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10/22/04 MK 4:19pm. I feel like I’m always playing catch-up with my journal. Besides taking notes here and there, airplanes seem like the only place I have time to write.
So let’s catch-up. We arrived in Brazil, the final country on our South American tour, on October 15th, feeling like we desperately needed to recharge our batteries. Traveling for months on end is difficult, but for the most part we are doing pretty well. The one area that is bringing us down, both physically and mentally, is our lack of health. It’s not that either of us has been sick, it’s that trying to maintain a healthy diet and regular exercise is virtually impossible on the road. Touring historical sites and immersing ourselves in local culture does little to keep us fit. Particularly when that culture, as it is in South America, virtually revolves around siesta and meat. Yes meat. It’s everywhere, and no matter how hard we try, we have found it virtually impossible to get a bite to eat that does not include meat. In fact, even when ordering a vegetarian sandwich, it still comes with some form of ham. In South America pork seems to be part of some mysterious fifth food group. While clearly not dairy, fruit, vegetable or grain, it apparently is not considered meat either. This is clear when they bring you ham despite specifically requesting NO MEAT. While I’ve been dealing with it fine, my very recently vegetarian wife is no longer amused with this particular cultural oddity. Speaking of cultural oddities: The pooper-scooper has yet to make a dent in the South American market. Particularly in Buenos Aires where a walk down the street is the dog poop equivalent of a stroll through a Cambodian minefield. Customer service is considered more of an inconvenience than good business, and the Speedo is a fashionable beach garment for men regardless of age or girth. In fact I would say the size of the Speedo is inversely proportional to the size of the belly.
10/24/04 MK We are in Sao Paulo and just returned to our hotel room after watching, live, the Brazilian Formula One Grand Prix. For those of you who are not fans of auto racing, and I believe that is pretty much everyone, Formula One is the pinnacle of motor sports. While not being very well known in America, its athletes are amongst the highest paid in the world and are superheros in their home countries. Going to a Formula One race is like going to the Super Bowl. Each one is held in a different country and is an enormous event virtually bringing its host city to a standstill. The Brazilian Grand Prix is held in Sao Paulo, which is an enormous and otherwise uninteresting city. With a population of 20 million it is considered the business capital of South America.
The grand prix turned out to be more than just a great car race; it was also something of a cultural experience. Sporting events around the world are testosterone filled, but in Brazil they take it up a notch. It took only a few minutes of sitting in the grandstand to realize we were deeply immersed in Latin machismo. This was evidenced when the first woman walked by and all the men, as if it was rehearsed, began shouting catcalls. I don’t know exactly what they were saying but the intent was clear. It didn’t matter if the woman was young or old, attractive or otherwise, once she came into view the men would go wild. Similarly, whenever a person walked by holding a beer, everybody in the stands, already armed with little balls of paper they had made from the event program, would throw the paper trying to land it in the victim’s beer. Every so often somebody would go to the front to collect the balls of paper for redistribution ensuring everybody was sufficiently armed for future attacks. Important to note is that nobody seemed to take offense to either the catcalls or the paper in the beer. They all seemed to understand that this is life in Brazil. Lisa, on the other hand, found the whole thing tremendously chauvinistic and childish. That is until she was coming back from getting a sandwich and the catcalls were now for her. Instead of anger or offense, she spread her arms and egged them on for more. A few began bowing to her. I was beaming with pride.
10/27/04 MK We’re back in Rio. Before heading to Sao Paulo, we spent one night in Rio in the barrio of Copacabana. While being perhaps the most popular spot in Rio with both tourists and locals, we were continually warned not to walk around at night, and in-fact to be careful during the day as well. Not wanting to be shut-ins on our return, we elected to move down the road to Ipanema, made famous in the song “The Girl From Ipanema”, which proved to be a much more hospitable neighborhood.
Having absolutely loved her skydiving experience in New Zealand, when Lisa learned they offered hang gliding in Rio, she immediately put it at the top of our agenda. If you are not familiar with hang gliding, and why would you be, you basically strap yourself beneath a wing made of metal tubes and fabric, and run off a mountain. For us, the mountain was overlooking the coastline and a very exclusive Rio community. It was also 1750 feet up. Similar to the skydiving experience, we were strapped to an instructor who would handle the tricky stuff, like keeping us from plummeting to the earth and meeting a fate I call RDS, rapid deceleration syndrome. After meeting our pilot at the beach we changed cars and drove to the top of the mountain. After some brief instruction, that included little more than showing us which side of the mountain we would run off of and suggesting we do not trip while running, we suited up, strapped in and prepared for launch. I gave Lisa the honor of going first so I could video her takeoff. Watching her run off the side of the mountain and take flight was pretty cool. I have to say, I love having such an adventurous wife.
Similarly my takeoff went smoothly. The scariest part is that first step off the platform and into the air. Not knowing if your going to sink or swim and not really having any control over the outcome. Once you realize, this contraption on your back really works, you can’t help but to be overwhelmed by the exhilaration of flying and the vantage point of seeing one of the worlds most beautiful cities from the air. After about 10-15 minutes of gentle gliding we landed safely on the beach. Each hang glider is fixed with a camera mounted beneath the wing. While flying, the pilot shoots a roll of film with a remote shutter release that he is holding. After landing, it turned out I had a camera malfunction so they offered me another flight free of charge. 20 minutes later I was back in the air.
That evening we met up with Odivalo, a local travel agent we met a couple of days ago while trying to arrange our Chinese visas. We had run into a snag in that China requires you to have a ticket leaving China before they will issue you a Visa to enter. Since we had planned on arranging our exit while in China, this threw a fairly serious problem at us. After considerable effort, Odivalo, who calls himself Odi (pronounced Ohgee) arranged for us to get flight vouchers to submit to the Chinese consulate. After receiving our visas two days later, we simply canceled the voucher. This little move saved us several hundred dollars over the only other option of actually buying tickets. While talking with Odi about the sites in Rio, he offered to take us to a samba school. Samba is the native music of Brazil. It is primarily a variety of drums and pretty wild dancing. There are samba schools all over Rio each one representing its community. The school Odi was taking us to was for the largest favela in Rio. Favelas are unplanned communities. They are very poor and there is no rhyme or reason to their layout. Most of the homes were built illegally with no property rights and the community basically takes care of itself with little help from the government. They are also considered to be very dangerous places. Odi told us we would be the only non-locals there but that we would be fine since we were with him. Pulling up, I was a bit apprehensive at first; the locals were clearly not to be taken lightly. However, Odi was right. Despite the occasional odd look, we were welcomed by all and had a great time experiencing real life Brazil.
10/28/04 MK Today we took a favela tour. Given Lisa’s background working for HUD, she was particularly curious to tour these unique and spontaneous communities. The first stop was back to the favela that runs the samba school we visited last night. Our tour guide seemed in disbelief that we were at the samba school the night before. We learned the favelas, while having a reputation for being very dangerous are actually quite safe. They are basically run by the drug dealers who know that tourists who are robbed or worse would bring the police, which is bad for business. Because of this they lay down the law for all to treat tourists with the utmost respect. We even heard stories about tourists accidentally leaving cameras behind only to have them returned to their hotel before they got back themselves. It was a great tour, but since this is Lisa’s area of expertise, I will let her provide the details.
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