Thursday, August 04, 2005
The Incredible Paucity of Candidates
Where are all the flatmate candidates?
Normally when we advertise for flatmates, we are inundated, but at the moment it is like a desert out there. We ran an ad in the Wednesday Herald, and got a grand total of TWO replies. So if anyone knows of someone looking for a flat in Kingsland, handy to transport, cafes and Eden Park, to share with two well trained guys aged around 30, just let me know.
In the meantime, for anyone who missed it here is the transcript of my recent excursion to South America and Europe...
The Brazillian Chronicles. May & June 2005.
I made it.
5 weeks of what, at times, seemed like a permanent life in airports and planes, trains and buses has come to an end and I have arrived back in New Zealand just in time to see the All Blacks destroy the Lions in the second test. Yay!
May 24th seems a long long time ago. Most of it was spent packing, and last minute shopping for locks and pack mesh, but with over half an hour spare I was ready... only Will & Roberta were not quite ready... so I had extra time to kill.They eventually made it to my place with Ken The House Minder at the wheel. After some amazing contortionist manoeuvres all four of us and ALL of the luggage made it into Will's Integra... And we were off... in the wrong direction, because it appears I should have said "the OTHER right" when I told Ken The House Minder to turn right. Never mind.
The airport was the first of... let me see... 28 airport visits in 5 weeks. You can count them as we go if you don't believe me... It was a low drama affair and approximately on time our Lan Chile flight to Santiago took off. Great Airline Lan Chile. Highly recommended. Nice planes - no bits falling off as has been reported to be the case sometimes with the alternative - Aerolinas Argentinas... very cute hostesses, good food blah blah blah. The entertainment system was semi on the blink though, so that coulda been better. Nevertheless, 11 or 12 hours later, with the Lost Cities score between me and Will at 18 - 12 to me, we landed in an overcast Santiago (airport 2). The overcast bit was very disappointing because the in flight map software almost could not render the step slopes of the Andes successfully! At Santiago we bid farewell to Roberta who was using air miles with Aerolinas to get to Rio via Buenos Aires. We chilled out in the airport gate lounge, amongst the cigarette smokers (which was a shock to the system) and 3 hours later took off with another Lan Chile flight to Sao Paulo (airport 3) and then on to Rio de Janeiro (airport 4). It was approaching midnight local time and Will and I eventually managed to get our luggage checked into the locked luggage place, and then got in a pleasantly air-conditioned taxi to our hotel in Ipanema. Roberta had given us instructions on how to catch the bus, which would have cost 5 Reals (NZD$3) but we were both only semi-conscious by this time and the leather seats were calling our name. In retrospect we probably did get ripped off (65 Reals) but in our condition it was a bargain. And it was fast. Really fast. Welcome to driving South American style! Martha would have employment for life there I tell you!
Slept like a baby for most of the night, but woke up very very thirsty. Will had forgotten to tell me the vital safety reminder of 'don't drink the water in Brazil' and in my jet lagged sleep deprived state I down three glasses of tap water in the middle of the night... oops. Nevertheless, got up the next morning still alive and ventured out into the city of madness. Coffee and a ham and cheese croissant for almost no money at all and we were feeling pretty good. A nice walk along Ipanema beach - BEAUTIFUL beach, if you ignore the slum on the hillside at one end in what would be PRIME real estate anywhere else in the world.
A few kilometres of beach walking later and we decided to leave the beach and walk over to the lagoon and then back to the hotel... a crazy guy on a bike pulls up at the pedestrian crossing and says "Skank? Less dollars!? Skank for you?"
Hmmmm. No thanks mate....
"Cocaine? Good cocaine!?"
So we crossed the road. He rides off point at the statue of Christ at Cocavado yelling "Christo! Christo! Skank less dollars!" *shaking my head* Mad place this. So it's a nice neighbourhood. Really nice. One of the worlds best beaches just over there... Mercedes and BMW's in every driveway. Tree lined avenue with mosaic footpaths... really nice. Then, we come to an intersection, cross the road to keep going, and there is a burnt out car body in the middle of the road. I am just reaching for my camera when a little voice at the back of my head said "Nup, not such a wise idea" when 4 youths jump out and yell "Mushela! Mushela!!!"
Neither Will or I know what a mushela is so we frown and play dumb. One of them grabs Will and throws him to the ground. Hmmm, these guys are serious it seems. So I turn around and my mushela yelling yob has a large knife in his hand. And it is raised above his head. Threateningly. And you know that scene in Crocodile Dundee where he says "You call THAT a knife!?" Well, even Crocodile Dundee would have had to concede that this definitely qualified as a knife... So he starts hacking at my backpack strap and I finally click as to what a mushela is... As soon as our mushela's have been removed from our backs the youths disappear into thin air and Will and I have an exceptionally brief council of war, and come to the conclusion that running might be a good idea. So we run. And then Will realises that our Hotel room key was in his back pack, along with our safe key. That's not so good... so we get a cab and race back to our motel and somewhat sheepishly inform the guy at the desk that we just got robbed and lost our room and safe keys... and yes, this was within 60 minutes of leaving the hotel.
Welcome to Rio.
So after getting our safe drilled and a new key issued etc. we decide a calming beer at the bar might not be such a bad plan. Over said beer we decide to catch the bus to Cocavado and see the aforementioned Christo! statue (without less dollars Skank or cocaine). So... traffic in Rio then... first thing is there are a LOT of busses. Thousands of them. I counted 35 in view on one street at one point. It's actually a slight shock when you see a vehicle that is not a bus. So we wind our way from Ipanema through Copacabana and along the shoreline for over an hour to the base of the hill/mountain/mound thing that the statue is at the top of. There is a train that leaves every half an hour for 30 Reals, but we get to be friends with Luis who will drive us up for 35 Reals, now, and not in half an hour, and will take us to the national park viewing spot across from the statue as well. All good. The drive up is rather steep and passes through neighbourhoods you definitely would NOT want to walk through alone, even during the day. The views were one of a kind.
Compulsory trip if you go to Rio. Rio is one of the most spectacular sites for a city anywhere in the world, and this is probably one of the best places to see it from.
The next day Roberta arrived and we spent the day exploring Copacabana (where I stood on the beach and could only see 3 other people on the beach with me at just before midday and an admittedly overcast winters day... but still.... Copacabana Beach... and it was empty!). I bought a new bag to replace my lost mushela, and then we headed off to the airport (airport 5). We got there early. 8.30pm-ish for our flight at 11.30pm-ish. After retrieving our luggage Roberta and I went to the police office to report the robbery. Our policeman was not 100% pleased because the football was on and there was 20 minutes to go and his team was up 1 - 0. But once we got into filling the report and he learnt I was keen on football too he mellowed a bit... We got the report filled and then found our flight was rather delayed... hmmm. Welcome to airports South American style... HOURS later we finally took off for Recife (Roberta's home town).
Paulo (Roberta's Dad) is there to meet us at the airport (airport 6). It's good to see him again, and really good to get to his apartment building and settle down and say hi to Amelia (Roberta's mum) and Pedro and Daniel (Roberta's nephews). It feels like a giant trek is over and we can now relax... but then sleep beckons and I just flake out.
Recife is a city of about 2 million people right out on the corner of Brazil that pokes out into the Atlantic. It is a place of stark contrasts (as is all of Brazil). Paulo is an architect, and therefore is reasonably well off, especially by Brazilian standards. The back wall of their building backs onto a favella (slum) which is a fascinating social phenomenon.
The view out the front...
and the view out the back over the favella.
The land is privately owned, and apparently one day it will be vacant and the next day literally overnight, 20 or 30 families will have erected ramshackle shacks on it... they then gradually make home improvements with bricks and concrete and window frames salvaged from demolition sites etc. Power is connected through pirate connections to nearby powerlines, which the power company apparently would like to disconnect but no staff will go and cut the lines for fear of their life... water and sewerage are similarly connected unofficially, the sewerage often into storm water drains instead of the sewers... so it ends up untreated in the river - not good. When Paulo gets his power bill he gets a charge for his usage, and then an additional charge which is his share of all the power that the pirate connections use up... you look down into the favella at night and since they don't pay for the power they use all the lights are burning brightly. Very odd.
The next night was Roberta's cousin's wedding. I had a pre wedding disaster when I went to iron my trousers... now I am pretty well house trained, and am actually very good at ironing. However this was my first encounter with a Brazilian iron. In New Zealand, when you iron cotton fabrics you set the iron to almost it's maximum heat setting... you are then careful not to leave the iron sitting on the garment of course. Well, in Brazil it seems they must have fabrics that are a S H I T L O A D tougher than our cotton ones. The temperature dial just had numbers on it from 1 - 9. Thinking that discretion was the better part of valour, I set the dial to just on 7... thinking that if it wasn't hot enough I could always bump it up a bit later. So then I pick the iron up and bring it to within about a centimetre of the trousers and black smoke starts billowing up. I swear the iron could only have been in contact with the trousers for a nanosecond, and there was a LARGE iron shaped hole in the leg of my trousers, and black fabric remnants seared onto the face of the iron.
Hmmm. Never mind. So we head off to the wedding later. I am in the car with Paulo (jnr.), Roberta's younger brother who I am sharing a room with. We pick up his girlfriend and then his grandad Fernando. On the 'character spectrum' Fernando resides firmly at the right hand end... he's like the definition of what some people would call 'quite a character'. You know how old people have large ears? That's because your ears never stop growing. Fernando has harnessed this fact and turned it to his advantage. He can breathe through his ears. I swear! He must be able to because he was in the middle of a sentence when he climbed into the car and no one else said anything during the 20 minute drive to the church... we couldn't because Fernando was quite happily chattering away. It was all in Portuguese so I missed most of it, but Paulo and Michaela were pissing themselves laughing most of the time. After the church we moved onto the reception which was quite an event... I was in jeans (as a result of the iron incident earlier) and felt rather conspicuous as everyone else was in a suit or a full cocktail dress. Hmmm. In Brazil Johnny Walker must make enough profit to subsidise the company's activities everywhere else in the world. They don't drink scotch as an end of evening drink there... they start with it... and it just keeps coming. Waiters walked around the room all night with trays full of whisky tumblers overflowing with ice and seemingly bottomless supplies of JW red label. Nibbles proceeded from 9pm to about 11pm... then the entrees appeared... then it was more whisky until mains began at about 12.30am... then the dancing really took off, and Fabio (the groom) got up on the stage with the band and played, and then sung, to rapturous acclaim. We skulked away sometime between 2am and 3am, and as everyone else did, pilled into cars and drove home. No concerns about drink driving here.... you're probably safer driving drunk at night here anyway as all the swerving, red light running (which is normal at night there) and crazy Brazilian Ayerton Senna style driving just washes over you like water off a duck's back when you are a little drunk. A great party.
That weekend we packed up and drove 70 odd km inland to Gravata where Paulo & Amelia have a 'weekend house' in a condominium complex. It's a great place to retreat from the big city. The drive there saw the price of petrol at the service stations drop from 2.49 per litre to 2.03 per litre in just under 30 km which was rather interesting to see. Paulo has a shop in Gravata which still sells coca-cola in glass 1 litre bottles. The next morning he took me exploring and we drunk coconut water from fresh coconuts, and bought yummo cheese bread nibbles too. June is the festival of St. John in Brazil, and in the north east they take it very seriously... coloured lanterns and streamers are everywhere and fireworks go off all the time. They have explosive fireworks which put double happies and thunderbolts to shame. These things sound like bombs going off! In Gravata the shops had vast selections of streamers and lanterns - it all looked very cool.
On the Sunday morning we got in the car for a drive to Roberta's uncle's ranch. 80 kms down the motorway we turned off onto a small rural side road... which was paved, but you had to pay attention because pot holes were not uncommon. We followed a truck with a HUGE sign on the back saying 'JESUS'. I saw it and said "Je-SUS!!!". We then turned off onto a smaller rural side road (un paved this time) and went several more kilometres, before turning off onto and even smaller rural side road where second gear was a dangerous gambit. A short while later we emerged at Zacca's ranch where a party (which had started the day before!) was in full flight. Kiwis and Aussies like to think they know a thing or two about BBQ's. We don't. We are amateurs. We arrived and a beer was thrust into my hand, a chair was pulled up and there was meat. Lots of meat. Many different kinds of meat. Beef, Lamb, Pork, sausages... and it just kept coming... they like to eat it rolled in some sort of cornmeal flour which is quite nice, but I actually preferred the meat on it's own. Oh, and there were NO salads in sight. None.
Next adventure was Will and I flying from Recife (airport 7) to Rio de Janeiro (airport 8) to Sao Paulo (airport 9) to Porto Alegre (Airport 10) which is the capital of the southern most State in Brazil. Recife - Porto Alegre was a 6 1/2 flight stretched to 7 1/2 hours after we sat on the ground in Rio for an hour waiting for a dwarf to board the plane. We were met in P. Alegre by Iascara, a friend who we had met when she was in New Zealand 18 months ago. We caught a taxi from the airport to her place in Bella Novum, a Suburb on the southern edge of Porto Alegre which took about 45 minutes (take note of this time for the return journey below). Roberta had warned us to pack our woollens as it is winter, and it gets really cold in the south of Brazil (apparently). Iascara said that usually at that time of the year it might be 6 - 10 degrees C... well when we were there it was daily highs of 28 - 32... lucky I had my scarf huh!?
We stayed with Iascara's family for a couple of days, and then went with her dad, brother, uncle and cousin to see Brazil play Paraguay in a world cup qualifier match at Internacional's stadium. On the Saturday Will and I went into town and explored a bit. I bought a Brazilian soccer shirt in preparation for the football game, and then we waited for a bus home...
...in the wrong place for about 45 minutes. Stupid gringos...
Will and I were resplendent in our Brazil shirts, but we didn't exactly stand out. It was a sea of yellow except for one small (loud) section of red and white stripes. (Nola, I have the tickets for you, but there were no programs) It was quite an experience... 90,000 odd fans (I think) and with Brazil winning 4 - 1 nearly everyone went home very happy. Tremendous atmosphere... helped by the 10 minutes of explosives/fireworks detonated continuously for 10 minutes on the roof of the stadium before the national anthems...
Oh one highlight of the stay in Porto Alegre was Will's attempt on the world sleeping record. He had a 23 HOUR sleep! A huge effort indeed!
After Porto Alegre Will and I took the bus, "Angio Class", to Florianopolis. It's a 6 hour trip and I think I saw more trucks in that six hours than I have in the rest of my life combined. Florianopolis is the capital of Santa Catalina state. It's a university town of about 270,000 people - a small town by Brazil lain standards. It's on an island that is about 500m offshore. The island is about 30 kms north to south and 15 kms east to west. We stayed in a sleepy little village called Barra de Lagoa where the lagoon that is in the middle of the island drains out to the sea via a small river. We scored a 2 bedroom apartment with full kitchen etc. for 40 reals a night (about NZD$25.00). I'd go back to Florianopolis any day - it was beautiful, peaceful and very relaxing. One night we went to a bar to see the Argentina versus Brazil world cup qualifier on TV. Late in the game (approaching midnight) I was starting to feel a little chilly... goose bumps on my arms and everything. No wonder... the clock across the road said it was down to 19 degrees C! Obviously I was acclimatising to Brazilian conditions!
Another 6 hour bus ride took us back to Porto Alegre... then a 2 hour ordeal in a bus got us to the other side of Porto Alegre... it was 'ride the bus for free' day and I think we squeezed about 150 people onto the bus. Pure madness. We then chilled out at Iascara's place for a few hours before catching a taxi to the airport. This time we had Ernie as our taxi driver... and he drove the fastest milk cart in the west! It took us barely 25 minutes to get to the airport (number 11), all without losing any paint or sustaining any panel damage along the way too!
Our flight then took us back to Recife (airport 14) via Sao Paulo (number 12) and Rio de Janeiro (number 13). These red eye flights might be cheap, but they are a little draining. We landed at 6.30am and by 9am I think I was fast asleep. The next couple of days were spent leading up to Will & Roberta's Brazilian wedding, for which I looked the part in a hired suit, with no large iron holes in the legs of the trousers! It was a helluva party with drinks flowing freely all night and fantastic food and great company. Two days before the wedding I had been at home alone and the phone had rung. Due to my limited (non-existent) Portuguese my phone policy was don't answer it unless it rings twice in a row which would be the signal that it was Will or Roberta or Paulo calling... the phone rung and I ignored it then it rang again straight away, but I had been faked out... Someone asked for Roberta in Portuguese and I stammered my way through a terrible attempt at explaining she was not home and that I did not speak Portuguese when the voice on the other end of the phone said "Is that you Brandon?". I was so surprised...it was Taciano, a friend of ours from New Zealand who is from Recife. I did not know he was in Brazil so it was a great surprise to be suddenly talking to him... At the wedding I got to meet his parents which was very cool and loads of other friends and family of Roberta's.
We got home at about 3.30am and the next morning I was up at 8.00am and into a taxi to the airport (number 15) for my 10.25am GOL flight to Salvador (airport 16) and Rio De Janeiro (airport 17). GOL really are an impressive airline. They only fly within Brazil as far as I know although they might have started flights within South America. Their staff are incredible... the same staff that check your bags in take your tickets at the gate lounge and are also your flight crew... they are all multilingual and when they look at your passport at the chicken counter they see that it is a New Zealand one and greet you in English.... then, an hour later at the gate when they are saying a "Thankyou, have a good flight." as they take your boarding pass they remember you are English speaking... nothing is too much trouble for them... when they are doing pre-flight checks, if someone is reading the stop and lean over and turn the overhead reading light on for them... little things like that. And it is the most superbly branded airline I have ever seen.
At Rio I swapped planes to an American Airlines 777 for the 38 minute flight to Sao Paulo (airport 18) where the captain decided he was too sick to continue on to New York... so we got off the plane and were given a pretty generous meal voucher to help us through the 4 1/2 hour delay as they flew a new captain in... bugger. Eventually though we took off bound for New York's JFK (Airport 19). I caught the train into Manhattan and checked out ground zero and the streets around the bottom end of the island, and bought some new shorts. Then it was back to JFK (airport visit #20), where 4 gate changes and one terminal change later we made it on to the plane, only to find that there were 2 Juliet Smith's, each with a boarding pass to seat 14C (behind me). And the plane was completely full... so no spare seats. Apparently the airline staff jargon for this is a 'seat duel'.... there were several animated walkie-talkie discussions along the lines of "Tango 46, seat duel on 14C, REPEAT seat duel on 14C.... Negative, negative! No seats available to relocate. We STILL have a live seat duel on 14C..." Very amusing stuff. Eventually it was discovered that a certain Mr. George Chen had checked in, but was not on board the plane. This was good news for the Juliets, as they could now sit down and the seat duel was resolved with a relocation from 14c. However it was bad news for all concerned because Mr. George Chen's bags needed to be unloaded from the hold which took about 45 minutes. So, over 2 1/2 hours late we finally took off for Charles de Gaulle (airport 21). My sister Brigid met me at the St. Michel Notre Dame metro station and took me for a short walk through the streets of Paris - showed me where she lived and worked and then on to the hotel she had arranged for me.
We then went out for lunch and a walk through the Gardens de Luxembourg which was very cool. I then had a we nap for an hour and a half to help me recover from the 55 hour ordeal from Recife - Paris, and then my friend Yann rung me to wake me up and say he was just finishing work. Brigid had gone out to meet up with some of her friends and her, me and Yann met up and went out for a few drinks, and then dinner, and then a few more drinks... It was really cool to catch up with Brigid and to spend time with Yann in his city, with him showing me around. The highlight of the evening was finding this pub Yann new with a crypt downstairs... you had to descend a staircase that was so steep and twisting it would be impossible to get down drunk, but the reward was this cool little room (cool in temperature and atmosphere) with a vaulted stone ceiling. Very intimate, and a great place to sit and drink Sangria. Brigid went home just after midnight and Yann and I picked up my stuff from my hotel room and drove to his house.
Welcome to Paris.
The next day Yann had the day off work so we got up and headed into town for red wine and tapas for breakfast. It was a music festival in Paris that day, so after a leisurely brunch with a few card games we hooked up with Yann's mate Laurent and hit the city... a few hours were whiled away in a bar drinking Mexican beers and playing San Yuan before we did some more exploring and ended up at a restaurant for pizza and drinks. Then it was onto the Place de La Bastille where there was a big concert going on... and where I experienced the joys of tear gas for the first time... not directly, but it was near enough to be unpleasant. The next day I spent with Brigid walking around Paris... the Louvre, Cleopatra's needle, The Eiffel tower, Place des Invalides (napoleon's tomb) lunch in a cafe and then St. Sulspice and Notre Dame. My feet will never be the same again but it was an excellent day. Paris is an incredibly beautiful city. I loved it. That night friends of Yann's came over to play games, including Guillume who I had met in New Zealand a couple of years ago. Great fun all night gaming...
The next day I was off again, on the train to Belgium. 5 minutes out of Brugges I was involved in what according to Danny D'Hoogge was Belgium's "first major train accident in 50 years". It was certainly my first train accident, and it was pretty scary stuff... we were cruising along at around 80 - 100km's per hour when there was a god-awful BANG... followed by loud screeching noises and more bangs in rapid succession. When overhead wires started falling down and slapping the side of our carriage it was clear all was not well. By the time the train had come to a halt there was a rats nests of tangled wires dangling off the back of our carriage, and one of the steel girders holding up the wires had collapsed and crashed into the carriage behind ours, breaking windows and sending two people to hospital. Rather exciting stuff, but far from ideal. The next hour was spent trying desperately not to die in the train... with live wires all over the ground no one was allowed out, and with the power not on in the carriages the air conditioning stopped. 33 degrees outside and hotter than that in the train. Not a comfortable hour at all. The we were loaded onto another train for the 5 mins trip into Brugge where we got on another train which drove 3 minutes out of Brugge and sat there for 20 minutes before driving 3 minutes back into Brugge, where we all got off again and got on another train... which eventually took us to Knokke - my final destination!
Danny's girlfriend Anna-Cabana picked me up and we then called into the Butterfly Garden where Danny and his family are now running a cafe. It was very amusing to see Danny behind the bar and his kitchen staff calling him "Big Boss!" hahahahaha. After helping to tidy up it was a short drive to the sea where I got a photo of me in the North Sea. That night Danny, Anna-Cabana and I went to Brugge for dinner which was really rather special It's a REALLY cool town with canals all though it and cobbled streets and lots of flowers in window boxes etc. I could definitely spend more time there...
The next day Danny had to work and loaned me a scooter and a German soldiers WWII crash helmet. I spent the day zipping around Belgium and Holland. I stopped in Sluise in Holland for lunch and had Maarjees - raw baby herrings - YUM-MO!!! Also on Danny D'Hoogge's must eat items for the day were ice cream from the place down the road - awesome icecream, Luiske Waffels from somewhere on the promenade (very very good) and a Crepe Normand which the chefs at the Butterfly Garden cafe ended up whipping up as I had failed to find them anywhere else. It was a really really awesome day, and it wasn't finished yet. Anna-Cabana had been preparing for a Raclette bbq that night back at her farm house. Many beers and wines and lots of melted Raclette cheese on HALF a potato later we turned in for the night.
The next day I caught the train, without any accidents, to Cologne where Sabine met me at the train station... which is RIGHT next door to one of the worlds most impressive Cathedrals. "Oh..." she says casually... "have you seen our Cathedral?" WOW... And so started Sabine Geister's accelerated course in Cologne Appreciation studies. 3 intense days of sight seeing, dining, sweets and chocolates consumption, beer drinking, grilling (not bbq-ing I'll have you know) by the lakeside, Cathedral climbing (all 511 stairs!) pizza making and university touring. Three absolutely top days in which I got to meet Marieke and Julia - the other two mouse-keteers of whom I had heard so much of while Sabine was in Germany... and they lived up to the billing Sabine had given them. Some people claim that a game of Mama Mia was played when we were by the lakeside, but strangely Julia and I have no memory of that having happened at all! The first night there Marieke joined Sabine and I and we went out dancing till the wee small hours in a Klien Kolshe bar.... lots of proper German beer, Cologne style, and lots of German football songs VIVA COLONIA!!! etc. etc. How much fun was that!?
After three days I left Sabine at the Hoppinoff train station, even though I was hoppin-on this time. She headed back to Prum and I started the amazing 60 hour journey home which involved a train ride to Brussels and then Paris, then a plane trip from Paris (22) to New York (23) where I was upgraded to business class WOO-HOO!!! for the trip to Sao Paulo (24) and then Rio (25) where I met up with Will who had flown in from Buenos Aires. We had about and hour and a half to kill before boarding our Lan Chile flight to Sao Paulo (26) and on to Santiago (27). A 3 hour lay over there was filled with a beer or two and watching the Copa de Libertores semi final between Sao Paulo and River Plate, and then we boarded the plane for our final flight back to Auckland (airport 28) where Baum picked us up bright and early!
And we were home safe and sound!
BC
Normally when we advertise for flatmates, we are inundated, but at the moment it is like a desert out there. We ran an ad in the Wednesday Herald, and got a grand total of TWO replies. So if anyone knows of someone looking for a flat in Kingsland, handy to transport, cafes and Eden Park, to share with two well trained guys aged around 30, just let me know.
In the meantime, for anyone who missed it here is the transcript of my recent excursion to South America and Europe...
The Brazillian Chronicles. May & June 2005.
I made it.
5 weeks of what, at times, seemed like a permanent life in airports and planes, trains and buses has come to an end and I have arrived back in New Zealand just in time to see the All Blacks destroy the Lions in the second test. Yay!
May 24th seems a long long time ago. Most of it was spent packing, and last minute shopping for locks and pack mesh, but with over half an hour spare I was ready... only Will & Roberta were not quite ready... so I had extra time to kill.They eventually made it to my place with Ken The House Minder at the wheel. After some amazing contortionist manoeuvres all four of us and ALL of the luggage made it into Will's Integra... And we were off... in the wrong direction, because it appears I should have said "the OTHER right" when I told Ken The House Minder to turn right. Never mind.
The airport was the first of... let me see... 28 airport visits in 5 weeks. You can count them as we go if you don't believe me... It was a low drama affair and approximately on time our Lan Chile flight to Santiago took off. Great Airline Lan Chile. Highly recommended. Nice planes - no bits falling off as has been reported to be the case sometimes with the alternative - Aerolinas Argentinas... very cute hostesses, good food blah blah blah. The entertainment system was semi on the blink though, so that coulda been better. Nevertheless, 11 or 12 hours later, with the Lost Cities score between me and Will at 18 - 12 to me, we landed in an overcast Santiago (airport 2). The overcast bit was very disappointing because the in flight map software almost could not render the step slopes of the Andes successfully! At Santiago we bid farewell to Roberta who was using air miles with Aerolinas to get to Rio via Buenos Aires. We chilled out in the airport gate lounge, amongst the cigarette smokers (which was a shock to the system) and 3 hours later took off with another Lan Chile flight to Sao Paulo (airport 3) and then on to Rio de Janeiro (airport 4). It was approaching midnight local time and Will and I eventually managed to get our luggage checked into the locked luggage place, and then got in a pleasantly air-conditioned taxi to our hotel in Ipanema. Roberta had given us instructions on how to catch the bus, which would have cost 5 Reals (NZD$3) but we were both only semi-conscious by this time and the leather seats were calling our name. In retrospect we probably did get ripped off (65 Reals) but in our condition it was a bargain. And it was fast. Really fast. Welcome to driving South American style! Martha would have employment for life there I tell you!
Slept like a baby for most of the night, but woke up very very thirsty. Will had forgotten to tell me the vital safety reminder of 'don't drink the water in Brazil' and in my jet lagged sleep deprived state I down three glasses of tap water in the middle of the night... oops. Nevertheless, got up the next morning still alive and ventured out into the city of madness. Coffee and a ham and cheese croissant for almost no money at all and we were feeling pretty good. A nice walk along Ipanema beach - BEAUTIFUL beach, if you ignore the slum on the hillside at one end in what would be PRIME real estate anywhere else in the world.
A few kilometres of beach walking later and we decided to leave the beach and walk over to the lagoon and then back to the hotel... a crazy guy on a bike pulls up at the pedestrian crossing and says "Skank? Less dollars!? Skank for you?"
Hmmmm. No thanks mate....
"Cocaine? Good cocaine!?"
So we crossed the road. He rides off point at the statue of Christ at Cocavado yelling "Christo! Christo! Skank less dollars!" *shaking my head* Mad place this. So it's a nice neighbourhood. Really nice. One of the worlds best beaches just over there... Mercedes and BMW's in every driveway. Tree lined avenue with mosaic footpaths... really nice. Then, we come to an intersection, cross the road to keep going, and there is a burnt out car body in the middle of the road. I am just reaching for my camera when a little voice at the back of my head said "Nup, not such a wise idea" when 4 youths jump out and yell "Mushela! Mushela!!!"
Neither Will or I know what a mushela is so we frown and play dumb. One of them grabs Will and throws him to the ground. Hmmm, these guys are serious it seems. So I turn around and my mushela yelling yob has a large knife in his hand. And it is raised above his head. Threateningly. And you know that scene in Crocodile Dundee where he says "You call THAT a knife!?" Well, even Crocodile Dundee would have had to concede that this definitely qualified as a knife... So he starts hacking at my backpack strap and I finally click as to what a mushela is... As soon as our mushela's have been removed from our backs the youths disappear into thin air and Will and I have an exceptionally brief council of war, and come to the conclusion that running might be a good idea. So we run. And then Will realises that our Hotel room key was in his back pack, along with our safe key. That's not so good... so we get a cab and race back to our motel and somewhat sheepishly inform the guy at the desk that we just got robbed and lost our room and safe keys... and yes, this was within 60 minutes of leaving the hotel.
Welcome to Rio.
So after getting our safe drilled and a new key issued etc. we decide a calming beer at the bar might not be such a bad plan. Over said beer we decide to catch the bus to Cocavado and see the aforementioned Christo! statue (without less dollars Skank or cocaine). So... traffic in Rio then... first thing is there are a LOT of busses. Thousands of them. I counted 35 in view on one street at one point. It's actually a slight shock when you see a vehicle that is not a bus. So we wind our way from Ipanema through Copacabana and along the shoreline for over an hour to the base of the hill/mountain/mound thing that the statue is at the top of. There is a train that leaves every half an hour for 30 Reals, but we get to be friends with Luis who will drive us up for 35 Reals, now, and not in half an hour, and will take us to the national park viewing spot across from the statue as well. All good. The drive up is rather steep and passes through neighbourhoods you definitely would NOT want to walk through alone, even during the day. The views were one of a kind.
Compulsory trip if you go to Rio. Rio is one of the most spectacular sites for a city anywhere in the world, and this is probably one of the best places to see it from.
The next day Roberta arrived and we spent the day exploring Copacabana (where I stood on the beach and could only see 3 other people on the beach with me at just before midday and an admittedly overcast winters day... but still.... Copacabana Beach... and it was empty!). I bought a new bag to replace my lost mushela, and then we headed off to the airport (airport 5). We got there early. 8.30pm-ish for our flight at 11.30pm-ish. After retrieving our luggage Roberta and I went to the police office to report the robbery. Our policeman was not 100% pleased because the football was on and there was 20 minutes to go and his team was up 1 - 0. But once we got into filling the report and he learnt I was keen on football too he mellowed a bit... We got the report filled and then found our flight was rather delayed... hmmm. Welcome to airports South American style... HOURS later we finally took off for Recife (Roberta's home town).
Paulo (Roberta's Dad) is there to meet us at the airport (airport 6). It's good to see him again, and really good to get to his apartment building and settle down and say hi to Amelia (Roberta's mum) and Pedro and Daniel (Roberta's nephews). It feels like a giant trek is over and we can now relax... but then sleep beckons and I just flake out.
Recife is a city of about 2 million people right out on the corner of Brazil that pokes out into the Atlantic. It is a place of stark contrasts (as is all of Brazil). Paulo is an architect, and therefore is reasonably well off, especially by Brazilian standards. The back wall of their building backs onto a favella (slum) which is a fascinating social phenomenon.
The view out the front...
and the view out the back over the favella.
The land is privately owned, and apparently one day it will be vacant and the next day literally overnight, 20 or 30 families will have erected ramshackle shacks on it... they then gradually make home improvements with bricks and concrete and window frames salvaged from demolition sites etc. Power is connected through pirate connections to nearby powerlines, which the power company apparently would like to disconnect but no staff will go and cut the lines for fear of their life... water and sewerage are similarly connected unofficially, the sewerage often into storm water drains instead of the sewers... so it ends up untreated in the river - not good. When Paulo gets his power bill he gets a charge for his usage, and then an additional charge which is his share of all the power that the pirate connections use up... you look down into the favella at night and since they don't pay for the power they use all the lights are burning brightly. Very odd.
The next night was Roberta's cousin's wedding. I had a pre wedding disaster when I went to iron my trousers... now I am pretty well house trained, and am actually very good at ironing. However this was my first encounter with a Brazilian iron. In New Zealand, when you iron cotton fabrics you set the iron to almost it's maximum heat setting... you are then careful not to leave the iron sitting on the garment of course. Well, in Brazil it seems they must have fabrics that are a S H I T L O A D tougher than our cotton ones. The temperature dial just had numbers on it from 1 - 9. Thinking that discretion was the better part of valour, I set the dial to just on 7... thinking that if it wasn't hot enough I could always bump it up a bit later. So then I pick the iron up and bring it to within about a centimetre of the trousers and black smoke starts billowing up. I swear the iron could only have been in contact with the trousers for a nanosecond, and there was a LARGE iron shaped hole in the leg of my trousers, and black fabric remnants seared onto the face of the iron.
Hmmm. Never mind. So we head off to the wedding later. I am in the car with Paulo (jnr.), Roberta's younger brother who I am sharing a room with. We pick up his girlfriend and then his grandad Fernando. On the 'character spectrum' Fernando resides firmly at the right hand end... he's like the definition of what some people would call 'quite a character'. You know how old people have large ears? That's because your ears never stop growing. Fernando has harnessed this fact and turned it to his advantage. He can breathe through his ears. I swear! He must be able to because he was in the middle of a sentence when he climbed into the car and no one else said anything during the 20 minute drive to the church... we couldn't because Fernando was quite happily chattering away. It was all in Portuguese so I missed most of it, but Paulo and Michaela were pissing themselves laughing most of the time. After the church we moved onto the reception which was quite an event... I was in jeans (as a result of the iron incident earlier) and felt rather conspicuous as everyone else was in a suit or a full cocktail dress. Hmmm. In Brazil Johnny Walker must make enough profit to subsidise the company's activities everywhere else in the world. They don't drink scotch as an end of evening drink there... they start with it... and it just keeps coming. Waiters walked around the room all night with trays full of whisky tumblers overflowing with ice and seemingly bottomless supplies of JW red label. Nibbles proceeded from 9pm to about 11pm... then the entrees appeared... then it was more whisky until mains began at about 12.30am... then the dancing really took off, and Fabio (the groom) got up on the stage with the band and played, and then sung, to rapturous acclaim. We skulked away sometime between 2am and 3am, and as everyone else did, pilled into cars and drove home. No concerns about drink driving here.... you're probably safer driving drunk at night here anyway as all the swerving, red light running (which is normal at night there) and crazy Brazilian Ayerton Senna style driving just washes over you like water off a duck's back when you are a little drunk. A great party.
That weekend we packed up and drove 70 odd km inland to Gravata where Paulo & Amelia have a 'weekend house' in a condominium complex. It's a great place to retreat from the big city. The drive there saw the price of petrol at the service stations drop from 2.49 per litre to 2.03 per litre in just under 30 km which was rather interesting to see. Paulo has a shop in Gravata which still sells coca-cola in glass 1 litre bottles. The next morning he took me exploring and we drunk coconut water from fresh coconuts, and bought yummo cheese bread nibbles too. June is the festival of St. John in Brazil, and in the north east they take it very seriously... coloured lanterns and streamers are everywhere and fireworks go off all the time. They have explosive fireworks which put double happies and thunderbolts to shame. These things sound like bombs going off! In Gravata the shops had vast selections of streamers and lanterns - it all looked very cool.
On the Sunday morning we got in the car for a drive to Roberta's uncle's ranch. 80 kms down the motorway we turned off onto a small rural side road... which was paved, but you had to pay attention because pot holes were not uncommon. We followed a truck with a HUGE sign on the back saying 'JESUS'. I saw it and said "Je-SUS!!!". We then turned off onto a smaller rural side road (un paved this time) and went several more kilometres, before turning off onto and even smaller rural side road where second gear was a dangerous gambit. A short while later we emerged at Zacca's ranch where a party (which had started the day before!) was in full flight. Kiwis and Aussies like to think they know a thing or two about BBQ's. We don't. We are amateurs. We arrived and a beer was thrust into my hand, a chair was pulled up and there was meat. Lots of meat. Many different kinds of meat. Beef, Lamb, Pork, sausages... and it just kept coming... they like to eat it rolled in some sort of cornmeal flour which is quite nice, but I actually preferred the meat on it's own. Oh, and there were NO salads in sight. None.
Next adventure was Will and I flying from Recife (airport 7) to Rio de Janeiro (airport 8) to Sao Paulo (airport 9) to Porto Alegre (Airport 10) which is the capital of the southern most State in Brazil. Recife - Porto Alegre was a 6 1/2 flight stretched to 7 1/2 hours after we sat on the ground in Rio for an hour waiting for a dwarf to board the plane. We were met in P. Alegre by Iascara, a friend who we had met when she was in New Zealand 18 months ago. We caught a taxi from the airport to her place in Bella Novum, a Suburb on the southern edge of Porto Alegre which took about 45 minutes (take note of this time for the return journey below). Roberta had warned us to pack our woollens as it is winter, and it gets really cold in the south of Brazil (apparently). Iascara said that usually at that time of the year it might be 6 - 10 degrees C... well when we were there it was daily highs of 28 - 32... lucky I had my scarf huh!?
We stayed with Iascara's family for a couple of days, and then went with her dad, brother, uncle and cousin to see Brazil play Paraguay in a world cup qualifier match at Internacional's stadium. On the Saturday Will and I went into town and explored a bit. I bought a Brazilian soccer shirt in preparation for the football game, and then we waited for a bus home...
...in the wrong place for about 45 minutes. Stupid gringos...
Will and I were resplendent in our Brazil shirts, but we didn't exactly stand out. It was a sea of yellow except for one small (loud) section of red and white stripes. (Nola, I have the tickets for you, but there were no programs) It was quite an experience... 90,000 odd fans (I think) and with Brazil winning 4 - 1 nearly everyone went home very happy. Tremendous atmosphere... helped by the 10 minutes of explosives/fireworks detonated continuously for 10 minutes on the roof of the stadium before the national anthems...
Oh one highlight of the stay in Porto Alegre was Will's attempt on the world sleeping record. He had a 23 HOUR sleep! A huge effort indeed!
After Porto Alegre Will and I took the bus, "Angio Class", to Florianopolis. It's a 6 hour trip and I think I saw more trucks in that six hours than I have in the rest of my life combined. Florianopolis is the capital of Santa Catalina state. It's a university town of about 270,000 people - a small town by Brazil lain standards. It's on an island that is about 500m offshore. The island is about 30 kms north to south and 15 kms east to west. We stayed in a sleepy little village called Barra de Lagoa where the lagoon that is in the middle of the island drains out to the sea via a small river. We scored a 2 bedroom apartment with full kitchen etc. for 40 reals a night (about NZD$25.00). I'd go back to Florianopolis any day - it was beautiful, peaceful and very relaxing. One night we went to a bar to see the Argentina versus Brazil world cup qualifier on TV. Late in the game (approaching midnight) I was starting to feel a little chilly... goose bumps on my arms and everything. No wonder... the clock across the road said it was down to 19 degrees C! Obviously I was acclimatising to Brazilian conditions!
Another 6 hour bus ride took us back to Porto Alegre... then a 2 hour ordeal in a bus got us to the other side of Porto Alegre... it was 'ride the bus for free' day and I think we squeezed about 150 people onto the bus. Pure madness. We then chilled out at Iascara's place for a few hours before catching a taxi to the airport. This time we had Ernie as our taxi driver... and he drove the fastest milk cart in the west! It took us barely 25 minutes to get to the airport (number 11), all without losing any paint or sustaining any panel damage along the way too!
Our flight then took us back to Recife (airport 14) via Sao Paulo (number 12) and Rio de Janeiro (number 13). These red eye flights might be cheap, but they are a little draining. We landed at 6.30am and by 9am I think I was fast asleep. The next couple of days were spent leading up to Will & Roberta's Brazilian wedding, for which I looked the part in a hired suit, with no large iron holes in the legs of the trousers! It was a helluva party with drinks flowing freely all night and fantastic food and great company. Two days before the wedding I had been at home alone and the phone had rung. Due to my limited (non-existent) Portuguese my phone policy was don't answer it unless it rings twice in a row which would be the signal that it was Will or Roberta or Paulo calling... the phone rung and I ignored it then it rang again straight away, but I had been faked out... Someone asked for Roberta in Portuguese and I stammered my way through a terrible attempt at explaining she was not home and that I did not speak Portuguese when the voice on the other end of the phone said "Is that you Brandon?". I was so surprised...it was Taciano, a friend of ours from New Zealand who is from Recife. I did not know he was in Brazil so it was a great surprise to be suddenly talking to him... At the wedding I got to meet his parents which was very cool and loads of other friends and family of Roberta's.
We got home at about 3.30am and the next morning I was up at 8.00am and into a taxi to the airport (number 15) for my 10.25am GOL flight to Salvador (airport 16) and Rio De Janeiro (airport 17). GOL really are an impressive airline. They only fly within Brazil as far as I know although they might have started flights within South America. Their staff are incredible... the same staff that check your bags in take your tickets at the gate lounge and are also your flight crew... they are all multilingual and when they look at your passport at the chicken counter they see that it is a New Zealand one and greet you in English.... then, an hour later at the gate when they are saying a "Thankyou, have a good flight." as they take your boarding pass they remember you are English speaking... nothing is too much trouble for them... when they are doing pre-flight checks, if someone is reading the stop and lean over and turn the overhead reading light on for them... little things like that. And it is the most superbly branded airline I have ever seen.
At Rio I swapped planes to an American Airlines 777 for the 38 minute flight to Sao Paulo (airport 18) where the captain decided he was too sick to continue on to New York... so we got off the plane and were given a pretty generous meal voucher to help us through the 4 1/2 hour delay as they flew a new captain in... bugger. Eventually though we took off bound for New York's JFK (Airport 19). I caught the train into Manhattan and checked out ground zero and the streets around the bottom end of the island, and bought some new shorts. Then it was back to JFK (airport visit #20), where 4 gate changes and one terminal change later we made it on to the plane, only to find that there were 2 Juliet Smith's, each with a boarding pass to seat 14C (behind me). And the plane was completely full... so no spare seats. Apparently the airline staff jargon for this is a 'seat duel'.... there were several animated walkie-talkie discussions along the lines of "Tango 46, seat duel on 14C, REPEAT seat duel on 14C.... Negative, negative! No seats available to relocate. We STILL have a live seat duel on 14C..." Very amusing stuff. Eventually it was discovered that a certain Mr. George Chen had checked in, but was not on board the plane. This was good news for the Juliets, as they could now sit down and the seat duel was resolved with a relocation from 14c. However it was bad news for all concerned because Mr. George Chen's bags needed to be unloaded from the hold which took about 45 minutes. So, over 2 1/2 hours late we finally took off for Charles de Gaulle (airport 21). My sister Brigid met me at the St. Michel Notre Dame metro station and took me for a short walk through the streets of Paris - showed me where she lived and worked and then on to the hotel she had arranged for me.
We then went out for lunch and a walk through the Gardens de Luxembourg which was very cool. I then had a we nap for an hour and a half to help me recover from the 55 hour ordeal from Recife - Paris, and then my friend Yann rung me to wake me up and say he was just finishing work. Brigid had gone out to meet up with some of her friends and her, me and Yann met up and went out for a few drinks, and then dinner, and then a few more drinks... It was really cool to catch up with Brigid and to spend time with Yann in his city, with him showing me around. The highlight of the evening was finding this pub Yann new with a crypt downstairs... you had to descend a staircase that was so steep and twisting it would be impossible to get down drunk, but the reward was this cool little room (cool in temperature and atmosphere) with a vaulted stone ceiling. Very intimate, and a great place to sit and drink Sangria. Brigid went home just after midnight and Yann and I picked up my stuff from my hotel room and drove to his house.
Welcome to Paris.
The next day Yann had the day off work so we got up and headed into town for red wine and tapas for breakfast. It was a music festival in Paris that day, so after a leisurely brunch with a few card games we hooked up with Yann's mate Laurent and hit the city... a few hours were whiled away in a bar drinking Mexican beers and playing San Yuan before we did some more exploring and ended up at a restaurant for pizza and drinks. Then it was onto the Place de La Bastille where there was a big concert going on... and where I experienced the joys of tear gas for the first time... not directly, but it was near enough to be unpleasant. The next day I spent with Brigid walking around Paris... the Louvre, Cleopatra's needle, The Eiffel tower, Place des Invalides (napoleon's tomb) lunch in a cafe and then St. Sulspice and Notre Dame. My feet will never be the same again but it was an excellent day. Paris is an incredibly beautiful city. I loved it. That night friends of Yann's came over to play games, including Guillume who I had met in New Zealand a couple of years ago. Great fun all night gaming...
The next day I was off again, on the train to Belgium. 5 minutes out of Brugges I was involved in what according to Danny D'Hoogge was Belgium's "first major train accident in 50 years". It was certainly my first train accident, and it was pretty scary stuff... we were cruising along at around 80 - 100km's per hour when there was a god-awful BANG... followed by loud screeching noises and more bangs in rapid succession. When overhead wires started falling down and slapping the side of our carriage it was clear all was not well. By the time the train had come to a halt there was a rats nests of tangled wires dangling off the back of our carriage, and one of the steel girders holding up the wires had collapsed and crashed into the carriage behind ours, breaking windows and sending two people to hospital. Rather exciting stuff, but far from ideal. The next hour was spent trying desperately not to die in the train... with live wires all over the ground no one was allowed out, and with the power not on in the carriages the air conditioning stopped. 33 degrees outside and hotter than that in the train. Not a comfortable hour at all. The we were loaded onto another train for the 5 mins trip into Brugge where we got on another train which drove 3 minutes out of Brugge and sat there for 20 minutes before driving 3 minutes back into Brugge, where we all got off again and got on another train... which eventually took us to Knokke - my final destination!
Danny's girlfriend Anna-Cabana picked me up and we then called into the Butterfly Garden where Danny and his family are now running a cafe. It was very amusing to see Danny behind the bar and his kitchen staff calling him "Big Boss!" hahahahaha. After helping to tidy up it was a short drive to the sea where I got a photo of me in the North Sea. That night Danny, Anna-Cabana and I went to Brugge for dinner which was really rather special It's a REALLY cool town with canals all though it and cobbled streets and lots of flowers in window boxes etc. I could definitely spend more time there...
The next day Danny had to work and loaned me a scooter and a German soldiers WWII crash helmet. I spent the day zipping around Belgium and Holland. I stopped in Sluise in Holland for lunch and had Maarjees - raw baby herrings - YUM-MO!!! Also on Danny D'Hoogge's must eat items for the day were ice cream from the place down the road - awesome icecream, Luiske Waffels from somewhere on the promenade (very very good) and a Crepe Normand which the chefs at the Butterfly Garden cafe ended up whipping up as I had failed to find them anywhere else. It was a really really awesome day, and it wasn't finished yet. Anna-Cabana had been preparing for a Raclette bbq that night back at her farm house. Many beers and wines and lots of melted Raclette cheese on HALF a potato later we turned in for the night.
The next day I caught the train, without any accidents, to Cologne where Sabine met me at the train station... which is RIGHT next door to one of the worlds most impressive Cathedrals. "Oh..." she says casually... "have you seen our Cathedral?" WOW... And so started Sabine Geister's accelerated course in Cologne Appreciation studies. 3 intense days of sight seeing, dining, sweets and chocolates consumption, beer drinking, grilling (not bbq-ing I'll have you know) by the lakeside, Cathedral climbing (all 511 stairs!) pizza making and university touring. Three absolutely top days in which I got to meet Marieke and Julia - the other two mouse-keteers of whom I had heard so much of while Sabine was in Germany... and they lived up to the billing Sabine had given them. Some people claim that a game of Mama Mia was played when we were by the lakeside, but strangely Julia and I have no memory of that having happened at all! The first night there Marieke joined Sabine and I and we went out dancing till the wee small hours in a Klien Kolshe bar.... lots of proper German beer, Cologne style, and lots of German football songs VIVA COLONIA!!! etc. etc. How much fun was that!?
After three days I left Sabine at the Hoppinoff train station, even though I was hoppin-on this time. She headed back to Prum and I started the amazing 60 hour journey home which involved a train ride to Brussels and then Paris, then a plane trip from Paris (22) to New York (23) where I was upgraded to business class WOO-HOO!!! for the trip to Sao Paulo (24) and then Rio (25) where I met up with Will who had flown in from Buenos Aires. We had about and hour and a half to kill before boarding our Lan Chile flight to Sao Paulo (26) and on to Santiago (27). A 3 hour lay over there was filled with a beer or two and watching the Copa de Libertores semi final between Sao Paulo and River Plate, and then we boarded the plane for our final flight back to Auckland (airport 28) where Baum picked us up bright and early!
And we were home safe and sound!
BC
