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.

I have had a couple of requests:
Where exactly am I?
Can we have some pictures.

The first is easy: just click here. which will take you to Google Maps. You can zoom in and out by clicking on the + and – signs on the left. You can drag the map in any direction to see the surroundng area. Double click any point on the map to zoom in with that point in the centre of the new map.

The camera has not been out of the bag much but I have taken a few snaps and ran the Photoshop “Make my crappy picture look great” button. I will try to get some better pics.

In the meantime here is Flavia’s apartment and the beach a couple of minutes away.

If you want to see some much better pictures take a look at this page There are a lot of quite good quality pictures so do not bother to try if you do not have broadband.

So often when you have known a person or a place for a long time you forget what you thought about it at the beginning. I am going to try to capture my first impressions here and then try to see how valid they are at the end of four months when I go home.

The first thing that I noticed is that not much is different from what I am used to in Spain. It is modern, mostly people live in apartments, parking is difficult, the roads are pretty good except where they are very bad. There are lots of familiar names like Telefónica and Banco Santander. The cars tend to be the smaller European and oriental models although I have not seen any large expensive status symbol cars. It may be different inland but there is very little sign of the third world.

The people are not what expected. I imagined excitable, emotional, hand waving latins with a tendency to exaggerate and to start dancing a samba whenever they can. Flavia is the only one I have found (apart from the samba). Brazilians seem to be very polite, a bit formal, smile a lot, drive well, and wear shorts and t-shirts. There seem to be lots of rules and regulations, often just social customs, which mostly are observed.

There are fewer black people that I was expecting. They tend to look less prosperous than the white people. It is hard to work out the origins of many but a lot seem to have a little bit of everything in their blood. Flavia says I am wrong but I have not noticed much mixing apart from the children. People socialising seem to be with those of a similar ethnic background.

Praia da Costa is part of Vila Velha and is a very nice seaside area which has a lot in common with Fuengirola. The main difference is that the beach and seafront is used mostly by locals which means that there are not many hotels and restaurants. This does not mean that the beaches are empty – the Brazilians are fanatical about going to the beach. They have built high rise apartments blocks close to the beach which block the sun by mid-afternoon.

Vitória is 15 minutes away across a very large toll bridge. It is an island and the State Capital of Espírito Santo. The centre looks like a tired old lady. I could see that it was once an important city but it seems to be in the process of being abandoned. Residents and businesses have relocated and the city centre is decaying gracefully. I guess that it is more profitable to develop virgin land on the mainland than redevelop.

Other quick thoughts:
We rich Europeans cannot afford to have a maid, have your car washed by hand, have an attendant in an elevator, employ a petrol pump attendant, repair a TV etc. All these things are common here with Brazil’s much lower wages.

On the other hand so many things seem to be very expensive – far more than in Europe. Cars, computers, internet, any luxury item and anything imported. There seem to be plenty of shops with extremely expensive home furnishings, kitchen equipment and branded clothing. I think that those who are poor are very poor and those with money have a lot.

Supermarkets only sell food and cleaning stuff. I have become used to buying clothing, electrical goods, shoes, computer peripherals, DIY materials etc and find it a bit strange to visit a dozen shops to achieve what I can usually do in one.

Bikinis are very small indeed Topless is illegal

There is an unpleasant black dust everywhere. The export of iron ore is a major industry and there are seven pelletising plants in Vitória that pollute everything.

The weather is wonderful. Hot without being oppressive and not too humid. Of course it is winter here.

The University here is a privately owned business. To a European that seems very strange.

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.