The Best Club in Brazil…?

I can boldly state, without fear of being completely wrong, that the best clubs in Brazil, perhaps even in South America, are in Santa Catarina.

There is no other place that has so many clubs ticking so many of the boxes that the best clubs need to have ticked. It begins with the music of course. To have the best music, you need to have the best DJ’s. The best DJ’s in the world come to South America for huge events such as Skolbeats in Sao Paulo, Reveillon in Rio, Carnval in Salvador and Creamfields in Buenos Aires. Names such as Fat Boy Slim, Sander Kleinenberg, Darren Emerson and Deep Dish have all made the journey down this way recently. There is little point in travelling thousands of miles just for one gig, so they generally squeeze in a bit of a warm-up a night or two before. More often than not, they visit clubs such as Warung, on Praia Brava above Balneário Camboriú, and El Divino, P12 and now Pacha close to or on Jurerê Internacional on Florianópolis.

Perhaps they come here because the atmosphere on the way to and inside these places is more relaxed than Rio, less shady than Salvador. Perhaps the people who make the journey from Curitiba, Porto Alegre and even Sao Paulo provide a more cosmopolitan crowd than clubs in Buenos Aires with porteños all seeming to hide their insecurities behind sunglasses while dancing in the same ´treading grapes´ style.

Being sited out of the cities, the clubs have scenery of beaches, mountains and lagoons that those of Sao Paulo can never hope to match. There is nothing like being able to see the sea while dancing in a club.

My favourite club in Brazil, South America, perhaps even the world, doesn´t have this vista do mar though. Much like the best clubs in Ibiza are up in the hills away from the strip (and away from the drunken British holidaymakers!), Brazil´s Best Club is tucked away down the backroads on the rural side of the motorway from the mini-Rio of Balneário Camboriú. It makes a strange contrast to park outside a wooden cow shed, with the attendant smells of four legged beasts, while parking alongside some 4x4 beast that may have never been so close to mud before. The church-going villagers of interior Santa Catarina must wonder.

As with the best clubs in Santa Catarina, Ibiza and the world at large, it is an open-air venue, one tented roof to keep off the rain. As well as the music, the atmosphere and the setting, you also need beauty on the inside. I will put this place alongside anywhere you care to name in any place in the world. There are more stunning girls (and boys) than any club I have ever visited. The VIP Area earned the nickname Silicon Valley, but unlike in clubs built for being seen, this is a true dance club. Girls may be wearing floaty feminine summer dresses and high heels, but this does not stop them trucking on through the madrugada.

2008 finished in real style as we took our visiting friends there to see Paul van Dyk on 30^th December, warming up for his Rio Reveillon gig on Barra de Tijuca. You can be as astounded as our gringoes were as the sun comes up over the surrounding mountains with thousands of beautiful people from all over South Brazil still partying hard around the lakes and stairs of the club, as well as filling the space under the tent. As the dark of night and the grey of dawn turn to blue daylight, you will also begin to appreciate how well-named is my Green Valley.

The Great Brazilian Animal-Off (Land)

After the resounding success of The Great Brazilian Fruit-Off (thanks Dimmi), finally comes The Great Brazilian Animal-Off – solely judged on which Brazilian animal of the land I would prefer to be.

Gambá 8%

Small possum-like creatures that live in my roof. Keeps me awake most nights. I don´t want to kill them though.

Capivara 12%

Capybaras are not so rare that seeing the World´s Largest Rodent (after Mickey) is a particular treat.

Marmosets and Tamarins 15%

These beautiful little monkeys will be much higher, especially if I visit the Rio reserve that is increasing the numbers of the rare Golden Lion version. For now though, my only memory of them is seeing a photo of one being smuggled overseas crammed into a thermos. His little face looking upwards depressed me.

Howler Monkey 23% (for sound only)

The amazing noise they make at dawn should come from a monkey the size of King Kong. Stay well clear of them though. You don´t want to know what they do if you get too close.

Maned Wolf 27%

Loses marks for not looking as cool as the Grey Wolf and for never having been spotted.

Puma 41%

I can´t rid myself of the association with Argentina and their national rugby team. Sorry. They do exist in the Pantanal though.

Deer 45%

I wouldn´t particularly want to be a Brazilian deer.

Onça 50%

Top marks for being the most beautiful animal in South America. No marks for being too intelligent to come near me in the wild. I haven´t even seen one in a zoo in Brazil! The Itaipu staff claimed he was hiding in a blind spot in the rocks. Que mentira. The closest I came was stroking a jaguar pelt that a crazy, friendly hippy and his lovely friendly wife were selling in Barreirinhas. It felt as wonderful as it probably once looked.

Coati 52% (for the views)

These little raccoony creatures have a cute gait and they will always remind me of Iguaçu Falls. Good to be able to get so close to wild animals in such a place.

Capuchin Monkey 58%

Named because of their love of a cappuccino first thing in the morning. Ok, not true, but very nearly for etymology students. Another cute little monkey with the hair of a monk. Good comedy rating.

Tamandua 64%

Such a unique creature with her flared trousers, tail like a flag and face like an ice-cream cone, but eating one thing for the rest of your life? I couldn´t be an anteater.

Jaguaritica e Jaguarundi 71%

Smaller cats such as the ocelot are beautifully patterned and very handsome. Perhaps a bit more of a Tasmanian devil-type personality would help though. Again, only known to me through the pelts.

Jiboia 73%

I travelled all around Brazil without seeing a boa constrictor in the forests and the jungles, and then finally, literally, bumped into one in a Florianópolis supermarket. Unexpected.

Macaco Prêto 74%

Cute isn´t the first choice amongst adjectives that I´d like to be called, but the spider monkey being the cutest monkey on the planet wouldn´t be the worst thing.

Tatu 77%

I´ve seen a few armadillos waddling around, and cute they are in their own way. In some remote Amazon village, I saw the shell of one that was big enough to bath all your children in.

Sucuri 83%

Yeah, sure. Who wouldn´t want to be an Anaconda? I also like the fact that one of the rivers in Bonito that tourists happily float down is named after these beasts. Foreign tourists would run a mile if they knew it was called Anaconda River. Uncle Mad also had a story about finding an 8m monster in the Amazon, giving his terrified Colombian friend the tail and saying ´Hold this – I´m going to find the other end´.

Paca & Cutia 88%

One Amazon dawn I left my hammock and walked away from our camp. I sat on a log and enjoyed the Sound of Sunrise. The bird chorus was overshadowed by a rustling in the trees. I was worried but couldn´t miss the chance of seeing something special. A little agouti appeared snuffling out of the jungle and went right past without even noticing me. I enjoyed the moment. It was only my moment.

Bicho Preguiço 92%

The sloth is one of nature´s finest gifts. Lack of predators made him lazier than a stoned koala. Talk about an easy meal. Easy fun too, as you can tickle, stroke and examine those long claws very closely in complete safety. Tap him on the shoulder and he only turns around 10 minutes later. Enviable lifestyle.

Onça Preta 99%

The coolest animal with the coolest name on the planet. I fell in love with them after seeing one in a zoo as a kid. The yellow eyes, the sleek fur and the hidden patterns. Loses marks for not being a true species, rather a genetic melanin mutation present in all spotted cats. Oh, what a mutation to have.

Anta 100%

The tapir is the winner. This humble little beast is related to the horse and rhino, but has a nose which makes him look like he´s training to be an elephant. One match-winning fact clinches his victory in my mind. The male anta has proportionately the largest ´fifth leg´ of any mammal. No animal in Brazil or anywhere else can beat that.

Understanding Brazil – Giving Directions

If you’ve come across this missive by accident after hitting the interweb in search of those directions that your friend emailed, because you can’t find the way to his house, his explanations made no sense and the reference points he gave you to look out for never appeared, there’s a good chance that you are in Brazil. Maybe this should be in the ‘Ask a Brazilian’ section: Why are Brazilians so singularly useless at giving directions to another place? Or perhaps a new Gringoes topic – ‘Ask a Gringo’. Has anybody ever arrived at a Brazilian house after receiving directions from the dono or dona?

The problem with Brazilians giving directions isn’t that they give you the wrong information, it is that they fill your head with so much worthless information that it is impossible to ever find your way to a shop, house, bar, market, club or even hospital. It isn’t just my lack of Portuguese that causes the problems, as Blondie tends to ask the way when we’re both lost together. She comes back as baffled as I do about where we supposed to go next. She is Brazilian though and proved it well when a Peruvian friend arrived the other week. He came all the way from Lima via Rio without any problems at all, finding the right bus at the station, changing later, getting off at exactly the right stop until he ended up right outside our place. Here he was stuck though. Early Saturday morning, we were in bed, he had to call his brother in Peru from the orelhão (enough of a task in itself in Brazil), who then emailed us to tell us our guest had arrived. Blondie hadn’t given him the address. Just a small detail.

When asking directions to a bar in the street, nobody ever says ‘Não tenho idea’. They spend half an hour telling you about where they think the bar might be, usually involving trees that have no relevance to their tale. ‘You’re going to see a tree. Well it isn’t that tree. Go past that.’ More details about how Tio once had a vasectomy on that street, and something about a giant cow follow from what you understand, before they finally tell you to walk 8 blocks then ask somebody else. All directions in Brazil finish with you needing to ask somebody else. That somebody else usually sends you back the way you came and you gradually find yourself getting closer to your target in ever-decreasing circles, like a drowning spider about to go down the plughole. The giant cow remains a mystery.

To be fair though, I did once get perfect directions in Brazil. We were invited to a party in Trancoso, but out in the bush not by the beach as you’d expect. The house owner came to town repeatedly to pick anyone up who wanted to go. The drive was as dark as anywhere could be, with an hour of driving up and down muddy tracks on the rolling hillsides, bouncing through ditches and streams until we reached the house in the middle of just about nowhere. Not being a likely place to find a taxi passing an hour after dawn, we asked how to get back to town. The directions given by the dona da casa were incredible. Turn right; down the hill; through the wooden gate; over the plateau; through the monkey forest; alongside the river; turn right at the flower shop and there you are! Only an hour’s walk somehow. A magic path. Or perhaps it is always that easy when the references are so perfect. We’d arrived at the house and headed to the serving hatch with two fingers held up ready. ‘Dois cervejas por favor’.

‘Where are you from, lads?’ came the answer in a lovely soft Lancashire accent. She was English.

Driving in Brazil

For visitors to Brazil, there is one essential piece of advice that you need – Don’t. But if you’re going to be staying for some time, you may not be able to avoid it forever. There are a few obvious points of which you should be aware – nobody stops at red lights in the dark of the city night, they just slow; signs help for the first turn-off but then generally leave you to fend for yourself; those five lanes each side highways, with cars crossing like ribbons on a maypole; motorbike and scooter riders all seem to have a deathwish, which is regularly granted; helped by the potholes big enough to bath in after rain; and the fact that almost everybody in Brazil who drives and drinks, drinks and drives. The recent police clampdown on drink driving has made the news but will take a long time to change cultural habits, especially until late-night public transport improves.

Glossing over all these minor quibbles, I’d prefer to pick up on the not-so-obvious traits. As with job titles, cars in Brazil are a very important status symbol for those who need material goods to boost their own self-worth. Which is everyone. Might is therefore right in Brazil and the big important people drive big important cars, and it is up to those lesser mortals to stay out of their way. This can be seen outside the gates of the underground car parks of every city block in the country. The two lights flash, the siren wails, the gate rises, and out of the darkness bounds a blackened 4x4 which bounces across the pavement, oblivious to the old dears and pregnant women with prams hurriedly moving out of its path. The signs tell you all you need to know – ‘Cuidado Veiculo’ not ‘Cuidado Pedestres’. There are no signs on the way out of the garage.

Once those cars hit the open road, this aggressive driving style lends itself very well to accidents, which is lucky as Brazilians love to see the aftermath of a good accident. Driving along the notorious BR101, at various strategic points where speed cameras might be useful, the accident blackspots instead have a television van waiting for the call. You can’t call them ‘Ambulance Chasers’ as they usually arrive long before the emergency services, filming the wreckage for live news programmes and interviewing shaking, blood-covered victims awaiting treatment. Death doesn’t make a difference to the coverage, except for the dearth of interviews. I saw some dramatic footage of a motorbike that had crashed in a tunnel, starting with huge smears of blood that led eventually to the bike and a still warm, possibly twitching corpse, lying in a huge pool of sangue. Just to confirm for any watching loved ones, the reporter also held up the photo id of the deceased, and that of his passenger friend, whose body was wrapped around the fence a metre above the road surface. Wonderful afternoon viewing.

I recently enjoyed a journey being driven by a Brazilian surfer. In holiday weekend traffic on the BR101 and in torrential rain, he was driving so close to the car in front that he couldn’t see its brake lights. Any sudden stops in the queue in front brought a slamming on of brakes and a few expletives about the abilities of the driver in front. After two hours of this he started to fall asleep at the wheel. I didn’t want to wake him as his driving had improved. Driving like this isn’t unusual. Brazilians are terrible drivers who all seem to know that every other Brazilian is a terrible driver, except themselves. You may counter this with a Senna, a Massa and a Piquet or two, but I would argue that the careless, aggressive driving style coupled with fantastic natural ability would likely lead to the best Brazilian drivers being amongst the very best in the world. The rest, though, leave me wondering if the Driving Test of Brazil consists of a question – ‘Que é isso?´ If you answer ´Carro´, you pass.

So this is what you have to contend with if you want to drive in Brazil. Don´t worry too much though, because worst comes to the worst and you have a tragic accident on a Brazilian motorway, at least you´ll be famous for 15 minutes in Brazil.

Understanding Brazil – Catching Flu’

I watched a staggering television interview with President Lula the other night which left me worrying, in layman’s terms, about Brazil’s strong economy. With the credit crunch in the USA still squeezing the housing market and much more, Brazil’s Finance Minister smugly announced to a press conference the other week that Brazil wasn’t likely to catch a cold from the pneumonia-laden sneezes of other countries far away. He doesn’t seem to realise how fast sneezes come out. With Brazilians being made redundant from manufacturing companies due to lack of exports, including one home-security company that sold alarms to US households, I think Brazil already has the sniffles but hasn’t yet noticed. With the Dollar dropping so drastically against the Real in the last year or so, Brazil’s exports have become more expensive, with China picking up the slack as it has been doing with other countries for the last decade. Even traditional Brazilian industries such as the shoe manufacturers are losing out in this globalisation. If the strongest economy in the world is struggling and they import only the cheapest goods, Brazil loses its exports to the country that will soon be the strongest economy, and has less money coming in from abroad. Very simple layman’s economics, no?

Apparently not, if you listen to the President of Brazil. The interviewer asked him about Brazil’s strong economy and whether that was down to his government. Lula claimed a lot of the credit for his party and also for the fiscal policies of previous presidents. The next inevitable question was about his preparations for a downturn if Brazil catches a cold from the fallout of the US crisis. Policitians are a strange breed and always like to be seen as in control. For this reason, during interviews and questioning, most will be primed on the likely questions and the possible answers that they can give to reassure the watching public that they are prepared for every eventuality, even if it is a blatant lie. Lula seemed taken by surprise and not a little angry with this question. He replied that they had no plans in place for this because it wasn’t going to happen. The next question was about his Plan B in case it did. I’m not sure he understood fully or just doesn’t have a grasp of contingency measures, as he said that he didn’t work with plans so if he had no Plan A, how can he have a Plan B? The expression on the face of the interviewer told me that she’d expected to be told about a back-up plan, and for his audience not to worry, even if he didn’t reveal any details.

Reassured?

I’m sure that at the very least we can take this as an honest reply and that the President’s government is hoping that by staying clear of the United States and sticking their heads in the sand ostrich-style, the country can avoid the circulating flu. Easy. With such detailed forward planning and with R200M to fall back on in the government’s coffers, you can rest easy in the knowledge that Brazil will continue to grow until it is proud to have the kind of stable first-world economy of which it has always dreamed. For this, we can all be grateful to President Lula.

Pass the tissues somebody please, I feel all emotional. Or maybe it’s just a sneeze or two coming on.