Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Brazil!

That´s right folks, we are in Brazil now and back on the bikes! After our stint in Buenos Aires, we took one final long bus ride (20 hours) up to Porto Alegre in southern Brazil. It is quite a shock to be in a country where we don´t know the language at all, and almost nobody in Brazil speaks Spanish (nor have we met any English speakers either). We have funny conversations with Brazilians where we speak Spanish and they understand the occasional word, and they reply in Portuguese and we understand even less. We don´t even know enough about the language to try and tint our Spanish with a Portuguese accent to make it more understandable. And our British Brazil guidebook has a pathetic dictionary, consisting of useless words like ¨bloke¨and ¨fish and chips¨. On the upside, it feels really exotic and we are motivated to figure some Portuguese out so we can stop pointing and grunting like idiots. On a sadder note, just now before I started writing this message, I finally took the time to look up the exchange rate and discovered it wasn´t 3 Reales to the US Dollar as we had been assuming (Argentina was 3 to 1, Peru was 3 to 1, why not Brazil?) but 1.6 to 1 - ouch! So all of a sudden things don´t seem so cheap...

Anyhow, it is fantastic to be back on the bikes and earning our kilometers. The landscape here is lush and green and (at least after today´s 800 meter climb) steep and dramatic. We are up in the mountains (Serra Gaucho) now in a town called Gramado, which is like Bariloche, Argentina only more so. More Swiss architecture, more fondue restaraunts, more ritzy shopping, more chocolate shops, more tourists. So we feel right at home and enjoyed the best ice cream sundae ever for an afternoon snack today after the long climb. This region is not the most stereotypical ¨Brazil-like¨section of Brazil (Brazil, obviously, is a huge, diverse country) - people here are still slurping mate, tracing their German ancestry, and eating huge piles of grilled meat - not such a bad life I guess. But it is dramatically different too (besides the whole Portuguese thing). A huge array of tropical fruits are available, fashions are completely different (tall, chunky boots are in this year I guess), the people are super-friendly, the motels have hourly rates, and everything is just a bit more humid, musty, and sexy (fecund?) than down south.

Speaking of humid and musty, yesterday we rode past some very impressive flooding, as this region just got hit by a huge 5-day storm (which we thankfully only caught the tail end of). Half of one town was inundated by floodwaters - some buildings up to their eaves - and people were busy in boats rescuing appliances and animals. Also on yesterday´s ride we saw two of the biggest (10+ feet tall), scariest gargoyles ever perched in front of a menacing, windowless, brick building. No idea what it housed but we didn´t stick around to investigate.

So far, though, the very best thing about Brazil is the coffee! We haven´t seen a cup of Nescafe since we crossed the border, and even the complimentary hotel coffee served in plastic cups is better than any coffee we had in Argentina - aaahhhh.

Anyhow, that is all for now. All the best,

Ty

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