Bruno Coelho

After the visa we were really (and I mean really, really) happy to leave São Paulo. I still can´t understand what 20 million people are doing in that place: breathing CO2, spending hours stuck in traffic to get anywhere, hearing buses and trucks hunking and burning millions of gallons of fuel while painting the sky brown - 24/7. The following two weeks were very relaxing, spending time with my family and speaking some Portuguese with familiar faces. By the way, very relaxing for me, not for Faith. She had to spend time with my family and speak Portuguese with unfamiliar faces. We went to a flower festival in a town close to São Paulo, then we spent five days at my gramma´s place in the country side of my state and finally another five days in ... read more

Oh my lordy lordy, the JUICE. Order a “suco natural” at a snack bar or restaurant and they will bring you fresh squeezed and then sometimes blended juice for a frothy way to quench your thirst. And not just orange juice. Most places will have a variety of the following: orange, mango, papaya, pineapple, avocado (they’re huge and sweet here - actually more like a smoothie when they are blended up), açaí, acerola, cashew (from the fruit part of the tree, not the nut), strawberry, passionfruit, goiaba, graviola... mostly stuff that we don’t even have words for in English. Its amazing. So colorful - orange, yellow, purple, pink, green, chocolatey brown... And so unbelieveably delicious. My favorite is far and away the açaí. Man oh man, suco de açaí - amazing. The "agua de coco," ... read more

They have a huge statue here of a bandeirante - a what, you ask? A portuguese mercenary from colonial days who hacked through the rainforest and murdered or sold into slavery tribe after tribe of indigenous peoples. Largely responsible for the depopulation of vast tracts of land and thus for securing much of Brazil’s current domain for the Portuguese. Jesuit missionaries tried to protect the locals in their forts and missionary towns, so the bandeirantes murdered them all too, and the govt kicked the rest of the jesuits out for interfering with the officially sanctioned rape and pillage of a continent. The snack bar across the street is also named in honor of the bandeirante. Its interesting what people value here. ... read more

São Paolo: Social Observations Part I: The Museum. (NB this entry is long) Bruno’s anxiety over his VISA interview had been growing steadily over the month of August but reached its peak in São Paolo. He spent a lot of time staring off into the distance and even said at times that he wasn’t hungry (!!!!). Yes, a true rarity for the Brumaster. So what could we do to distract him? We went to a museum about São Paolo and Brazil in the nineteenth century. It’s housed in a building that was supposed to replicate the palace at Versailles, but they ran out of funds and instead ended up with an abbreviated version. The model that they had constructed, which took the two years initially allotted for the construction of the actual building, is on display ... read more

After another night on the road and lots more driving, we arrived in Foz do Iquaçu, the brazilian city closest to the mighty waterfalls for which the town is named. The cataratas are actually about 275 separate waterfalls altogether on the river iguaçu; a million or so years ago they used to be where iguaçu emptied into the river parana' (which forms the border between brazila and paraguay) but do to erosion they have moved farther and farther upstream. due to different erosion rates of rock types, there are two levels of falls in most places, like steps. they are amazing. To visit the cataratas (waterfalls) you can go to either the brazilian or argentinian sides of the river, though we (and most tourists) opted for both. you need about a day to do each side. ... read more