Blogs from Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil, South America - page 3

That night when we got home, Marcelo asked me what I wanted to do the next day. He said we could either go to a party or we could go to a futbol (soccer) game that he had mentioned to me a few days previous with his friend Jesus. He warned me that Jesus took the game rather seriously and was the kinda guy who would get ready for the game by consuming sufficient beer to get wild, paint his face, swing his jersy in the air, and spit curses at the top of his lungs from the stands. The answer naturally was, "Oh, I wanna go to the soccer game!" It seemed to me that soccer and culture in Brazil were almost one in the same; so if I wanted to understand what made Brazilians ... read more

Lesson to all Canadians: Brazilians don´t give a s#$t about Canadian mula. "No we don´t exchange Canadian dollars. Not Canadian sorry. Not here sorry." Another lesson: travellers cheques (in Canadian funds especially) are equally useless in this city. And the most important lesson: this country suffers from a serious case of disorganization. You go into a bank and all you see is mayhem. People friggin´ everywhere, no information counters, no "Can I help you with something?" The only people standing around are stern looking, gun toting security guards who look at you like "are you kidding me?" when you ask them a question. In order to find out that the answer is "nao" you have to stand in loosely established line-ups for an eternity. Everyone will give you the same beaurocratic answer: "Oh no. We can´t ... read more

So, here I am in Brasil. I arrived the day before yesterday after more than 24 hours of flying. I took off and landed so many times in that period of time that I lost count. I learned a few things about flying that I will keep in mind for future voyages: bring power bars, things like nuts and other satiating foods containing protiein, because air line food is for dogs. Since I didn´t want to be presented with pork I opted for the veggie meal. Big mistake. What came for supper was some kinda bean something or other with unidentifiable ingredients, served on top of a bed of mushy fragments of cauliflower and nutritionless rice. There was a hard white bun with margarine, a disgusting bowl of bean salad, and a bowl of mushy, flavourless ... read more

...... read more

It´s been quite a while since I´ve been on a computer with this much time, so I´m going to write a few short entries for each city to catch up what´s been going on for the past few weeks. After the craziest of Salvador, I was looking forward to get to quiet Maceió. Unfortunately, the bus company had other plans. Getting at the bus station around 20:00 to buy a ticket for the 22:30 bus (usually no problem) I learned that they had just sold the last ticket two minutes before I walked up. Next bus, 6:30. Beleza. I spent a quite miserable evening in the rodoviária (bus station) trying to stay awake all night in order to keep my pack safe and with me. However, when I finally got to Maceió safely and with all ... read more