made getting to interviews a snap. (I was lucky to leave São Luís a week before the bus drivers went on strike.) Salvador could use the same system.
Oh, and I finally got to eat sapoti fruit. I first tasted it in the Sunday market in Gloria back in Rio in December. It was rather pricey there, but the lady called it "sapoti baiana" and I was sure I would find it in the northeast.
I did, and I bought the lot of three pictured below for less than two reais. I put them in the fridge to eat the next day.
I consumed them all in less than five minutes. Imagine the sweetest pear you've ever tasted, a pear that tastes almost like straight sugar. Oh my goodness. I had a stomachache for a day afterward, and never bought another. But, oh, my goodness.
Oh, and one hint from Fortaleza: when looking for a bar/restaurant with live music, it's important to make sure that the place has wi-fi.
---
At the end of the road trip, I came back to Salvador for a week, to indulge in access to a washing machine, reliable internet, a stove for making pasta, visits with the Vieiras, and all the amenities of apartment living. The week was not terribly eventful, though I did enjoy passing the time with the Vieiras. Got to go swimming and see the fish at Porto da Barra again.
---
And now I'm back on the road. I just arrived in Brasília, the loathed and loved capital.
Brief story:
I arrived and pulled the usual routine of going upstairs to the departures floor to catch a cab. This technique works to guarantee a cheaper cab at most large Brazilian airports, as you're hiring someone from a post in the city and not from the airport post. Being not of the airport post, that cabbie usually has to go back without a fare. Thus fares are much more negotiable.
Lesson #1: taxis in Brasília only stop at the lower level. No matter.
So I get in a cab with a grumpy mineiro driver, and he drives me to where I think my pousada is. He tells me along the way that the city government is cracking down on unlicensed pousadas. (This is complete bullshit, as regular business hotels in this city are terribly expensive.) He asks me if I've talked to someone there. I mumble something, and we continue. (I made an email reservation.) We arrive at the pousada, and it's abandoned. The driver gets slightly more grumpy upon discovering that I didn't talk to anyone.
We go to the next pousada, where he's dropped a fare off recently. When we arrive, we note that the sign on the door says that the pousada has been closed for non-compliance with the city law. Damn.
We stand there talking for about five minutes about possible hotels in the business hotel area of the city. (In Niemeyer and co.'s design for the capital, there's a specific section set aside for hotels.)
Suddenly, thankfully, the door to the pousada slides open and two guys emerge. They confirm that the pousada is operating, and we arrange a room for the night.
So here I am, typing away. I have a fan-cooled room, which is okay because the city is cool and the air is so remarkably dry.
I panicked for a good hour in looking online for a new hotel, before noting that I perhaps got the address of the first pousada wrong. I wrote down the address, walked down the street, and pressed a buzzer.
An elderly lady came around the side, asked if I was Adam, and mentioned that, although my reservation was good, the pousada had moved since Lonely Planet writer visited.
And yes, despite the availability of a room and a nice innkeeper, there was a sign on the door reading "Closed by the Governo do Distrito Federal." So it goes.
Postscript: As I noted to many people, the combination of grid-like streets, a mix of high-rises and low-rises, palm trees, and a beachfront made Fortaleza remind me of south Florida. It was perhaps the most American-looking city to date. By coincidence, perhaps, Fortaleza is a sister city to Miami Beach.
Post-Postscript: One of the reasons I stopped in Fortaleza was to see a friend, and had a great time at lunch with him, twice. So shout-out to Alceu, and thanks to his family and him for the hospitality.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Observations on an organized run in Brazil: Corrida Pague Menos - Etapa Fortaleza
I'm still in Fortaleza, where I ran a 10km last Sunday around the Parque de Cocó. Some random observations on the difference between a race in the US and a race in Brazil:
1. There were no lines for the porta-potties, pre-race. In the US, nervous athletes stand silently in long lines stretching and rocking to and fro, waiting for a plastic door to swing open and slap shut. (The slapping sound is far too familiar; if this is what I remember, I may need a new hobby.)
2. We all lined up for the race start at 7 AM. A military band - supposedly there to play the national anthem - first went into a jazzy rendition of "Aquarela do Brasil," which is a great song if not the actual national anthem. People swayed and danced to this, despite standing shoulder to shoulder in the hot sun. Then came the national anthem, and of course little conversations continued throughout the songs.
3. The announcer then led us in the Lord's Prayer, which most people, not including an American who hasn't memorized the Portuguese version, recited along with him. Hey, the country's still 75%+ Catholic.
My original plan had been to run the first 5km lap at a brisk pace, but then really push it on the second lap. Unfortunately....
4. It was hot! On the bus ride to the event, I passed a sign that read 29 C, at 5:30 AM. A later check of the weather online revealed that it was 80% humidity at the start at 7 AM. I wasn't prepared for the heat, having trained by running at sunset in breezy São Luís. I took to grabbing two 200 ml cups of water (which came with the foil lids still attached, forcing you to jab a finger through), one to drink and one to pour over my head.
On the second lap, I gazed for a while at the paramedics as we passed, glad they were there but hopeful that I wouldn't need their help for heat exhaustion. I took off my hat to allow my head to cool faster.
5. I finished in 47:41. That result was sent to me as a text message about two hours later (the clock time was about 48:00), which is a brilliant idea. It beat having to look up my time online a few days later.
6. Post-race, we had bananas, oranges, more water, and some disgustingly sweet sugar cube bar, which I couldn't eat. Not much in the way of protein. I must have consumed almost two liters of water, before walking the 2 km back to the hotel in Aldeota. I arrived in time to grab the last bites of the hotel breakfast.
Next race will probably be on June 20th in Porto Alegre, which will be MUCH cooler.
1. There were no lines for the porta-potties, pre-race. In the US, nervous athletes stand silently in long lines stretching and rocking to and fro, waiting for a plastic door to swing open and slap shut. (The slapping sound is far too familiar; if this is what I remember, I may need a new hobby.)
2. We all lined up for the race start at 7 AM. A military band - supposedly there to play the national anthem - first went into a jazzy rendition of "Aquarela do Brasil," which is a great song if not the actual national anthem. People swayed and danced to this, despite standing shoulder to shoulder in the hot sun. Then came the national anthem, and of course little conversations continued throughout the songs.
3. The announcer then led us in the Lord's Prayer, which most people, not including an American who hasn't memorized the Portuguese version, recited along with him. Hey, the country's still 75%+ Catholic.
My original plan had been to run the first 5km lap at a brisk pace, but then really push it on the second lap. Unfortunately....
4. It was hot! On the bus ride to the event, I passed a sign that read 29 C, at 5:30 AM. A later check of the weather online revealed that it was 80% humidity at the start at 7 AM. I wasn't prepared for the heat, having trained by running at sunset in breezy São Luís. I took to grabbing two 200 ml cups of water (which came with the foil lids still attached, forcing you to jab a finger through), one to drink and one to pour over my head.
On the second lap, I gazed for a while at the paramedics as we passed, glad they were there but hopeful that I wouldn't need their help for heat exhaustion. I took off my hat to allow my head to cool faster.
5. I finished in 47:41. That result was sent to me as a text message about two hours later (the clock time was about 48:00), which is a brilliant idea. It beat having to look up my time online a few days later.
6. Post-race, we had bananas, oranges, more water, and some disgustingly sweet sugar cube bar, which I couldn't eat. Not much in the way of protein. I must have consumed almost two liters of water, before walking the 2 km back to the hotel in Aldeota. I arrived in time to grab the last bites of the hotel breakfast.
Next race will probably be on June 20th in Porto Alegre, which will be MUCH cooler.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Something something something dark side: São Luís, Maranhão
São Luís took some time to understand.
To speak well of it, I would note that it has a little bit of almost every Brazilian city I’ve visited: it has a lagoon like Rio and Florianópolis, it has long, wide beaches like Maceió, it has a colorful colonial center like Salvador, and it has office towers and political offices in high-rise buildings in the middle of nowhere, like Cuiabá and Salvador. In fact, I would consider it Salvador in miniature, with the same long looping roads, inexplicable traffic, coast and historic center, racial diversity, and (until recently) oligarchic politics.
To say the very least about São Luís, I would comment that it’s almost like a bad caricature of Brazil and the challenges that Brazil faces. The lagoon surrounded by luxury apartment buildings smells of sewage (a constant algae bloom, according to one respondent). It rains a lot, and every time it rains, the lovely beaches are unfit for swimming. I walked into the ocean the morning after a rain and had two little white worms with black eyes attach themselves to my arm and bite. I crushed them both, and never went into the water again. Open rivulets of city water carry trash and debris onto a beach that is otherwise stunning. The historic center is colorful, in that you can look at the buildings, but the museums don’t offer much information and aren’t terribly captivating. The center is pretty, but it lacks a sense of life. (According to my new maranhense friend, almost all the residents were expelled from the center when the city got UNESCO status and the state government developed it into a tourist attraction.) I was the only visitor at two museums, and there just weren’t that many people - tourists or locals - on the streets on a Saturday.
Photos below are of colorful streets in the city center. My favorite is the Rua da Giz, the middle picture. I wish there was some exhibit on the design of the streets, or their history, or settlement patterns, or name origins. If there was such an exhibit, I missed it.
The city is famous for its use of azulejos, or blue-and-white tiles in a Portuguese style. According to the guide, it was discovered that azulejos worked well in cooling buildings and fending off São Luís’s ever-present humidity. I can understand how the first task works by reflecting sunlight; I can’t really grasp how the latter works.
At the Visual Arts Museum, a curator named Mario explained the differences among old Portuguese tiles (connect in sets of four to form very straight geometric patterns), French tiles (form more artistic, curved patterns in sets of four), German tiles (much more elaborate, multi-colored) and English tiles (mass-manufactured, all the same, don’t connect to each other). I took some photos from around the historic center.
Ah, but I wasn’t here for the azulejos. I was in São Luís for the politics.
The story begins and ends with the Sarney clan. (“Clan” is the preferred term used in Folha de São Paulo.) In 1966, an ambitious young federal deputy named José Sarney was appointed governor of Maranhão by the military regime. His clan would only lose a state-level election for the first time in 2006. In the meantime, José Sarney has been governor, senator, vice-president, President of the Republic, and President of the Senate, as well as a well-acclaimed fiction writer.
To understand how the clan has stayed in power so long, it helps to know that Maranhão, the state of which São Luís is the capital, is among the poorest in Brazil. I recall (but can’t locate at the moment using XP) an article from 2000 noting that, of the 100 poorest municipalities in Brazil in 2000, 83 were located in Maranhão. The bus ride into São Luís from Belém certainly didn’t offer any evidence to undermine this statistic. (I really can’t or shouldn’t judge relative poverty levels from a bus window.)
I can’t state for sure that the Sarneys (oh, it’s plural - his daughter is currently governor, having engineered to throw the candidate who beat them in 2006 out of office in 2009 by means of judicial rulings on vote-buying) employ vote buying or turnout buying. Or that they engage in electoral fraud. I have no solid evidence. Not having evidence, however, didn’t stop plenty of Maranhenses from leveling these accusations in our discussions.
In any case, here’s the view of the colonial center from the north end of the José Sarney Bridge. By coincidence, I took these photos on the Senator’s 80th birthday.
Sarney, you might recall, was previously in the news last spring for a series of accusations that he, as President of the Senate, issued a bunch of secret acts to give relatives and friends jobs and contracts. I can’t remember all the details because it’s all gone down the Great Brazilian Memory Hole and we’ve all moved on to present scandals. He’s still President of the Senate, being a Senator from Amapá. (He stepped aside so that the next generation of Sarneys could take over in Maranhão; Amapá is a smaller state where it’s presumably cheaper and easier to win elections. After all, he’s a former President of Brazil.)
In any case, being a poor state with a nationally-prominent patriarch from the right-wing means that federal monies are very important, and that Mr. President of the Senate matters in getting the pork from Brasília. Thus, as a corollary, they’re always on the side of the president. Roseana Sarney was an ally to Fernando Henrique Cardoso. She’s now an ally to Lula. (Painted walls in town read Roseana 25 Lula 13, which is not a football score but rather the two electoral codes for their respective tickets.)
I talked to two sets of non-Sarney administrators. A former governor, who broke with the Sarneys after being appointed and elected with their support, pointed out that Vale’s projects to invest in steel plants in Maranhão were all shelved after José Sarney objected. Cooperation with the World Bank on a sanitation project was stopped because the Senate would never approve a loan. In short, the governor said, after his break, Maranhão received no money that wasn’t already its legal automatic due. José’s hope was that his daughter would win in 2006, and receive all the acclaim for re-starting the stalled investments and projects.
I’ve been to other states before where conflicting personalities among political elites stall or reverse projects. Rio de Janeiro comes readily to mind. But Rio de Janeiro isn’t as desperately poor and in need of investments as Maranhão is. I don’t mean to dramatize the situation, but lack of investments in sanitation mean that people are dying of preventable illnesses. Lack of investments means that people aren’t getting jobs or better jobs.
(Oh, it almost goes without saying that the good Senator from Amapá also blocked extra federal monies for the administration of Jackson Lago, who beat Roseana in 2006.)
It started to put a human face on the costs of sub-national oligarchy and one-party rule in Brazil. The political science term “sub national authoritarianism” isn’t exactly right, but the phenomenon is similar. I was more than a little sickened by these tales. (I still need to find numbers to corroborate the stories.)
---
Oh, and the governor’s palace sits perched on a hill overlooking the river, at the north end of the historical center. It’s the Palace of the Lions, but I never learned why.
The city was originally founded by the French, specifically by a guy named Daniel de la Touche. Write your own silly joke with that. The Portuguese expelled them soon after.
The visit was unremarkable. I stayed on the northern coast, ate at touristy but empty restaurants for lunch, sweated a lot, cursed aloud when I found out that the day after my arrival was another national holiday, and ran on the beach until wild dogs and rivers of run-off blocked my path.
It rained every day, usually in quite heavy bursts. The city sits on the margins of the Amazon ecosystem, but still close enough to receive the Amazonian downpours.
I did make a new friend, who grew up in São Luís but goes to graduate school in Belém.
---
I’m now in Fortaleza. On Friday afternoon, I showed up early to the airport hoping to get some work done on the laptop. São Luís’s airport, however, is the first I’ve encountered in Brazil that isn’t air-conditioned in its lobby. It was a long wait.
I did go to my first running event here in Fortaleza (and in Brazil). That story is forthcoming.
Below, a view of the upper-class neighborhood Ponta d’Areia (Sand Point), looking back across the muddy Rio Anil and the Ponte José Sarney. Also, an explanation of the state flag, from the plastic bag of a Maranhão-only grocery chain, Mateus. It’s not the only state flag in Brazil that bears a passing resemblence to the Stars and Stripes, and the resemblence is not coincidental.
To speak well of it, I would note that it has a little bit of almost every Brazilian city I’ve visited: it has a lagoon like Rio and Florianópolis, it has long, wide beaches like Maceió, it has a colorful colonial center like Salvador, and it has office towers and political offices in high-rise buildings in the middle of nowhere, like Cuiabá and Salvador. In fact, I would consider it Salvador in miniature, with the same long looping roads, inexplicable traffic, coast and historic center, racial diversity, and (until recently) oligarchic politics.
To say the very least about São Luís, I would comment that it’s almost like a bad caricature of Brazil and the challenges that Brazil faces. The lagoon surrounded by luxury apartment buildings smells of sewage (a constant algae bloom, according to one respondent). It rains a lot, and every time it rains, the lovely beaches are unfit for swimming. I walked into the ocean the morning after a rain and had two little white worms with black eyes attach themselves to my arm and bite. I crushed them both, and never went into the water again. Open rivulets of city water carry trash and debris onto a beach that is otherwise stunning. The historic center is colorful, in that you can look at the buildings, but the museums don’t offer much information and aren’t terribly captivating. The center is pretty, but it lacks a sense of life. (According to my new maranhense friend, almost all the residents were expelled from the center when the city got UNESCO status and the state government developed it into a tourist attraction.) I was the only visitor at two museums, and there just weren’t that many people - tourists or locals - on the streets on a Saturday.
Photos below are of colorful streets in the city center. My favorite is the Rua da Giz, the middle picture. I wish there was some exhibit on the design of the streets, or their history, or settlement patterns, or name origins. If there was such an exhibit, I missed it.
The city is famous for its use of azulejos, or blue-and-white tiles in a Portuguese style. According to the guide, it was discovered that azulejos worked well in cooling buildings and fending off São Luís’s ever-present humidity. I can understand how the first task works by reflecting sunlight; I can’t really grasp how the latter works.
At the Visual Arts Museum, a curator named Mario explained the differences among old Portuguese tiles (connect in sets of four to form very straight geometric patterns), French tiles (form more artistic, curved patterns in sets of four), German tiles (much more elaborate, multi-colored) and English tiles (mass-manufactured, all the same, don’t connect to each other). I took some photos from around the historic center.
Ah, but I wasn’t here for the azulejos. I was in São Luís for the politics.
The story begins and ends with the Sarney clan. (“Clan” is the preferred term used in Folha de São Paulo.) In 1966, an ambitious young federal deputy named José Sarney was appointed governor of Maranhão by the military regime. His clan would only lose a state-level election for the first time in 2006. In the meantime, José Sarney has been governor, senator, vice-president, President of the Republic, and President of the Senate, as well as a well-acclaimed fiction writer.
To understand how the clan has stayed in power so long, it helps to know that Maranhão, the state of which São Luís is the capital, is among the poorest in Brazil. I recall (but can’t locate at the moment using XP) an article from 2000 noting that, of the 100 poorest municipalities in Brazil in 2000, 83 were located in Maranhão. The bus ride into São Luís from Belém certainly didn’t offer any evidence to undermine this statistic. (I really can’t or shouldn’t judge relative poverty levels from a bus window.)
I can’t state for sure that the Sarneys (oh, it’s plural - his daughter is currently governor, having engineered to throw the candidate who beat them in 2006 out of office in 2009 by means of judicial rulings on vote-buying) employ vote buying or turnout buying. Or that they engage in electoral fraud. I have no solid evidence. Not having evidence, however, didn’t stop plenty of Maranhenses from leveling these accusations in our discussions.
In any case, here’s the view of the colonial center from the north end of the José Sarney Bridge. By coincidence, I took these photos on the Senator’s 80th birthday.
Sarney, you might recall, was previously in the news last spring for a series of accusations that he, as President of the Senate, issued a bunch of secret acts to give relatives and friends jobs and contracts. I can’t remember all the details because it’s all gone down the Great Brazilian Memory Hole and we’ve all moved on to present scandals. He’s still President of the Senate, being a Senator from Amapá. (He stepped aside so that the next generation of Sarneys could take over in Maranhão; Amapá is a smaller state where it’s presumably cheaper and easier to win elections. After all, he’s a former President of Brazil.)
In any case, being a poor state with a nationally-prominent patriarch from the right-wing means that federal monies are very important, and that Mr. President of the Senate matters in getting the pork from Brasília. Thus, as a corollary, they’re always on the side of the president. Roseana Sarney was an ally to Fernando Henrique Cardoso. She’s now an ally to Lula. (Painted walls in town read Roseana 25 Lula 13, which is not a football score but rather the two electoral codes for their respective tickets.)
I talked to two sets of non-Sarney administrators. A former governor, who broke with the Sarneys after being appointed and elected with their support, pointed out that Vale’s projects to invest in steel plants in Maranhão were all shelved after José Sarney objected. Cooperation with the World Bank on a sanitation project was stopped because the Senate would never approve a loan. In short, the governor said, after his break, Maranhão received no money that wasn’t already its legal automatic due. José’s hope was that his daughter would win in 2006, and receive all the acclaim for re-starting the stalled investments and projects.
I’ve been to other states before where conflicting personalities among political elites stall or reverse projects. Rio de Janeiro comes readily to mind. But Rio de Janeiro isn’t as desperately poor and in need of investments as Maranhão is. I don’t mean to dramatize the situation, but lack of investments in sanitation mean that people are dying of preventable illnesses. Lack of investments means that people aren’t getting jobs or better jobs.
(Oh, it almost goes without saying that the good Senator from Amapá also blocked extra federal monies for the administration of Jackson Lago, who beat Roseana in 2006.)
It started to put a human face on the costs of sub-national oligarchy and one-party rule in Brazil. The political science term “sub national authoritarianism” isn’t exactly right, but the phenomenon is similar. I was more than a little sickened by these tales. (I still need to find numbers to corroborate the stories.)
---
Oh, and the governor’s palace sits perched on a hill overlooking the river, at the north end of the historical center. It’s the Palace of the Lions, but I never learned why.
The city was originally founded by the French, specifically by a guy named Daniel de la Touche. Write your own silly joke with that. The Portuguese expelled them soon after.
The visit was unremarkable. I stayed on the northern coast, ate at touristy but empty restaurants for lunch, sweated a lot, cursed aloud when I found out that the day after my arrival was another national holiday, and ran on the beach until wild dogs and rivers of run-off blocked my path.
It rained every day, usually in quite heavy bursts. The city sits on the margins of the Amazon ecosystem, but still close enough to receive the Amazonian downpours.
I did make a new friend, who grew up in São Luís but goes to graduate school in Belém.
---
I’m now in Fortaleza. On Friday afternoon, I showed up early to the airport hoping to get some work done on the laptop. São Luís’s airport, however, is the first I’ve encountered in Brazil that isn’t air-conditioned in its lobby. It was a long wait.
I did go to my first running event here in Fortaleza (and in Brazil). That story is forthcoming.
Below, a view of the upper-class neighborhood Ponta d’Areia (Sand Point), looking back across the muddy Rio Anil and the Ponte José Sarney. Also, an explanation of the state flag, from the plastic bag of a Maranhão-only grocery chain, Mateus. It’s not the only state flag in Brazil that bears a passing resemblence to the Stars and Stripes, and the resemblence is not coincidental.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Inscrever-se, no jeito do gringo (Sign-up the Gringo Way)
How to register (like a gringo) for a running event:
1. Google "corrida Fortaleza" and find out that there's a run in Fortaleza on my first weekend there.
2. Find out that one has to register by going to a local Farmácia Pague Menos ("Pay Less Pharmacy"), the main title sponsor for the race.
3. Go to the Pague Menos on Av. Nazaré in Belém. Show ad to lady behind the counter. No one has any idea how registration works. Leave defeated.
4. The next day, go to the Pague Menos at the Praça Batista Campos in Belém. Show ad to guy behind the counter named David. David takes your name, says he'll investigate, promises to call you back.
5. Three days later, go back to same Pague Menos and ask for David. Find out that he doesn't work again until after you leave Belém. No one else knows anything about the race. Leave discouraged.
6. Go to the Pague Menos on Av. Jerônimo de Albuquerque in São Luís. Again, no one has any idea about the event.
7. Go to Pague Menos on Av. Castelo Branco in São Luís. Again, no one knows what to do.
8. Send an email to marketing[at]paguemenos.com.br asking if there are alternatives for registration. Email bounces back, undelivered (in Google's words, refused).
9. Call the 0800 Consumer Service number for Pague Menos. Explain that no one at these stores knows what to do. Attendant asks which one, and promises to email the Av. Castelo Branco location with instructions.
10. Go back to the Av. Castelo Branco location, where people instantly light up when you pull out the entry form. Receive attentive service, leave, registered and thrilled.
This sequence is a good parable to describe my current work/life. It's often full of frustrations, but the rewards are good. Friday, I went back to the bus station looking for the umbrella transport organization, which has an address there. No one seemed to be familiar with the group, including the state employees charged with bus inspections. I was only looking for another phone number to keep the chase alive. The number listed on their website went to a residential number. (I called. I then apologized.) Oh well.
Here's a picture of an attractive street scene in Belém.
Another week in São Luís (big beach, historical center) and a Friday midnight flight to Fortaleza.
UPDATE: I should have looked below. I already shared that photo. My apologies. Here's a photo of a really nice nearby building that really looks like it should be a hotel. It is not a hotel. It is not a convention center, a museum, or a restaurant. I'll leave its function to your imagination. (I was both surprised and disappointed when I found out.) Answer in a forthcoming post.
1. Google "corrida Fortaleza" and find out that there's a run in Fortaleza on my first weekend there.
2. Find out that one has to register by going to a local Farmácia Pague Menos ("Pay Less Pharmacy"), the main title sponsor for the race.
3. Go to the Pague Menos on Av. Nazaré in Belém. Show ad to lady behind the counter. No one has any idea how registration works. Leave defeated.
4. The next day, go to the Pague Menos at the Praça Batista Campos in Belém. Show ad to guy behind the counter named David. David takes your name, says he'll investigate, promises to call you back.
5. Three days later, go back to same Pague Menos and ask for David. Find out that he doesn't work again until after you leave Belém. No one else knows anything about the race. Leave discouraged.
6. Go to the Pague Menos on Av. Jerônimo de Albuquerque in São Luís. Again, no one has any idea about the event.
7. Go to Pague Menos on Av. Castelo Branco in São Luís. Again, no one knows what to do.
8. Send an email to marketing[at]paguemenos.com.br asking if there are alternatives for registration. Email bounces back, undelivered (in Google's words, refused).
9. Call the 0800 Consumer Service number for Pague Menos. Explain that no one at these stores knows what to do. Attendant asks which one, and promises to email the Av. Castelo Branco location with instructions.
10. Go back to the Av. Castelo Branco location, where people instantly light up when you pull out the entry form. Receive attentive service, leave, registered and thrilled.
This sequence is a good parable to describe my current work/life. It's often full of frustrations, but the rewards are good. Friday, I went back to the bus station looking for the umbrella transport organization, which has an address there. No one seemed to be familiar with the group, including the state employees charged with bus inspections. I was only looking for another phone number to keep the chase alive. The number listed on their website went to a residential number. (I called. I then apologized.) Oh well.
Here's a picture of an attractive street scene in Belém.
Another week in São Luís (big beach, historical center) and a Friday midnight flight to Fortaleza.
UPDATE: I should have looked below. I already shared that photo. My apologies. Here's a photo of a really nice nearby building that really looks like it should be a hotel. It is not a hotel. It is not a convention center, a museum, or a restaurant. I'll leave its function to your imagination. (I was both surprised and disappointed when I found out.) Answer in a forthcoming post.
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