Ushuaia & Tierra del Fuego

Ushuaia´s heavily promoted claim to fame is that it is the southernmost city in the world, but this isn`t true as that title belongs to Puerto Williams, across the Beagle Channel in Chile. Ushuaia instead should focus on what it does have to offer, which is easy access to great hiking in a beautiful national park, boat cruises to see penguins and sea lions, great restaurants and the major port of call for ships heading to Antarctica.

We arrived on Tuesday after yet another delayed flight. Fortunately this leg was first class so we were able to while away the time in the VIP lounge in El Calafate´s airport. On Wednesday we hiked more than 21 km in the beautiful Parque Nacional de Tierra del Fuego.

Peat bog in Parque Nacional de Tierra del Fuego

I am happy to report that mom did not die and was quite the trooper, up to and including our hitched ride back after we missed the last transport out of the park. Today was much more low key - ALL of the shops along Rua San Martin, both sides and in order, of course, and then a 6 hour boat trip in the Beagle Channel to see sea lions and penguins.

Penguins in the Beagle Channel

Tomorrow we`ll do a little more hiking, and on Saturday we head to Mendoza.

Ushuaia sports an impressive variety of restaurants. On Tuesday my entree was sea bass cooked in lemon and sage; on Wednesday I had about a pound of southern king crab in olive oil and garlic; this evening I had lamb cooked in honey and oranges. All have been accompanied with delicious Argentinian wines and dessert.

This is totally off topic but there is some 13 year old Argentinian staring at me as I type on the hotel`s computer. I wonder if he can read what I`m writing.

El Calafate

The purpose of this stop in Patagonia was to see the Perito Moreno glacier in the Parque Nacional de los Glaciares, and what a fantastic glacier it is. We spent all day yesterday in the park, starting off with 2 hours along the boardwalks for views of the glacier.

Perito Moreno glacier

We saw two big blocks and many smaller ones fall off the glacier and into the milky white Lago Argentino. After a packed lunch, we took a boat across the lake and spent about 2 hours walking on the ice in a safe part of the glacier, the part that is contained by the valley. The ice hiking wasn´t too difficult and I think the best part was being able to see into the superblue holes in the ice.

We arrived the day before in the mid-afternoon and only had time to arrange yesterday´s excursion and to take a short 2 hour horseback ride in the outskirts of El Calafate.

Horsebackride near Lago Argentino

The horseback ride was very enjoyable. My horse, Lucero, was a little bit lazy and liked to hang at the back of the pack. This gave me an excellent view of my mom´s horse, Gringo, who was suffering from a bout of diarrhea. In addition to the beautiful scenery, we saw an big owl and some other birds. One of the stable´s dogs that was along for the ride ate a baby chick of some bird. I saw it get cornered and scooped up into the dog´s mouth. : (

All the trips in El Calafate are for the entire day, so we are spending the day in El Calafate until our mid-afternoon flight leaves for Ushuaia. I have had my fill of tacky souvenir shops and am blogging solo.

Useless OneWorld

First of all, everything is fine. Now that I´ve gotten that out of the way, can I just say how useless the hyped OneWorld Alliance is if one of their passengers is re-routed on a participating company´s flight?

Take for example, my mother. She missed her connecting flight in Miami to Buenos Aires due to American sitting on the runway in Dallas for 30+ minutes and then her having to go to three different terminals in Miami. American re-routed her through Santiago on LanChile to arrive 3 hours later than originally scheduled. Meanwhile, I know none of this since I had already left for the airport. After her no-show, I go to the OneWorld check-in section at the Buenos Aires airport. Only a lady from LanChile was there, and I ask her if she could check to see if my mom was on the flight from Miami. She told me that she worked for LanChile and not for American. I pointed out that both companies were part of the OneWorld Alliance and she said that passenger lists are not shared. That´s helpful, especially when the passenger who was supposed to be on American is REROUTED on your OWN COMPANY. I´d like to add that all of these conversations were in Spanish (and that mine thankfully is awesome today), so it isn´t like I´m the Ugly American speaking in loud, slow English.

Anyway, I then had to go talk to superbitch at American. Because no one was at the counter, I went to the hidden American office behind the check-in counters. I asked superbitch if my mom was on the flight that arrived this morning. She checked the passenger list and said no. Then I asked if she was on the flight that arrived yesterday morning and she said no. Then she curtly said that I would have to talk to my mom. I said "gracias" and took some small comfort in that superbitch had ratty bleached hair and has to stare at a computer screen all day long.

Don´t you think that if you (a) worked for American and (b) had a passenger flying on American that you´d be able to tell someone that the passenger was re-routed on your superspecial OneWorld Alliance? Isn´t everything supposed to be easier with all this codesharing? Apparently not.

Buenos Aires

On Wednesday, we took the Buquebus monopoly ferry from Colonia to Buenos Aires. The one hour ride on the fast ferry cost a pricy 105 pesos, or about US$35.

Buenos Aires is a very big city – about 11 million people live in the city proper and the metropolitan region has almost 16 million. The city feels more congested and compact than São Paulo even though the latter is larger. In the evening we walked around the chic Palermo neighborhood and ate Mexican food (it has been more than three months).

I spent the first full day in Buenos Aires visiting some of the favorite places of my departing travel partner. We went to a very tasty bakery in the Belgrano neighborhood near her university and then ate the pastries in the 3 de Febrero park. Buenos Aires has lots of dog walkers, and I am happy to report that the (rich) residents of Buenos Aires have very good taste in dogs – lots of labs, retrievers, and German shepherds, and few if any yippy small dogs. At night we went to a Morrocan restaurant where I had an appetizer, an entree, dessert, coffee and a bottle of Malbec for less than US$25.

Fountain on Libertador

Uruguay

I spent two days in Uruguay, with one night in the capital Montevideo and the other in Colonia. Montevideo was nice. Parts reminded me of cities in Spain. The center is compact and walkable, and some buildings in the historic city center are being restored. Montevideo receives day tourists from cruise ships, which is good for the Uruguayan economy but annoying for certain other tourists who don’t like day tourists from cruise ships.

Plaza in Montevideo

Eating out in Montevideo was a lot cheaper than in Brazil; I had a great dinner consisting of salad, entrée, good wine, and dessert for US$ 15.

The next day I took a 3 hour bus ride to Colonia, an historic town across the Rio Plata from Buenos Aires. Colonia has nice river beaches and an even nicer colonial center.

Last Night in Belém

I’m postdating a couple of blog entries to make it seem like I’ve been better at keeping the peeps at home informed. It has been a little difficult to blog w/out internet access at home, not to mention that I no longer have a home.

Anyway, my last few days in Belém were really busy. After packing up all my crap and shipping half of it back to Texas, I had a sunset drink at Boteca das Onze, which is located in the restored Casa das Onze Janelas.


These loud people sat next to me. The blurry photo conveys their inebriated state, which is also probably why they ended up paying for my drink.

Afterwards I made one last trip into Cidade Velha for some goodbyes. I had to be at the airport before 5 AM for a 6 AM flight to São Paulo. My two nights in São Paulo were fun. I had a fantastic churrasco with the family of a fellow classmate; I ate for 7 hours straight.

Poll

In my pre-departure shopping frenzy, I bought a beautiful wicker basket this evening. It just barely fits into one of the sturdy corrugated cardboard boxes I have to ship things back. There is no room for padding to protect the top or bottom of the basket inside the box, but there is plenty of room on the sides.

a) Will the basket get smashed in the 7,000 mile journey to Texas via the Brazilian and U.S. postal systems?

b) Does it stand a better chance as hand luggage via Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina?

Polls close Thursday morning.

Take me home!

Praça da República

At the southeaster edge of downtown Belém is the Praça da República, home to the Teatro da Paz and a nice urban green space. On Sunday, the praça hosts the Feira Artesanato where you can find a lot of crap for sale but also some decent regional handicrafts and Christmas presents for certain family members. I like to go and stroll around after brunch. Here are some photos I took today:

Craft/crap stalls lining the "tunel das mangueiras." If you happened to receive a very sketchy looking postcard of Belém at night, this is the area in the daytime.

Street performance with an empowered woman whose theme was "use a condom." And there were *children* in the audience! You can bet that it wasn't financed by USAID as the Republican right goes into conniption fits at the mere thought of a pragmatic HIV/AIDS foreign policy. I donated R$1 when the hat was passed. The Teatro da Paz is visible in the background.

You can even get a tatoo. Mine says "I lived in Belém for four months and all I got was this lousy tatoo." The one I got last week says "mother."

Catching Mangoes

Remember my previous post about how mango season was here? The fruit is so plentiful that two guys can shake down a given tree, collect the mangoes, and cart them off for sale without anyone paying attention. I took this picture today while walking to my usual Sunday brunch place:

If you look carefully, you can see the blue rope that mango robber #1 used to climb up the tree to shake out the fruits. And if you look even more carefully, you can see a mango mid-flight, about to be caught by mango robber #2's sack.

Belém Panoramic

On Friday I went to Mangal das Garças, Belém newest high-end redevelopment project built on the Guamá River's edge on an abandoned site. The development has an expensive restaurant, an aviary, a butterfly garden, a pricey artesanat, and a big tower that used to serve as a lighthouse. Fantastic views of the city are available at the top of the tower for R$2. This panoramic shows about 135º:

Museu Emílio Goeldi

Belém is home to the renowned Museu Emílio Goeldi, a research institution dedicated to the study of the Amazon's cultural and natural riches. The museum is better known to the public as the city's zoo, and despite what you might expect for a zoo located in the third world it is not depressing or disgusting. The exhibits are small and focus on Amazon species. Sure, the leopard and birds would rather be roaming free, but it sure beats being hunted or fleeing your burning home from the onslaught of cattle ranchers.

Electric eels

Giant Lilypads

Tortoise.

This species' name in Portuguese is jabuti, which is really funny if you say "get jabuti over here."

Winter is Here

Although located in the southern hemisphere, Belém refers to early December as the start of winter. “Winter” is more accurately described as the really rainy season, where it is supposed to rain twice a day. To date is has been raining a lot more often than this past “summer” (read rainy season), but that isn’t saying much since Belém suffered from a drought along with the rest of the Amazon. It rained two days ago. The afternoons are a little cooler as well, although I am still able to sit in front of my computer in my boxers with the window open and the fan blowing on me as I am doing now.

I heard there is some nasty weather in Texas. Ashia!*


*Expression of sympathy in Pidgin. Really. That’s what it means.

Grocery shopping

A while back I was asked about the cost of groceries here in Belém. I waited to post until I had a long list compiled from several weeks worth of shopping. Prices are listed in US$ and have been converted from the metric.

skim milk, sold in a box 3.02/gal
cashew fruit juice 4.92/gal
6 pack Diet Coke 3.46
water 1.11/gal
750 mL of cachaça 6.18/gal
12 pack of good beer 10.04

limes 0.39/pound
mini bananas 0.33/pound
papaya 0.35/pound
passion fruit 0.37/pound
tomatoes 0.42/pound
bell peppers 0.63/pound
onion 0.23/pound
açaí 8.63/gallon
1 head of lettuce 0.90
huge bunch of basil 0.32
pineapple 0.91

fresh fish 4.15/pound
ground beef 1.54/pound
dozen eggs (one of which was rotten) 1.06
gouda cheese 6.03/pound
salami 6.11/pound

box of 3 granola bars 1.25
Moca cereal (Nestle’s Frosted Flakes) 2.31
loaf of wheat bread 1.15
packet of linguini 2.00
roll of cookies 0.83
can of oatmeal 1.44/pound
white rice 0.35/pound

jar of cupuaçú jelly 1.95
toilet paper (4 rolls) 1.01
ground coffee 1.64/pound
sugar 0.24/pound

I don't have the patience to fix the formatting, so deal.

Ever fry a rotten egg?

I did this morning, and it was nasty. After wolfing down 6 pães de queijo (mini cheese rolls) filled with cupuaçú and bacuri jelly, I wanted to supplement my carb and coffee fest with some protein. So I heated up the skillet and cracked the egg over the skillet, only to spill brown goo everywhere and stink up my kitchen in the process.

I've been spoiled here in Brazil; this was my first rotten egg. Had I been in Cameroon, where one in three eggs were rotten, I would have used the tried and true float test* to identify the stinkers.


*Rotten eggs float. If you put a raw egg in a glass of water and it sinks, it is good to go. If it floats, toss it out.

Sorvetology: VICTORY LAPS

After more than three months of hard work and meticulous sampling, I have tried all 49 flavors currently offered by Cairú, Belém’s gourmet ice cream chain. I recently discovered that not all of the locations offer the same flavors. Sometimes one location would be out of stock of a flavor but the same flavor would be available at the location 5 blocks away. Other times a flavor would be unique to a location. This kept me on my toes and required me to visit the three biggest stores in the city to ensure that no flavor went untasted.

In these last two weeks, I’m doing victory laps and enjoying my favorite flavors. The top 5, in no particular order, are carimbó, paraense, taperebá, papaia, and amendoim.

Sorvetology, part 6

The final installment of Cairú's ice cream taste-a-thon:

Abacaxi: Pineapple. Tasty sherbet with chunks of pineapple.

Graviola: Creamy white Amazon fruit with no English translation. In the amazon fruit photo/post below, graviola is the big spikey green fruit.

Limão: Lemon. Like a sherbet, a little too strong.

Malhado: Chocolate + vanilla. Boring.

Mangaba: Tangy relative of a mango.

Maracujá: Passion fruit.

Ovomaltine: Ovaltine. Chocolate malt.

Papaia: Papaya.

Sensação: Chocolate with some kind of cookie inside. Boring.

These flavors were listed but were never available:

Bacaba: Some fruit.

Maçã: Apple.

Frutas do Bosque: Some combination of fruits.

Leite de Soja: Soy milk.

Universidade Federal do Pará

Classes are just about over, so I thought I’d provide a link to some pictures of the university. To see the official photos, click on the “Galeria de Imagens” on the right hand side of the webpage. You may notice that there aren’t any students in these photos; this is an accurate, although I’m sure unintentional, reflection of the university since the most classes haven’t met since the strike began in late August.

Wheels on the Bus

Believe it or not, I do have class and I do go to class. To get to class, I ride the bus, and in riding the bus I pass through the Guamá neighborhood. Here are some photos I took:




The neighborhood is pretty polluted since it is on the banks of the Guamá river. When the water level is higher or when there is a lot of rain, the trenches in front of the wooden houses fill with water in addition to the regular trash and sewage.

Pretty fruit from the Amazon

Normal

On Monday I saw escaped flock of guinea hens pecking away in the street.

The fan in my living room is on high, constantly blowing directly on me.

Three buses ran red lights today.

I had a passion fruit and cachaça cocktail with my dinner of rice and beans.

Going to the Movies

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" opened in Brazil on Friday. Belém has five movie theaters with a total of fifteen screens, and the film is playing at four of the theaters on eight screens. I saw the movie this afternoon. I made the trek via bus from my apartment in sort-of-central Belém to the Castanheira Shopping Mall on the (one) highway heading out of the city because the best theater and only one with stadium seating and decent sound, Moviecom, is located there. I usually go to the theater in my neighborhood or the one downtown since they are much closer and I can walk.

I had hoped to see the 5 PM show, but that sold out before I arrived and the 6:30 PM show sold out while I was waiting in line. I was not about to kill 4 hours in the crappy mall waiting for the 8:30 PM show, so I sacrificed my high cinematic standards and walked across the food plaza to the other movie theater chain and saw the 5 PM show. The sound and seats were fine, in case you were worried. The person sitting next to me answered his cell phone twice during the screening. The movie was good, too, although I think I liked the earlier installments better. And of course, the book is better.

Most movies here are shown in the original language with Portuguese subtitles. Some movies, particularly those aimed at children, are dubbed. Those with cross-generational appeal like "Harry Potter" can usually be seen either dubbed or with subtitles.

Going to a movie in Belém is extremely cheap by U.S. standards. I use my student ID card and get a meia, or half admission. Today I paid R$5 to see the movie, which is a little more than US$2. I also bought a Diet Coke for R$2.50, which was a nice contrast the the $4 bottles of water sold in U.S. theaters. Each theater usually has a discount day during the week where I can see a movie for R$3 with the meia.

Happy Thanksgiving!

In honor of the food fest, I'm posting some pictures of food I took on Monday's trip to the Ver-o-Peso market. While the open air market is a more interesting place to shop, I usually buy my groceries at the supermarket that is six blocks from my house, and not Ver-o-Peso, which is a 20 minute bus ride away.

Filets of fish

Shrimp, differentiated into piles based on size and quality

In case you are wondering, I had chicken and beef shishkabobs instead of turkey.

Mango Season

It’s here: mango season. A time of fear for car windshields unlucky enough to be parked under a mango tree, a time of pain for unwary pedestrians strolling along one of Belém’s many mango-tree lined streets, a time for breakfasts supplemented with two mangos.

Baskets of mangos at the Ver-o-Peso market

The fruit is ridiculously cheap right now. On Monday I bought a pile of 10 mangos for R$1, which works out to less than a nickel per mango. I am working my way through a pile of mangas amarelas, or yellow mangos.* Perhaps the next purchase will be a pile of manga vermelha, the larger red mangos that you can buy in U.S. supermarkets.


*Fo people wey sabi mango fo Cameroon, I chek se dem bi mango number 3: small wey no get rope. I don’t know why I’m writing in pidgin except for that it is fun.

Amazon at Dawn

The bad thing about my flight from Paramaribo to Belém was that I had to be at the airport at 3 AM for the 5 AM flight. The good thing was that with such an early flight, I was treated to seeing the sun rise over the Amazon rainforest through the plane's window. At first I wasn't sure if I was looking at two layers of clouds, but with the increasing daylight, the two layers resolved themselves into one of clouds and another of forest canopy. Here is a photo I took in flight, probably over the Brazilian state of Amapá:

Suriname

I should be writing a paper for tomorrow’s class, but I don’t want to. Instead, I choose to blog about this past weekend’s excursion to Suriname. Surinam Airways has direct, 1½ hour flights between Belém and Paramaribo for a reasonable price, so I figured I would check out one of the Guianas while it was relatively cheap and convenient to do so.

I arrived in Paramaribo at the lovely hour of 3:30 AM and took a van into the city, which is located more than 40 km north of the airport. I slept a bit and then explored Paramaribo on Friday. The historic city center is compact and pretty, and most of the older buildings are made from wood. Suriname’s Independence Day is this Friday (Nov. 25th), and many of the public areas were cleaned and spruced up with red, yellow, white, and gold, the colors of Suriname’s flag. I checked out Fort Zeelandia and the Central Markt and then had a very tasty lunch of something called tayerblod, which was like a buttery, overcooked and less bitter njamajama* served with awesome beef spiced with cloves and pepper. For dinner, I had some really good roti, which is an Indian dish that is basically curry (chicken, beef, whatever) served with potatoes and eaten with a dry wheat tortilla.

The Waterkant along the Suriname River in Paramaribo

On Saturday I rented a bicycle and rode around the Commewijne district across the Suriname River from Paramaribo. I was a little disappointed since the area was billed as being an old plantation district, which it was, but instead of plantations I saw fairly modern houses built along the road. Still, it was a nice excursion and let me see more of the country. Lunch was forgettable; dinner was much better and was like a jambalaya. I forget the name of the dish.

On Sunday, I thought about going swimming but decided that the hour bus trip and 6 km walk to get to the river was too much effort. Instead I stayed in Paramaribo and went to an Independence Day festival and had a good plate of rice with delicious pork and less than delicious but still good sweet blood sausage. Dinner was a repeat of roti, but at a different restaurant. My flight left at 5 AM this morning.

Overall, it was a good trip and Suriname was a nice change of pace from Brazil. The ethnic mix of Suriname (blacks, indigenous Americans, and Indians) creates a good variety of food.** I didn’t have a chance to explore the interior, but considering that I just spent several days in the Brazilian Amazon I didn’t feel like I was missing much. There were lots of Dutch tourists in Paramaribo visiting their former colony, and it was a little weird for everyone to assume that I speak Dutch (niet), which is the opposite of here, where people on the street assume I know no Portuguese but understand everything. I’m sneaky that way.

*spinach-esque vegetable, fo people wey no sabi chop fo Cameroon

**Despite Suriname’s varied cuisine, the McDonald’s in Paramaribo was packed on Sunday evening – the line for the drive-thru was 20 cars deep and people were flowing out the lobby doors.

Boat trip up the Amazon and Monte Alegre

The next segment of the mini-vacation to the Santarém region was a trip to see the rock paintings of Monte Alegre. To get there, we returned to Santarém and boarded a passenger boat for the 6 hour trip down the Amazon. Air travel is becoming cheaper and more affordable, but only the bigger cities are reached by plane and the majority of people still travel by boat, even along the major routes such as Manaus – Belém (5 days) or Santarém – Belém (2 days). Passengers sling their hammocks along hooks and camp out for the duration of the journey. The aft of the two story boat had a little bar with cold beer.


The town of Monte Alegre doesn’t have much going for it, but what it does have is very worthwhile. In the vicinity of the township are hundreds of rock paintings dating back 12,000 years, which means that they are the earliest known signs of human habitation in the Amazon basin.


You have to have a guide to visit the sites since they are only accessible with a 4x4 truck. The landscape was dry and hilly, very unlike the rest of the Amazon, and reminded me more of the cerrado around Brasília and the caprock of West Texas (except for the vegetation). After the six hour tour, we spent the rest of the day in Monte Alegre doing nothing and took the evening boat back to Santarém. The return trip was much more crowded but better for sleeping since the hammocks didn’t swing as much. Since we were going up stream, the journey lasted around 8 hours. After walking around Santarém in the morning, we went to the airport for the 1 hour flight back to Belém.

Floresta Nacional de Tapajós

On Sunday, the three of us went south of Alter do Chão to the Tapajós National Forest, one of the few preserved tracts of rainforest in the rapidly deforesting state of Pará. To get there, we rode in a motor boat for about an hour and a half down the white sand beach-lined Tapajós River. The ride there and back was extremely wet; think Splashwater Falls without falling. Our base was the village of Jamararaquá, where we left our stuff and then took a four hour hike through secondary and primary forest. After the hike, we had lunch in the village and then went snorkeling in an igarapé, or a branch of the Tapajós River. I felt like I was in an aquarium and saw angel fish, some guppies, those bushy aquarium plants that look like strings of pom-poms, and even a piranha with a little red belly. The piranha was probably a vegetarian and expressed no interest in me.

Afterwards, we walked back into the forest and set up camp for the evening. We cleaned the area of leaf litter to make it unattractive to cobras, and we found another creature that had to be removed:


This guy, who was about the size of my hand, was sitting on a tree about three feet from where my head was to be. Our guide said that while the painful bite is not poisonous, if left untreated it can cause gangrene and require amputation of the affected limb. After taking care of spidey, we got in the hammocks and slept until dawn.


The howler monkeys howled all night, and at dusk and dawn other animals, especially birds, were very active.

Alter do Chão

I spent the past few days in the vicinity of Santarém in the western part of Pará state, and I spent the first full day of my mini-vacation 35 km from Santarém on the river beach of Alter do Chão. Alter do Chão only appears in the dry season when the waters of the Tapajós River lower to expose the white sand beaches that line its banks. While there are many kilometers of nice beaches in the region, Alter do Chão is one of the best and most accessible. I’d say it is among my top five favorite beaches in Brazil.



The laid-back village is across the river from the beach. Normally, visitors take quick canoe trips to reach the sand, but because the Amazon is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years, we were able to walk across the shallow river bed. Other than increased accessibility, the drought had no other effect on the beach. I had a fantastic lunch of tucanaré (peacock bass), rice, beans, salad, and beer at the beach shack shown above.

Tapioca

Perhaps the most common food ingredient in Belém's regional dishes is tapioca. Tapioca is made from ground manioc and is then transformed into a variety of foods, such as the snot-like goma in tacaca or as a tasty ice cream. The most common is simply called tapioca, which refers to what are best described as rolled Brazilian crêpes.

The imaginatively named Casa da Tapioca is a restaurant two blocks from my house where I pick up some take out dinner about once a week. In the photo below, you can see the process.

The ladies begin by scooping some finely ground tapioca from the big plastic container and then sifting it onto a hot round griddle, where it cooks for about three minutes and is flipped half way through. Once the manioc tortilla/crêpe is ready, it is filled with a variety of condiments. The most basic is butter. My usual order is one turkey, cheese, and oregano and one ham and cheese. I also get a dessert tapioca, alternating between a Romeo e Julieta (cheese and guava jelly) and coconut with sweetened condensed milk. They cost a little more than US$1 each, and three are quite filling.

Dinner

Proposition Two

For those who are registered to vote in Texas and haven't already done so, vote NO on proposition 2 tomorrow (Tuesday). It is a sloppily written, divisive, discriminatory distraction. School finance? What's that?

My prediction is that it will pass 65/35 with 13% voter turnout, and I'd consider anything less than 60% passage to be a victory for the no's.

Soccer fans

On the way back from Algodoal, I took this picture of a soccer fan and his buddy driving along a major road in Belém. The big white thing behind the roof-mounted speaker is a team flag for Club Remo. I gather there is a match today.

Algodoal

This past weekend’s beach pick was Algodoal, which is reached by a 3 ½ hour bus ride east from Belém to Marudá and then a 30 minute boat ride to the Atlantic island. There is not a lot to do on Algodoal except go to the beach, which is exactly what I wanted. The island is very quiet with only a few thousand inhabitants and no cars. To get around, you either walk, as I did, or ride in horse-drawn two wheeled carts. The windswept beaches have dunes created by the constant winds and white, crunchy sand.

Praia Princessa

Preparing for Bush's Visit

Just in case there was any doubt, I thought I'd clarify that President Bush is NOT popular in Brazil. After participating in the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, President Bush will stop in Brasília on the 5th and 6th before returning to Washington via Panama. The anticipated visit generated this graffiti:

From Agência Brasil

"Get out Bush the killer." From the Drudge Report.

I learned from the "Drudge Report" that these statements were spraypainted on the Indian Museum and the JK Memorial, both in Brasília. The two buildings are side by side along the Eixo Monumental, a major road in the Brazilian capital, and about a ten minute walk from where I lived last summer.

While anti-US graffiti and perpetual protesters are all over Latin America, these next few days will certainly be more active than usual. This past weekend I heard an announcement that there is to be an anti-Bush rally here in Belém this coming Sunday. The protest could be interesting to see, but I think I will go to the beach instead.

Sorvetology, part 5

The latest installment on the ice cream sampling. I've started to double up on the scoops because otherwise I won't make it through all 49 flavors and be able to return to my favorites.

Ameixa: prune.

Amendoim: peanut, but more like super creamy peanut butter. Very good.

Brigadeiro: type of chocolate.

Café: coffee. Almost excluded because it is too tame, I figured that after all this is Brazil, the world's #1 coffee producer. And there were chocolate chips.

Cairú: coconut with chocolate shavings. Tasty but I expected something more imaginative for the namesake of the ice cream chain.

Coco: coconut.

Floresta Negra: black forest, but with maraschino cherries instead of raspberries.

Queijo: cheese. Kind of gross and definitely too much for an entire scoop. Much better as part of the Romeo e Julieta flavor, which paired the cheese ice cream with guava jelly.

Manga: mango.

Sapotilha: not sure what this is, but it was fruity and tasted like banana.

Sorvetology, part 4: eliminated from consideration

In the interest of being able to eat a scoop of all ice cream flavors at Cairú and return to my favorites, the following flavors have been eliminated from the study. In some cases, the flavors are just too common (chocolate). In others, the flavors were sampled and deemed disgusting.

Baunilha: vanilla.

Ceu Azul: translates to "blue sky" and tastes like cheap oversweet frosting from a grocery store birthday cake. Disgusting.

Chiclete: bubble gum. Also disgusting.

Chocolate.

Cookie: cookies and cream.

Flocos Nevados: chocolate ice cream with chunks of white chocolate.

Menta: mint.

Morango: strawberry.

Morango do Amor: strawberry with crispy vanilla wafers. Not very good.

Pavê: chocolate-y something-not-very-interesting.

Tri-sabor: neopolitan.

Finados

Today is a holiday. Finados is best described as a very tame Day of the Dead without the candy, skeletons, or parades. People visit the recently cleaned and tidied cemeteries to honor the dead with candles and flowers. I’ve been meaning to check out one of the cemeteries since I arrived, so this was a good chance to do so.

Cemetery in Batista Campos with candle offerings

Most of the tombs and crypts are above ground; they remind me of the cemeteries in New Orleans. The Batista Campos cemetery was surprisingly empty considering that most of the existing tombs date from the late 19th century. Some of the more popular tombs were covered in candles and flowers, and a few had candy offerings which are certain to attract rats once night falls. From what I gather, certain tombs have followings and act sort of like patron saints. Two tombs with small children and one with a slave were very popular.

Amazon Beer Company

Every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 6:30 – 9:30 PM, the Amazon Beer Company at the Estação das Docas has an all you can eat and drink buffet for the bargain price of R$22. The food is decent – nothing spectacular – but the beer is excellent (at least one variety is). ABC makes three types of microbrews on the premises: black, forest, and river. Black is gross. It tastes like a sweet stout. Forest is a light beer and is pretty good. The best is river, which is an amber ale but not as bitter as those in the US. The beer is served in 300 mL glasses that are usually replaced before you finish the contents. I usually get my money's worth with three trips to the buffet and four or five glasses of beer.



Estação das Docas is a redeveloped area of Belém’s once busy port on the Baía do Guajará. A few years ago, the state government redeveloped a portion into a restaurant and leisure complex. The area attracts tourists as well as locals. Most of the restaurants are pricey, but the complex sponsors free events all the time, like movies, industry shows, and performances.

Belém from the air

Here are some shots of Belém I took on my most recent trip:

Mangeirão stadium, Marambaia neighborhood, and Baía do Guajará

Rio Guamá entering the Baía do Guajará and view of downtown Belém

Merry Christmas!

This is the giant plaster Santa I mentioned in the previous post, and he's not alone. Christmas decorations started to go up last weekend. It is kind of funny how an equatorial, third world city has adopted aspects of global culture that are totally out of place, like reindeer, snow, and fat men in heavy coats asking for a heat stroke in the 95 degree weather. This particular store of Wal-Mart-on-the-Amazon is four large city blocks from my house.

Random news items from today

Today’s edition of "O Liberal" had some interesting stories worth brief commentaries.

The telenovela* América ends today. Basically, the series covers the life of an illegal immigrant to Miami who gets deported back to Brazil. I don’t have a TV and have only seen portions of a few episodes, so I can’t vouch for the quality of the program. América is very popular here and people say that it is good.

Speaking of deportation, there was also a story about the third plane load of illegal immigrants being shipped back to Brazil, this time departing from Texas. Many of the illegal immigrants to the U.S. from Brazil come from the southeastern state of Minas Gerais. The state has paid for the entire cost of the flights, and the governor of Minas is complaining that it is not fair for his state to have to pay for the flights when they contain residents of other Brazilian states. He is also concerned about the image of Minas. He proposes that the federal government share in the costs of the flights and that the flights stop in various Brazilian state capitals. Minas Gerais is one of the richest states in Brazil.

Some people have asked about the drought in the Amazon. Most of the stories in the international press have been about Peru, although Brazil is also affected by what is said to be the Amazon's worst drought in 40 years. A story in today's paper focused on the problems communities near Santarém are having problems with transportation, potable water, and the spread of disease. It hasn’t rained much Belém, but the water level is normal. I plan to investigate the effects of the drought with a visit to the Santarém region in a few weeks.

Belém was rated by the Fundação Getúlio Vargas as the second worst place to live among Brazilian capitals, bested only by Rio Branco, the capital of Acre state in the western Amazon. According to the study, Belém’s biggest problems are violence, vandalism, and lack of adequate sanitation. Brasília, the federal capital, has the best quality of life.

And for some levity, one letter to the editor complained about the ever-earlier Christmas decorations that are starting to pop up all over Belém. It isn’t even Halloween, but I guess Brazilians can’t jump the gun on Thanksgiving. Yamada, which is basically Wal-Mart, has gigantic plastic Santas outside of one of its stores. I’ll try to remember to take some photos.


*A telenovela is like a soap opera that runs every night of the week for 3 – 4 months and then ends.

Sorvetology, part 3

The Cairú store on Avenida Conselheiros Furtado in Batista Campos

Banana carmelada: carmelized banana.

Sonho de Valsa: milk chocolate with chips of chocolate covered cookie wafers.

Ki-passas: coconut icecream with raisins.

Goiaba: guava.

Uxí: no translation. I think this is a nut. The ice cream is light brown w/ darker brown flecks and reminds of peanut, but there is an interesting spicy kick as well.

Back in Belém

DC was good. The interview went well and I got to see some friends and family along the way. Still, getting there was a major pain in the ass since I spent 30 hours in flight, excluding airport time, and was on a plane every day for the past five days for at least two hours. On top of that, I had to change 5 of the 6 legs of the trip due to an initial scheduling problem and the hurricane. I really don’t understand why airlines don’t allow passengers, especially those without checked luggage, to parachute out as the plane flies over their final destination. That would have saved 10 hours today.

Piles of Fruit

I've had an expensive, annoying day, spending about US$40 on phone calls trying to correct a flight that arrives after my interview is supposed to begin. Way to proof read, schedulers! And I still managed to go to class. But all should be good, provided that something totally off the wall like a hurricane hitting Miami doesn't happen. For serenity now, here are some pretty pictures of piles of food:

Piles of coconuts for agua de coco - R$1 each

Piles of pineapples - R$1.50 each.

Gas prices

Based on an unrepresentative survey of Belém's gas stations involving a sample size of one (the Shell station closest to my house), gas in Brazil costs R$2.69 a liter. With 3.8 liters to the gallon and 2.24 reais to the dollar, that comes to US$4.56/gallon. Brazil also sells alcohol, a blend of gas and fuel made from sugar cane, for R$2.09 a liter, or US$3.55/gallon. Almost all fuel stations sell both regular gasoline and alcohol, and most cars can run on both fuels.

In other car news, I rented out my apartment's parking space to a neighbor.

Forest mythology

After binging at an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, I went to central Belém’s largest park, the Bosque Rodrigues Alves. The park is a fragment of rainforest that was set aside in the late 1800’s when Belém’s political leadership was trying to create a Paris of the tropics, complete with its own Bois Boulogne.* The fragment is definitely a fragment – the park only covers about two city blocks – but has nice trails and is a good place to enjoy an afternoon if you can tune out bratty children. The most interesting things in the park were the two statues depicting creatures from Amazon Indian mythology.

The iara is basically a Siren of the rainforest: beautiful woman, irresistible voice, hangs out by waterfalls and lures Indians to their death. This one was perched by a little lake on which children take canoe rides:

Iara

The curupira is a little more imaginative. This forest creature can become invisible and has feet that point backwards. I’m not sure how much of this is re-envisioned environmental mumbo jumbo, but the plaque said the curupira protects regular forest dwellers so long as they only hunt for food and use forest resources for what they need. If the Indian uses the forest in an unsustainable manner, the curupira becomes his enemy and can make him get lost in the forest, always coming back to the starting point.

Curupira

I wonder what the curupiras are doing about the topic raised in this article in today’s “New York Times.” The article is about illegal logging in the Amazon, and all of the places mentioned are in the state of Pará. One thing I’m working on at my internship is alternative sanctions to environmental crimes since the penalties established in the laws don’t work. With the drought in the Amazon and the dry season just beginning, this is certain to be a very bad year for logging and forest fires.

Get busy, little curupiras.


*This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. For most of the 1800’s, Brazil had a monopoly on the production of rubber, which was in great demand during the Industrial Revolution. Because of the rubber trade, Belém and Manaus became fabulously wealthy.

Alcatraz on the Amazon

Last night I went to one of the islands in the Rio Guamá. The organizers for the excursion only run the tour twice a year, and this was the fourth time they had gone. The cruise and island visit was definitely aimed at tourists, although I was the only non-Brazilian and it seemed like almost everyone else in the group of 30 or so was from Belém.

The boat left around 7:30 and cruised for about 20 minutes before entering an igarapé, or a channel that runs between river islands. The music on the way was good. After passing the homes of several ribeirinhos, the name for people who live on the islands and along the river, the group got out and encountered a gigantic canoe filled with fruit.

Annoying lady with microphone next to the fruit canoe

I pigged out on bananas, watermelon, cashew fruit, star fruit, acerola (red, tiny, and tart), papaya, and cacao (from which chocolate is made).

I also helped myself to some tacacá. Tacacá is an indian dish found all over Belém and is quite tasty. It is made from tucupi (lemony-tart juice of cassava) and is served with jambu (alkaloid spinach), and salty dried shrimp. It also has goma, which is made from finely ground cassava and has the consistency of snot. My first experience with tacacá was not very good as there was WAY too much goma in my serving, so I felt like I was drinking a bowl full of warm loogies. But this serving was more balanced and very enjoyable.

After the food, I could have left. Some people sang and dance around the campfire but I opted to stare at the almost full moon through the tree branches. The group of people I came with also wanted to leave, and by 10 we passed the time by making fun of the tour guide who would not leave the microphone alone. Finally, a little after midnight, we returned to Belém.