Posts from — December 2007

I am currently in Sao Paolo bus station (this is becoming a tradition ) on my way to Rio de Janeiro. But let me tell you about christmas…

I have been spending christmas with the wonderful 62 year old Maria who has shown me an even more wonderful christmas with her family.

I arrived here on the 23rd after an 8 hour bus ride. Driving into Sao Paolo is an interesting experience: even though this city has 20 million people (greater metropolitan area), driving into the city was quite easy. Nice highways, city as far as you can see (and much further ) but no traffic jam… until we got to the rodoviario that is. I was overwhelmed for a moment by the amount of people waiting and departing there. I found my way to teh subway station easily (SP is blessed with a good subway system servicing major parts of teh city) and followed the directions to my host’s house.

She was happy I arrived as I was a bit late, and soon we left to a party that her kids were having to celebrate christmas with her ex-husband (he was no longer there, they don’t get along very well ). I met the whole family, excep for one son who was in Belo Horizonte for christmas. 4 kids and a bunch of grandchildren, all very nice and most of them speaking english or french.

Maria is a wonderful woman. she has been traveling around all her life, living in a zillion different places, doing even more different things. Over the past few days we have talked a lot and it was more than a pleasure. She has told me so much that i cannot even begin listing here. I will just tell you some random things: she is anthropologist, specialising in African cultures and religions. Since there are a lot of slaves in Brasil, she knows a lot about their cultures as well.

She has been an chief editor for a publishing company. She lived in different places in the states for 15 years, surfing couches of friends for 3 years.

Her application paper for her anthropology study was a report on her research she did on an island off the coast of Brasil that had people living there completely isolated. Their only contact with the outside world was a navy vessel going there every 3 months. As a result of so many years of isolation, they had the most interesting view on their history, Brasilian history and much much more. Extremely cool and interesting!

The last two days I stayed with Maria I went to explore some of the city. This city is also very nice. It is the richest state and city of Brasil and very safe to wander through the streets. I went to visit Little Tokyo (the biggest japanese community outside of Japan), the downtown area and Mercado Municipal, the city’s main graveyard and some small things. The smells you experience while wandering through the small corridors of the indoor Mercado Municipal are amazing: one moment you are in the fruit area which smells like a fruit explosion, teh next minute you are entering the herbs area or the fish area. Very nice place!

Also very beautiful was the cemetary. Always a weird place to go, this one was definitely worth seeing! Very beautiful family graves of ridiculous sizes (some as big as a small church!). Check teh gallery for pictures soon!

Now the next challenge awaits: Reveillion in Rio de Janeiro !!

My last post here from BH contains some big news! After being in BH for nearly a week, I have decided to try and live here for at least a couple of months. I like this city very much, as must have been obvious from my previous posting

I have contacted my former boss at Coolblue yesterday, and if the paperwork checks out I can start working for them again from BH starting January 15th (I’ll be traveling between Sao Paolo, Rio and BH until then) for 4 days a week. So now I need a place to stay that has a decent internet connection and I need to learn some portuguese. I am very excited about all of this!

One of my motivations is that I would _really_  like to spend carnival in Brasil, as this has been a dream of mine since I was a child. I figured that instead of traveling around, I might as well make some money to finance more travels. It seems like this is going to work out fine!

This will be my first try at living outside of Holland in a completely different culture. I am very excited about this and will keep you updated when it actually starts on how it works out! Wish me luck!

The last few days in Belo Horizonte I have been doing quite a lot of different things, the results of which you can hopefully see soon in the picture gallery. Here is a small summary:

I went to visit two beautiful caves on sunday with Amilcar, a host from BH, and Julie, hist guest at the time. The caves were really beautiful and located in beautiful natural surroundings. We spent almost all day there and then drove back to BH.

Another day we went to see some waterfalls, also reasonably nearby. They were very beautiful and it was the first time in my life I was swimming in a natural bassin at the foot of a waterfall. Very amazing experience!

And there was more: we went to a super luxurious meat restaurant with the most delicious all-you-can-eat meat and an astonishing view. The view made me sad too. Of the over 2 million people living in this city, a lot of people have to work very hard or don’t even succeed to put food on their table every day. And here we are, eating until we drop. Sad but true, I guess this is one of the many intriguing aspects of this country: filthy rich against alarmingly poor.

We also went to see a live band and a beautiful night view over the city (getting soaking wet while admiring it)

And then there are of course the girls. They might not all be extremely hot, but the amount of beautiful asses here is downright ridiculous!

I really love being here in Belo Horizonte. Her I am just a stranger and not  a walking ATM liek in Salvador. The surfers community is very nice and the regular people too. It is a very safe city, which is also very nice for a city this size (3rd biggest city in Brazil).

On sunday I am moving to Sao Paolo to celebrate christmas with a couchsurfing mother and daughter in Japanese style (their family chooses a different theme-country every year). After that I am not sure where I will spend New years, but that will be tomorrow’s problem

So, you guys are probably quite curious as to what the hell I have been doing the last few days? Well, you might wanna sit down for this one, because it is a long story. Let me begin by telling you why my last post was stopped so abruptly:

I was sitting in that internet cafe in Jequié, waiting for the bus to leave. It was  about 22:10 when a man tapped me on the shoulder: “Are you going to Bela Horizonte?”. I was heavily surprised taht it was actually the bus driver, looking for me to take me on the bus earlier, so I would be in BH earlier. How friendly of him to come and look for me (I was out of sight of the bus or the ticket office, sitting inside an internet cafe).

After an uncertain bus ride including changing busses at a deserted terminal at midnight and a whopping 33 hours of traveling (counting from leaving the pousada in Morro to arriving at the Rodiovario in BH) I was in Bela Horizonte. When I was on the bus, I received an sms from my host that he could not host me (he had forgotten to inform his 11 weeks pregnant wife ). I asked him to post a message on CS to ask for another host and a friendly guy called Felipe said yes. The two of them were waiting at the bus terminal for me (for 3 hours, the bus was a ‘little’ late). I was ready for the adventure called Bela Horizonte!

I’m running out of wow’s. I’m beginning to get a little bit used to being in this country. It certainly isn’t the piece of cake traveling in Europe was. I’m now in transit to Belo Horizonte to meet a cool CS-crowd and also see the neighbourhood where one of my all time favourite bands Sepultura originates from.

About the last few days then:

Going to Pelourinho was interesting. You literally get asked to buy something or give someone money every 30 seconds. Yet you can feel pretty safe from 10am in the morning ’til 1 am at night (this is the time the police is present so all the up to no good people stay quiet). The hostel I was staying in for the night was amazing. It had a very beautiful view over the all saints (have the tune in your head yet?) bay. Muriel brought me there together with Luiz, who also stayed the whole night to have some good fun. We met some random people and also the lovely beer-selling woman from the concert on sunday again. Although I cannot speak a word with her, it was really nice to see her again!

The next morning I took a boat to Morro and I was amazed when I arrived. Extremely beautiful Island, but the village is totally touristy. 50% Pousada’s, 25% restaurants and the rest is people working in these places and some support buildings. I located my hostel with the help of one of the 100 guides/proppers (saying i had a reservation seemed to get most of them off my back though ). I put down my stuff and decided to explore the beaches for a few hours, just walking across 1st, 2nd and 3rd beach.

In the evening I went climbing/walking/swimming to see the sunset and almost got lost doing so (not a good idea in the middle of the jungle after nightfall ). Saw a beautiful sunset though!

The next day I took one of the boat tours Luiz had recommended me. That was definitely worth the ridiculous 50 Reais I had to pay! Some very nice still very quiet villages on the other side of the island definitely made my day. After getting back though I decided I wasn’t going to stay in Morro, as it was too touristy for me.

Luiz had told me that my favourite band Sepultura was originated from Belo Horizonte, where he is also from. I decided to see if I could go there. I posted some messages on the groups in couchsurfing and within half an hour I had a couch and a detailed itinerary on how to get there. Satisfied I went to bed early.

This morning I got up early, paid the hostel (cheaper than expected, yay!) and took the boat to Valenca. There I got hopelessly stuck finding the bus station (turned out to be a “little” smaller than expected ) and had trouble buying a ticket (was there really no option for today anymore?). Luckily I had heard two guys speak German just minutes before and they were still standing around. I decided to try my luck and asked them for help.

One of the guys helped me very well and indeed there was supposedly no way to get from Valenca to BH today. I walked with my new german friend into town and he told me he knew three dutch people here. We talked and walked, and he explained my other options. I think somewhere around the time he told me that many of his friends came here to have sex with children (although he strongly disapproved of it) I thought it was time to take one of my other options.

The guy took me to a bunch of white vans that are used as taxi’s (old volkswagen vans can apparently easily take 12 people and luggage!) and he made sure th driver would help me to get to a place where I could find a bus to BH. Two of these busses later and a long very beautiful busridelater I am sitting here in Jequie waiting for my bus. Very impressed wth the beautiful landscape, f

Today I’m leaving the safe and comfortable place that Luiz has given me for the past few days. Tonight I will go out in Pelourinho, the touristy area in Salvador. I will be guided by cool surfer Muriel. She has been living in that area for three months so se apparently knows what goes on everywhere.

What have I been doing the past few days? Luiz has driven me around the city to show me the different neighbourhoods and explain a lot of things about this city and Brazilian culture as well. He took me shopping, something we both hate (although no girlfriends this time, so no dog-like following and nodding ), he took me for some native food, very good.

Luiz’s arm turned out to be broken, very sad and unfortunate!

On sunday night I went with Protasio and Muriel to a big free concert somewhere in Salvador. It was great! I love live music and since Bahians love to party they go completely crazy! Since the concert was free it attracted a lot of poor people from the favela’s, but being with locals i didn’t feel unsafe for a moment. This concert was a very good experience: Bahian people are very nice and becoming friends is easy (when you speak portuguese that is ). Example: we were talking to some people we had met for maybe 10 minutes when we were invited to a birthday party next week. Luiz later told me that this is very typical for Bahians. In the city he comes from (Belo Horizonte) this is not common at all.

We also talked and became friends with one of the people trying to sell beer. We bought some beers from her but Protasio found it too warm, so we decided to buy beer somewhere else. In holland this would be an instant end of a “friendship”, but here the woman explained that she tried to buy ice to keep the beer cold, but she couldn’t get any. Now she was trying to sell beers anyway but didn’t blame us at all for buying ours somwhere else. Tough life, but she had a big smile on her face all night long. I admire that!

After the concert we went to eat pizza near Protasio’s house. The pizza was amazing! I think it was maybe the best pizza I ever had!

Tomorrow I will go to a place called Morro de Sao Paolo (http://www.morrodesaopaulo.com.br/, jealousy alert!) to spend some days there after which I will probably go hiking in Chiapada Diamantina for a few days. Who knows…

It might be a while before I have internet access again, so don’t worry (especially you, mom! )