Wow, that was quite a trip!  We left Wednesday afternoon by bus and arrived in Rio 8 hours later and took a 15 minute taxi ride to Flavia’s Uncle Rafael who has an apartment in the middle of the city.

The road was a dual carriage way for the first hour and then became two single lanes. There was often a third lane for overtaking, especially up hills. The last hour was dual, then triple carriageway.  The roads were all in pretty good condition. The modern comfortable bus was limited to 80 or 90 kph for the whole journey and mostly managed to keep to those speeds. It did help arriving in Rio in the evening after the peak traffic.

In the morning Rafael took us on a tour of Rio. It is a real advantage having a car, driver and guide with a detailed knowledge of the city.  First we went to Corcovado mountain and the statue of Christ the Redeemer which is 700 metres above Rio. We stopped at a couple of brilliant viewing points on the way up.  We drove almost to the top of the hill, parked and got

into small buses for the last climb of a hundred metres of hairpin bends. From there was a short walk, a couple of escalators and we were at the foot of the statue without even getting out of breath. There is also a funicular railway which is very useful if you do not have a car.

The views are breathtaking.  It was a hot sunny day and the city inland was covered in a light haze. This trip alone is worth a visit to Brazil.   Rio is full of very steep hills and so there are thousands of locations with fabulous views, soon you become a little blasé about what would be a traffic-stopping elsewhere. Rafael’s lounge faces the statue and a nearby favela an interesting combination of two of Rio’s signature sights.
Around 4 o’clock we had a self-service meal followed by a well-earned siesta.  In the evening we took a 20 minute taxi ride to the old city area full of bars and restaurants. We went to the Scenarium whch the Guardian rates as one of the best ten bars in the world.  It is a very strange place. It is not really a pub or bar or a restaurant or a nightclub or a disco or an antiques shop but a mixture of all of them. It looks like an ancient converted warehouse with two rooms the size of tennis courts on each of the three floors. In fact it used to be housing and each floor used to contain 12 apartments. A girl singer accompanied by keyboards and guitar was singing sambas and the sound was piped to the more remote areas; there was no dancing that I noticed.

It was fairly busy. Plenty of customers were eating large meals or snacks but there was no expectation that the customers should eat. The thing which I like about most live music I have heard here is that the volume is reasonable, not the ear-splitting high volume that is everywhere in Europe.  Some listened attentively while other groups chatted without raising their voices. The musicians accept that they are not giving a concert and that all the customers are not expected to applaud every song. It makes the whole evening very pleasant and relaxing.

So, I hear you ask, what was that bit about the antiques shop?  Well the decor is something that Salvador Dalí or Federico Fellini might have come up with.  The walls were full of religious icons, pictures, statues and other paraphernalia; at least the staff were not dressed as monks and nuns.  During the day the tables and chairs are moved and the premises open as an antiques shop with all the decorations for sale.  I did find it a little disconcerting being so decadent under a life-sized portrait of a nun!  Sadly I did not bring my camera but the next article will have some pictures of its similar sister establishments in the same street.

PS
Pics will appear within 24 hours, I promise!
PPS
They are in place and I have also added pics to the two previous articles.

On Sundays the English eat roast beef and yorkshire pudding. On Saturdays Brazilians eat feijoada.

Feijoada is prepared with black turtle beans, with a variety of salted pork and beef products such as salted pork trimmings (ears, tail, feet), bacon, smoked pork ribs, at least two types of smoked sausage and jerked beef (loin and tongue). It is prepared over slow fire in a thick clay pot. The final dish has the beans and meat pieces barely covered by a dark purplish-brown broth.

The taste is strong, moderately salty but not spicy, dominated by the flavors of black bean and meat stew. The dish is served with rice, collard greens and slices of orange. It is very good indeed. Typically in restaurants they will serve six or eight different pots each with a different type of meat so that each person can ensure his favourite and avoid his dislikes. At home a single pot with a selection of the varieties of meat is usually prepared.

On Saturday we were invited to lunch at the Novotel Hotel which has the reputation of doing the best feijoada in town. Our hosts were Lourdes, a colleague of Flavia and her husband Marçal who is a prosecutor in the Appeal Court.

The other guests were Lourdes´ sister and brother-in-law. We started with drinks and tapas in the lounge and then moved into the restaurant for the serious eating.

As usual I disgraced myself in the “eat until you drop” fixed price buffet. There was a lot of salad and healthy stuff which I ignored in favour of calories and cholestrol. After my second helping there was no room for the fruit and deserts. I had managed to lose a second kilo this week but I am afraid all the good work was undone. Fortunately Flavia was nearly as bad so my edge in our competitive weight loss campaign was not too badly damaged. Feijoada is a wonderful dish but not to be eaten too often!

One of the highlights of the restaurant was a trio of guitar, bandolin and tambourine who were playng delightful soft Brazilian music. It was a perfect background in a busy room.

After lunch we wandered up the coast for around 100km. It is much more the Brazil I was expecting. Miles of beaches, beach bars, surfers, para-surfing, beach football and general fun. There were plenty of much poorer people than in Vitória but not much sign of real povery. We found a cheap hotel, had a very light supper and plenty of beer and then bed.

In the morning it was cold (around 22C) and windy with patches of rain, it was not busy on the beaches but the restuarants were thriving. We tried to get a cruise around the bay but the afternoon cruise was cancelled. it was the captain’s birthday and he was having a party on board. He was already a bit tipsy and offered to include us in the party with no promises about when we would return. Regretfully we watched them sail off with a mountain of beer and churrasco.

We stopped in Nova Almeida on the way back. It is a nice beach resort with a beautiful colonial church dating back to 1580.

It was a great weekend and now we must spend the week eating lettuce

Last weekend there was lots going on as it was St Peter’s day, the patron saint of fishermen and high season for tourism in the mountains. We attended a big Festa Junina in Vitória on Friday evening. There was a covered stage in the park built for the Mass celebrated by Pope John Paul ll in 1991.  We watched a number of bands perform some very good music. I learned about Forró – a rock music style  with  strong African roots.

There must have been a couple of thousand people there with all sorts of kiosks selling food and drink. I was struck by several things. First there was little alcohol being drunk. This may have been partly caused by the new tough drink/driving laws. The second was that  few people were dancing, mostly they listened and chatted. The only applause came from the fans who were close to the front of the stage. Another different thing is that almost all the bands I have seen include some sort of piano accordion or concertina. The sound goes very well with rock music.

On Saturday we drove up into the hills behind Vitória. It is very beautiful and extremely fertile. We saw coffee, bananas, orchids and all sorts of fruits and vegetables being grown.  The area is mainly populated by people of German, Austrian and Italian descent. There are lots of restaurants in those styles.

German traditional dancing

I must admit I was not expecting to see men in leather shorts and girls in European country dresses dancing to accordion music. They are strongly promoting rural tourism – another similarity with Andalucía.

All the hotels except one were fully booked and we took the last room available in our hotel. We were a bit reluctant as there was a big wedding that evening and the bar and restaurant would be closed. The band in the VIP room would be about 10 feet over our heads. “No problem” said the receptionist, “join the party, nobody will notice”  We did not really believe this but brought some nice clothes just in case. We arrived mid-afternoon and saw the preparations. Two sound stages, a truck load of beer, another lorry carrying three enormous barrels of wine, a dozen cooks at a giant barbecue with what must have been a ton of meat, five or six different areas of the hotel were set up with bars, tables and chairs.  It was clearly going to be a big affair.

Around 9pm we joined the party.  I guessed that there were around 600/700 people there. Some women were wearing very beautiful long dresses and their men with nicely tailored suits.

The gatecrashers

At the other extreme some young men were wearing shorts, t-shirts and baseball caps on backwards.  In between these two there was clothing of every level of formality. It made me feel at home as I like the feeling that everyone is wearing exactly what they like to wear.

We found a table and sat down and almost immediately a plate of rice, beans and barbecued meat (churrasco) arrived .  I was hungry and enjoyed this. Half way through another plate arrived, piled high with beef. We turned down several offers of more plates of meat. Not even a hint of bread, salad, chips, fruit or anything healthy. Next came a plate of sausages, chorizo black pudding and other meat delicacies. Finally great trays of cakes and other sweet sticky things arrived, not my sort of food. In between I was befriended by a waiter whose only desire in life was to make me drunk. Every time my beer glass was less than half full he magically appeared and filled it up again.  Flavia was getting the same treatment from the waiter with the whisky bottle.

Towards midnight most of the important guests had left the VIP room so we went in and danced to a lively band.  After 20 minutes the waiters came in carrying great joints of roasted beef, carved them and passed the plates around the room.  I tried to eat some, I really did, but I was defeated. We staggered off to bed when the party finished around 1AM. The resident cock started crowing at 3.30AM and the cleaners started work above us at 6.00AM. I remembered why I prefer towns.

When we went to breakfast at 10.00 there was not much evidence of the party. We have asked the hotel to call us the next time they have a wedding

So, I am off to Brazil. Half an hour to get to Woking station, an hour on the bus to Heathrow Terminal 5, 20 minutes to get a shuttle bus to terminal 4, 45 minutes to check in and go through security and over two hours to wonder why British Airways make you check in three hours before the flight.

The flight started on time at 21.45 British time and 11 mind-numbing hours later we were over São Paulo. We could not see much as Guarulhos Airport was closed due to fog. 90 minutes later it was clear enough to land. Customs and Immigration was a breeze and my case came out in record time and I was back on schedule to catch my connecting flight to Vitória.

Check-in was easy and there was no problem with my vast amount of luggage and duty free shopping. Unfortunately there was a problem with the flight. Ten minutes after departure time they announced a four hour delay.The regulars reckoned that it was because there were not enough bookings and that they were merging two flights. Nobody bothered to tell me that the new flight was from Congonhas Airport an hour away by bus.

Looking up from my crossword I noticed the passengers drifiting away. I asked what was going on and was told to collect my baggage and go to the coach to Congonhas. This was an interesting ride as it was my first sight of Brazil and I was in Brazil´s biggest city. Greater São Paulo has a population of nearly 20 million and is the third biggest Metropolitan area in the Americas (after Mexico City and New York).

My first impressions were that it looked quite prosperous, the driving was disciplined (apart from the motor bikes), crash helmets are worn by all motor cyclists, the roads were good, there were no dangerous looking wrecks on the road. In fact if I had been told that I was back in Spain I would not have been surprised.

So another check-in and the fight was on time – well that is what they told me. Ten minutes after departure time they announced a one hour delay which, in fact was 90 minutes. I spent the time trying to invent a better Acronym for the TAM airline. Twist and manipulate. Terrifying Accident M?? Travellers are martyrs. TAM are misanthropes. I settled for Take-off a miracle. Seriously, the flight was OK, the food dreadful and my main concern was the very poor communications with the passengers.

28 hours after setting out I arrived in Vitória where Flavia was waiting at the airport. She had had the same difficuties tryng to find out what was happening. Ten minutes after I left the plane we went to the car park. I like small airports.

4PM local time and I had to stay awake as long as possible to reduce jet lag. Not hard to do with Flavia, we went shopping.