Royal Palace Hotel- Brazil Porto Alegre

6 December 2009

I made a mistake by uploading the entry of 24.11.09 into my travelpod titled 'The Longest Drive'. It is now installed in its rightful place in ‘North to Alaska’ with the correct date. I have also uploaded some extra photos to this entry.

Please see ‘I didn’t hit a cow today’ on 24.11.09

... sure. Silly me.

We rode through the Rio Guaiba town of Ipanema, unfortunatey, not the beautiful and famous Ipanema, further along the stunning Brazilian coast. Then to the highest point in Porto Alegre, overlooking the city, which was marked with a beautiful church Santuario Mae de Deus (Sanctuary of the Mother of God), with the most magnificent 360 ° views.

Another thing which marred the trip a bit for me, was the fact that the little ...

... the hustle and bustle of the crowd. A few kids asked for money, there were some buskers, singers and street entertainers. It was very busy and we soon began to relax and almost blend in.

There was one group of entertainers I fell in love with. Four Indian/Peruvian looking girls, obviously from one family, were singing in 4 part harmony, gently hopping from foot to foot in unison keeping to the rhythm being played on guitar by their Dad, (I presume) who was ...

... for example, I went to check out a Gaucho guitarist called Marcello Caminha and was surprised to hear him play many tango songs.

It just so happens that the annual feria do livros (book festival) is taking place while I´m here so I went to check it out. There were all sorts of books as far as the eye can see (but mostly in Portuguese). I was very happy to find a used copy of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller ...

Partindo para Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. Foi um tempo muito bom que tive com Marcio e Viviane. Um casal muito abençoado que mora em Porto Alegre. Tive a oportunidade de conhacer um pouco Porto Alegre e a cidade de Farroupilhas.
Aproveitei para ir na unviersidade do Rio Grande do Sul encontrar com os estudantes do movimento Alfa e Omega (um ministério da Cruzada Estudantil e Profissional para ...

... know started pouring in, and before we knew it there was about 20 of us sitting around a table catching up and telling a few of our tales. After a few hours we hit club in a different part of the city and saw a cover band who played anything and everything. It was after 4 by the time we got back to the hotel and got some well needed sleep.

Again, we were in the same predicament as before, wherby we hafta check out of a hotel at around ...

... of words! The road itself surprised mainly by its monotony. Between Porto Alegre and Mendoza there stretch more than 24 hours of totally flat land. No hill, nothing. Flat grasland in Brasil, flat bushland in Chile, populated by cows and horses. The land of the Gauchos! But the crossing of the Andes was really beautiful. There even was a whitewater river to be seen, the Aconcagua river. When we got close to the frontier the chilean ...

... my Spanish, having had worked on only Portuguese for a couple of years. However, after two months of speaking nothing but Spanish, my Portuguese seems so much more difficult. I want to take advantage of this week to the maximum of my ability and speak as much Portuguese as possible. We went to visit an organic farm tended by Tio Juca, a shirtltess sixty year old with leathery bronzed skin from decades of working in the sun. He grows over ten different crops on his three acres ...

... so that the verdant vineyards will yield vinegar and humble girls will show you the spot where German blood is fresh. Do not ascend Spain's dry sierras because every stone will be transformed into fire, and the brave will fight there for a thousand years: do not stray amid the olive groves because you'll never return to Oklahoma, and do not enter Greece, because even the blood that you're shedding today will rise from the earth to arrest you.

... vybojovala svoje prachy...ubytovala jsem se a s batuzkem vyrazila prozkoumavat mesto (u sebe ani flok ani dolac). Haha ...maj tu srandovne umisteny ATM, jsou vzdycky shlukly v uzavreny mistnosti kam se vchazni ramem s detektorem kovu. Kdyz neco najde, tocici dvere se tocit prestanou. Pak je tam policajt a tri mala okenka, kudy lze prohodit klice, mobil nebo penezenku...batoh samosebou ne. Ani na drobny z kapsy to neni uplne vhodny ...