9000km and back again

4000 by plane; 1500 by boat; 3500 by bus. Brasil's a big bloody place; but a great place for adventure!

I flew into the middle of the amazon, found a group of dudes and a guide named Osmar and headed into the jungle for a few days. This wasn't as crazy or wild as you may expect, but I did start what I hope to be a long-standing tradition of sleeping in a hammock. We did see tons of birds, eagles, and alligators, some monkeys and a sloth. I fished for and caught many (red) piranha (in the same waters I had been swimming in a few minutes earlier) -they were too small to eat, but we did eat some catfish that we caught. Two of the highlights of the jungle experience:
(i) Falling asleep in my hammock, listening to the sounds of the jungle, and the rain. In those moments, the power of this magical place really hit home.
(ii) Listening to the story of our guide Osmar: He is a 38 year old native of the area. Until the age of 15 he had never left the jungle, had never seen a city, a car, never spoken a language other than his native dialect. At the age of 15 his father took him to the city and enrolled him in boarding school. The first 6 months were terrible for him -he'd never felt so alone: didn't speak Portuguese, didn't know anyone, didn't know how to live in the city with all their strange customs. He managed to persevere, completed school, and got a job as a tour guide. His employer encouraged him to learn english, which he did. In the following years he travelled a few times to Europe and lived in various countries there for a total of 3 years learning languages. Now he speaks Portuguese, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and a little Japanese. He can't tell anyone in his tribe (those who still live in the jungle) about his trips to Europe because they simply won't believe him; they'll think he's making it up. The only ones who know are his mother and brother.
Other neat parts of the jungle experience included visiting native families and collecting latex from trees and making rubber.

I returned to the city (Manaus) and bought a ticket down the amazon river -5 days by boat to the coast (city of Belém) with a two-day stop-over in a place called Santarém. 5 days on this boat was one of the highlights of my 4 weeks: truly an experience. The boat from Manaus to Santarém held a little more than 800 passengers (of those, 3 were foreigners, the rest were locals mostly travelling to visit family for the Christmas holidays) although by North American standards it is maybe a 200 passenger boat. Everyone sleeps/lives in hammocks for the duration of the journey. In the Amazon there is a real hammock culture (that, unfortunately, is starting to die with “modernization”) that I really love –there are people (maybe not in the big city) that sleep in hammocks even in their homes.


There was nothing to do on the boat but meet and talk to people. It was a really fantastic time; getting to talk, really talk to the local people –regular, normal Brasilians of the north. I have a super-patriotic Canadian friend, Collette, who had given me a bunch of Canada stickers to hand out on my voyage. On the boat I met a couple of little girls who I made friends with, gave them some stickers and the word spread fast: by the end of the day I knew nearly every child on the boat (Collette had given me a lot of stickers). One of the highlights of the boat experience was one evening on the top deck of the boat: I was playing the count-to-20 game with some children and a few adults. A crowd grew and more and more people wanted the opportunity to try to beat me. The crowd grew to 40 people eagerly awaiting their turn, plus others surrounding just to watch. After playing this game, another friend I had made, a guy from São Paulo had another great game that we played. It was really a great evening: people of ages 6 up to ages 60 all playing together and having a blast.
Nearly everyone hates the boat –locals and foreigners alike. Locals take the boat out of necessity (the cost of air-tickets puts flights way out of reach for a lot of these people), as do travelers that are on tighter budgets; A few foreigners take it for the experience, but the majority feel like they’ve experienced it after one or two days. I know that it’s unlikely that I will because there is too much “new” out there, but I would do it again…

I stopped in Santarém for 2 days with four friends that I had made on the boat. There is a beach on the river called Alter do Chão. It was a nice place to relax for 2 days.

Reaching the coast of Brasil, I hung out in Belém for a day and then began making my way along the coast. I took a few buses to a place called Lençois Maranhenses, allegedly the only desert in Brasil. They are dunes of really white, fine sand that stretch on for miles. Pools of rainwater collect in the valleys forming little lakes. It is a really beautiful area. I spent new-years-eve in the town bordering the desert called Barrerinhas. At the time I was travelling with an Israeli and an Australian. We walked the town in the evening checking to see where the action was. There was nobody to be seen anywhere! Eventually we did hear some commotion and followed the noise…right into a church. This is where everyone was hanging. We walked a little further and found another packed church, and another. We hung out in one of the churches for a bit: everyone there really seemed to be having a good time. (Note that, while there are a ton of churches in Brasil, I don’t think that this is representative of a Brasilian new-years-eve)

One of the cities I stopped in for a day –enroute to Lençois Maranhenses- is called São Luis. My well-travelled Israeli companion remarked that the architecture of São Luis was very similar to that of Lisbon, Portugal.

I moved on to another old Colonial town called Olinda, bordering the big city of Recife. It was a nice little place, dead quiet in the day, but lively at night. Coincidently, I happened to be there for a little mini-carnaval called frevo. The tiny streets were jam-packed with people drinking and beating drums. At around 11:30 in the evening, the party ended in a big riot in the main square. I never really figured out why or how it got started (a rumor was circulating that two rival gangs started it) but it got nasty pretty freakin quickly: people beating on each other, throwing bear bottles at each other, at cars, buildings. The police were on the scene super-fast and started their own beat-down, dragging people off. It was over in probably 20min, but it killed the party. Some Brasilians were so funny: they were apologizing to the foreign tourists in the area for the behavior of their countrymen; so profusely as though they had been the ones to initiate the fight.

Leaving Olinda I headed to a nearby beach called Porto de Galinhas; hung out there for two days, trying to surf, exploring some mangroves, and just relaxing.
Next stop was Salvador. This is a really happening city: Lots of live music in the evening, people playing Capoeira all day long, little food stalls on every corner, and little bars everywhere. I was travelling with an American dude and a Russian girl that I had met and one evening we were waiting at the bus stop to take the bus back from the beach to the town centre. A cabbie pulls up and says he’ll give us a ride for a few cents more than we would pay for the bus. We get in. The cabbie did go directly to the centre of town, but he stopped at other bus stops on the way to see if anyone else wanted a ride –until the cab was full: 7 people. It was hilarious. Some old lady was sitting on my lap talking about if her husband could see her now sitting on the lap of some young guy she didn’t know…

One afternoon, my companions and I left the super-touristed town centre to try to find a place to eat. A 5min walk from all the action, we found a little restaurant and sat down. It was exactly what we were looking for: super-basic, cheap, of course there was a tv in the corner with music videos playing, and we were the only foreigners there. As we were eating, one of the other patrons, I guess, really liked the song that was playing and began to belt it out at full volume. Imagine this in a restaurant in Canada :) Well this is Salvador: another dude from across the restaurant joined in; and then another. They stood up, started dancing, pointing at each other, and singing away. At the end of the song they returned to their seats and continued eating only to get up again a few minutes later to another well-liked song.

While in Salvador I saw a show that included music, dance, and capoeira. It was really something else. I paid money to see what was considered to be one of the better shows, and everything was top-notch.

After Salvador I went to a national park called Chapada Diamantina. This is a spectacular place; really stunning. There are hills and valleys and plateaus, waterfalls, rivers and streams. Despite being a well-touristed area, the people in the area have managed to preserve its tranquility.

Note that while I say simply that after x I did y…in reality all of these were separated by 12hr, 18hr, or 24 hr bus rides.

Having covered a ton of ground in a short 3-and-a-half weeks, I met up with Vanessa and spent the last half-week of my time off in a little colonial town (one of the originals in Brasil) called Diamantina. A quaint place with not much to do, it was just what I needed to unwind. There is a little main market in the centre of town and there was a band playing on Saturday morning. One dude, I think over 80 years old, was dancing up a storm with every girl in the joint. He would walk through the crowd and if he found a girl on her own he would whisk her away; if he found a girl with some other dude, he would ask him permission to take the girl and then would whirl away on the dance floor, return the girl and say thanks.

9000km and 4 weeks later I was back home.

Topo do Mundo and Ouro Preto

Last weekend, with a few friends I made at the gym, I went to two places:
Topo do Mundo is a little hill just outside the city that is used a jumping off point for paragliders. This is something that I may be interested in, but it will be a long while before my Português is good enough to think about getting a license to do this (my friend suggested I do it in tandem with someone, but this is very unappealing to me). It was cool to hang out and watch these dudes take flight.


Ouro Preto is an old colonial town an hour outside of BH. There isn't too much to say about the place. There are a ton of churches there and we did take a tour of one of the churches built by the colonizing Portuguese: it is a huge power symbol, ridiculously elaborate -art, gold, and the like.

My friends and I in the town:


This is my last week at work. I have 4 weeks off to do...something. I just bought a plane ticket to the middle of the amazon, but beyond that I'm gonna pretty-well wing this one. The plan right now, in it's entirety, is so: hang in the amazon for a few days; take a boat down the amazon river to the coast; make my way down the coast; see how far I get (Brasil is freakn huge!); try not to get robbed, killed, or eaten by an anaconda. Looking forward to an adventure!

Another Long Weekend, Another Bike Trip

So Ted and I took a three-day weekend a couple weeks back to do some biking. We took a 5 hour bus to a little town of Três Marias and began biking back in the general direction of home. We biked mostly little dirt roads, passed through small villages, and just enjoyed being in the clean open air, away from the big city. We stopped in one town that I really liked: super-small, of course there was a church (this is Brasil after all), little bar complete with a hitching post out front -but no horses were hitched to it, they were just left to wander free! We saw probably 15 people in total in that town.

A pair of blue-and-yellow macaws:


Always the math teacher, I've got a little problem for you:
In the aforementioned town we met a woman, her daughter, and her granddaughter. The woman (the grandma) is 43 years old, her daughter is 28, and the granddaughter is 13. Should the pattern continue, when will the granddaughter get pregnant? It was really crazy to be there and talk to all three of them at once, and to think that this little girl may be a mother soon. This is not uncommon in Brasil and I have more thoughts on it, but that'll be for another post.

Everything went quite smoothly except for one minor incident: We had been biking for hours; had passed no towns, and no one. The sun was strong that day and, together with the rough dirt roads, made the riding tough. The water in my bottles looked at once more and more appealing as I lost more and more fluids, and less and less appealing as it's temperature rose. As chance would have it we passed by a flowing brook: good, clear springwater. I thought...what are the chances? I dunno, maybe it was the heat, maybe we were delirious, but there you go. Wouldn't you know it, that bloody water...just kidding. There was no drinking of any spring water on this trip!
Although to tell the truth, we did stop at a bar in a little town to ask where we were and to ask for directions. When the dude in the shop asked if I wanted anything to drink I said sure, I'll have water, expecting him to bring me a bottle that I could buy. Instead he brought out a pitcher from the fridge and poured me a cup. The last experience drinking untreated water was still fresh in my head and having no idea where he got this water I knew it could cause some problems. But I'd rather get sick than be rude (you do it your way, I'll do it mine), so I drank it all. In hindsight though, I could have tried to slip a purification tablet (which I make a point of carrying now!) into the glass.

Small Towns, Big Cities

Small town mentality/hospitality is something global I’ve found. However, in the little town of Alto Caparaó it is really something else. I had made my way there to climb Pico da Bandeira, a nearby mountain. This is winter just turned spring in Brasil and it is not a peak time for tourists. Certainly there were few that I encountered during my week, and all but a few in Rio were Brasilieros.
As I got off the bus in the little town of 5000 and began to stroll about, a woman, Alaíde, approached to ask if she could help me with anything. What proceeded was a visit to her super-nice house where we sat down and chatted about travelling; Note that she spoke no English, so when I say chatted, I mean struggled (but in a very enjoyable way) to share our experiences in my limited Português. She then made phone calls to the various pousadas (guesthouses), helped me select one, walked me over and introduced me to Alaní, the owner/operator of the place.
Alaní and her husband are incredibly nice people who went out of their way to make me comfortable. Her husband knew that I wanted to get an early start on climbing the mountain, so he woke up and had breakfast ready for me at 6:00am! (It is more common than not, here in Brasil, for a hotel or pousada to include breakfast in the price of the room). Further, he went on to ask if I had/needed sunscreen/a hat/flashlight/lunch and more!
The mountain, the third highest in Brasil, is easily accessible and climbed by many people, but as luck would have it, I had it nearly to myself that day. Unfortunately it was quite cloudy and the view, allegedly stunning on a clear day, was not the best.


Still, it felt great to, once again, stand atop a mountain and feel like the king of the world. I waited at the peak for two hours hoping for the skies to clear; no such luck, but a moment lasting no more than a few seconds made, not just the wait, but the trip worthwhile: As I waited, an eagle flew out of the thick clouds, at exactly my altitude, directly toward me, maybe 30m away. It was only but a few seconds before it veered off back into the fog, but it was truly magic!
I descended the mountain, and shortly after I began the 9km walk back to town a car passed and Julia and Renan offered me a lift. Renan had summited the peak numerous times but said that coming from the other side is much more rugged, less travelled, and more pristine. He dropped me off at my pousada with his phone number; should I be interested in climbing the peak from the other side, I should give him a ring. Insane!
Shortly before I left the road to start climbing the mountain, I had bumped into another couple, Antonio and Maria from my hometown BH! Antonio is a retired cop and they both gave me their cell numbers in case I ever needed any help in BH or anything at all during my time in Brasil. Once again, the only word I can think of: Insane!
I woke up the next (Monday) morning and decided to take a walk. I had two hours till my bus left. There was a waterfall about 8km away –no chance of getting there and back in two hours, but as I was strolling along, a car passed in that direction. I flagged it down and asked if they’d pass close to the waterfall. Within seconds I was cruising along with Sonia and her husband (coffee bean harvesters on their way to work). They dropped me off within 1km of the waterfall. I checked it out (there really wasn’t much of a waterfall there –It is the dry season after all) and proceeded to head back. Now I had about 75min to make it back to town to catch my bus. Unfortunately the way back was all uphill –there was little chance of me making it on foot. I was at the mercy of passing motorists. And as it happens there were none. So I started off at a slow jog, knowing that the odds were slim, but willing give it a shot. About half-hour into it, a car passed, I asked for a ride, and was dropped off right in front of my pousada with just enough time to pay for my room, say bye to Alaní and her husband, and get to the bus! Beautiful.
I left the town marked by the exceptional warmth and friendliness of these people.
I wanted to try to surf again so I headed next to a little town called Saquarema, known for its breaks, but the only place in town where you could rent boards was closed, and nobody knew when/if it would open. As it turned out, the place never did open but I spent a nice half-day relaxing on the beach.
I moved next to a town called Arraial de Cabo –here to do some diving. I did do two dives –in the coldest freaking water I have ever been in! According to the thermometer on my divemaster’s computer the water was 17oC!! I wore a fully hooded, 5mm wetsuit (my first time ever in this type of suit) and I still froze! Furthermore, the visibility was brutal! You couldn’t see more than 5m in front of you. I think it’s safe to say that diving in Southeast Asian waters really has spoiled me!
Next on to Rio; It is not nearly as bad as some say, and not nearly as good as others say.


It is definitely a beautiful city from afar. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t great while I was there: it was cold and cloudy most of the time. I did get up to the “Christ the Redeemer” statue, spent some time strolling the lengths of the beaches at Ipanema and Copacabana, watched surfers at Aproador, and hung out on Copacabana beach watching a bunch of dudes play futevolei (volleyball with no hands –just feet, head, etc); this was really impressive: up and down the beach, pretty near everyone playing had crazy skills!
It was a really good week; I was just pumped to be out on the road again.

It's a Sad State of Affairs When...

over a month has gone by and the only thing to report on is a conference I went to in New Orleans. Yep, work has been keeping me quite occupied (same old story). I haven't had much of a chance to get out there and see a whole lot. But, things are not bad at all and I am enjoying myself.

It was, however, really good to get away from teaching for a bit. My school sent me to New Orleans for a week to attend an IB conference. While there I did manage to get out and check out the town (I was in the French Quarter), the nightlife, the great live music, and Harrah's casino. One thing I didn't do a lot of is sleep, but it was well worth it.

There's not much more to say -there are a few pics in my albums from the trip, but I didn't take my camera out with me at night, so there isn't a whole lot.


I wish I had more to say about Brasil, but for now...
In a couple weeks I do have a week off and I hope to get out somewhere and check out someplace. What/where hasn't even begun to cross my mind.

Photo Album

...when it crashes again, I know I'm gonna get a bunch of "well, what did you think was gonna happen" or "dude, you're a slow learner" but such is life when you are too busy to find alternatives.

Yep, I'm going to continue posting my pictures to Atpic. For those people that do not care to read my jargon but would still like to see pictures, you can click on the Photo Album link to the right. Alternatively, if you click on a pic in the blog it'll take you to the Album containing it.

Weekend Bike Trip

Our bus arrived (10 hours after leaving BH) in the town of Guaratinguetá, Sau Paulo @ 5:30am on Friday morning. Ted and I had breakfast and hit the road. Friday was a good day, we biked on paved road, over mostly flat ground and some small foothills as we approached the mountain range we were to cross:


After 95km including what, at the time, I thought was a super-tough 8km climb, we called it a day.

It's different travelling here. In Asia, everyone looking at me sees a foreigner. Here, friendly people will just come up and start speaking to me thinking I'm just another Brasilian travelling through...until I open my mouth of course.

One thing that was really tough for my super-paranoid self to accept: In these tiny little towns, Ted will just leave his unlocked bike against the wall of a cafe and go inside for lunch. All I can think of while we're eating is about someone swiping the bikes. Ted, whose bike is worth 4 times mine, is totally relaxed saying that this type of thing doesn't happen in these types of towns (he is just as paranoid as I am as soon as we get to a city).
One more: Ted drinks spring water when he's in the mountains -unfiltered, untreated. He's been living and travelling in Brasil for 5 years and has never been sick. To me this seemed totally insane: I would never have considered drink untreated water in the past, and I carried enough of a supply to always make it to the next town.

Saturday started out really well. We biked only 55km because it was so tough. We were on dirt roads and nearly all of the first 30km were uphill. The last 20 km, though downhill, were not so easy as it was super-bumpy and if I moved too quick my chain would fall off or if I wasn't moving slowly enough I may have flown off the cliff as the road sharply curved hugging the mountainside.

The scenery was really fantastic. Green everywhere, hills and mountains surrounding us, very few people, little towns, ranches...brilliant. It felt great to be out there enjoying nature.

On our 30km uphill, Ted continued to stop at these springs (where the local townfolk get their water) and would have his fill. In a not-too-bright moment, I was looking at my warm water-bottles and at him drinking this nice, "clean", cold water, and I thought what-the-hell...

As you may guess, I chose the wrong spring to drink from. Ted and I both were sick as dogs that evening and spent a restless night emptying the contents of our stomachs in various ways. Speaking to some people in the town (called Alagoa) we found that some of them too had gotten sick recently. They told us that it'll be a three-day recovery time. The women at the Pousada (guesthouse) where we stayed were super-nice and very motherly. They took Ted's temperature because he thought he was feverish (we would go from super-chilly spells to being really warm), and they mixed up this horrible, bitter concoction and told us to steadily drink it throughout the day.

To make it to the town where we were to catch a bus back home, we still had to bike 120km on Sunday. We made it about 100m before the nausea was too much and we pulled over heaving. Agreeing that there was no way we could bike in our condition we, 2 dudes with bicycles, tried to hitchhike on a Sunday (the day of rest) in a small town in the middle of nowhere. After three hours with no luck we decided to take the only bus out of town for the day...in the direction opposite of home. 4 buses later and at 6:30am on Monday morning we arrived in Belo Horizonte. I showered and went to work. Ted called in sick, stayed home and took care of himself. He came to work the next day feeling mostly better. One week later, I can say that I am finally over most of it.

All things considered, I still chalk this one up as a good trip.