My Brazilian Experience

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Alright, so I didn´t write any group mail during my
whole stay here in Brazil. It is a result of expensive
internet, lack of time or being in remote places and
general lack of motivation, but this is not really an
exuse. Well, at least some of you got Shay´s mails, so
you knew what´s going on with me. Now, that we
separated, I have no choice but to write. So now, that
I am on the Brazilian-Bolivian border, I will write a
summary of my Brazilian experience, and hope for
better internet access and writing muse in Bolivia
(BTW chack out the photobucket account for new pics,
even organized in albums. My parents said that they
are good 😊.
- We got to Brazil through Foz do Iguaחu - the falls
are as amazing as everybody say they are (yes, dad,
more than the Niagra. It also helps that they are not
surrounded by hotels...)! You have around 300 photos
between me and Shay to get an impression from. Other
things we realized - it´s hot, the meat is not as good
and the buses are worse and more expensive.
- Sao Paulo - maybe an interesting city to live in,
something is always happening, but not very beautiful
to visit. A nice 2 day stop (inluding a nice
Empire-State-Building-Style lookout - so many
buildings!) on the way to Ouro Preto.
- Ouro Preto (which was my 2nd choice for the
carnaval, but we stayed in for lack of buses a day
ahead) - a beautiful city, well preserved old
buildings and churches in the middle of green
mountains, kinda reminded me the old towns we visited
in Italy. Very nice scenery for a student-style
carnaval - lots of drunk young Brazilians in the
streets, which can be either very good or very bad,
the only problem is that many of the parties are in
closed frat-houses (or in bigger closed areas -
expensive..). But most of the carnaval was a very
different experience than I expected - less street
parties, and more a real glimpse into the lives of
young Brazilians and learning a little Portuguese
(similar to the glimpse that I had and really loved in
Argentina), through the sorority girls that we stayed
with - they didn´t organize parties, and they only
spoke Portuguese, but some of them made an genuine
effort to make us understand them - probably my most
authentic Brazilian experince in here... In the
carnaval´s last day I finally realized how to enjoy
the street parties - first of all, there were more of
them, and second, by this time you have quite a good
chance to meet somebody that you know on the street,
so you can move between people and parties - next
carnaval should be more than 5 days (: . I also found
out, for the second time in this trip (the first time,
for those of you that don´t memorize my blogs, was in
Rosario 😊, that given the right atmosphere I can
actually really enjoy dancing...
- Rio - really a beautiful city, we saw it from about
4 different miradors, and each one had a different
point of view. 2 footaball games in the Maracana - 1
of them with really good football and a crazy
thunderstorm during halftime. Went hang-gliding - lots
of fun! Really liked our hostel - good atmosphere,
good crowd. Some post-carnaval parties - nice, but I
like Ouro Preto better (the the winners´ parade, I
wasn´t that impressed - in Ouro Preto the bands were
much less professional, but we could almost touch them
- here we just watched from afar).
- Ilha Grande - an island with famous beaches. I
admit, the beaces were nice, but I didn´t like the
fact that nobody actually lives there and everything
is made for tourists and expensive. I got the same
feeling as in southern Chile - that even the most
simple things are so hard to get and expensive.
- Paraty - a town with a really nice preserved old
center and that is surrounded by amazing nature that
we only saw a glimpse of. We took the bus to see a
nice river-waterfall, and on the next day took a boat
tour that went through beautiful private islands and
tropical beaches (nicer than Ilha Grande, to my
opinion) that ended earlier than expected because of a
thunderstorm...
- Curitiba - a very modern and north-american-looking
city in the south. It was a very pleasant (and quite
cheap) place to spend a couple of days. In Brazil (and
in the south especially) I finally had a chance to do
some couchsurfing, and we had a very cool host that
took us to an amazing
all-the-very-good-meat-you-can-eat restaurant (we
cooked dinner in return another time…) and to a cool
live-music-samba-club, and we also met another girl
that showed us the city one afternoon.
- Florianopolis - We saw Floripa through couchsurfing
eyes too, and I guess had a different experience of
the city than most tourists. Here (like in Curitiba)
most of the people we met were students, so now I
basically know how the universities in Brazil work (:
. We basically came for the beaches, but most days
were too cold for this, so we spent quite a lot of our
time there couchsurfing - a birthday party, a pool
party, paintball game, moving hosts and just hanging
around (and of course, quite a few beaches too -I
wasn't that impressed, maybe because of the weather
too)…
- Panatanal - after saying goodbye to Shay I had a
really lonely and annoying 27 hour bus ride to Campo
grande. From there I went to a 3 days tour of the
Panatanal - a huge marshes area with plenty of
animals. So I slept in a hammock, everywhere around
the main building was flooded (like living on an
island) and went to some boat, horse, jeep etc trips
in the area. It was a beautiful area and a nice
experience, just that I got bitten by many mosquitos,
and some ants and spiders…
- Food - The basic meal in the cheap eateries here is
rice, beans, a small salad and a small bull steak.
Yes, for some reason they eat a lot of bull meat in
here. You can get better food, obviously, but it is
gonna cost you (and we did, sometimes, I also had
Bamia and Lubia in here!). The good thing about this
cheap eateries are the huge portions, sometimes all
you can eat (except for the meat), so as you can
imagine I ate enough rice and beans for a lifetime...
- Music - What I liked so much about Brazilian music,
is that when it's good, it is both danceable and fun
just to listen too (and I almost never say it). It
made enjoy the Brazilian clubs I went to, at least the
Samba clubs are very good and include live music many
times. There is also Funky, a terribly repetitive
dance music, that is defiantely not fun to hear
(icluding a couple of songs that were playing every 5
minutes in the Carnaval). I also liked Argentinian
rock, but it is as Argentinian as Israeli rock is
Israeli, not a completely different type of music like
in Brazil (and they have some of them here, almost
every region has its typical music).
- Language - Portuguese is definately harder and
doesn't sound as well as Spanish, and a new language
was hard, but when ppl talked to us slowly and wanted
us to understand, me and Shay actually had
conversations in Portuguese! We answered in Spanish,
but they usually understood us (although, many times,
answered in fast Portuguese...).
So now I crossed the border to Bolivia and waiting for
my train to Santa Cruz (it was on a strike today,
quite expected 😊 …
I also finished uploading my photos from Brazil, so
check them out at
http://s186.photobucket.com/albums/x151/roib/south%20america%202/

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