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.

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.

Food blogging: O Nordeste

Above is a bottle of prune/plum-flavored yogurt from Alagoas. Admit it, you couldn't think of a better name if you tried.

Fleeing the Country: Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay

To resolve my visa problem, a few days before Christmas, as detailed below, I left the country. I found that the cheapest flight was to my beloved Buenos Aires, through Montevideo. Flights to Montevideo itself were more expensive, and Juan wasn't going to be there anyway.

(The formulation "my beloved Buenos Aires" is accurate and descriptive, but it's also a reference to "Mi Buenos Aires querido," a tango song made famous by Carlos Gardel.)

Some assorted thoughts from the trip:

The Uruguayan airline Pluna deserves my thanks for its low prices, especially for last-minute flights. However, I have two gripes. First, the displays and the announcements for flights to or from the largest city in Latin America refer to "San Pablo." I understand that this is a direct-to-Spanish translation of São Paulo. For the sake of consistency, however, one should then call my present home "Río de Enero." See how odd that sounds? The airline also flies to a city that might be called "Puerto Alegre," but they don't call it that. Be consistent! Second, they charged for everything, down to the water in-flight (US$2 for a 500 ml bottle). I wouldn't mind this, except that neither the Carrasco Airport outside Montevideo (pictured below; about the size of the Manchester, NH or Grand Rapids, MI airports), nor Aeroparque Jorge Newberry in Buenos Aires has a single drinking fountain. I am an entitled American (and a cheap bastard)! I demand free drinking water!





It must be noted that Rio de Janeiro does have drinking fountains in both its airports. Because I was delayed by my good friends at the Federal Police, I wasn't able to fill my bottle before the flight.

To its credit, however, Buenos Aires has something that is nearly impossible to find in Rio de Janeiro: peanut butter!



I once had the following conversation with the Secretary of Planning for the State of Rio de Janeiro, Sergio Ruy Barbosa:

Him: "I'm traveling to the United States next week; can I bring you back anything?"
Me: "Well, my girlfriend's coming soon and bringing me some things. Um... do you know what peanut butter (in my best approximation, manteiga de amendoim) is?"
Him: "No, what is it? Is it good?"
Me: (explains peanut butter)

Note that the peanut butter is right above the dulce de leche. I was in a Carrefour in Buenos Aires to buy bottled water. I thought to buy dulce de leche for Bethany, but didn't know if my credit card would work. I also figured that I could come back later for the dulce de leche. When I passed the supermarket again, it was closed.

So I took the local bus (only 1 peso, 20 cents, inserted into a cool rotating meter onboard the bus) to Retiro station into town from the airport, and passed along the Costanera Norte. Once upon a time, seven years ago, I went running and got lost near the Aeroparque. Passing the sights now, I considered that the run must have been pretty long, and I wondered why the large industrial blocks around the Aeroparque didn't dissuade me and make me turn around.

I had arrived after 9 PM, and the city was dark. Most of my photos didn't turn out. I can assure you that little has changed; the grand train station still sits next to the seedier-but-crowded bus station at Retiro. I set out to check the city against my memories.

I was first struck by how wide the boulevards in Buenos Aires are. Rio de Janeiro, the third-largest city in South America after Bs. As., has nothing approximating these wide streets. I don't even count Avenida 9 de Julio; I already knew how wide that was. (It requires two stop light cycles to cross.)




Buenos Aires strikes me as much more of a urban place, much more of a city. Rio de Janeiro is a marvel, and is also a city, but at most points you can look up at green hills or out onto crystal water, and you feel less enclosed by the urban edifice. By contrast, while in Buenos Aires, you never forget that you're in the biggest city in the country, an urban construction.

I walked up Avenida Santa Fé, a street I knew well. The Burger King was still there, as was the 24-hour cafe I was planning to use as an after-hours spot. I remembered the cafe - La Madeleine - from a particularly late night in which Karim, Pedro and I left Buenos Aires News (a disco now called something else) at about 5:30 AM, and stopped to eat breakfast, despite my grumpy protests. While I put my head down on the table and generally acted sourly, they ordered breakfast, made fun of me for the benefit of the waitress, and finally got up to go home at 8 AM.

Santa Fé seemed to have a lot more pizza and Italian places than I remembered. I was in search of a steakhouse (parilla), though I soon began to feel that I wanted to eat everything the city had to offer. The Italian food is very good, as are the various Argentine selections. The gelato is what I'd imagine Italian gelato tastes like, and on a muggy night there was a line at the most popular chain in town:



Given my previous experiences, of course I ended up at a mall, specifically at Alto Palermo, the mall closest to our dorm in the summer of 2002. Alto Palermo now has a Benihana, or, in the words of Michael Scott, "an Asian Hooters." This makes Buenos Aires even classier than Scranton, which in fact doesn't have a Benihana. I also noted that the new marketing slogan for Alto Palermo is "Pasión de la mujer." Sexist? Please! This is Argentina! There are far more sexist things in this country!



I ventured up Avenida Coronel Díaz to find the old dorm and see the neighborhood. The pizza chain Ugi's has been replaced by another pizzaria. The corner cafe still has a banner that reads "Quilmes - El sabor del encuentro." I couldn't find the local empanada shop that was on the way to the gym, but I didn't look very thoroughly. I was getting hungry. For the record, however, as I've told people, I used to live at the corner of Paraguay and Coronel Díaz. It exists.



I did eventually find a parilla that had filet mignon (bife de lomo) for about fifty pesos. I'd recommend this restaurant; it has a salad bar that comes free with dinner! Now, this is innovative for two reasons. First, orders at Argentine restaurants take anywhere from forty to ninety minutes to arrive. Although I could (and did) chew on the provided rolls and breadsticks, that becomes dull. Second, most Argentines' concept of a salad doesn't go beyond iceberg lettuce, chopped onions, and tomatoes (unless you add globs of mayonnaise to disguise the vegetables). This salad bar had much more variety. The place is Aires Criollos, at Av. Santa Fe, 1773 in Barrio Norte.

And the steak! Oh the steak! I took one bite and all the memories came flooding back. I love Brazilians, and I love Brazil, but nothing can dim my passion for Argentine steak. The steak was delicious, the house red wine was delicious, and the combination of the two made me sing out the following response to the waiter who asked how my meal was (in broken Portuguese/Spanish): "Lad (rapáz), I came all the way here from Rio de Janeiro just to eat Argentine steak, and it was all worth it."

After dinner, I went back to La Madeleine - which advertises with a neon "24 Horas" sign out front - and found the awful news posted on a flyer on the door: "closed for cleaning and fumigation until 6 AM." It was roughly 12:30 AM.

I instead found another cafe, and sat down to write. I ordered an espresso and a medialuna - a sweet croissant - according to plan. In the thrall of steak memories, good coffee, and another medialuna, I wrote for two hours or so.

The cafe closed at 3 AM, and I was forced onto the street. It was then that I concluded that my romantic vision of Buenos Aires as an all-night city was a little off. Santa Fé was closed except for a few pharmacies, and the street was quiet except for the trash-pickers. I walked a few blocks in search of a place to sit and snack, but without luck.

In defense of Buenos Aires, it was early Tuesday morning. All reasonable people should have been asleep, or at least at home.

I took a taxi back to the bus terminal, and a bus back to the Aeroparque. I tried sleeping on some seats and couches, but was awoken twice and shooed away by employees opening up restaurants in the food court at 5 and 5:30 AM.

In the early light at Aeroparque, I satisfied my interests in politics and travel at the same time. I snapped a photo of the Argentine President's official plane. As the United States gives their president's plane the codename "Air Force One," so Argentina gives theirs the name "Tango One." (You can see T-01 on the tail. "Tango Three," a smaller plane, was also parked there. News sources I found later confirmed that Christina Kirchner was in Buenos Aires.)



My flight took me back to Montevideo, where I used my last Argentine pesos to buy Bethany an alfajor, and gave the change to flight attendants collecting for a charity for premature Uruguayan infants. In the terminal lounge in Montevideo, I sat reading La República (depicted below, with a headline about the outgoing President's Lula-like high approval ratings) when I was approached by a woman with a clipboard. She asked me if I had a moment, and I did. She then asked me whether I had "Pluripass."

"Have what?"
"Oh, are you Uruguayan?"
"No, sorry, American."
"Oh, excuse me. Sorry to bother you."

It's okay. I'm still very flattered to be mistaken for a local.



I'm content being (legally) in Brazil for now. As I've known all along, Buenos Aires and Montevideo warrant future return visits.

Fugitive from the law

Oh dear.

If the next post comes from the United States, here's the explanation.

I learned today that I've overstayed my visa by a month. Long ago, when I applied for a year-long visa from the SF Consulate, I received an unusual stamp that said "Duration of Stay: 90 Days" and "Validity: 1 Year." I pointed out to the US Consulate in San Francisco that I needed a year-long visa, as specified on my form; they assured me with a wave of the hand that it was fine. I left.

Upon arriving in Brazil, after registering, I was given a stamp which reads "Permanencia: 13/11/09." I was also given a protocolo, a precursor to an ID card that read "180 Dias." I assumed that my visa was valid for 180 days, at which point I'd ask to extend it.

I recently lost my protocolo, the little slip of paper, and went back to the Federal Police to ask for a new one. The official at the desk took a look at my passport and said, "This is expired. You have to leave [Brazil] now, and pay a fine." I was shellshocked, and asked for a clarification.

It turns out that the visa only is valid for a stay of 90 days; the protocolo itself is not a visa, but is valid for identification purposes only for 180 days. The assurances at the SF Consulate were wrong, and I was wrong not to try and correct them.

I pointed out that I had applied for a year-long visa in San Francisco, and showed him the original paperwork. He went behind his desk, consulted with someone else for a few minutes, and returned to say that my other option was to go to Itamaraty, the Ministry of External Affairs, to plead with them to change the visa.

So I stopped by Itamaraty, which has perhaps the most laughable business hours in the entire Brazilian bureaucracy: 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM, weekdays. They were closed when I arrived.

I'll go back tomorrow; I'm at their mercy. I don't know what I need or what it costs, but each day in Brazil (since 13 November) is now costing me an additional R$9.90.

Sigh. In the words of my brother Valmore Henrique, "ah, meu povo, me mata, me mata" ["oh, my people, you kill me, you kill me"].



For no particular reason, here's a photo of a deer defecating at the Federal University of Mato Grosso's zoo.

First Impressions, Campo Grande / Mato Grosso do Sul

Some brief notes:

Campo Grande is closer to Asunción, Paraguay, than it is to Brasilia or Rio de Janeiro, and it shows. (In fact, one of the recommended weekend outings is a trip to Ponta Porã, where one can walk freely into Paraguay to buy cheaper - read: black market - goods.) We're at the edge of the Pantanal and a few hundred miles south of the geographic center of the South American continent.

I came to Campo Grande late last night on a connection through Guarulhos airport in São Paulo. I had to make a domestic connection in São Paulo, but because my flight was continuing on to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, it became a domestic-to-international-terminal transfer and another trip through security. Quite a pain. On the second flight, by sheer luck, I sat next to the Director of Tariffs for the municipal transit agency here and his family. They were returning from a week's vacation in Natal, RN, a later stop on my trip. We chatted for a while, and shared a cab ride to the neighborhood. I'll call him later this week.

I woke up today with plans to buy water. (This is always a high priority when one can't drink the water out of the tap. The hunt for water never ends.) I located a supermarket and set off walking.

My first impression of the town is that it seemed more Latin American than Brazilian. I mean to say that Rio de Janeiro has a uniqueness and a profile that sets it apart from other cities on the continent. Rio is unique, and is uniquely gorgeous, violent, chaotic, extreme, delicious. As I mentioned before, the River Plate Delta cities - Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and by extension Porto Alegre - all have a common look. Campo Grande, on the other hand, belongs to the group of cities that could be in Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, or the interior of Argentina, and not seem out of place. (The Portuguese signs might look odd.) The low rise of the buildings, the intermingling of pavement and dirt, the use of varied color and the faded paint recall Arequipa, Peru, or other medium-sized cities across the continent.

So I reached the supermarket - which turned out to be the first Hipermercado Extra in the country - and bought lunch, water, and some crackers. It's a long walk, not to be repeated often. If I do return, however, I'll bring my camera. It's the first store in my experience that sells groceries on the ground floor and - via an angled moving sidewalk - clothes, sporting goods, and TVs on the second floor. I wondered if Wal-mart owns the chain, and only later confirmed that it does not. (Wal-mart owns Bompreço, which is mainly in the Northeast.) Also seen on the walk back - stores that correctly used the English noun implied in the previous post.

The town was closed today for Childrens' Day, a holiday in which kids receive presents and no one works. The nightly news had a segment about kids waiting on the highway between Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais for presents dropped off by passing motorists, and how dangerous this practice is. This segment followed two reports on drunk driving arrests and state DMVs' inability to take away the drivers' licenses of offenders. In short, Jornal Nacional was in a mood for scolding tonight - the not-so-implicit message was "why don't the police/bureaucrats do their job in this country?" See here.

Overall, a curious town, with very friendly residents. I'm staying in a bargain hotel, but I get to use the wireless network, pool, and breakfast service of the twice-as-expensive up-market hotel next door. The major drawback: I have about as much personal space as a college freshman in the US does.

Calls to set up interviews start tomorrow.

UPDATE: While webjet offered sandwiches and a dessert for each leg of the flight to and from Porto Alegre, Gol only offered the following in-flight snack (and a mint):



It's exactly what it looks like: a Ritz-cracker sandwich with cream filling. And I'll translate - Presunto is Ham. It was not so tasty, but I was hungry.

Dinner tonight

Went to a local confiteria and ordered the Prato Tropical for dinner tonight. It contained:

two ham slices, two cheese slices, a tunafish sandwich with lots of mayo, pineapple, strawberries, papaya, honeydew, tomatoes, lettuce, an orange, and a fried banana

That, plus a side of rice and beans, pretty much summarizes my experience of Brazil so far.

Friday night sleuthing

Dissertation research - call it "fieldwork" - is a lot like detective work. That is, I feel like a one-man detective agency, save that a) no one has died, or has asked me to investigate a case, b) other people might not find the cases interesting, c) my life is in little danger, and no television producers are calling or d) I don't smoke, and I don't currently have an office. In all other respects, it's like playing Dick Tracy.

I certainly didn't expect the following sequence:

I need to talk to Mr. Smith. He worked at the agency back in the late 1990s. Mr. Smith, by all accounts, lives in Rio de Janeiro. But he is now retired, and the last two times he appeared on the Google, he was 1) first in line for tickets to a Roberto Carlos (the Neil Diamond of Brazil) concert last year, and 2) asking a members-only car aficionado site how to fix his power windows, in 2005. Yet I really need to talk to Mr. Smith.

So tonight, Friday night, I joined the members-only car aficionado site, so that I could send a private message to Mr. Smith about the possibility of meeting to talk. Maybe we could meet at the beach on a Wednesday morning; that seems to be what retired people do here. We'll see if he responds. Hopefully his email address hasn't changed.

At least I have live music while I work; there's another concert on the balcony of the Modern Art Museum across the street. The last concert lasted until midnight last night, with no regard for noise ordinances. It was quite loud. Thankfully, they covered some songs I like, such as Minha Menina by the Mutants.

Finally, a photo taken from today's evening run in Flamengo, the famous crying coconut:



The caption encourages people to, at the end of a beach day, put their garbage in the trash can. Each hour, half a ton of garbage is abandoned on the beach. And you don't want to be responsible for making sad garbage, now do you?

Still Life with Paper Towels

The pineapple ("abacaxi" - ab-uh-ka-SHEE) sells for US$1.25. Fresh, cheap, sweet fruit is one of the highlights of this country.