Brazil Places – Praça Pateo do Collegio

When I did a presentation course at college, a fellow student bravely stood up in front of his peers and announced in a camp voice ‘Today, I’m going to tell you about campanology - which, for those of you who don’t know, is the study of bell-ringing.’ We sniggered greatly. I’d never met someone who was interested in such a thing before. But I was young then. Opinions change with age. So maybe it is a sign of my age (I won’t say maturity) that one of my favourite things in Sampa is O Sino de Paz - The Peace Bell - in Praça Pateo do Collegio.

I came across it by accident on a Saturday afternoon, never having heard of it before. The noise it makes is as dolorous as Big Ben or any other large bell when sounding alone, and it’s not particularly pretty to look at - a 2ft high bronze bell-shaped thing hanging from a stone frame. Nor is it ugly though. The only good thing about it really is that it just hangs there alone in the praça, next to the entrance to the Museu de Anchieta. Because it is situated as such, anyone can ring it! For free!

It has a small demolition ball dangling from a chain inside, and a rope hanging down to head height, making it look like some gladiator’s weapon. It is just begging to be struck, but nobody seemed at all interested in it. I was. Any chance to make a different noise and my eyes will light up. For once, there was nobody around to stop me. I read the blurb about why it was placed there, pushed the rope away, and then swung it as fast as I could towards myself.

CLANG!

Oh wow. What a miserably beautiful sound (or beautifully miserable sound even) resonated around the praça. The skatekids stopped and looked over. The students in the museum queue turned as one. They all stared at me, waiting, wondering in silence. Perhaps it just seemed silent because my ears were ringing for far longer than the bell, having been so close. My brain was too. By the time it stopped, everybody was getting on with their lives again, but for a few seconds they had been all mine!

After all these years, I have some appreciation of the art of ringing a bell, but not to make a tune, just one big noise, like a gong. Once is more dramatic. The world peace I had wished for (like any good contestant in a beauty pageant) doesn’t appear to have come true yet. The world may not become a better place for me or you ringing that bell, but I guarantee that at least you’ll walk away from it feeling better.

Brazil Places – Porto Seguro

Some people may have happy memories of the place. I don’t. Like food, some places in life just don’t agree with you. It’s like an allergy or a bad reaction. Some people have it with fish, I have it with Porto Seguro. The city claims that Brazil was born there 500 years ago when Cabral arrived from Portugal, tactlessly ignoring the people who had already been living in the area (and still do) for thousands of years. Still, at least we didn’t have to stay there. First time around at least.

Arraial D’Ajuda is a far prettier place to stay but out of season it felt like every night was Tuesday night. It’s a pretty town and you can walk for miles along deserted beaches backed by cliffs of all shades from white through orange to crimson. The white part is argila, a cement-like substance which is very good for the skin (especially cellulite) when mixed with fresh water. There is a fresh water lagoon where people go to collect the powder, mix it into a paste, and apply it to themselves and each other. I could have stayed for hours, watching the two girls cover each other with mud, but I was dragged away. We only found out afterwards why the beach was regularly deserted. A little later than our visit, a group of four girls were attacked by four men while they were washing the mud of in the lagoa. The men came running down the path from the top of the cliffs and jumped into the water after them. One of them even had her havaianas stolen, along with the usual items of bags full of cameras, money, hairbrushes, lipstick and all the other things a group of Brazilian men might want to steal.

So there were a few of us experiencing the Porto Seguro area without being able to take photos of it. Of Arraial and its coloured lanterns, of Trancoso and its coloured houses (all connected internally so that the townsfolk could run and hide in the church when their houses were attacked by invaders), and of Corumba with its coloured cliffs. There were enough decent places nearby to keep us occupied while waiting for the wheels of Brazilian bureaucracy to turn in Porto Seguro.

We spent many, many happy hours there wandering the streets between police stations, bus company and lawyer offices, and banks, but only one actual night in the city. That too was memorable. We had to return for an early meeting and arrived too late at night to be worth making the trip on the ferry over the river. So instead of our beautifully appointed Arraial pousada with lighted pool (from where we’d watched a huge meteorite light up the sky on its way to land in a Bahiana field), huge breakfasts, incredibly friendly staff and clean, fresh smelling bedlinen, we stayed in one that had none of that and much less.

The lack of a camera meant that I couldn’t take a photo of one of our pillows. It was officially The Worst Pillow In The World – a worn-out grey sack half-filled with smelly hard sponge bricks. It looked like a bag of building bricks for kids. If that made us laugh, the shower made up for it. It nearly took my arm off as I stood in the pool of water and touched the metal tap. Shamefully, I didn’t mention it because I was too embarrassed about my bad choice of room. Inevitably, it happened to Blondie as well. We sneaked up to the slightly more expensive room upstairs. It had windows, so was worth paying the extra for, even if we didn’t.

After a prisoners breakfast (Coffee without milk? Or coffee? In Brazil?), we refused to pay the price he’d stated at the bus station. We needed the extra to pay medical bills after the shower. He said he would call the police. We told him, truthfully, to go ahead because that was where we were headed anyway. We invited him to come with us, calling his bluff. Just outside the police station, we heard angry shouting. Our man was running up the road after us, demanding his towels back. Now, I have to admit, it wouldn’t be the first time a hotel towel had miraculously crawled from the bathroom, across the room and packed itself neatly in my bag when I wasn’t looking, but not with these ones. The towels he left for us were of similar comedy quality to the pillow – grey and strange smelling with ancient holes connected by even older stains. They made rice-paper look thick. We were frankly insulted that anybody thought we might try to nick them. We told him they were upstairs in the other room. We’d had to take a shower there because ours was so dangerous. His demeanour changed instantly, from anger to relief at not having lost his towels. They were probably family heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation. He smiled and told us to have a good day, then returned to his pousada, leaving us to enter the police station more baffled than ever.

We should never have gone back.

Brazil Journeys: Rio de Janeiro to Porto Seguro

My first long-distance bus journey in Brazil, and the worst one by far. It had to get better after this one. And to think we were running through the streets of Ipanema with huge bags because we were afraid of missing it.

A late booking meant we had aisle seats near each other. As we sat in our seats, we played Bussian Roulette (Onibussian Roulete in Portuguese). Three of us in our seats watching the front for the people getting on, wondering who you were going to spend the next twenty hours sitting next to. The boys were hoping for a beautiful tanned brasileira wearing little more than a bikini. You sit, you wait, you watch. The couple? No, not them. They’re looking further back. The sweaty obese man? He sensibly booked the first row. Nobody else getting on? The bus set off. We all had double seats. Result! We didn’t know about the stop over the bridge at Niteroi. Then I saw her. I knew immediately that she was mine, my bus partner. Her and her tiny baby. I could feel it. They walked up to my seat, and sure enough, twas her. As I stood up to let her past, I could hear the laughter of the others. Twenty hours of dribbling, crying, screaming, gurgling, burping, farting, and other nasty smells. Poor them, how were they going to put up with me? We’d all lost the roulette.

As I looked forward to my sleep being disturbed by regular bouts of breast-feeding (not me you fools), as has happened on other buses before for me, my only consolation was that Barnoldinho hadn’t won either. The leggy beach-babe never materialised. He had a middle-aged woman with various smelly plastic food containers to contend with. We left Niteroi behind and headed north.

My partner and her baby lowered their seat and closed their eyes. I swear, they staying in the exact same position for twenty hours, without making a single noise. I think somebody drugged them. The journey seemed uneventful. I slept fitfully, we stopped regularly, the usual. At one stop, the bus disappeared without telling us. It returned half an hour later, probably a little lighter, and not just because of the cleaning. At some point I noticed my bag had been tampered with but it still had the zips and padlock in place. It wasn’t until we arrived in the pousada in Arraial d’Ajuda and tried to put some music on that I realised my ipod had gone. I hate those moments. It takes half an hour of searching, re-searching, unpacking and unravelling for you to admit what you knew immediately. Your gear has been nicked. A digital camera too. With huge memory card bought specifically for taking photos of all those amazing things I would see in Brazil without ever running out of space, as had happened in other places. All of them presents. All of them gone. Amazing photos of Costa Verde, Ilha de Gigoia, Carnaval in Rio, Pão de Acucar and Cristo’s feet. All gone forever. Plus passports, documents, and other less important things. It’s always hard to accept this. I checked my bag every few minutes for the next few days just to make sure it wasn’t hiding the things from me. I still check it occasionally now, just in case I missed a quiet corner.

I blamed the baby. That whole sleep thing was just a ruse.

The bus company were no help at all, even if they had the names and addresses of all the staff and passengers on the bus. Porto Seguro lawyers advised us to sue them because of their shoddy security measures. They’re lawyers. They didn’t tell us it could take seven levels of appeals until we won. They would win in any case. We would have to make regular, expensive return journeys to the place in order to pursue the case. In Brazil, the legal constitution (drawn up by lawyers) ensures that right of appeal, for those who can afford the legal fees, can be taken all the way to the Supreme Court in Brasilia. It is impossible to extract money from those who already have it. One return visit to Porto Seguro was more than enough to learn our lesson. We dropped the case.

Understanding Argentina – The Electricity

I’m not quite sure how the electricity works in Argentina, and I don’t think anyone else is either. It all seems totally arbitrary. There are at least three different types of socket for your plugs, so arriving with an adaptor to suit Argentina isn’t necessarily going to work. Some sockets have been adapted to work for all types:- the round 2-pin, the flat v-shape, and the 3 pointed star, but most haven’t. This means that Argentinean houses are full of adaptors. Not only my double whammy of English plug into travel adaptor into Argentinean multi-adaptor (it doesn’t work any other way but this combination, I don’t know why), but also for local electrical items. Sockets seem to have been places in houses by a tall drunk wearing a blindfold and carrying a pin. They appear everywhere – above ovens, out of reach up by the high ceiling, in bathrooms, under toilet seats, you name it, and there will be a socket. Except where you need one, which leads to cables travelling via a chain of adaptors to bedrooms without sockets, and amazing tangles of wires leading to multi-adaptors.

These things are amazing to behold – space for anything up to eight plugs at once, but only only in the correct combination, some with two holes, others three, some round, some square, some flat. It’s like the coordination puzzle for kids that you have to hammer the shaped blocks into the corresponding holes. A hammer would be handy to help the plugs go in sometimes too. They don’t all seem to be of the same size, never mind shape. Popeye on spinach wouldn’t be able to force some in, while others hang limply halfway out like they’re tired of working and just about to have a siesta.

Being Latin plugs, you might also be able to accuse them of acting a tad sensitively. Any small touch of a plug, any minute movement of a cable, can lead to a huge spark that momentarily lights up the house better than last night’s lightning. Sometimes it even happens without any touch at all, which fits in with the analogy perfectly. This can lead to you losing all kinds of work on computers, but sadly not this piece.

The Christmas tree lights flash on and off too, but not at regular intervals. Sometimes they’re on for an hour, sometimes off for half, and sometimes half of them are completely off while the other half flash merrily. I haven’t dared to go near them to investigate. That’s asking for trouble. And besides, I can’t find the plug. It’s lost amongst many in a scrum on the bathroom floor.

Understanding Argentina – Kissing

I haven’t been to every place on the planet but I still think I can safely say that nowhere on earth is there as much kissing between people as in Buenos Aires. It’s impossible for anywhere else to beat because everybody does it here. They’re not discerning, they kiss family, close friends, friends, strangers, in fact anyone close enough to be in kissing distance, and always on one cheek, not the French or Brazilian model of between one and three, depending on who it is you’re kissing.

It is quite difficult for me to adapt to this, especially when it comes to kissing the men. I don’t know how long I’ll have to stay in Buenos Aires until kissing men on the cheek seems like the natural thing to do. It sure doesn’t at the moment. It just doesn’t feel right. Men have beards or stubble and even moustaches, and feel all wiry and prickly and scratchy on your cheek. It’s horrible! I don’t know how girls put up with kissing a hairy man once, never mind every time they meet one. It makes me shiver to have a big Walrus tache tickling my face and ear, in much the same way as having a big cockroach running across my hand does.

I’m never sure whether to air-kiss people like a sweetie from Absolutely Fabulous, or to plant my lips on their cheeks like a vacuum cleaner on a curtain. But people here do seem to connect with their kisses, so I go with that one normally. Even with the men.

I think I could live in Buenos Aires until the ice-caps melt and still not get used to kissing men when I meet them. I still find myself doing it though, however awkwardly, even with non-Argentineans who understandably don’t want me lunging at them. Then I’m left pouting at fresh air in the middle of the street.

When you meet people you know in the street, the kissing starts to get a bit tiresome. If you only want to say a quick hello, it takes ten minutes to do it. You say hello, do the round of cheeks, say a few words, then go around again. I’m glad I don’t know many people to bump into in the city. Parties are a nightmare though. I once arrived at a house party, spent three hours being introduced to every man, woman and dog in the house, waiting for them to get up from their chairs, or to pause in their conversations or dancing to kiss me. After I’d finished 73 people, two dogs, and a spider, it was halfway through the night. I thought I’d better leave by midday so I started to go around again immediately after I’d finished saying hello. Next time I’m going to do both at the same time. Then I can enjoy the fiesta. But for now I’ll continue to feel confused and awkward with it all. How do you act? If you live in a house with Argentineans, do you kiss them every morning? And when they get home from work? And when they go to bed, like children? And when they get back from the toilet or from answering the door or when they come back from the kitchen with the coffees? It’s all too demonstrative for me. I’m English. It isn’t that I don’t like showing my feelings; it’s just that I don’t have any feelings to show. The only feeling all this kissing leaves me with is a desire to shave far more often.

Understanding Argentina – Buenos Aires Style

Or stylists. There are other striking things about the style of the porteños. Buenos Aires is renowned for being an almost European capital of style and elegance. While it is true that there are some very stylish people in the city, well-dressed, well-groomed, and well poised, Buenos Aires is also home to some of the worst haircuts on the planet. And so many of them! I haven’t seen such a high percentage of bad mullets since West Germany met Argentina in the 1986 World Cup Final.

They’re not the classic permed-at-the-back mullet favoured by the likes of Rudi Voeller, but usually mullets that make the wearer appear to be harbouring a nest of baby rats in the back of their hair. The tails of these ratitos hang down in wisps around the back of the neck, curling up above collars and around ears. Sometimes there are many rats, sometimes just one, its tail hanging way down the back having been growing for years. And that’s what baffles me most:

Are these haircuts cultivated or not?

Now I can almost forgive – ok, I can never forgive a mullet under any circumstances, not even close – somebody growing up in Smallsville, USA or Kleine Bavaria, Deutschland having a mullet because they’ve never travelled far enough from their farms to know any better. And sometimes it even suits them. But in a metropolis that looks to the European fashion capitals of Milan and Paris for its ideas, where people care about what they wear and how they look, this is totally unforgivable.

I have seen some shocking sights that a man should not have to deal with alone! An unprecedented double mullet, where the victim had a normally obscene mullet supplemented by a huge rat-tail, bouncing like a happy snake on a trampoline as he walked down the street. I had to cover my girlfriend’s eyes in case the shock was too much for her. I have seen a man with normal short, straight hair on top and a mullet made out of one big dreadlock hanging down the back like the mud on the back of a woolly mammoth! A combination of the tow worst hairstyles that a white person can have! Truly the worst haircut on the planet! And worse – I was with somebody who knew him! They actually stopped to talk to him! I pleaded heavy shopping and left. No way could I talk to him without either laughing, asking obnoxious questions, or beating him up.

But did he know? That he had the mullet? Do any of them know? The mullet part of the hair always looks scruffy and unkempt, sometimes in complete contrast to the neatly coiffured top and the contemporary clothes. Obviously I have a theory about this, because theories are all I have. Argentina had a financial crisis a few years ago. Everybody had to make cutbacks. Hairdressers did it by saving on wear and tear of their scissors, and by selling their hand-held mirrors. They never put anything behind the heads of their customers and ask ‘Is sir happy with the back as well?’ They just cut the top and the sides and say ‘Diez pesos por favor’! The mullets are never seen so they are never known about! Everybody with a mullet in Buenos Aires walks around the city laughing at the state of all the other people with mullets and their lack of fashion sense!

Somebody needs to rectify this situation. I think that is why I was called to Buenos Aires. I shall be that hero. Tomorrow, I shall hit the streets on a Mission of Mercy, with a digital camera to show them what they’ve never seen, and a large pair of scissors.

Argentina Places – Buenos Aires, City of the Midnight Sun

It surprised me to find out how late the sun sets in Buenos Aires. Sometimes after midnight, sometimes even later, I haven’t actually seen it go down yet. Like you, I thought only Scandinavia, Canada, Alaska and Siberia could claim this. Wrong! Buenos Aires has it too. Perhaps it is only because we’re approaching the longest day of the year in the southern hemisphere. Maybe in winter, it is dark 24 hours a day.

People have written before me about the strange quality of the light in the city. So strange is it in fact, that to the untrained gringo eye, it appears dark outside after about nine o’clock, with stars and moon showing above. Don’t be fooled. It is still daylight. The locals know. Just look at them, they’re all still wearing sunglasses.

You see people everywhere steadfastly refusing to take them off, even in dark sweaty clubs, deep underground on the metro, or just hiding in dark corners of bars. There could be a number of reasons for this:

1. The pollution. Outside yes, in dark smoky bars maybe, but smoking is banned in bars now. Impossible.
2. Everyone is blind. Unlikely. The few definite blind people I have seen have white sticks (bit of a clue) and walk slowly through the carriages asking people for financial help on the metro. They talk very slowly too, which is great for my Spanish listening skills. Most people in the city sound like machine guns when they talk, so that counts them out of being blind in my book.
3. Everyone is a frustrated rock/pop/film star. Only rock/pop/film stars are allowed to wear sunglasses indoors. It helps them to stay in character and helps them to hide their true introverted insecure nature behind the mask of dark glasses. If everybody wore dark glasses indoors, our stars wouldn’t feel special any more. Their fragile egos would shatter. It is impossible to be cooler than anyone else in Buenos Aires when, sat at a table across from you sits a woman approaching 80, still out and still wearing a huge pair of shades to eat well after midnight. She even looks like Mick Jagger’s mother, which makes you look like a total nobody in comparison. If everyone is a star, being a star is normal which makes it impossible to be a star. So can’t be that.
4. To avoid the effects of autosomal dominant compelling heliophthalmic outburst syndrome? Probably not. Even the doctors don’t know what it is.
5. Expensive sunglasses. Buying your shades from much-vaunted European design houses is an expensive business, hell the logos alone are big enough to cover your cheeks, so people like to wear them 24 hours a day – during the day, at night, while eating, while sleeping, to make sure they get their money’s worth. Well, you never know.
6. Pure misplaced vanity. Hmm.

I tried to fit in. I wore my shades on the metro occasionally, just to look like a porteño. It’s dangerous. I bumped into children and old ladies who were hiding from my field of vision. I couldn’t see properly. I tried to get on the train when the one that I’d heard arriving was on the other platform, the wrong side of the tracks. A blind man grabbed hold of my arm before I fell in the path of the train arriving on our side. I’m not sure if he was saving my life or asking for money. I said ‘Muchos gracias’ and left it at that. I took my shades off before I got on the train. Lesson learnt.

Argentina Journeys - Puerto Iguazu to Buenos Aires

My first long bus journey in Argentina was a revelation, especially after seeing some of the local buses, and after having travelled through much of Brazil and Bolivia by bus. The first shock is the size – double deckers! With only 3 seats across! Despite booking last minute tickets, we bagged the pair of seats at the front upstairs. Fantastic. Settle down, spread out, enjoy the view with your feet up, watch a couple of dodgy films, ah, very civilised. As well as the films, they provide coffee, water, sweets, blankets and a pillow. At the pit-stop, there was a three-course meal and ‘champagne’ laid on, all ready immediately we sat down.

The best surprise was yet to come though. A tray of glasses with ice and a bottle of ‘whisky’ appeared in front of my face. A nice nightcap to help you nod off to sleep, they know how to treat their passengers these people. They even had a dog coming on board to pet for those who needed to de-stress. Admittedly, petting a sniffer dog isn’t the best idea. A friend of mine did it once at an Italian airport and before he knew it, he was being frogmarched away for a strip-search and interrogation. He was just being friendly and thought that the dog was doing the same as it sniffed him. Our dog seemed friendly, unlike the moody police who followed close behind him, checking documents. An old woman in the seat behind us awoke with a start when the dog put his nose next to hers and hoovered around her face. She only complained about it for a few hours.

I wasn’t complaining at all. I’d never been treated so well. There were no pot-holes for the whole journey to bounce you awake every few minutes, and to slow you down for hours. We were about to arrive an hour and a half early! This couldn’t possibly be happening. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’d never had an early arrival in South America before. We’d only just finished the breakfast that was served up to us. Then we could settle back and watch the cityscape appear right before our eyes.

Brazil and Argentina are very competitive, both vying to be the number one nation of their continent. They compete at football, at financial growth, beef, anything short of war. But as far as the buses go, Brazil – your boys took a hell of a beating! Travelling around Argentina was going to be a doddle wasn’t it?