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  Brasilia, Federal District, Brazil
Wednesday, June 4, 2008

May 13 - 14

Our next adventure was a stay on an "estancia," a ranch in the middle of the pampas northwest of Buenos Aires. Leaving the club, we drove straight out highway 8, which ran past the club and all the way to San Antonio de Arecha, the center of gaucho life. Our host met us at the local Esso station, and we followed him down dirt roads that went on forever, arriving finally at a lovely rose-colored ranch house straight out of the 19th century. Two couples were just finishing lunch under the vine-covered table outside near the very large brick barbeque grill, fueled by wood. They turned out to be members of the International Women Forum (to which Carol used to belong in business days), who had just attended an international meeting in Buenos Aires. They had loved staying at the ranch and were just leaving to catch airplanes home.

We settled into our room and then into lunch under the arbor as well. There was no sound around us except the gentle sound of the wind across the plains. We could see nothing but open fields and clumps of trees along the creek. Our host was an Argentine of some 60 years, who spoke English from birth with a perfect, but old-fashioned British accent. It felt as if we had stepped back into the 19th century. After lunch, we had a quiet horseback tour of the surrounding area and then a small siesta. Drinks on the covered arcade surrounding the house were followed by dinner in San Antonio at a lovely restaurant on the 18th-century town square. Returning to the estancia, we shared a brandy with our host in front of the fire, feeling like Victorian visitors to another world, one described by Jane Austen, who would have been at home here.

Astride

The next day, we visited the town and the small but perfectly restored church of the same era. The afternoon gave us a real taste of gaucho life. We took more spirited horses into the fields around the estancia and cantered across the pampas with hair flying (John's) and around herds of other horses. The horizon was wider, the sky bluer and the wind softer than any of our previous rides, and we felt almost lost in the countryside. More drinks on the arcade, followed by a dinner of local beef in front of the fire, and we fell into bed, feeling that we had experienced a small piece of mythic Argentina.

May 15-16 One chance in a million?

Work has to follow pleasure, so we returned to Buenos Aires to figure out how to get the Jeep shipped home and to pick up our Brazilian visas. Returning to the same private hotel - a door in the street with a small plaque above the buzzer - and the same French restaurant, where we had gotten to know the owner, we felt as if we were habitués. At lunch, we sat at a table for two, next to an Argentine businessman at another small table, and started telling our French hostess about our adventures since our last lunch there. As we described to her the Hurlingham Club, the gentleman next to us said: "I'm a member of the club. I was there on Sunday and Monday as well. I saw the Jeep in the parking lot and wondered whose it was." We tried to figure the odds of that happening, but the calculators didn't go that high. John finally identified one shipping company that works out of Fortaleza in Brazil to ship the Jeep to the east coast of Florida, although we couldn't finalize the details.

BA 2

We were now dealing in Portuguese, not one of our languages, so communication was more difficult. But we did manage to identify the person we needed to contact in the Fortaleza office of the shipping company and duly sent off emails in English, hoping we would get a response. There was nothing else to do but wander through the pedestrian streets of central Buenos Aires, checking out stores, restaurants and lots of local color and itinerant vendors. Then we returned to our favorite gaucho restaurant and ate "parilla" - pronounced 'pahreejah', an overload of grilled meats, sausage, chicken and various parts, guaranteed to give you instant cholesterol problems.

May 17-21 Uruguay

Our three and one-half hour car ferry across the River Plata left at 9am, and we had to be there an hour ahead of time. Luckily, the ferry dock wasn't far from our little hotel, and we pulled into line with everyone else. The tourist deck was above the first class one, but it seemed to us we had better views. The Plata is immense, and once away from the shore, it seemed like the ocean. We couldn't see land on any side for most of the crossing. The entertainment was a singing group, all Argentine women, who sang in perfect English, without accent, every hit song I could remember from the 1960's, but apparently couldn't speak it at all.

We landed in Colonia, a foothold of the Portuguese in colonial times, and headed to Montevideo, settled by the Spanish. Our immediate impression of Uruguay was of a peaceful and prosperous landscape, with tree-lined highways and rolling fields of grass and crops.

BA from the warter

Montevideo was obvious from afar with a super-high telecommunications building, at whose feet gathered a modern waterside city mixed with an ancient port. The central square was full of a week-end fair, with roads blocked off. As we parked the Jeep and got out to reconnoiter, we met our first hotel 'dispachante,' a well-dressed man who recommends hotels to tourists for a living. We were to meet more in the days ahead. Hotels will pay them if they genuinely do direct business to them. We checked out a few hotels, including the one he recommended and decided on it, partly because the garage was very secure and just high enough for the Jeep to fit. As we left the hotel to go to dinner, our dispachante asked us to tell the front desk that he really did direct us there. They weren't going to pay him unless they were sure - a very interesting perspective on the economic situation in Latin America and what people have to do to make ends meet.

We usually wander around cities by ourselves, but with limited time we took a city tour and were glad to have done so. Montevideo is quite large and spread out across many hills and valleys, with a number of very interesting ethnic areas. The Germans had settled one part, the Dutch the next and so on. The architecture and atmosphere changed with each settlement, and we saw some lovely churches and riverside beaches that seemed like the seashore. We ended up at the old port for Sunday lunch around 2 pm; the old market building had been turned into a warren of upscale shops and restaurants.

Carol and the Estancia

We were joined by one of our fellow tour members, a consulting engineer who does ISO inspections around the world. We sat on the second floor veranda of a restaurant overlooking all the market and port activity, drinking sangria and thinking all was right with the world.

Instead of driving up the coast into Brazil, we headed straight north from Montevideo and through the central plains, enjoying the rolling countryside and the obvious prosperity compared to Argentina. There are only 3.2 million people in Uruguay, and the hinterland is ranch country. We saw real gauchos herding cattle, wearing their baggy trousers, high boots and hats that look like fedoras, but have wider brims. The middle of the country has a major hydro-electric project creating by damming a river to create a reservoir. All our information about the country was now coming from a German guidebook I acquired from our hotel in Buenos Aires, so we turned down side roads to find the one hotel recommended in the whole area on the shores of the lake. It was a lovely hotel in a perfect setting - and totally occupied by some company's off-site retreat. So we back-tracked to the main road (itself somewhat obscure) and headed for the next town to see what we could find. We pulled off the highway into town and found it completely dark - there were no street lights, no lights in stores, no lights at all, except the headlights of cars. Obviously, a major power failure. Nonetheless, we found the one hotel noted in the German guidebook by asking every few blocks as we went.

Hurlingham Polo and Golf Club House

Wondering how bad this night was going to be, Carol went up the steps with a flashlight to inquire about shelter - just as the lights came back on.

On Tuesday, thanks to the German guidebook, I dragged John north of town down rugged dirt roads to a "microclimate" among the rock outcroppings. A weather-beaten man led us across the fields towards what looked like a grove of small trees. It turned out to be a narrow valley two hundred feet deep at points with a natural spring and stream that created an atmosphere completely different from the surrounding land. The temperature dropped ten or more degrees as we climbed down the side, and the vegetation became lush and almost tropical. Plant species exist there that can be found nowhere else on earth. Apparently, there are several of these in Uruguay, for reasons no one has explained - or I have found out. Our weather-beaten guide was very proud of this national treasure and his role as its guardian.

Then we headed for Rivera, the border crossing into Brazil, and found it to be the funniest town. The border runs right through the middle of town, people wander back and forth across it, doing their shopping and errands. There are duty-free shops everywhere. I saw the most upscale landowner, wearing gaucho trousers, perfectly pleated in beautiful grey material, tucked into the highest and most elegant tan leather boots, a crisp white shirt with silk scarf tucked in and a beautiful leather jacket and cap. Uruguay is doing well, thank you very much.

We managed to find the passport control office in the local police department, but when we asked about customs for clearing the Jeep into Brazil, no one knew what to do. Finally, they sent us to the "dry port" out of town, a facility where truckers go to get customs clearance for their loads. But no one had every crossed with an American car. The young customs official couldn't find a form on the computer system for anything like it. He called various other offices and managed to find a paper form that he had to fill out by hand. It took him quite a while, since he'd never done it before, but we finally got our piece of paper. It was clear we could have driven off into Brazil without it, but doubtful whether we could get the Jeep out at the other end. So we headed off finally to find the road to Porto Alegre on the coast, where we were supposed to meet up with the family of one of our neighbors in St. Charles. She's Brazilian, from Porto Alegre, and married a man I went to high school with. It was a tough drive, and we arrived in town far too late to do anything but find a hotel - with the help of another 'dispachante' - and fall into bed.

May 22-24 Porto Alegre with the Bings

Chris' cousin Beto found us and moved us to his parents' house, where we were instantly charmed. Walt and Sole Bing are not English speakers, and we don't speak Portuguese, so we searched for common languages. Walt has spoken German from birth, like many in Porto Alegre, and Carol managed to remember hers from college days in Stuttgart. So we communicated after a fashion, mixing German and Spanish and throwing in an English word or two. Beto, his family and his brother and sister speak perfect English, of course. We were quickly taken to a wonderful churrascaria owned by Beto's friend [email Beto, get details and names and publicize the restaurant] for a holiday feast [get holiday?] of beef, chicken, pork, sausage and other dishes that kept arriving at the table, all of them delicious and none to be missed. The restaurant was full of holiday family tables, children everywhere, and a neat play room in the back for them, with closed-circuit TV to keep the parents' eyes on them. We staggered back to the Bings' to rest until supper, in which we were joined by Beto's brother Ever. On Friday, Beto's sister Carla kindly took the whole day to drive us and her parents to Gramado, a German town north of Porto Alegre, complete with Bavarian-style buildings and restaurants, set among Alpine mountains. It was strange to hear blond, blue-eyed Germans speaking fluent Spanish. We had a wonderful lunch, lots of wondering through shops and a visit to a fantastic forest preserve with a tall observation tower overlooking the alpine slopes of green forests.

Saturday, Sole kindly arranged for her hairdresser to cut my shaggy hair, while John and Walt picked up the Jeep from the Chrysler dealer, where it had been serviced and the warranty book stamped. We had lunch with the whole Bing family at Beto's house. John and Walt by now had figured out how to speak Spanglish together and were having a great time. Carla and Carol decided that Carla has to come visit us in France in October. It was a family occasion, full of warmth and humor, and we felt so enfolded in it that it was very hard to leave. But we had to get on up the coast to keep to our itinerary and meet the projected shipping date for the Jeep from Fortaleza on Brazil's northeast coast. So we jumped in the Jeep and drove up the coast to Torres, where, on Walt's advice, we stayed at a lovely beach-front hotel. Thank you, all the Bings, for taking us in and making us feel so completely welcome.





May 25 - 28 Iguacu Falls

Continuing up the coast, we spent a night in Florianopolis, a rolling island cum beach resort, surrounded by lovely bays and spectacular mountains. Lunch the next day was at the furthest tip we could find at a restaurant on the edge of the bay, and the freshest fish we've ever eaten. Then we headed up the coast to Curituba and started our drive across Brazil to Iguacu Falls, at the junction of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. We checked out the town and decided it was too touristy and too expensive, so we took a chance and drove 15 kilometers out of town in the dark to find the youth hostel listed in the guidebook. No, we're not youth, but old people can stay there, too. In fact, we met an Australian couple about our age who were doing yet another walk-about. We all spent the entire next day seeing the falls, which involved crossing back into Argentina because the views and the access are much better than the Brazilian side. Our youth hostel arranged a bus and guide to take us there, a guided tour through the rain forest, and a boat trip on the lake at the bottom of the falls.

How to describe Iguacu Falls? There are dozens of waterfalls descending from the huge lake on the border of Paraguay and Brazil, tumbling and crashing down over immense rocky cliffs into two or more rivers hundreds of feet below. The air is constantly full of spray and the roar of the water falling. On the Argentine side, you can get up close and personal with many of the falls by walking on the intricate web of steel walkways that cross over and under them. We first took a boat ride to for a close view of the bottom of one of the falls, and went right in underneath it to get soaking wet - except for those of us who had bought cheap plastic ponchos at the grocery store on the way. Then we climbed up from the lake surface to the web of walkways on the stone steps carved into the cliffs and hiked for miles over, around, under and up to waterfall after waterfall. At some points, the falls were just a few yards under our feet, and we could see the water falling far below us. We rambled up and down and around the many waterfalls, met the local raccoon equivalents, who had much longer and sharper claws and had unfortunately become accustomed to getting food from the visitors, and ended up semi-exhausted at the Sheraton Hotel in the park (just how did they get the exclusive right to be there?), where we sat on the veranda, admiring the broad extent of the falls and having a cup of tea.

Exhausted, satisfied and slightly soggy, we met out guide and the rest of our group from the hostel at the park entrance, dropped off three young English girls at a hostel in Argentina, and headed back across the border to our Brazilian hostel. After dinner with the Australians on the patio next to the pool, we fell into bed, more than satisfied with our encounter at the falls.

May 29 - 31

Now we had to get from the Argentina/Paraguyian/Brazilian border to the center of the northern plains, where far-seeing Brasilian President Juscelino Kubitschek created a national capital from scratch in the 1960's. This required driving north through the center of Brazil, far from the coast and super-highways, on two lane roads often heavy with truck traffic. Our passing skills improved measurably, and we found interesting places to stop or sleep. Our hotel one night, outside Irati, a medium-sized town, was a large white castle, complete with turrets and towers and surrounded by fields full of grazing horses. It was the Brazilian equivalent of Blackberry Farm, selling products from the land - fruits, jellies, grape juice, etc. We tried to get a glass of wine without success - we kept getting the grape juiced instead. The next day we stopped for gas at the SuperHulk station and restaurant in San Jose, a small town in the middle of nowhere and found the attendants speaking English. Inside, the restaurant manager was even better - an accomplished linguist who had taught himself American English and Spanish by 'Wizard' courses on the Internet. He spoke the fastest English we've ever heard in a completely authentic American accent. He was going to come to the States and work, but fell in love and decided to stay in his small home town, where he seemed to be perfectly happy. The entire staff of the Super Hulk loved the Jeep and the fact that we'd driven it all the way to Ushuaia and back and presented us with a bright orange SuperHulk sweatshirt to take home.

We continued through bucolic countryside with bright red soil and rolling hills. The two-line highway and truck traffic greatly improved our passing skills, and we arrived in Goiana in good time to find the Ibis. But it was a pretty large town and hard to understand complicated directions in Portuguese, so a very kind woman got in her car and led us to it. Another example of the extra-ordinary kindness we've met everywhere we've traveled.

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