Sorry about that, the next week was longer than I thought. Apart from laziness and lethargy after flu the reason was that I had two articles planned in my mind – Salvador and Corrruption; both were going to have some quite rude things to say and I chickened out.

The other reason to write again is to welcome Fred who I met recently. He is American and commutes to work in the USA but has a Brazilian wife and step-daughter in Vitória. He is going to write some articles for the blog. They should be an interesting contrast – seeing things from an American rather than European point of view.

If you look up you will see there is a new “about this blog” tag at the top of the page, take a look, especially if you do not know what a RSS feed is.

Salvador
It is a fascinating city with a strong African culture and tradition. The Pelourinho area is the old slave quarter and traditional centre of the city. Apart from the beaches we did not find much else of tourist interest. The name comes from the whipping post where the slaves were punished.

The sounds of drums are everywhere, the day we arrived there was a concert in the main square of the Pelourinho with Olodum playing.
It was to celebrate the the 20016 World Cup being held in Brazil. I think they find something to celebrate every weekend. About 100 drummers, maybe 75 girl dancers and a crowd packed in like sardines in a tin.

Olodum is part a drumming group, part a social welfare organisation, part political and part a youth club. It seems to be at the heart of everything that goes on in the Pelourhino. You cannot move without seeing their logo, a lopsided colourful version of the CND “ban the bomb” symbol. Impromptu groups of half a dozen eight year olds practice in the middle of the road. there are teen bands, youth bands female bands and probably pensioner ones too.

Closely related to drumming is the Candomblé religion with its variety of gods, especially Oxala. There are plenty of opportunities to watch their ceremonies but we did not on the grounds that it would be either a tourist rip-off or an intrusion into a serious spiritual affair.

It really is quite spectacular and quite different to anything else I have seen anywhere in the world. The Pelhourinho has the advantage of 100 years of neglect. This means that it has missed most of the ravages of modern civilisation and gives the modern world an insight into the way things were. The only place I have seen a similar thing is Tallinn in Estonia where time stood still during the years as a Russian satellite and is now reborn as a prosperous tourist city.

This brings me to the complaints. It is dirty, the facilities are poor and it is very dangerous.

When we arrived in Salvador we went to a small branch of a bank. Instead of the usual two or three armed guards with their hands on their holstered pistols there were eight guards all holding short barreled shotguns and looking very alert. I have no idea how well trained they are but would not like to be anywhere near when they start shooting. In our hotel one person was telling how her tourist bus from the airport was hijacked and everyone had to hand over all valuables. A few minutes later a rather breathless young man burst through the front door having escaped from an attempt to rob him. There are a lot of beggars and some are very persistent. If the authorities are going to succeed in their plan for mass tourism they are going to have to take security much more seriously.

We try to stay at the cheaper end of the hotel market. We must have looked at ten Pousadas (like a Spanish Hostal). They were very cheap (too cheap at R$50/60), smelly, damp mouldy bathrooms, dirty, in serious need of a coat of paint and poor electric wiring. We are not fussy people but were shocked. We tried to find better places but could only find rather classy four and five star hotels at R$400/600. Eventually we found a very nice youth hostal at R$110 for a double room Laranjeiras Hostel this was well run, clean and reasonably comfortable.

The third complaint is the tourist product. It has been a World Heritage site since 1985 but needs a lot of investment. Bahia is famous for its cuisine but we could not find any restaurants offering it. There are stalls selling acarajé a sort of bun made of ground black-eyed beans deep fried and then stuffed with a spicy mixture of prawns, tomato, palm oil and cashews. We did find one restaurant advertising Bahian food on Saturdays. We arrived at 2.30 and were told that it had finished for the day. There is a lot of poor quality tourist stuff for sale but if they are to improve the industry they will have to offer better quality arts and crafts. A large part of the charm is the architecture but so much of it is falling to pieces. There are some restoration projects but my feeling is too little, too late.
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The danger, of course, is that if they sanitise the area they will destroy the atmosphere. It is because the Pelhourinho is a residential area for some of the poorest people in the city with a unique culture that it is so interesting. If they are moved out to the suburbs and bused in to provide entertainment in a clean shiny new tourist ghetto the attraction will go. The tourist authorities will have a difficult job to find the right balance.

The Pelourinho is on my list of “must visit places” for a visitor to Brazil. One or two nights there is probably enough and a couple of days on the beach in one of the nearby islands. But be careful, especially after dark and in quiet places.

Our next trip is to Fortaleza.
It is 2300 km north of here on the most eastern tip of Brazil. It is the State capital of Ceará. The metropolitan area is 3.4 million and it has a reputation as a party city. It is the nearest point to Europe (7,000 km to London) and has a thriving international tourist business. We go for ten days on 3rd September and ten days after we return i go back to Europe.

The journey to Salvador was an uneventful 90 minutes with Azul, one of the new low cost airlines that keep appearing everywhere. We took a bus about 35km to where the city was founded, ate lunch, found a hotel and started to explore.

Salvador was founded in the early 16th century, is the oldest city in South America, the third largest in Brazil and it used to be the capital city. We discovered how big it was coming from the airport and taking a 30 minute bus ride to the area where the city started and later a similar journey to the old city centre. It is quite different to anywhere I have ever been before. There are not many people who are pure white or pure black. There is every shade of brown that you have ever seen anywhere. It is not surprising that it is a popular holiday destination for middle class blacks from the USA

The next blog report will talk about Salvador itself as in the morning we left for Morro do Sao Paulo which is on a beautiful little island about 30km away. You can fly there by air taxi from Salvador airport or take a taxi to the docks and an expensive fast ferry. Feeling mean and adventurous we took two buses and two ferries at maybe 25% of the cost and an extra three hours. If you only have a couple of days and a generous budget take the plane. Only take our route if you are confident, know the itinerary and speak at least basic Portuguese.

Morro do Sao Paulo has no paved roads and the only powered vehicles are boats and tractors. The ferry is met by a couple of dozen young men with wheelbarrows ready to carry your cases and take you to one of the hundred or so Pousadas (small hotels)spread along the five beaches. We found a reasonably priced place, clean but basic, with the bed right under large window and the beach 10 metres below us. It faced east and we were treated to such a beautiful sunrise that we were inspired to take a long walk at 5.30 am. Those who know me well will find that very hard to believe!

We soon recovered from this strange malady and became progressively lazier, going to bed earlier and rising later. The most energetic thing we did was watching the locals on the beach: soccer, surfing. volleyball, a form of beach tennis, running, gymnastics, stretching and practicing Capoeira a spectacular martial art. They have to be fit as every brick, can of beer. bottle of water or gas has to be carried through the water, across the beach, up steps and onto the sandy road and to the final destination. This makes everything a bit more expensive but is excellent value.

My only complaints were about the hotel which would not share wifi with us (the only guests) and about a couple of dozen dogs always on the beach having a fine time. They were a nuisance when we were eating and could get boisterous. Flavia does not like dogs and was troubled by them, especially when one barged into her and twisted her ankle. A cook at the hotel gave her a hot compress and a massage but insisted on closing all the doors and windows before she started and for an hour afterwards. It is, she explained, very dangerous to be exposed to any wind after a hot compress.

Having extended out stay by a day and preferring to be in the city during a forecast rainy spell we decided to leave. Two minutes before we were due to start the 15 minute walk to the ferry a tropical storm started, the rain was impressive. We were soaked in seconds and missed the ferry and lost an hour. Several hours and several more storms we were back in the first hotel and we still could not connect to the internet.

In a week I will add a chapter about the city and add some photos to this page.

Several things this week have made me think about noise in Brazil, especially the sound levels of music. Certainly it is no worse than Spain which I find to be a very noisy country and it is probably no worse than in England but there are some differences.

The cult of the noisy motor cycle that plagues Spain does not seem to exist. There the youngsters compensate for their lack of horse power by disabling most of the silencing. The rock concerts and clubs here are as loud as anywhere but they do not over-amplify the calmer music like Jazz or soft rock. What does surprise me is the neighbouring building about 30 metres away. Half a dozen time a year they have a party with very load music starting about 4pm on a Sunday and lasting for five or six hours. It is very hard to make yourself heard in maybe 50 or 60 apartments. I wonder if anyone complains.

On Friday evening the annual Romaria or pilgrimage of Nossa Senhora da Penha took place. This involved some 12,000 people walking 14km in a procession. We watched for around an hour and I was very impressed but the “trio elétrico”. This is a large lorry fitted with a stage, amplifiers, light show and and speakers the size of small cars. They are mainly used in the carnivals but can be rented at any time of year. Unfortunately I did not have my camera handy but the general idea seems to be to make your ears bleed and turn your liver into water. This will give you the general idea

On a similar note we went away for the weekend to eat sururu in Iriri – I just had to say that, it rolls off the tongue so well. Sururu is the Portuguese for mussels and Iriri is a very nice beach resort about 85km south of here. We had just got comfortable on the beach when this Jeep rolled up. Young Brazilian men are just as likely to have million decibel sound systems in their cars as any other young men. They are very generous and like to share their music with the whole world; they are probably in a hurry as they will be totally deaf in a few years. This character took his fetish to another dimension. We moved away but even 100 metres away it was loud.

This week nothing much happened so I will just point out a few things they do differently here. Some are better, some worse and some just different. Some are quite important and others trivial and they are in no particular order.

On the road
Traffic lights have two red lights; presumably to allow for a broken bulb.
Cats eyes (the studs in the road) are four times the size of European ones. They really do encourage lane discipline as nobody wants to drive over them.
Speed bumps (known here as suspension breakers) are like mini mountains and often quite well concealed. I think that these account for the almost complete absence of low slung sports cars.
Speed cameras are everywhere. On the edge of town they are just before traffic lights, at the lights and again 100 metres later. Speed up to almost catch the lights on green and you can get three fines in 20 seconds.

In the shops
Pharmacies will often deliver medicines at trivial cost. They open seven days a week and late in the evening, there seems to be one in every street competing strongly on price. Not many medicines seem to need prescriptions. Judging from the number of pharmacies and the queues in some it is safe to assume that Brazilians really like medicine.
Supermarkets always have someone at the till to put your shopping into bags. Often they will also push the trolley to the car. Usually there is free coffee (near the coffee shelves) and often also cheese, salami and other promoted products.
Tradesmen have little shops and can fix watches, phones, printers, TVs, washing machines, toasters and all the things Europeans tend to throw away when they break after the guarantee period finishes. You can buy the exact number of screws you need at the screw shop. It can be cheaper to get a dress made to measure than buy a known brand.

Apartment blocks
Security is paramount and almost all the buildings in middle class areas have 24 hour guards and high walls. Nobody gets in or out without the guard’s permission.
Shared facilities are common here. Flavia’s apartment, like mine in Spain, is around 30 years old and has much more land than more modern blocks. The neighbours share a basketball court, two barbecue areas, pool and changing rooms, beach volleyball (which is a bit derelict) and a room for parties and meetings. The underground garage has an area for storing bikes and a compressor for tyres and lilos. Newer buildings often have no land at all but the ground and first floors have barbecues, party rooms, gymnasium, sauna etc.
Apartment sizes are much larger than in Europe. 120 square metres is small and 150 to 200 is very common. Penthouses are as large as 600. There are some smaller apartments but not many.
Maids room and service area and kitchen. Often take up to 50 metres (my apartment in Spain is 75 metres) They all have a large cupboard without windows called the maid’s room. Even a London estate agent would be too embarrassed to call it a bedroom. There is a tiny bathroom with a shower over the lavatory. There is also a large scullery with laundry sink, washing machine, clothes line tumble dryer etc. Nobody I have met has a resident maid and it does strike me as a terrible waste of space.
A chimney over a metre square goes up the centre of the buildings and internal bathrooms have windows into the chimney. Some people have also put in windows from the kitchen. This can add up to a very interesting combination of sounds and smells wafting between apartments. The bathroom door must always be kept closed!
Dogs and cats are allowed but their feet must not touch communal areas. They have to be carried from the apartment front door to the street. This accounts for the large numbers of toy Poodles and absence of Great Danes. The Brazilian pet owners are much better than Europeans at clearing up the mess their dogs make on the pavements.

Bureaucracy
It is terrible! A bit like Spain 20 years ago (and England in 10 years’ time?). So far I have not had much to do with it but recently read that it takes 50 pieces of paper to start a new business and you should allow six months for the formalities. According to a TV program this week many legal processes are still open 20 years after starting

Food
Staples are rice and beans. Flavia says that it is correct to serve rice at any meal unless pasta is served. I think I would add that it is probably also correct to eat beans whenever rice is served unless fish is part of the dish. Bread is mostly eaten for breakfast in little french rolls. If you can afford it it is with butter cheese and ham. Plenty of potatoes are sold but french fries are not often served in restaurants. My roast potatoes (with beef and yorkshire pudding) went down very well.
Restaurants In previous posts I have talked about self service restaurants which I love. Mostly these are open for lunch only. In the evenings they become conventional restaurants or cafe/bars. A meal is often three times the price we pay for lunch for two and is big enough for three or even four people. This is very restricting when you are a couple. If there are more people you have to all agree on what to eat. Smaller portions are often available but it is not cheaper to have two small portions than one mega-meal

That is it for this week. sorry, no pics as I could not think of much that would go with this article. We have just booked two weeks vacation in Salvador, Bahia starting on 31st May. This is a very interesting city, the third biggest in Brazil with wonderful beaches all around and beaten for life, music and art only by Rio.

We arrived in the evening and Flavia’s cousin Monica met us at the airport and insisted on driving us around the centre of the city and showing us the floodlit buildings.

This is by far the best time of day to get a brilliant first impression of the city. It really is spectacular and is worth the long trip just for this.

Brasilia was conceived a long time ago but in the early 1950s President Kubitschek appointed Lúcio Costa as the urban planner and Oscar Niemeyer as the architect to realise the dream of a new capital city. Even 49 years after the inauguration of the city centre it still looks very contemporary, spacious and uncrowded. The clever layout of the city meant that originally there were no traffic lights at all. There are a few now and occasionally the pedestrian wishes that there were more as he ponders crossing six lanes of traffic between him and his destination.

The original design was for a city of half a million people. There are now five times that plus another couple of million in nearby satellite cities. The concept was a city shaped roughly like a bird or aeroplane. The cockpit and front fusilage is the centre of government and is the equivalent of Westminster and Whitehall in London. The rear fusilage houses lots of different sectors such as banking, hotels, embassies, churches, medicine etc. The two wings are residential laid out to a strict formula with wide roads, lots of open spaces, and easy access to local shopping, entertainment, schools and all the requirements of modern life.

Around this is a very large artificial Lake Paranoá (not paranoia) which fulfills three functions: reservoir, leisure and humidifying what used to be a very dry atmosphere. The city is on a plain one thousand metres high which gives it a very nice climate, not often too hot or too cold and two seasons: wet and dry.

I loved the city and my only reservation is that many of the buildings are in need of maintenance or restoration. For example the cathedral is a brilliant concept, looks wonderful from a distance at night but closer inspection shows that a lot of the stained glass is broken and missing. Similarly the Praça dos Três Poderes (Portuguese for Square of the Three Powers) In the words of wikipedia :
“The name is derived from the encounter of the three federal branches around the plaza: the Executive, represented by the Palácio do Planalto (presidential office); the Legislative, represented by the Congresso Nacional (National Congress); and the Judicial branch, represented by the Supremo Tribunal Federal (Supreme Federal Court)”. For more information see here

All this sounds wonderful except that the square now looks a bit bleak and one of the Niemeyer buildings is permanently closed. It is a brave man who orders the demolition of a Niemeyer building but this will have to happen to some of them. Even though it is a United Nations World Heritage Site the occasional bad building will have to make way for a new one.

On a more personal note it was a very nice trip. Once again Flavia’s extended family were very hospitable. Monica is a doctor but the morning after we arrived she went off on a course and returned a few hours before we left. We looked after the cat in lieu of rent. Her flat is very conveniently located for the city centre being a 15 minutes bus ride. The taxis are reasonably priced and all fares are on the meter so getting around was not a problem. The centre is very hard on the feet as the buildings are often a long way apart.

May 1st was a national holiday and there was a big party in the square under the TV transmitter mast. This is a little like the Eiffel Tower and there is an elevator to a viewing platform 75 metres high. This is well worth a visit to get the best view of the city. We did not attend the party but saw it on TV. The City Hall provided a very big churrasco with lots of live music all free of charge. Tens of thousands of the poorer people attended and had a fine time. During the day teams of dentists, doctors, hairdressers, masseurs, manicurists and other personal care professionals gave free services to all comers. Some people queued for five or six hours.

We met up with Flavia’s cousin Marcelo and his wife Juliana who is expecting their first child. He is a Lt Col in the army and recently arrived in Brasilia after a couple of years in Guatemala. We went to the leisure sector around the lake and enjoyed a tropical storm while having lunch in one of the many restaurants. It is a very beautiful area spoiled only by yet another handicrafts market for Flavia to spend too much time and money

Talking of markets we also went to the very big imported goods market (popularly known as Feira do Paraguai). Much as I hate shopping I was impressed. It is very large and seems to sell just about anything you can carry. I was surprised at the extensive pirated software openly on sale. Even in Bangkok they are not quite so open. I was not tempted as it was all for Windows and almost free is too high a price for me.

I think I might start being more polite about TAM. The tickets were paid for with air miles and my trip to Brazil from London was enough for two return tickets. The flights were on time and without incident. The only complaint is that the outward journey had a three hour stopover in Belo Horizonte turning a two hour journey into nearly six hours. If anyone comes to Brazil with TAM make sure that you first register with their frequent flyer scheme.

It is easy to ramble on for hours as there is so much there. I had better stop now.

PS

I forgot the The Juscelino Kubitschek Bridge. It is a recent addition and totally in the spirit of Brasilia. There are lots of very nice new buildings complementing the older ones.