After fourteen hours of air travel, including a layover spent entirely in Charlotte's security checkpoint, I finally arrived in Philadelphia Sunday morning. There really is no place like home, even if you have to travel through customs, immigration, and security to get there.
I truly enjoyed my six months in Brazil. It wasn't always easy to adapt to the culture or to take care of things at home while abroad, but with every challenge, I grew wiser, more resourceful, and usually more flexible. Six months was just the right amount of time to complete a fair bit of my dissertation research, delve into the Portuguese language, and begin to understand Brazilian culture.
Now it is time for me to finish my dissertation in Pittsburgh. I will miss all the friends I made during my stay in Rio, but I know that many of us will stay in touch. I will also miss walking to the beach, taste-testing all the different tropical fruits, and of course, I will miss the tropical sun. (Pittsburgh could use some of that sun!) I will not miss Rio's public transit, or lack thereof, nor the 4am street-sweepers or 10pm trash-collectors. It all balances out in the end.
This blog is now finished. You can page through old entries by clicking the "Older Posts" link at the bottom of the screen. You can also view my photos from Brazil (and other trips I've taken) on my Picasa homepage. Feel free to leave comments on both sites.
Thank you all for joining me along this journey.
Até a próxima vez. Until next time.
Briana
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Amazônia
July 30, 2011
It is difficult to put the Amazon into words. You could call it a tropical rainforest, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth. You could call it an agricultural opportunity for palm or soy or sugarcane, or you could call it a logger's dream (or worst legal nightmare). You could call it an international climate policy issue or an environmental activist's call to arms. You could call it a witness of cultural history. The Amazon is all of these things, and yet, none of these descriptions fully capture its essence. The Amazon is bigger than us and it becomes no less mythical once you're surrounded by it.
When I told Brazilian friends that I was going to tour the Amazon, they looked at me in surprise: "Even Brazilians don't go to the Amazon," they said. It's like the frontier of the Wild West: it's impossible to imagine what lies beyond.
It certainly felt like the Wild West as I investigated my options for tours. There are so many options, so many scams, and so many Internet wars between competing companies. I wanted to find a tour group that truly practiced the three tenets of sustainability, which means it needed to be environmentally responsible, economically viable, and socially just. (Amazon tours make excellent case studies on greenwashing!)
It took a week of research, but I finally found the right group. I chose Amazon Gero Tours, run by Gero Mesquita himself. In the Lonely Planet guidebook to Brazil, Gero is described as an all-around nice guy who will go out of his way to accomodate his guests. This is absolutely true. To begin with, he gave me his phone numbers for both his office and his home, told me I could call at anytime of day or night, and even picked me up at the airport in Manaus when my flight arrived at 1:30 in the morning. I stayed in a hotel next to his office in Manaus, slept for a few hours, and started the tour at 8:00 the same morning.
The tour group started with eight people. Since people stayed for different lengths of time--I stayed four days and three nights; other people for three or two days--there was a constant ebb and flow as some people left while others arrived. The logistics were very well organized, though, so it wasn't at all chaotic. Throughout the four days, I met one guy from South Africa, one girl from the U.S., and seven people from Germany, five of whom were travelling together. (Germans travel a lot.) I also met at least ten Brazilians, all of whom either worked for the tour company or lived in the area. The Brazilians told some of the best stories about life in Manaus and in the Amazon. We had nightly storytelling sessions; the only thing missing was the campfire!
One of the common misconceptions that the Brazilians cleared up right away was the distinction between "native" and "indigenous" people. I had thought that "indigenous" was the more politically aware term to call the "native" people. Not so! The native people are essentially the locals, the people who grew up in the area, and usually, the family of whom has lived lived in the area for generations. The "indigenous" people are the people who have essentially been "uncontacted". These are the people who live in tribes deep in the forest and have no concept of today's "modern" life. The tours were always led by two people: one native person and one person from Manaus.
Throughout the four days, we stayed in a "jungle lodge," which was essentially a very simple bed & breakfast, but adapted to the jungle -- i.e. electricity and running water only for a few hours per day, accomodations in bed or hammocks (I chose bed), and all meals included. There were many different activities: hiking in the jungle, learning about medicinal plants and trees, fishing for piranhas, catching (and holding) caiman, watching the stars at night, and LOTS of canoeing. All of these activities are shown here in my Picasa album. I'm not going to try to describe each activity--that would take several more entries--but if you have any questions, leave a comment on this blog and I'll be happy to reply.
I'll leave you with some of my favorite photos from the trip:
Our amazing guide, Reuben, showing off the grasshopper he made from palm leaves.
The Caboclo family home we visited.
Caiman!
In the canoe, wind at my back.
Salvador, Bahia
July 22, 2011
A few weeks ago, I visited the city of Salvador in the Northeastern state of Bahia. Click here for a photo tour of my trip.
Updated Travel Plans
July 10, 2011
[Click on the calendar for a larger, clearer image.]
I made a few changes to my travel plans. Some changes were forced (i.e. dropping Peru from the itinerary), while others I made to preserve my sanity (i.e. choosing the Amazon over the Pantanal instead of trying to visit them both). With this new schedule, I end up spending more time in Rio than I had originally anticipated for the month of July, but I am choosing to enjoy quality over quantity. I am still leaving on Friday for four days in the Amazon jungle, and needless to say, I am super excited!
I'll write more about each trip as I return. Tomorrow I will write about Salvador, the historical and cultural city where I just spent the last three days. For now, sleep is the next item on my agenda. All this travelling and organizing makes for a very sleepy blogger!
Time to Travel!
July 2, 2011
Behold my travel route for the next three weeks!
I plan on taking the bus for Routes 1 and 3. I will fly for Route 2, due of the sheer distances involved. Along the way, I will stay in various eco-lodges, employ local guides (mainly for Route 2), and of course blog about the whole adventure. Stay tuned for the details!
Sugarcane & Ethanol in Avaré
May 15, 2011
I am still pinching myself to make sure I didn't just dream this past week. It took me a month of e-mails to seven different contacts to arrange this visit to Avaré, but looking back on the experience, I can say that every minute of preparation was completely worth it.
The purpose of the trip was to learn firsthand how sugarcane ethanol is produced in Brazil. Therefore, I arranged a tour of an ethanol plant and of the adjacent sugarcane fields. However, sugarcane fields are notoriously out in the middle of nowhere, so I needed a place to stay. That's [partly] where the organic fruit farm comes in. The farm's director, Luciano Bopp, graciously offered me free lodging and board at the farm's guest house, pictured at the top of this entry. More than "just" a place to stay, Luciano also gave me a tour of the organic fruit farm and a tour of the sugarcane fields, which the farm rents out to the ethanol factory that I visited the next day.
My schedule was approximately as follows:
Friday, April 29: Take bus from Rio to São Paulo (Tiête station, 6 hours). Take Metrô to hostel in São Paulo and spend the weekend in the city.
Monday morning: Take bus from São Paulo (Barra Funda station, 3.5 hours) to Avaré. Meet Luciano at the bus station and travel 45 minutes by car to the farm.
Monday afternoon & evening: Explore farm (fruits + sugarcane) with Luciano.
Tuesday, all day: Tour ethanol factory in Cerqueira César, a municipality near Avaré, and have lunch with Director José Meyer.
Wednesday: Take bus from Avaré to São Paulo (Barra Funda station). Transfer to Tiête station in São Paulo. Take bus from Tiête station to Rio. (15 hours total)
Wednesday, midnight: Arrive in Rio. Collapse in bed in Gávea for a few hours before returning to campus and class Thursday morning.
Looking at this summarized schedule, it does seem like a lot of travel for two full days of tours. It was. However, there wasn't really a shorter way to do it (aside from the weekend in São Paulo, of course). There is no direct bus from Rio to Avaré, so a transfer between bus stations in São Paulo is required. Additionally, Avaré doesn't have any public transportation--none that goes out to the farms, anyway--so a car was required there, too. Furthermore, flying wouldn't have made any sense at all, so in the end, I just took the opportunity to enjoy the road trip to the fullest.
But now I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's rewind a bit and talk about Avaré:
Luciano (below) is the current director of the organic farm in Avaré, Fazenda Takaoka, and is one of the people that made the entire trip possible. Our tour of the farm started out in the fruit fields, where he explained to me the basics of organic farming and the details of how organic farming works at Fazenda Takaoka. One of the points he stressed was that production on an organic farm functions basically the same way that it does on conventional industrial farm -- just without the chemicals. For fertilizer, they use compost and occasionally some other natural fertilizer product, and for insecticides/pesticides, they use pheromones from butterflies and moths, which just keep bugs away from the crops instead of killing the bugs altogether. The farm does occasionally allow other groups to carry out experiments on the fields. Below, Luciano was showing me an insecticide experiment from a local NGO.
There are six different types of fruit grown on the farm: peaches, plums, nectarines, guavas, lychees, and atemoyas. This year, insects and especially caterpillars have been attacking the guavas. Nearly every guava has had some sort of damage, so the white bags shown in the tree below were designed to protect the guavas while they ripen on the tree.
After touring the fruit fields, we continued onto two other fields: corn and royal palm (the latter of which I had coincidentally tasted in a pastry for the first time before I left for Avaré). Luciano insisted that the corn grown for people was the same corn that was fed to livestock; the livestock corn was just harvested later. I'm almost positive that this is not the case in the U.S.--that two distinctly different types of corn are grown--but apparently, in Brazil, growing just one type works perfectly fine.
After the corn debate, we moved onto the sugarcane (below).
When Luciano and I visited, most of the sugarcane field was muddy due to irrigation activities. The fields are irrigated using what is essentially a giant portable hose, the reel of which is what I'm sitting on in the picture below. This portable setup allows the fields to be irrigated semi-automatically with water and fertilizing nutrients, such as recycled vinasse (a byproduct of ethanol production), being supplied through the pipelines on either side of the base.
After touring the sugarcane fields, I visited the combined sugar mill and ethanol factory, Usina Rio Pardo, pictured below.
"Usina" in Portuguese means "mill," "factory," or "refinery." "Rio Pardo" is the name of a nearby river, where "Rio" means "river" and "Pardo" means "brown" or "mulatto." The river unfortunately holds up to its name: its water is a muddy brown due to eroded sediment along its banks and run-off from nearby farm fields and factories. It should be noted, however, that Usina Rio Pardo takes special care to minimize contamination of the river and other waterways, and actually recycles much of the water used throughout the factory.
I had two guides for my tour of Usina Rio Pardo. Marta (left) was my main guide. An architect by training and accountant by day, Marta was my English-language translator. I am proud to say I did most of the tour in Portuguese, but there were parts where I had no idea what the person was describing or how to phrase a question, and for these parts, Marta's translations were absolutely critical. Since Marta lived in the U.S. for 13 years, we also reminisced about things we missed from the States. At the top of the list were: Girl Scout cookies (Samoas for Marta), Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods. Our conversation made me start thinking about everything else I miss ... oops. My second guide for much of the day was one of the plant's engineers. He guided us through the actual machinery portions of the plant, once we donned our hard hats, of course. Some of the main pictures from the tour are below. The sugarcane arrives from the fields in what looks like a series of boxcars. Each car of cane is dumped onto a huge conveyer belt (with sides) and is transported through the various processing stages.
People at the plant always know how much sugarcane is being harvested and processed, and where each batch is currently located, thanks to a sophisticated GIS system of real-time data, field maps, and video images. Each computer screen below shows a different type of information being collected: amount of sugarcane harvested per hour (top center), descriptions of the harvesting equipment and their real-time locations (bottom left), and hourly precipatation data plus real-time video images (bottom right).
Once the sugarcane is harvested, it can begin to be processed into ethanol. First, sugarcane juice is extracted from the stalks. The juice is the base for the ethanol. The outer fibrous material of the stalks is burned to produce electricity for the rest of the factory and for a nearby town. Through a series of filtration, evaporation, and fermentation processes, a molasses-like substance is produced. At this point, about half of the product is separated to produce table sugar and the other half continues to be manufactured into ethanol.
Below is a sample of the liquid before it is fully fermented (8 hours required). Antibiotics are added to the liquid to kill the bacteria and other microorganisms present at this stage.
The sugarcane that is not processed into ethanol is made into table sugar. Below are trays of pre-crystallized sugar and a sample of the almost-crystallized molasses. Unsurprisingly, this was the sweetest smelling segment of the tour. I had a chance to taste the sugar earlier in the day and it tasted exactly as it smelled.
In addition to producing ethanol and table sugar, Usina Rio Pardo also carries out its own laboratory testing, mainly to control the quality of its product. The pictures below are from the plant's lab. Most of the testing deals with microbiological control and variations in composition. The Brazilian government requires very little, if any, of this information to be reported, so the testing conducted at the lab is primarily for internal knowledge and to find ways of improving the product.
After touring the lab, the indoor departments, and the plant itself, it was time for lunch! Marta and I joined the Director José Meyer and about eight other employees and visitors in a private dining room, where we had a chance to share conversation, learn more about each other's work, and simply enjoy one another's company.
And ... that was the day! After lunch, I sat down and filled in all the gaps in my notes while I waited for Luciano to pick me up and drive me back to the farm. (The only trouble with being without a car and/or public transportation is that you always have to rely on someone for everything!) I was exhausted at the end of the day, but extremely grateful for the tour. I went to bed that night infinitely more knowledgeable about sugarcane and ethanol production than I had been when I woke up that morning.
Anytime you go on a tour or learn something new, there is always more to learn. The tour of Usina Rio Pardo was no exception and I now find myself reading various outside sources to make sure I understood everything exactly right. Below, as a bonus for those of you who understand Portuguese, are two short YouTube videos about Usina Rio Pardo (Part I & Part II), featuring Director José Meyer:
On Wednesday morning, I returned to the bus station in Avaré and settled in with my notebook and some snacks for the trip back to Rio, via São Paulo. The bus arrived in São Paulo on time (at the Barra Funda station), but after I transferred to the Tiête station to catch the bus to Rio, there was just one problem: the bus to Rio never arrived. After speaking with various officials at the Tiête bus terminal, we finally figured out what was wrong: I was waiting for a bus arrival, not departure. That is, somehow I ended up with two tickets from Rio to São Paulo and no tickets from São Paulo to Rio! It wasn't a catstrophe--I just went upstairs and exchanged the ticket for the next bus leaving for Rio--but it did mean that I had to wait an extra three hours at the bus terminal and didn't get back to Rio until 2:30 in the morning. It wasn't fun, but it could have been worse: I could have been forced to spend the night at the Tiête station!
Despite the minor transportation mishap, I am so glad I had the opportunity to visit Avaré. I learned about the agro-industrial sector that drives Brazil's economy, I met some incredibly knowledgeable and friendly people, and I had a chance to relax for a few days on an organic farm. I couldn't have asked for anything more! If any of you happen to ever find yourself in São Paulo or Brazil and would like to see some of these places for yourself, just ask me. I heartily recommend visiting Fazenda Takaoka and Usina Rio Pardo and would be delighted to make the connections!
Making a List. Checking it Twice.
April 13, 2011
This is another travel logistics post. I have nine weekends for short trips between now and July, and then I have the month of July for longer trips. (The university trimester ends June 30.) I leave Brazil--from the Rio airport--on July 30.
This is my current destination wish list:
Brazil
Rio de Janeiro:
Santa Teresa (maybe this weekend)
Tijuca Forest (after the rainy season)
Petrópolis, "The Imperial City" (haven't picked a date yet)
Other Brazilian destinations:
Since Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador are all South American neighbors and Ecuador is [relatively] tiny, one possiblity would be to make a 2- to 3-week trip in July through all three countries. That would be an adventure!
So now we've reached the audience participation segment of this blog show. I'd love to hear your suggestions on any of the destinations I've listed here. Do you know of good, cheap places to stay? Likewise, do you know of any easy ways of getting cheap plane tickets as an estrangeira in Brazil, without using a native Brazilian's CPF number? What places have you visited or heard about that you would definitely recommend? What have I missed? Thanks everyone!
This is my current destination wish list:
Brazil
Rio de Janeiro:
Santa Teresa (maybe this weekend)
Tijuca Forest (after the rainy season)
Petrópolis, "The Imperial City" (haven't picked a date yet)
Other Brazilian destinations:
Salvador, Bahia (April 21-24, over Easter)
Iguaçu Falls / Itaipu Dam (haven't picked a date yet) (Falls between Brazil & Argentina; Dam between Brazil & Paraguay)
Manaus, Amazonas (looking for reputable eco-tours through part of the Amazon Rainforest; I can sense greenwashing from miles away!)
Blumenau, Santa Catarina - German settlement (haven't picked a date yet)
South America - other countries
Cali, Colombia (probably July, after the semester ends)
Machu Picchu, Peru (haven't picked a date yet)
Argentina - Buenos Aires and/or National Park of Glaciers(!)
(Fun fact: Did you know Argentina owns part of Antarctica? Me neither.)
Somewhere in Ecuador ... ?
Since Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador are all South American neighbors and Ecuador is [relatively] tiny, one possiblity would be to make a 2- to 3-week trip in July through all three countries. That would be an adventure!
So now we've reached the audience participation segment of this blog show. I'd love to hear your suggestions on any of the destinations I've listed here. Do you know of good, cheap places to stay? Likewise, do you know of any easy ways of getting cheap plane tickets as an estrangeira in Brazil, without using a native Brazilian's CPF number? What places have you visited or heard about that you would definitely recommend? What have I missed? Thanks everyone!
Keeping Track of Travel
April 5, 2011
My time in Brazil is a little more than 1/3 over and I still have a lot of places in Brazil and South America that I want to see.
In Brazil, I want to visit:
- the Tijuca Forest (hiking in Rio)
- Santa Teresa (artsy bohemian district in Rio with a famous bonde, or trolley/tram)
- Salvador, Bahia (Northeastern Brazil)
- Manaus, Amazonas (largest city in the Amazon, with entry to the Amazon Rainforest)
- Blumenau, Santa Catarina (German settlement in Southern Brazil)
Other South American countries I most want to visit:
- Colombia (most likely Cali and not the more dangerous Bogotá, but I also just read about the fairy-tale-esque Cartagena)
- Ecuador (Galápagos Islands)
- Peru (Machu Picchu)
- Argentina (Buenos Aires)
With this list, I better stop writing my dissertation and start packing my bags!
What do you all think? Are there cities or countries you have heard particularly good stories about or would personally recommend? Leave me a comment and you might just influence my travel plans.
Cabin Fever meets Wanderlust
April 4, 2011
peace. it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. (anonymous)
I have a refrigerator magnet with this quote on it and I've been thinking about it a lot lately. In a city that never sleeps, is bustling with people and traffic at least 20 hours a day, and is under perpetual construction, it can be a challenge to ever find a quiet moment in Rio. Add to that the stress of classes (both in Rio and, via Skype, in Pittsburgh), frustration with gathering certain data for my dissertation, and the daily effort required to learn a new language, and it becomes difficult to even imagine a quiet moment.
Enter cabin fever and wanderlust. I began to feel a bit trapped in Rio and just wanted to get on the road and see something. Anything. At the same time that wanderlust hit, I also heard about a weekend meditation retreat that was happening at a Shambhala meditation center in São Paulo. (I already knew some people from Shambhala Pittsburgh, so this connection wasn't completely crazyrandom.) A few days later I decided I'd venture to São Paulo for the weekend and see what the retreat was all about. I just had to get a bus ticket and find a place to stay.
After a brief Internet search Wednesday night, I found the São Paulo Global Hostel and made reservations online. ($19/night? Yes, please.) The process couldn't have been easier. I had similar luck with purchasing bus tickets Thursday morning. I had been warned many times about Rio's Rodoviária bus terminal, where I needed to go to buy the tickets. Without a doubt, the Rodoviária is located in a seedy part of town--I purposely didn't wear any jewelry and was constantly aware of the location of my wallet--but other than that, it was fine.
I took a bus from Gávea that dropped me off right in front of the main building, where I went in and bought my ticket in five minutes with no language difficulty whatsoever. When I left the Rodoviária, I walked around the corner and caught another bus to the university campus. I was on campus by 9:30 am, and considering most graduate students and faculty arrive between 9 and 10, I was right on time.
The process was even simpler on Friday--I took the same bus to the Rodoviária and was on the road to São Paulo by 11:30 am. The plush seats and curtains on the bus were a welcome change from the bare bones buses I usually depend on to get around in Rio. (Is it so difficult to add shock absorbers to public buses?! Really now.)
The scenery between Rio and São Paulo was incredible: open fields and rolling hills, often with mountains in the background. For some reason, we had huge lowlaying clouds all the way out to São Paulo. You can see some of these clouds in the picture below (left).
My first impression of the city of São Paulo was the same as my first impression of Rio -- it's so colorful! Houses painted in bright oranges and blues with white trim. Bold colors against concrete sidewalks and patchy asphalt roads.
The traffic in São Paulo is supposed to be even crazier than the traffic in Rio. However, I didn't see much of it because that traffic occurs mostly during the week when all of the Paulistas, as the people of São Paulo city are called, are hard at work. This is in contrast with the Cariocas of Rio, who are known for their great skill of enjoying the beach and enjoying life in general. (These are stereotypes, of course, though I do wonder if the act of enjoying your work is a concept in either city.)
When I arrived in São Paulo, I went straight to the hostel. I was originally skeptical about the hostel, largely because it's website is full of glowing "testimonials" from former guests (all of which could be completely fake), but I took a chance because it was cheap and convenient. It turns out that I had no reason to worry. The hostel was clean (minus a small bathroom renovation project), safe, and full of friendly world travellers. There were two Danish girls backpacking through South America for four months, two Brazilians who were visiting São Paulo for a Magic tournament, an Australian semi-professional Poker player (did I miss the card game memo?), a few people from Fortaleza in Northeastern Brazil, and an adorable kitten named, "Tutti," pronounced "TOOH-chee."
The hostel managers were great, too. Maria organized activities each night and Rafael, the owner, took care of the behind-the-scenes operations. Rafael also told great stories and one night serenaded us with Spanish-Gypsy music on his guitar. (Never believe someone who says they only play a "little bit.")
The nights at the hostel were lively without venturing into the "out-of-control party" territory. They were actually really nice. The mornings started fairly early since everyone wanted to make the most of their days in São Paulo (and avoid the intense midday sun.) On Saturday and Sunday morning, I headed over to the Shambhala center, which was barely three blocks away from the hostel. As people were arriving at the center, there was breakfast with tea and coffee set up on the back porch and we all soon fell into conversation.
There were about 15 participants for the weekend at the center. The majority of people were born and raised in Brazil, but a large minority of the people were of Japanese descent, which makes sense since São Paulo is the largest Japanese "settlement" outside of Japan itself. There was also one person from England, one from Australia, and two people, including myself, from the U.S. I was really surprised to see such an international group and I learned so much from people telling their stories about where they came from and what brought them to São Paulo.
To make a long story short, we ended up having a great weekend together, and over cups of tea and conversation, over guitar melodies and Portuguese-Spanish-English translations, I began to realize what I had been missing in Rio. I have been spending the past two months primarily around Brazilians (obviously), but talking really only about the day-to-day stuff and maybe current events and other such topics. In day-to-day interactions at school or work or home, people don't really talk about travel, much less about their own travel experiences. I then spent this past weekend completely surrounded by people who had traveled to São Paulo from other cities or, in the cases of the ex-pats, from other countries. We immediately formed the traveler-to-traveler bond. We could all assume we had been living "on the road" for some period of time and we all knew, to a certain extent, what that way of life was all about. We could then bring out the food and the drinks and just wait for the stories to materialize. They always did.
All in all, I'm so happy I ventured out to São Paulo for the weekend. The travel time and arrangements were fully worth the effort. Now I'm just thinking about where I want to go next: maybe Colombia or Argentina or Peru ... ?
I have a refrigerator magnet with this quote on it and I've been thinking about it a lot lately. In a city that never sleeps, is bustling with people and traffic at least 20 hours a day, and is under perpetual construction, it can be a challenge to ever find a quiet moment in Rio. Add to that the stress of classes (both in Rio and, via Skype, in Pittsburgh), frustration with gathering certain data for my dissertation, and the daily effort required to learn a new language, and it becomes difficult to even imagine a quiet moment.
I took a bus from Gávea that dropped me off right in front of the main building, where I went in and bought my ticket in five minutes with no language difficulty whatsoever. When I left the Rodoviária, I walked around the corner and caught another bus to the university campus. I was on campus by 9:30 am, and considering most graduate students and faculty arrive between 9 and 10, I was right on time.
The process was even simpler on Friday--I took the same bus to the Rodoviária and was on the road to São Paulo by 11:30 am. The plush seats and curtains on the bus were a welcome change from the bare bones buses I usually depend on to get around in Rio. (Is it so difficult to add shock absorbers to public buses?! Really now.)
The scenery between Rio and São Paulo was incredible: open fields and rolling hills, often with mountains in the background. For some reason, we had huge lowlaying clouds all the way out to São Paulo. You can see some of these clouds in the picture below (left).
We also passed several favela settlements. Favelas can be broadly described as Brazil's shantytowns. Many favelas have no running water, no electricity, and until the recent addition of police stations, were run strictly by druglords. Tourists are always told NEVER to enter a favela without a community guide, and even then, safety is a reasonable concern. Of course, some favelas are more dangerous than others, but none of them are clean, safe places to hang out. (Nor are they tourist attractions; they're people's homes.)
Much of the scenery between Rio and São Paulo consisted of a combination of the two features above: favelas and open spaces. Being a good tourist, though, I still took pictures at every opportunity. You can see many of these on my Picasa page here.
The traffic in São Paulo is supposed to be even crazier than the traffic in Rio. However, I didn't see much of it because that traffic occurs mostly during the week when all of the Paulistas, as the people of São Paulo city are called, are hard at work. This is in contrast with the Cariocas of Rio, who are known for their great skill of enjoying the beach and enjoying life in general. (These are stereotypes, of course, though I do wonder if the act of enjoying your work is a concept in either city.)
When I arrived in São Paulo, I went straight to the hostel. I was originally skeptical about the hostel, largely because it's website is full of glowing "testimonials" from former guests (all of which could be completely fake), but I took a chance because it was cheap and convenient. It turns out that I had no reason to worry. The hostel was clean (minus a small bathroom renovation project), safe, and full of friendly world travellers. There were two Danish girls backpacking through South America for four months, two Brazilians who were visiting São Paulo for a Magic tournament, an Australian semi-professional Poker player (did I miss the card game memo?), a few people from Fortaleza in Northeastern Brazil, and an adorable kitten named, "Tutti," pronounced "TOOH-chee."
The hostel managers were great, too. Maria organized activities each night and Rafael, the owner, took care of the behind-the-scenes operations. Rafael also told great stories and one night serenaded us with Spanish-Gypsy music on his guitar. (Never believe someone who says they only play a "little bit.")
The nights at the hostel were lively without venturing into the "out-of-control party" territory. They were actually really nice. The mornings started fairly early since everyone wanted to make the most of their days in São Paulo (and avoid the intense midday sun.) On Saturday and Sunday morning, I headed over to the Shambhala center, which was barely three blocks away from the hostel. As people were arriving at the center, there was breakfast with tea and coffee set up on the back porch and we all soon fell into conversation.
There were about 15 participants for the weekend at the center. The majority of people were born and raised in Brazil, but a large minority of the people were of Japanese descent, which makes sense since São Paulo is the largest Japanese "settlement" outside of Japan itself. There was also one person from England, one from Australia, and two people, including myself, from the U.S. I was really surprised to see such an international group and I learned so much from people telling their stories about where they came from and what brought them to São Paulo.
To make a long story short, we ended up having a great weekend together, and over cups of tea and conversation, over guitar melodies and Portuguese-Spanish-English translations, I began to realize what I had been missing in Rio. I have been spending the past two months primarily around Brazilians (obviously), but talking really only about the day-to-day stuff and maybe current events and other such topics. In day-to-day interactions at school or work or home, people don't really talk about travel, much less about their own travel experiences. I then spent this past weekend completely surrounded by people who had traveled to São Paulo from other cities or, in the cases of the ex-pats, from other countries. We immediately formed the traveler-to-traveler bond. We could all assume we had been living "on the road" for some period of time and we all knew, to a certain extent, what that way of life was all about. We could then bring out the food and the drinks and just wait for the stories to materialize. They always did.
All in all, I'm so happy I ventured out to São Paulo for the weekend. The travel time and arrangements were fully worth the effort. Now I'm just thinking about where I want to go next: maybe Colombia or Argentina or Peru ... ?