The Brazil Chronicles Vol I: Brazil Uber Alles

Capivara. Papivara? Feed Me!

Hello

Sorry not had a moment to write since arriving – been on the run since arrival. The police are still looking for me…

Left the flat in good time after collection by an “it’s my first day” taxi driver – he was wearing a tie and carried our bags. Unfortunately, excellence stopped there. He could not drive; lots of poor clutch work, a limited ability to read the road and no ability whatsoever when it came to staying in his lane (Perhaps he is Brazilian?). I hoped the pilots would do a better job keeping to their flight paths otherwise we were going to be in trouble.

We had to book a people carrier as I had my 9 kilograms of luggage and my little backpack as hand luggage and a pair of shoes and my toiletry bag in a shared tog bag. The remaining cubic feet of the tog bag were taken up with an Imelda Marcos-like collection of TLS's shoes. TLS also had her handbag, wheelie bag hand luggage and a small caravan or large wheeled suitcase, depending on your perspective with the rest of her clothes. Apparently, if you are Brazilian, a 46 kg luggage allowance is viewed as the amount you MUST take with you, not the maximum permitted amount you MAY take with you.

Arrived at the check in counter to be greeted by a thin-lipped member of the Gestapo with the personality of a Rottweiler. IS THIS YOUR BAG? IS THIS YOUR ONLY BAG? PASSPORT NOWWWWWW! FASTER! FASTER! AT THIS COUNTER YOU ARE MY BITCH! RAUS RAUS RAUS. JUDENNNNNNNNNNN RAUS!

Fortunately the short haul flight to Frankfurt, Luftwaffe flight LH509 was like flying business class – enormous seats with plenty of leg room. I thought if this is what German airlines are like, how on earth did they lose the war. I started to whistle the theme to the Dambusters. Unfortunately, it was not to last…

We arrived at Frankfurt and got the bus to the terminal. Then we walked. And walked, And walked some more to the international departures terminal. We checked our hand luggage through security and were half way to the departure lounge when TLS realized that her left hand was empty. We walked some more all the way back to security to fetch her hand luggage. But first they had to scan if for signs of explosives as they were suspicious of the collection of charger cables seen on the X-ray machine. Fortunately, they did not check my collection of Kindle, cell phone, iPod, toothbrush, razor, PDA and other assorted cables and chargers and the like.

Rushed to get to the departure lounge which was absolutely packed. They announced in German, English and apparently pidgin Portuguese that the flight was so full that anyone with more than one piece of hand luggage had to check in the extra pieces. The Germans immediately followed orders and went to the counter while the Brazilians continued eating their cheese, sugar, fried banana, pastry and condensed milk sandwiches.

They eventually called people in seat row order which was completely ignored by everyone except a few outraged Germans all holding a single piece of hand luggage. Much like the Iberia disaster flight of two years ago, the plane was old; the trusty Luftwaffe workhorse without any frills. I didn’t know that the Junkers-88 was still in service. Actually, it was an old Boeing 747 which still had the big box TVs stuck to the ceiling every ten rows. So much for movies and games on demand! And no pouch with toothbrush, travel socks and ear plugs!

Having eaten a burger at Giraffe (not a giraffe burger) at Heathrow, I wasn’t planning on eating on the flight, but it smelled so nice I ordered the chicken curry which is a very strange thing to server to 480 people when there are only four toilets on board. Fortunately, I tend to get backed up when I fly; perhaps it is the fear that causes a tightening of the required moving parts?

The “entertainment” started with a news broadcast, and then football, possibly in German, possibly in Portuguese. Possibly I did not know as I was listening to my iPod and reading Heart of Darkness on my new Kindle. Nice.  Then the pre-movie sit-com started. Was it cutting edge comedy by the likes of Jack Whitehall? The self-deprecating humour of a miserable Jack Dee? The sheer horror of Frankie Boyle? No, it was an episode of The Golden Girls with Bea Arthur. I had forgotten how much she looked like a man. I think the plane was made in the same year as the show. I tried listening to the on-board music but they only had two channels; one playing thrash metal and the other on a loop endlessly playing the Horst Wessel song.

We landed pretty much on time at the same time as another flight so the three passport control people on duty certainly had their hands full dealing with a 900 strong, 48 turn, snake queue of people trying to get through immigration.

Fortunately, Mr Perreira, the preferred taxi driver, was still waiting for us at the exit and we made our way through to Higienopolis to meet the parents. In Sao Paulo rush hour traffic. It took just over an hour so not bad at all. Got in, said our hellos, especially to the much-mellowed racing pig that is Phoebe who has put on a bit of weight since I last saw her. In case you do not know, Phoebe has something of a reputation and is known as the Charles Manson of the canine world. She hardly barked at all and was even pleased to see me, but that may be down to Number Two Mother having the foresight to meet us downstairs with a dog biscuit.

A quick shower, unpack and off to buy the phone cards which we could not get because of the massive queues at all the phone shops. Had a coffee and marvelled at how expensive everything is. I bought a small pair of travel speakers at Dixon’s duty free at Heathrow for my iPod – 40 quid – the same set in SP – 85 quid and our coffee machine, for which I paid the princely sum of 179 pounds including a 30 pound voucher for free coffee is about 450 pounds in Brazil; these people are crazy!

Then I went to the bank to draw cash. Nothing worked and even the very nice bank manager who unlocked his bank to come out and help us could not resolve the cash withdrawal problem after spending an hour on the phone to customer support. (Imagine an English bank manager doing this after quitting time? “Sorry mate, can’t help you now, I need to count my taxpayer funded bonus). I spent half an hour trying to make reverse charge calls to my local bank and when I finally got through, it was after 11 pm local time and they were closed.

Fortunately the evening was saved by Number Two Mother cooking a whole cow for Shabbat which made everything seem much better.

Tried again Saturday morning and they thought it may have had something to do with the earthquake as my cards were absolutely fine; just not working here. Apparently, they had received other calls from overseas customers with similar problems. I have not been to a bank since so still not sure if things are back to normal; one only goes to a bank here as a last stop before going directly home. One does not make a withdrawal and then hang around to spend it. One may not live to spend it. A little bit like South Africa then?

Saturday morning rushed to the phone man with borrowed cash and got the SIM cards before heading straight to Aguas de Lindoia (Literally: the place where the giants are watered). While only 170 kilometres, it took about five or six hours to get there as we stopped for two lunches. Brazilians are a lot like Hobbits in that they also like to double up on their meal times. The journey was pretty much without incident apart from one brief moment when Number Two Mother decided to bend the laws of science by attempting to occupy the same space and time as a light delivery vehicle in the next lane and another when we went through the single lane closure because of rock falls and the collapse and subsequent absence of the oncoming lane on a mountain pass.

We arrived in the resort/spa town at about 4 pm and met P (TLS’s sister’s son) and N (TLS’s sister’s husband’s mother - apologies; Jewish geography lesson.) Unpacked and mooched around the hotel before taking dinner. A very old hotel, currently undergoing renovations (renovations being an ongoing theme wherever I stayed and whenever I attempted to sleep) but was obviously quite grand in its day. Probably why it is called the Grande Hotel Gloria. Still, it was very nice and relaxing with very friendly staff and all inclusive three meals a day. Lunch and dinner always had at least two types of meat from the ‘eat as much as you can’ buffet. We did pretty much nothing for three whole days with no phones, no computers and no TV. Actually, there was TV, but it is so bad that it is classed as ‘no TV’.

Unlike Sao Paulo (and London) you can drink the water from all the taps as it comes from the local aquifer. Across the road, and accessed by a secret tunnel (although not that secret as everyone in the hotel knew about it) was the Balneiro or spa baths where people go to ‘take the waters’. After a preliminary examination, they sit around with measuring cups and, depending on their ailment, return every 30 minutes to drink a pre-determined, measured amount of water.

It was a little bit tired and run down, presumably having not been repainted since opening in 1951. The gardens and ponds (now empty) were designed by the famous landscape designer Burle Marxe (Literally: Capability Brown) and were in need of weeding. For all that, you could see that it must have been quite something when it opened.

A typical hotel day went something like this:

07h00. Woken by the goddamn rooster that lives in the back yard of the hotel.

07h00 – 08h00. Try (unsuccessfully) to get back to sleep.

08h00. Have a shower. The showers in The Place where the Giants are Watered are huge. The shower nozzles are set so high in the bathroom that most of the water has evaporated by the time it lands on you. This makes it extremely difficult to wash the soap from your body which is obviously a problem as the last thing you want is for bubbles to start frothing out of your shorts as you walk into the dining room. Short people are obviously unable to bathe as, at their height, it is not possible to wash in such a fine mist.

08h30. Go to breakfast in the football pitch sized dining room (making sure no bubbles are being released from waistband). Steer clear of the pastry table struggling to support weight of sugar and sweetened pastry. They even had pao de sucar con asucar (Literally: sugar bread with added sugar and forget the insulin – nothing can help you now). It is a wonder the entire nation is not diabetic. Number Two Father, who has a number of health issues, is fortunate in that diabetes is not one of them and he makes an interesting sight as he slowly and methodically works his way through a plate of 480 pastries each morning. I have never seen anything quite like it. Each dessert table had a huge bowl of doce de leite which is like heavily sweetened condensed milk but with added sugar. They also had doce de banana which is much the same thing, but is considered a health food by Brazilians as it has fruit in it. This then would explain the doce de laranja (ditto orange), doce de abobora (ditto pumpkin), goiabada (ditto guava) and pudim de liete which is like a crème caramel made with sugar, sweetener, condensed milk, cane sugar, pure sugar, brown sugar, white sugar, saccharine, Sweetex and Candarel.

09h45. Go to the pool, lie around, read, pass the time until lunch. Wonder what meat will be served.

12h00. Lunch. Eat meat. Avoid pastry table.

14h00. Back to the pool or take a drive into town.

14h01. Narrowly avoid killing a motorcyclist as Number Two Mother negotiates the vaguely acknowledged stop street at the end of our road.

14h07. Drink medicinal beer with shaking hands.

14h09. Notice in reflection of mirror behind bar that beard is now almost entirely white. Remaining hair appears to have fallen out.

14h45. Go back to hotel and have a lie down, bide time until tea.

16h00. Tea and cake served in downstairs bar.

16h30 – 19h00. Contemplate dinner.

19h00. Dinner with two types of meat. Cross room to avoid pastry table which is now calling you by your first name.

21h00. Retire to lounge and thrash the in-laws in only your second game of Canaster. Gratifyingly freak out mother in law with only card trick you know.

To break this magnificent monotony, we did go for a walk with a Monitor. This is not a giant lizard, but what they call the entertainment staff. She took us on a six km walk down the mountain and around the lake in the middle of the village. On our way we saw a posse of capivara (Literally: Big teeth, no eyes). We stopped to feed them, or rather Stella did; I took photos from a distance (available on request at a nominal fee). Watching these seemingly tame but savage beasts relentlessly chew their way up a six foot long piece of bamboo reminded me of Number Two Father and his breakfast pastries. Capivara are the largest members of the family Rodentia, roughly the size of Labradors, with thick coats, four massive teeth and (apparently) no eyes and which spend much of their time swimming and the rest of the time lying in the shade waiting for tourists to pass them bamboo shoots. This posse had babies with them so I did not want to get too close although they did look very pat-able. I would leave such foolishness to other gringo tourists.

That was pretty much the way we spent three marvellously relaxing days before we took the advice of a fellow holiday maker and took an alternate route home through Sao Paulo state’s second largest city. Right through the traffic-ridden middle. Short cut? My ar....

I don’t understand Portuguese that well, but I am fairly sure that both sets of advice we were given by separate garage attendants were ignored. We got home at about 6 pm which gave us just enough time to shower and change before heading out to a sushi carvery to meet TLS’s sister T, husband Foffi and their son, P. Very nice evening despite T’s run in with the staff who would not serve her the same carvery as us but without rice. With a massive carbohydrate aversion equalled only by a fondness for protein, she has been known to eat the tops off pizzas and pour gravy on her salad. I managed to eat about 8 of everything so felt the money was well spent. Went home via T to pick up Phoebe who had been lodging with them while we were away. I made sure I had a dog biscuit in my pocket.

Wednesday was fairly relaxed. Skipped breakfast out of respect for my waistline and went with TLS to the opposite end of town. She dropped me at Morumbi, a large shopping centre – the food hall alone is probably bigger than The Cape Quarter – while she went to the doctor. I spent a very relaxing two hours with my book and a large cappuccino which cost the equivalent of a small hatchback.

Got home via the Supermercardo (Literally: Massive bill, tiny trolley) and bought groceries and two bunches of flowers for Number Two Mother as a thank you for paying for our holiday in Lindoia. It was very unexpected and very much appreciated. We shall have to take them out for dinner one of these pleasantly warm nights. Did I mention that at 5 pm in Lindoia, it was 28 degrees. Nice.

Finally managed to draw cash from the bank this evening and got home with cash and innards intact at about 8 pm for a light dinner of rolls and cold cuts. I think I ate beyond my capabilities at the hotel.

Fat Al

PS On the way home, listening to a pleasant Café de Paris CD, TLS recognized the “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf” theme and asked if I was familiar with the story “Little Red Hiding Rood”? This will only amuse those of you familiar with Portuguese pronunciation. (Lessons available on request for a nominal fee.)