June 1-3 Brasilia, the City of the Future
Good roads led us to Brasilia, created from scratch in the middle of Brazil in the 1960's, the dream and realization of President Juscelino Kubitschek , a far-seeing futurist who realized that Brazil needed a new capital to set its face to the future, not unlike the decision to create Washington DC to bring north and south together after the American revolution. The city itself rises from the central plain, designed in the shape of a 727 airplane as a symbol of technology and the future. We arrived in the early afternoon and spent the rest of the day driving the 'wings' of the airplane (where commercial activity is concentrated) and walking the central corridor to see the monuments, museums and buildings from the outside. In our usual way, in one of the 'wings,' we stumbled onto one of the few (maybe the only?) Chinese restaurants in town, newly opened and run by a naturalized Chinese, who was an excellent cook. After several days of Brazilian barbeque, it was a real treat - fresh, crunchy vegetables and all.
We devoted the next morning to finding a new hotel, since we didn't like the one we had reserved, and discovered that the hotels and restaurants are all in the two hotel and restaurant sectors - one north and one south - where commercial activities are grouped. Then we set off to find the father of our friend from St. Charles. He was in Brasilia for medical treatment, staying with his son, our friend's brother, who is currently a Senator from Fortaleza, on the northest coast of Brazil. Their house was outside the airplane plan, across one of the arms of the artificial lake that was created, in a very interesting planned development. Moroni, Chris' brother, has represented his district for some time, but is now leaving the national government and running for Mayor of Fortaleza. We wish him well; he is a formidable politician and a gracious gentleman. Chris' father Joao was a delight and a treat for us, speaking six languages and sharp as a tack. He promised to come see us in St. Charles, and we intend to hold him to his promise.
We spent the late afternoon and evening hours with a travel agency, arranging our airplane tickets, once we give up the Jeep to ship it to Florida, and a boat trip up the Amazon to see the jungle. The agency recommended to us, because they spoke some English (and our Portuguese is not strong), was in a large vertical shopping complex in one of the 'wings'. It took quite a lot of time to identify the best flights, book the seats and get the tickets authorized by email, so they could be printed for us to take with us. We also set up the boat trip and got vouchers, all this in a combination of English and Portuguese, none of us truly fluent. By this time, it was dark, and with great relief, we returned to our new and better hotel and collapsed. The Jeep, as usual, was parked right in front of the entrance, where the front desk could keep an eye on it throughout the night.
Tuesday, we walked the central 'fuselage' of the airplane, where all the major monuments and museums are located on a long, wide strip of green grass. It was an awe-inspiring trip. President Kubiktschek promised "fifty years of economic and social development in five," and created a new national motto: "Order and Progress." The teams of northeastern Brazilian workers were led by urban planner Lucio Costa, architect Oscar Niemeyer and landscape engineer Roberto Burle Marx, all of whom created a city of the future that lifts your heart when first you see it. It's impossible to describe the total effect, but here are some of the pieces:
The cathedral of the city, "Our Lady of the Appearance," shaped like a bulb of garlic with a crown of spikes from white curved columns and lovely blue stained glass interior, flanked on the outside by large, "haunting" statues of the four Apostles The memorial to Kubitschek, shaped like an elongated question mark, with a statue of the president standing in the curved portion, marking his mausoleum and photos/documents of the construction of the city The monument to the migrant workers Os Candangos, who came from the northeast of Brazil to build the city, shaped like modernistic human figures with large thighs and shoulders, but strangely small heads, holding straight-lined implements that might be tools The Supreme Tribunal Federal, with repeating right-angle exterior panels, curved on the inside edge The headquarters of the Brazilian army that looks like a space ship about to land
After we walked through and around all these and other spectacular buildings on the central esplanade, we went up to the top of the TV tower to get a bird's-eye view of everything we'd seen. Upon descent, it was a short walk back to our hotel, where we gratefully collapsed, uplifted by the coherence and graceful modernism of the vision of this city, created more than 40 years ago.
June 4-6 "On the road again..."
Now we had to get from Brasilia in the center to Fortaleza on the northeast corner of Brazil, whence the Jeep will depart by ship, with any luck, for the east coast of Florida. We had talked to the shipping company and its local agent there and were relatively confident that it was possible. But there were small details, such as: what kind and size of container, what contents can we leave in the Jeep, how does the rack on top come off with all its equipment (mostly for emergencies that never happened) and where does it all go? We pondered these questions as we drove towards the coast.
We were up and out early, heading north through beautiful ranching country, rolling hills and mountains on either side of the highway. Taking interior roads, we experienced little car traffic, but lots of trucks, whose travel pounded some of the roads to pieces. We came to know truck stops pretty well and relied on them for information about the road ahead. Whenever the map showed the road as bad, it turned out to be good. And when we hit route 20, which angled northeast to Fortaleza, it was shown as an excellent highway. In reality, it's one of the worst roads we've seen in this entire trip. There were potholes that a car could have fallen into, and we dodged and wove around the worst of them, cursing quietly every time we hit something we wished we could have avoided. We found hotels by asking at gas stations, and in this way found ourselves almost in the middle of a large party for third-graders one night. Thankfully, their party ended at 9 pm.
June 6-8
We approached Fortaleza late in the day on the 6th, when it had turned dark. Thankfully, the last stretch of Route 20 was decent surface, and we managed to find our way into the city and find a large gas station, where we could ask for directions to the Ibis. As usual now, a customer paying for his gas volunteered to drive us closer to our destination and put us on the right road. We followed him through some twists and turns; then he got out of his car and pointed us on our way. Somewhat nervously, we followed the signs to Iracema Beach and found ourselves in the old port on the street that runs past the Ibis. We like this hotel chain in France and were pleased to find it in Brazil. We know its ways - it has everything you need, is reasonably priced and pretty efficient, even if you do have to pay for breakfast. This one is two blocks off the beach and has its own swimming pool and a co-located beauty salon, which was just the right thing for my scruffy finger- and toenails after months on the road.
We first explored the old port to the west, seeing how the urban decay is being slowly reversed by restoring old facades and turning the buildings into restaurants and shops. We went a little beyond the boundary of restoration and found the urban ghetto along the shore of the bay, so we were glad to turn back to the restaurants and shops on the beach. Strangely enough, in one newsstand, I found a magazine in Portuguese, devoted philosophy, with articles about Kierkegaard, St. Thomas de Aquinas, determinism and relativism, ethics, Hobbes and - strangely enough - Bernard Malamud. Do beach-goers in Fortaleza stop and pick up an issue on their way to play volleyball and work on their sun tans? I studied philosophy in college and graduate school, but have never seen a glossy magazine on a beachfront newsstand before. There must be more to these Brazilians than we thought. We had a lovely dinner of very fresh fish at a restaurant on the beach just two or three blocks from our hotel, complete with a complimentary 'caiparinha' - a Brazilian drink that will curl your toes.
Sunday we walked the beach to the east, towards the ritzier part of town, and found the usual beach scene. There were lots of families, games of soccer, beach-front restaurants and watering holes on the beach, sun, surf and sand all shining under a wonderfully blue sky. We walked for 3-4 miles along the waterfront enjoying the activity and the wide pavement for strollers. Returning to our hotel, we decided to take the Jeep and explore in order to find our destinations for Monday morning: the Jeep dealer for service and the shipping company to finalize its return to the US. Then we drove out west to check out another hotel and see what that side of town is like. The hotel was very nice, located on a yacht harbor, but so isolated that it didn't appeal to us. We pushed on a bit further west and found the seamier side of life, the poorer area on the coast, with buildings in various stages of deterioration. So we decided to head back to our Ibis haunts along the coast road. On the way, we came back into the restored old port and a small grocery store we had noticed on our first walk, so we stopped to buy some water and yogurt. John was outside in the parked Jeep, and as I returned to the car, a man came out of an apartment building across the street and in perfect American English asked what in the world we were doing there. He turned out to be a retired US State Department Foreign Service officer, married to a Brazilian, who now lives here in Fortaleza. He looked out his window and saw our California license plate and came out to see who we were. He insisted on giving us his telephone number and invited us to dinner, so amazed was he that we had driven all the way from California. So we'll give him a call and see what happens.
June 9 -13 Shipping the Jeep
Monday morning bright and early we turned up at the office of HamburgSud, that well-known German shipping company, and found our contact Gary, happily with excellent English. As we discussed the terms and conditions, and the date of payment for the shipping cost, we also learned the vagaries of Brazilian ATM's. Those that will do international withdrawals are few and far between, and all are limited in the amounts they will dispense. But having some cash management experience, however ancient at this point, we found ways to get it done. It was like stepping back in history. To get money with a VISA cash station card required going to the foreign exchange department of Banco do Brasil (a commercial bank), where a functionary behind a counter filled out forms in duplicate and made copies of the Visa card with carbon paper and an old-fashioned credit card machine. To be fair, he did have a computer and used that as well, but the pieces of paper were flying pretty fast before the cash was handed over. We also called our banks to alert them to the withdrawals to make sure we didn't end up on the black list of possibly stolen cards with multiple withdrawals.
Dinner with the retired US diplomat and his Brazilian wife was charming. They invited us to stay with them, which we will do this week-end, when we know the Jeep is locked and loaded. Such kindness to take in complete strangers! But that's been our experience throughout this trip.
Our next tasks were to get a part replaced in the Jeep steering and to negotiate with the customs broker, who arranges for the Jeep to pass customs and be loaded into its container at the new ocean port of Pecem, some 50 miles west of Fortaleza. John took care of the difficult parts, stuffing the Jeep into its container -20,0052 miles from San Diego - this was the first vehicle ever shipped from the Port of Pecem, finalizing the shipping, costs and customs requirements, getting everything done in record time. Naturally, he made friends with the custom broker along the way. In fact, the broker took us to dinner with his girlfriend and other friends. Carol went to see the local museum of history and the cathedral. Fortaleza was a significant port of entry in the second half of the 19th century, and the pictures and old post cards show a thriving colonial town. As times changed, the historical city fell into disrepair and is just now being revived. A large modern high-rise city rises to the east of the old port, with wonderful beaches stretching between the two, lined with hotels and restaurants of every sort. It's winter here, now, so the weather is alternately very hot and sunny, usually in the morning, then cloudy and humid, with occasional, but brief tropical storms. The beaches were packed on Saturday and Sunday mornings, but quiet during the week. The temperature hits 90 just about every day, but they tell us it doesn't heat up a great deal more in the summer - it just has more hours of sun.
June 14-18
With everything done for the Jeep that could be done, we moved in with the American diplomat and Brazilian wife - into a high-rise on the beach in the old port, with a panoramic view of the beaches of Fortaleza and a hammock on the terrace for enjoying it. Lunch was a spectacular charrascaria full of locals, where we ate more kinds of barbequed meat and fowl than I knew existed. We also met a young student who will spend the next year in St Joe Indiana - next to Notre Dame - as an exchange student, and we promised to introduce him to our friends who live there and help him out. It's a small world...
Sunday we went to the beach east of town, a beautiful curving white sand beach, covered with small beach-front restaurants consisting of an open-air kitchen and tables, chairs and umbrellas on the beach. We ate fish straight out of the water that morning and splashed and swam in the Atlantic for the first time on the trip. Monday we got the final documents for the Jeep's shipment, the original bill of lading that allows us to reclaim it from the shipping company. We took our hosts to dinner at a new restaurant on the beachfront, which looked almost Norwegian inside with all the wood and was shaped like a ship. Tuesday we moved back to the Ibis for one night because our plane left for Manaus the following day at 6:30 am, and we had to be at the airport by 5. Vanya, our Brazilian hostess, arranged for a taxi she knew to pick us up at the hotel at 4:30, which was re-assuring, given the empty streets at that hour and the range of taxi drivers one might meet. Our flight took three hours, stopping at Belem, so we had vistas of the Atlantic Coast and the Amazon as we approached Manaus.
Manaus was once the rubber capital of the world, a very prosperous 19th-century city with a spectacular opera house. Then a dastardly Englishman managed to steal some seeds of the rubber tree and took them to Malaysia. Manaus lost its monopoly and declined, but is now revitalizing, due to tourism and that it is a duty free port thereby attracting manufacturers from all over the world. It's the starting point for most Amazon River tours, and also an ocean port for shipping, since the Amazon is large enough to accommodate ocean-going freighters and cruise ships. We wandered around the town and through the thronged shopping streets of the center, past the exterior of the famous opera house, now restored. The town is clearly on the upswing, favelas (slums) are being replaced with public housing, which is red brick and fairly attractive. The port area is jammed with warehouses, offices and everything to do with ships and shipping.
June 19-22 Sources of the Amazon
The Amazon is actually the confluence of two rivers, which join together just below Manaus. The Simoës River rises in the Andes and flows east towards Manaus, picking up lots of brown soil as it goes. The Rio Negro flows south from the northern part of Brazil and is tinted black by the acidity and decay of the leaves that fall into it along the way.
We started out from the port in Manaus and headed up the Rio Negro, which has better wildlife and plants and fewer mosquitoes - also due to the acidity of the water. Our boat was a Brazilian version of The African Queen, a triple-decker with railings, painted blue and white, but somewhat the worse for wear. We were the only passengers - due to low tourist season - with a crew of three and Conrad, our excellent Brazilian guide and translator, who speaks several languages. It took a few hours of steaming to get to the upper reaches, where the jungle closed in around the river and its tributaries. We got into a very small and unstable wooden canoe and perched on wooden seats in the exact middle, while the guide and one of the crew paddled us through small passages between the jungle trees growing out of the water. The river has two seasons - rainy and dry - and in rainy season the water rises more than 15 meters from its summer level. Islands and inlets are submerged in rainy season, with only the tops of the trees rising from the water. We floated quietly among the tree tops. The water was so still that the trees were reflected perfectly on its dark surface, and we seemed to be flying through the air with trees above us and trees below us. Dinner on board the boat, tied up to a small landing place, two or three hours of generator power and air conditioning to dry out enough to crawl into bed.
The next morning - our 30th wedding anniversary - we took a jungle hike on small, almost invisible paths, lead by our Brazilian guide. We found a rubber tree, and our guide slashed with a machete to show us the pure latex that flowed onto his hand. The white, milky liquid, rubbed between his fingers, turned into crumbled eraser pieces. The next tree had bark that produces iodine when slashed, and John had some put on a cut on his leg. The monkey vine came next: its bark, when boiled in water, produces medicine that cures upset stomachs. The quinine plant and the cinnamon tree came next, the latter smelling wonderfully. Then we saw a plant that produced menthol, and after that, the dolphin vine, whose bark can be used to stimulate abortions. Our tour was like going to the drugstore - all you needed to be cured was a machete. There were also plants to avoid, as Carol discovered when slipping on a rock and getting stung by dusty white-green thorns whose tips stayed in the palm. Conrad managed to get most of them out, and the rest will come out in time, he said.
Late in the afternoon, we took another, longer canoe trip to see wildlife at dusk. We saw and heard howler monkeys in the distance and squirrel monkeys up close. We pulled up to the shore where tree branches leaned down into the water, and a tribe of 15-20 squirrel monkeys came and sat in the branches right next to the boat. They had grey bodies, orange arms and legs, and white faces, with black rings around their eyes, noses and mouths and red splashes of color on their faces. Conrad said he'd never seen them come so close or so many of them. They seemed to enjoy sitting with us for a while. We explored more inlets and streams, floating in the dusk and the reflections on the water. We saw a sloth hanging upside down in a tree and several species of jungle birds. As dusk started to fall, we fished for piranhas and caught several, using raw beef as bait, and carefully avoided their razor-sharp teeth. In the dark, we searched for caimans (a kind of freshwater crocodile) on the shore with a flashlight. The light clearly shows their red eyes in the vegetation, and Conrad captured a small one - maybe 6 months old - and showed us its features. The young stay with their mothers for 3 months after they hatch; then they're on their own. We paddled back to the boat through the jungle night, glad to be returning and really glad to get off the narrow wooden seats, but moved by the beauty and diversity of the flooded river environment.
On the 21st, John's 69th birthday, we visited a native village well known to Conrad, who grew up in one very much like it. First, we found the communal cooking place by the path up from the river, where native women were making giant pancakes of manioc flour on a kind of griddle 3-4 feet in diameter. They spread them on leaves to dry and store them until eaten. Apparently, manioc is high in protein. Further up the path, the ground leveled out to a collection of houses on stilts around a common area that also served as a soccer pitch. The village had 140 people; there was a church and a school and a souvenir shop, where we bought redwood souvenirs and a pair of earrings made of feathers, to thank them for their hospitality.
We had planned on a charrascaria (BBQ) on the beach at the Rio Negro. Arriving at the spot, we found the river was too high this season, and the leaf-thatched structures for both eating and sleeping were under water. So we canoed back to where the boat was tied up to a grassy area and built our fire there. Sitting on logs around a fire, somewhere in a tributary of the Amazon River, we watched the dusk fall suddenly, as it does in the jungle, and listened to the sounds of the insects, birds and creatures around us.
The next morning, we cast off from the jungle and headed down the Rio Negro to see where it joins with the Simoës to form the Amazon proper. The captain took a short-cut from the Rio Negro, the northern tributary, to the Simoës through a very narrow channel that connects the two, with a placid lake in the middle, upstream of the actual confluence. We saw the river banks quite closely, some occupied with riverside homes and others dense with trees and undergrowth. As the channel narrowed even further, the jungle brushed the sides of the boat as we pushed out way through, finally coming out on the southern tributary and sweeping the leaves and tree branches off the decks.
The "meeting of the rivers" that forms the Amazon was quite long and an interesting natural phenomenon. The difference in the height of the river banks (the Negro is quite a bit higher) speed, acidity and organic matter in the waters keeps them from mixing together for several miles. Semi-circular patterns form at the edge of the black and the light brown water running together and run downstream. The Amazon is many miles wide at this juncture, and there is a constant stream of ocean-going and river craft, some carrying freight and others tourist boats like ours. The sheer size of the river and level of freight and other activity was impressive, especially since we were at least 750 miles inland from Belem, the nearest port on the coast.
For anyone looking for adventure on the Amazon, we would heartily recommend contacting Conrad to act as guide. His email is: fariasconrado@hotmail.com.
After spending the night at our previous hotel in Manaus, we saw the town proper and the interior of the splendid opera house, the Teatro Amazonas. It was built at the end of the 19th century in grand Renaissance style with a pinkish exterior, white trim and balconies made of finely cut Portuguese stone. It also has an impressive cupola on top, added at the insistence of the then-mayor, made of 36,000 ceramic tiles imported from Alsace-Lorraine, all in the yellow, green and red colors of the Brazilian flag. Those rubber barons spared no expense while their monopoly lasted. The opera house continues full seasons of music, drama and dance; Margot Fontayne performed there, and left a pair of ballet slippers behind as a memorial. We also enjoyed the Municipal Market, built in 1902 from a design by Gustave Eiffel - (yes the same one as of the tower, and two steel churches fame - seemed appropriate to end our adventures with him since he joined with us in the Baja. ) based on Les Halles in Paris and the many splendid mansions of the rubber barons.
June 23 - 25 Return to Panama and the US
At the end of the day, we headed to the airport and to Panama, on our way to Miami, checked into the hotel we already knew from our trip down. It seemed eons since we had first passed through, worrying about shipping the Jeep to South America. We didn't have the time then to see the Panama Canal and the locks, so we stopped off to see them on the way back. It was really worth the overnight stay to see one of the engineering marvels of the world, especially at that time. And great fun to stand on the observation deck over the Miraflores Locks and see the huge boats going through the locks with what looked inches to spare. We learned that another set of locks will be built 2014 alongside the original ones to accommodate the need for ocean transshipment and hope to come back and see them one day. We had time to see a little more of Panama and its suburban development and urban redevelopment. It's a sophisticated city, with a growing US retirement community, due to the climate, and relatively inexpensive.
Tomorrow we fly to Miami and start our trek back to St. Charles, picking up the Jeep in Jacksonville and driving home. No more dictionaries and detailed maps, asking questions and hoping to understand the answers, just interstate highways and home before the 4th of July. As it always does, this travel has changed us in ways we didn't anticipate and made us appreciate the growing world in the Western Hemisphere below our borders. We'll be paying more attention from now on to the changes and opportunities here and wishing these spirited peoples and countries the best of luck as they continue to develop.
We have enjoyed sharing our travels with you through our words and pictures. However, as we learned in Granada, "Our words have holes in them," as do our pictures. They have only provided a snap shot of life in Central and South America, which deserves far more then just our brief blog. It is worth your time to take a trip to the various countries, one, two, or three at a time to experience for yourself the people, scenery and culture. You need not be afraid because you now know the area. It is the unknown that puts people in fear of travel.
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