Brazil - 2/2 - i should log off

Sorry, no vegetarians allowed

October 8, 2009 By Jillian

I know its practically blasphemous for me to say this, but listen up America, we have not conquered the buffet. Everything might be bigger in Texas, but Texas sized doesn’t hold a candle to Brazil. From the moment we got off the bus in Curitiba to the moment we left we seemed to be plied with delicious dish after delicious dish.

I hate buffets, but I’ve been known to bend the rules in places like Vegas, so when our friend told us about a local all-you-can eat place on our first afternoon in Curitiba, I went along with it for the cultural experience. And I saw the huge table of pastas, meats and every kind of savory dish you can imagine. It looked incredible and tasted even better. I gorged myself, drank some Cachaca and declared myself stuffed.

The rodizios and Churrasqueria in Brazil are incredible. Settled by a large number of Italians, the buffets are often piled high with delicious Italian specialties (risotto, gnocchi, pastas, etc…) as well as plates of high quality vegetables, fruits, and of course sushi. (Brazil is home to the second largest Japanese population outside of Japan!). After the initial buffet, I was hooked, and decided to up the buffet scale a bit and head to a Churrasqueria. Churrasquerias are brazilian bar-b-que places famous for their smoked and bar-b-qued meats which are carved tableside at an unending table side buffet of meat. Definitely not the place for a vegetarian.

Meats of every cut, size and seasoning arrive at your table on a roasting spit, and are expertly carved onto your plate. Just image, filet mignon, roast beef, sausages, steaks, veal, chicken and even roasted chicken hearts in a continuous carne-fest at your table. They look and smell delicious, and although we have restaurants like this in the United States, this is above and beyond anything I’ve ever seen. It is completely overwhelming. When you flip that card to green the meat arrives before your hand is back from the card and doesn’t stop until you flip it to red. And no matter what cut of meat it is, (usually we didn’t know) it is juicy and delicious. The meat was incredible, I’m usually not such a big red meat fan, but this was literally the most delicious steak I’ve ever tasted. After 20 minutes I realized my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I had to put my fork down and walk away…back to the buffet of salad and fruit. Will power is everything.

One things for sure, if you ever come to Brazil, plan to leave your diet at home.

Brasil, Brazil

October 6, 2009 By Danny

Usually when we write a little summary post of a country we do so at the end when we’re already in a new county. Right now though, that wouldn’t seem quite right. Brasil is so different from where we’ve been that we really just need to share that now.

First off, they don’t speak Spanish here. Not since our first days in Mexico have we felt this lost when communicating with people and it has been very frustrating. We hear the Portuguese, respond back in Spanish, and everyone just looks at each other like they don’t know what happened. I have vowed that I will not be traveling like this in Africa…Swahili lessons here I come.

Constantly we get and give a thumbs up to show that we understood the Portuguese…initially we assumed this was just the international symbol for “you got it?” or something like that. Looks like it’s more the Brasilian sign for “we’re all good” because it is used all the time here.

When we first got to Brasil (they spell it with an ‘s’ not a ‘z’ so we’ll leave the ‘s’ in for now) we entered from Bolivia which is probably (not looking at economic statistics, just going by what I saw) the poorest country in all of South America. If ever we saw a case for not being land-locked I think this would be it. From the pobreza of Bolivia (with 0 coastline as compared to Brasil’s 7400km) we were shocked to see our first Brasilian city even had a skyline! When we entered the country, two brothers that had helped us said “Welcome back to civilization.” I didn’t realize how much I had missed that civilization for the prior few weeks in Bolivia.

It was here in that first city of Cuiaba that we first had our real taste of Portuguese. The accent in that region sounded more like a Swedish version of Spanish than it did a Portuguese accent. So strong was the Swedish that whenever someone opened their mouth I felt the need to point, say “Swedish Chef”, and walk away. Luckily the Swedish sounds went away with the countryside and now the accent sounds like a mix of Spanish, French, and Italian.

For us, the challenge of spending here has been just as great as the challenge of speaking. Brasil is fully a 1st world country and with the prices to go with it. The Metro in Rio costs almost to the penny what the metro in Washington, DC costs, and city buses are similar. The long distance buses are expensive and domestic airlines know this and price their flights just a touch higher. We actually flew from the Pantanal to Rio, it cost double what the bus would have cost but took an afternoon instead of 40 hours. At least the beer and wine is still affordable!

Bathrooms all have toilet paper and paying for the bathroom seems to be the exception rather than the rule. We’ve spotted water fountains in a variety of places (that means the water is treated) and our faces are stuffed with more food than we can handle EVERY time we go out to eat.

One negative though, my arms hurt. There are VW Beatles all over the place and every 2 minutes Jill puts her fist into my arm and says “Punchbuggy whatever, no punchbacks.” Luckily this has frustrated me immensely, disturbed my sleep, and I now hit her and say “Punchbuggy imaginary, no punchbacks.”

Why Rio Won

October 5, 2009 By Danny

Sorry Chicago, you guys should try for the WINTER Olympics…..leave the summer Olympics to the beaches and palm trees of Rio…one of the most stunning cities we have ever laid eyes on.

The biggest problem with Rio was that it is a City…and a city is a place where people live in order to go to work and go about their daily lives. We don’t work and our lives are far from normal…hence cities aren’t usually so enticing to us. In Panama City we saw the canal, in Bogota we hung out with Couchsurfers, and in Lima we took some time from our hectic travel schedule to get visas for Bolivia and Brazil. Here in Rio though, we found one of the most amazing cities in the world.

I think the best way to describe Rio is that it is what you would get if you bulldozed Miami and put New York City along the banks of Biscayne Bay. An eclectic mix beachgoers, business people, cross dressers and travelers, it is the first place I was able to wear shorts and not feel like someone had written the word tourist across my back. Nestled amongst beautiful bays, stunning beaches, and rainforest covered hills, Rio really is the closest thing we’ll ever have to the oxymoron of a city built in paradise.

And it was raining.

We had one day of nice weather and would have loved to hit the beach, but that day happened to be Yom Kippur so we were obliged to pass. The rest of the time we wandered downtown and through hilltop communities. We ate the street food (meat on a stick continues to be the best value) and even attempted a [free] museum in Portuguese. Really though, we spent three days wandering around.

We also managed to meet up with some local Couchsurfers who took us out for a wonderful night on the town. One didn’t get out of class until 10pm and the other had class even earlier the next morning, but that didn’t stop us from closing the place down and getting back to the hostel around 2am.

I would move here tomorrow if only they didn’t speak Portuguese. Sure, the weather right now isn’t so great…but it is spring here right now so its only fair.

Pantanal

October 2, 2009 By Jillian

I don’t know about you but when I go to any sort of expo or fair I always put my name in for the raffles, there’s always the chance I might actually win. Just before we left on this little adventure (also known as our trip around the world) we won a trip to Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest freshwater wetlands. So from the very beginning of this trip without a travel plan, we planned to go to Brazil and the Pantanal come hell or high water. After that Bolvian/Brazillian border crossing
and three long bus trips on unpaved roads, phew it felt like both had come. We were definitely looking forward to staying at a nice lodge with good food and have a few days off our budget, but getting there was a stressful rush and we ended up having to skip some places along the way that we would have liked to visit. Just gives us another reason to return to Brazil!

Some guidebooks say dry season is the best time to go to the Pantanal because the animals are all clustered around what water there is, while others say the wet season is the best time because the animals are all clustered on what dry land there is. Go figure. At almost 10 times the size of the Florida Everglades, we were hoping to see more than just a few animals. Fortunately, we saw tons of animals (and for the record its dry season!) from capybara’s and caimans to birds of every species you can imagine. It was undoubtedly great wildlife viewing, but unfortunately we’d seen many of the same species on our pampas tour in Bolivia.Frankly its hard to get excited about the 1000th caiman sighting, even if they are really cool, really scary creatures. Our guide, a retired heavily accented Italian, peppered his bird and animal sightings (which were always very, very exciting to him even if we couldn’t see the creature) with mamma mia!!, leaving us wondering what the actual animal names were- is that a little blue heron or a little mamma mia blue heron? Depends who you ask I guess.

And then of course there was the piranha fishing. Unlike our attempt in Bolivia , we were wildly successful at piranha fishing in the Pantanal. Dropping his line into the water, Danny caught one in what seemed like seconds while my line sat quiet. Disappointed in my fishing prowess (after all I’ve definitely done way more camping and fishing than Danny) I resolved to shaking my pole in the water as violently as possible to imitate an animal in distress. Of course this prompted a “mamma mia” from the guide who scolded me for “over doing it.” Right, like I ever do anything in excess. 🙂 Two seconds later I got my first piranha of the day. Score!

Unfortunately it was my last to make it successfully into the bucket. I caught two more, but neither actually stayed on the line long enough for a picture, so you’ll have to just trust me on this one. 🙂 My second catch, thrashed around in the water a good bit as I fought to pull him in. Back and forth we went until it broke my line. This of course, prompted a “mamma mia!” and when my line was restrung and baited I quickly attempted again. Waiting for what seemed like forever, I tried my now patented shaking technique, which yielded no results. Again and again, with no results. With everyone else pulling in piranha’s by the bucket load (or so it seemed on my quiet end), I prayed for the another one. And it came, and again broke my line. Must have been the biggest piranha in the lake 🙂

What happened to our catch you might ask? Well, the first evening at the lodge we watched sunset from the dock and couldn’t believe the dozens of caimans lurking nearby in the water. Completely unafraid of us, they almost seemed interested in us. After piranha fishing we found out way. To guarantee animal viewings a lot of lodges feed the wild animals, ensuring that their clients get good pictures. As you can imagine this has a significant impact on the animals behavior towards humans and within the local eco-system. I was floored when the pirnha’s we caught were fed to the caiman’s from the sandy beach in front of the lodge with about a dozen people standing around. Talk about an unhealthy practice for the ecosystem and an unsafe practice for the guests! Just what I want, a dozen caimans who associate humans with food, anyone up for a night hike along the river? 🙂

Sorry, no vegetarians allowed

Brasil, Brazil

Why Rio Won

Pantanal

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