Once upon a time in Brazil...

This is my first blog entry about Brasil. In short we have been in Brasil for about a month, we started in Sao Paulo staying with a family, went into the interior for a bit to do some trekking on camping, and now we are in Rio which is reveling in post carnaval madness. We´ve seen a lot of the many faces of this imense country: Brasilian meet buffets and caipirinhas, towering waterfalls and mountains, vast farm land and cattle grazing, live samba bands in the streets and crazed soccer fans, extreme contrast of wealth betweem the afluent areas of Rio and the infamous favelas that cascade the hills surrounding the city... heres some highlights about our time here so far.

SAO PAULO: A family friend of the Tais who lives in Sao Paulo adopts up, their son actually is waiting for us to arrive at the Sao Paulo airport with a home made sign, first taste of Brasil´s hospitality. They live in an urban neighborhood outside of Sao Paulo, Santo Andre. Their extended family all live in the same barrio and come over regularly to eat dinner, laugh at us trying to speak portuguese, and just spend time together. Like other Latin America countries it seems like it is pretty common for extended families to live in the same area and foryoung people to live with their parents until they get married. The family were obsessed with how amazing and unique Brasilian food is, they insisted on introducing us to Brasil´s multitude of good foods. We are also inrtoduced to the Brasilian nightlife. Flavio, Jose´s son who is our age, takes us under his wing and we go to little street bars and Samba clubs. Our first night not making it home around 6am where our stand-in-Brasilian-mother is waiting to offer us food. We see the main parts of Sao Paulo and see our first favela. Basically favelas are Brasilian shanty towns or areas of urban slums. Many of the people have been displaced, by rural- urban migration, flooding, and gentrification of the urban centers. The people occupy the land with out legal contracts, usually in the periphery of large urban centers (Rio and Sao Paulo have the most), their is sometimes electricty although it is not provided by the government, they have no public santitation, and are usually governed unoffocially by druglords and gangs. Heres the wikipedia entry and a photo journalism article from the Washington Post:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favela
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/specials/favelas/handholding.html?hpid=topnews

ALTO PARAISO, SAO JORGE, and CHAPADA DOS VEADEIROS: Once we tear ourselves away from the conforts of our Sao Paulo family stay, we head north and into the interior to Brasilia, the capital of Brasil. Brasilia is an interesting city, it was completely built from nothing about 30 years ago and therefore is extremely well organized. It doesn´t have all the sprawling, hillside, favelas that Rio and Sao Paulo are known for. Really only stay in Brasilia long enough to catch a bus 4 hours north of Brasilia to Alto Paraiso. We spend about a week in this beautiful town surrounded by mountains and farmland. There is a national park close by so we did some hikes in Chapada Dos Veadeiros. Funny side note, Alto Paraiso is this bizzare burnt out hippie town that used to have agricultural comunes outside of it and still has tons of storefronts advertising the sale of power crystals.

THE PANTANAL: After Chapada Dos Veadeiros we continued further into the interior of Brasil, getting closer to the border with Paraguay to see the region of Brazil known as the Pantanal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantanal
It is the worlds largest wetland and has a biodiversity rivaling the amazon. There are over 660 different species of birds, just to put that in perspective the entire continent of N America has only 700 species all together. We saw tons of black caiman alligators (there are arpox 10 million in the region), capivaras- the worlds largest rodent (looks like a giant groundhog), and a giant orange-headed spider... aparently it had fangs but I actually didn´t witness this beast. We rented a car in Cuiaba the capital of Motto Grasso and gateway city into the Pantanal and drove down the Transpantanal highway which after about 100 km turns into a potted dirt road mostly traveled by heards of cattle. Needless to say we got stuck in the mud our first day, but we pushed our way through and I actually learned how to drive a manual car which was fun.

CUIABA TO RIO DE JANEIRO: We decided after camping, mud trekking, and pot hole roads we wanted to travel the 1000 km journey from Cuiaba to Rio de Janeiro for the largest and probably most famous Carnaval celebration in Brasil. We also were going to hitch-hike. The magnitude of our proposed feat was laughable, but we made a sign that read RIO DE JANERO (spelled wrong because we ran out of black maskign tape) and set out visiting truck stops on the periphery of Cuiaba. The first day got us no where, we were too many people, with too much luggage and it was getting on in the evening. So we took an overnight bus to Campo Grande- south of Cuiaba, and our second day was much more successful. We managed to get three rides and cover abotu 500 km. We rode in trucks carrying, leather, and cattle... which is bascially most of what you see in this pat of Brasil- cattle. We were confident that we´d reach Sao Paulo the following day but aftering attempting for about 6 hours we threw up the white flag, caught the first local bus the passed us and bought a ticket for Rio de Janeiro in the first major city we stopped in. The bus from Pres. Prudente to Rio would be another overnight journey, about 18 hours. We arrived in Rio the next day on Carnaval Sunday.

Currently in Rio, will write more on Rio and Carnval next time!

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