So I am back in Brazil again, this time for six months. On my last visit the blog petered out – partly because it was becoming a chore and partly because some people thought it was unreasonably critical of Brazil. In fact others thought that it was an advert by the Brazilian Tourist Authority so I reckon that the balance was about right.

This time I will try to add to the blog at least once a week rather than twice. There will be some personal stuff but I will try to keep it all fairly general. The plan is to comment on anything in Brazil that strikes my fancy. The country’s affairs are not well reported in Europe and I hope to give a view from a European perspective. As this is my first week I will be more personal than usual while I find my feet in the Brazilian way of life.

Back together

The journey was about as good as you can hope for. I flew TAM because they had the best deal.  My previous journey with them was full of problems but this time everything worked perfectly.  My luggage was a few kilos over the limit but the checkin at Heathrow did not mention it. In São Paulo they tried to charge me R$72 extra which they finally waived.  It took 21 hours door to door which was very tiring.
It was very good to see Flavia again after three months apart. Skype is very good but but no substitute.

My first impression was the weather.  It is fairly humid which intensifies the feeling of heat. The actual temperature is around 28/32C which is much less than in Málaga in the summer. In short the heat is not a problem for me so far and it is going to get a bit cooler as the summer is now over.  Of course the rain is another thing. It has often been quite cloudy and most evenings there has been heavy rain, often accompanied by thunder and lightning.

Some of the guests

The Sunday after I arrived was Flavia’s birthday and she held a churrasco (barbecue) in the grounds of her apartment. There were twenty people most of whom I already knew and it was good to see old friends. It was very nice to have a maid and a cook to do the hard stuff on the day. We will be eating the left over food for the next month. Sadly we have finished all the beer.

My proxy server in the UK was running well but is suffering from some sort of glitch which needs sorting out.  It allows me to access BBC iPlayer which only admits people who connect via a UK computer. It can also access all sorts of other UK sites which have the same policy. This is another plus for Linux as it is very easy to do and is free.  Talking of computers (again) I have spent a couple of days re-installing Windows Vista Home Edition on Flavia’s computer. It is my first good look at Vista and it really is as bad as its reputation. I will also add Ubuntu Linux in the hope that she might be tempted to see how a proper operating system works.

Only three candles?

On Sunday we attend the wedding of Flavia’s cousin who is marrying an Englishman so there will be an unusual concentration of Brits in Vila Velha. It will be interesting to see how Brazilians celebrate weddings.  The first good thing is that the male guests are not required to dress like waiters.

To close here is a nice thing about life in Brazil. Since my last visit I had my 60th birthday; this gives me all sorts of concessions here. Post offices, banks, lottery shops, chemists etc must either allow me to go to the front of the queue or have a separate queue. Also people who are handicapped, pregnant or with very young children have the same rights.  Another bonus is that I receive half price entry to cinemas, museums and various other tickets. All I need is someone who gives half price hair transplants.

On a technical note I have been forced to make people log in if they want to add a comment.  This is because I was receiving over 20 spam comments every day all of which have to be manually deleted. If you want to add a comment please register a name and email address. You can fake both and remain 100% anonymous if you want.

The trip to Minas Gerais was excellent and I will add something to the blog about it in a few days.

In the mean time the subject for today is the mosquito.

A mosquito eating lunch

One evening, shortly after arriving in brazil there was a diabolical noise in the road outside the apartment.  I looked out and saw a small truck belching black smoke and making the sort of noise that would really impress Spanish teenager motorcyclists. Flavia explained that this was the fumacê which burns oil to create black smoke to prevent mosquitos. A few days later a man from the town hall mosquito man arrived for his annual visit and put tablets in the u-bends of the water outlets in the floors of the bathrooms.

A fumacê truck

This is part of a very big scheme to try to control malaria and dengue in Brazil. This also explained whey there are not many mosquitos around the town.

The word mosquito derives from Latin via Spanish and Portuguese and means little fly. It is the female of the species that is dangerous – she can survive on a diet of nectar but needs the minerals and vitamins in blood to produce eggs. In Europe mosquitos are little more than a nuisance but in parts of the world they are dangerous killers. If Europe gets any warmer they could easily become a problem in the south.

Malaria is the danger that most people know about. The malaria map for Brazil shows that it is the northern part of Brazil outside of the bigger cities that is affected. The Amazon area is hot and wet which are the perfect conditions for breeding.  It is a dangerous disease worldwide and kills a lot of people every year.  In fact malaria is not that big a problem here, in 2003 there were only 30 deaths.  Bill Gates is not a person I often refer to favourably but I do admire him for the many millions he has donated to malaria research through his foundation.

Dengue fever is a bigger problem at the moment, eapecially in the urban areas. It is a very painful disease; in my childhood in the Caribbean it was known as break-bone fever. It affects most of the country except the far South. Earlier this year just in the State if Rio de Janeiro there were 23,555 cases of dengue, including 30 deaths,  in less than three months. Similar statistics apply to most areas of the country and Espirito Santo had 703 cases in a few weeks this January.

There is no cure or vaccine for dengue fever, all you can do is take the usual treatments for fever and wait for it to go away. The strong and healthy will recover and the weak can die. Once you have had one of the four strains of dengue you are immune to a recurrence of that strain. Unfortunately it also means that if you have an attack by one of the other strains it is more likely to be haemorrhagic which is very dangerous.

The only weapon against dengue is to fight the mosquito itself. It breeds in still water and so old car tires, empty cans and plastic containers, flower pots, open sewage, puddles in the road and even large leaves can all be breeding grounds. Wearing long trousers and sleeves in the evening is a good idea as is using repellants and sprays. In the North visitors should take anti-malaria pills.

On a more cheerful note I will add that I have had a few mosquito bites but they are less of a nuisance here that they are in Málaga during the summer.  Brazil is remarkably free of nasty things! Apart from the jungle areas there are very few natural threats. Snakes, spiders, hornets and all other bugs seem to be pretty harmless. Apart from the occasional shark in the Northeast the sea does not hold much threat.  There are no hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanos, tsunamis or anything else dangerous …  apart from the people, of course

For a more detailed description of haemorrhagic dengue see the WHO article.

Sunday morning and our last day. We took a taxi to the hippie market in Ipanema. There were no hippies there but there were a lot of interesting handicrafts stalls as well as all the mass-manufactured tourist rubbish. We wandered around and bought a couple of things and ate some very good food from a stall run by ladies from Bahía. We wandered around the town for a while but by this time my batteries were run down. Three days of walking, eating and drinking too much with not enough sleep had caught up with me. We returned to the apartment and spent the rest of the day quietly.

At 22.30 Rafael took us to the bus station and the 23.10 bus departed on time. This time it was a very luxurious affair with fully reclining seats. We managed to sleep reasonably well and arrived at 06.30 Monday morning just in time for Flavia to start work at 07.00 and for me to complete the missing few hours sleep. It is tough not having to go to work but I have learned not to be jealous as Flavia leaves for work every morning at dawn.

When I arrived in Rio I was expecting not to like it; there had been too many tales of crime and violence and i was expecting to spend the whole time looking over my shoulder. Brazilians seem to enjoy scaring the wits out of foreigners with bloodthirsty tales of gruesome crimes committed in Rio.  Even Flavia was telling me about a visit a few years ago when two favelas were having a disagreement. All night they could hear the sound of guns firing and see tracer bullets going in both directions. Apparently it is not unknown for bullets to enter  apartments nearby.

It is hard to tell where the truth lies. I suspect that the crime rate outside of the favelas has dropped considerably over the years. Probably a lot of the violent crime, as in England, is by young black men against other young black men and often drugs and gang related. All I can say is that it felt no more dangerous than any other large city I have been in. Of course we stuck to the most important areas, were not out in the middle of the night and avoided deserted places.

So my verdict on Rio: it is fantastic, a city not to be missed, it has more natural beauty than any other city I ever ever seen – by a long margin. It has rich and vibrant cultural life too. It would be very easy to spend a week there and that is without going to the beach.  The beaches are wonderful, as good as anywhere, but I would not go there from Europe or the USA just for a beach holiday. There are plenty of nearer places which are much easier to get to. So my advice is go there for two weeks and alternate lazy days on the beaches with touring the city. It is very expensive by Brazilian standards (all large cities are more expensive than the smaller towns) but most Europeans will find the prices fairly reasonable.

It is with eager anticipation that I look forward to my next visit. (Rafael, that is a hint!)

Having gone 400km south-west our next trip is 450 km due west to Belo Horizonte the State Capital of Minas Gerais , the third biggest metropolitan area city in Brazil (5m).  We are going to spend a week driving around the first area in Brazil colonised due to its abundance of gold, diamonds and other riches. “Minas Gerais” means “General Mines” in Portuguese.  There are a lot of old towns with a well developed cultural tourism industry.

We may not have much access to the internet but will try to add a couple of reports while on the road.

On Saturday morning we went to the city centre to visit the Cathedral which did not impress me at all.  It looks like a giant command module of an Apollo space craft. Star Trek fans will know what I mean when I say that it comes from the Klingon school of architecture.  The inside was better but I found the place very depressing. In fact I preferred the distorted reflection of the cathedral on a neighbouring office block.

We then took the Santa Teresa Tram to the same area that we had lunch yesterday.  It is probably as near to a favela that a tourist can go in safety. This was a wonderful ride and is not to be missed. Do not be put off by the tram’s dilapidated appearance and the poverty of some of the passengers (I kept a close grip on my valuables). This is daily transport for many people and is not a tourist attraction. The European Health and safety people would have a nightmare with the open sides, overloading and passengers jumping on and off the moving tram.

The tram is supposed to be limited to 32 people; in spite of going considerably over this number the schedule of a tram every 30 minutes means that there can be long queues.

A couple of hours was spent wandering around various cultural  centres and a stroll around the Rua do Ouvidor area where we had a drink and listened to a samba band playing in the street. Yet again I was struck by the fact that hardly anyone seems to dance. The customers of half a dozen bars listened to the music,  eating and drinking while the shoeshine boys and other hustlers looked for an opportunity to earn a few Reais.

Around 4pm Rafael and his girlfriend Claudia picked us up and we went for lunch in Bar Lagoa restaurant overlooking the lake Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas. Three had perfectly cooked and very tender fillet mignon and Rafael went for the steak tartare. I do not object to eating the meat raw – even mixed with raw egg and other ingredients. What put me off is that the large plate arrived with nothing other than the tartare. It would have been much more appealing half the size but with some french fries and salad.  A couple of hours later we left having damaged our wallets severely.

After a rest and a change of  clothes we hit the Santo Scenarum, this time a different building very close to the one we went to on Thursday. We arrived at 21.30 and found that we had to pay $15 dollars admission at the weekend. Three drinks each and the bill for two came to $55 – we are moving in the fast lane.  In fact it was not that bad value.  This place was twice the gigantic size of the other branch. Two seven member tango bands rotated and there was a very large disco area. Someone said that there were 800 customers there and 180 staff. The decorations did not have the religious theme but were just as surreal.  The value for money was confirmed when we left at midnight and discovered a queue four deep stretching 500 metres.

An early start on Friday and the two of us took a taxi to the Sugar Loaf Mountain The two cable car trips cost around $30 each person which shocked the Brazilians. Being used to European prices I thought that it was reasonable value as the ride and view are spectacular. It is not as high as the Statue of Christ the Redeemer but its location is so good that the view is even better. You can see most of the city, especially beaches like Copacabana and Ipanema which are close. Again we had wonderful weather which makes a big difference. We spent three hours here just marveling at the landscape.

At the bottom we went for a long walk along the Pista Cláudio Coutinho which is a small peninsula which doubles as a military base and a nature reserve. It appeared to be a circular route but the path stopped at the halfway point and we retraced our footsteps. It was very quiet and peaceful but with excelent security so we felt quite safe.

Rafael picked us up  in the afternoon and we explored some of the hills. We wandered around and he showed us all sorts of interesting places. On one of the hills we came across a lake surrounded by tropical jungle. A lot of these areas are protected as part of a National Park. Travelling around the city is not nearly as difficult as you would think as a lot of the hills have tunnels going through them more or less at sea level.

In the Santa Teresa area are a number of simple but very interesting restaurants offering food from the Bahía area. We had a very good lunch there. At first sight the prices looked a bit high but on enquiry the waiter agreed that a single portion might be enough for three. In fact the three of us could not eat it all and Flavia and I did not eat again that day. These portion sizes are fairly typical so do not be shy about ordering a single dish between several people. You can always order more if it is not enough.The problem is finding a dish that all of you want to eat.

We spent a quiet evening and had an early night.