Brazil, before arriving I thought of Bebel and Astrud Gilberto, beautiful oiled beach bodies, beef skewers of the churrasceria sort and caipirinhas, it was that, but not much more.
Brazil is a country of old and new with like characteristics of an 80s New York city. It's diverse, not one Brazilian looks alike, in fact, it was often easy to get lumped into a Brazilian when in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo. It's buildings range from colorful, colonistic houses to steel skyscrapers and the occasional fancy new apartment building. Even the language, Portuguese, sounds like an eclectic mix of Spanish, Italian, French and perhaps, Russian mixed together in a blend that comes out beautifully but is extremely challenging to understand. I spoke Spanish to try to get by but that only got me so far, and in reality, it made me realize how much we often don't listen to each other as human beings when we are trying to get our point across.
Starting with Sao Paolo, Christa and I cruised around with a local middle-upper class engineer named Enrique. Enrique represents the globalized Brazil in a nutshell. He has worked in Egypt, Spain and now returned home to Sao Paolo. He speaks Spanish, English and Portuguese fluently and he was a fan of good food, beautiful sights and surrounded himself with wonderful people. We ate amazing pizza, drank ridiculously overpriced caipirinhas and cruised through the streets of Sao Paolo. He took us through markets overflowing with local produce. Then, through streets lined with pole dance performers and drunken dancing samba-ers.
2 days later I was off to Salvador, the center of Afro-Brazilian culture with brick layed streets, amazing coconut, African/ Indian influenced shrimp dishes, music that made you think you could change the world by dancing and Cappoeira dancers that put Olympic gymnasts to shame. Peleurinho was a charming city filled with smiling faces and fun hanging heavy in the air.
Finally, I made it back down to Rio De Janeiro. Renowned for it's beautiful beaches and mountains surrounding the city, it fused Capetown, Seoul and Barcelona, in it's character, beach culture and aching to be fun.
Will I return to Brazil, perhaps, one day, but for now, I think there are different corners to investigate. Brazil has the reputation of being one of those countries with it all: food, fun, culture, beauty and history. It is a wonderful place but for me, it was no Morocco or Italy or India, but that could be the bias Asian in my heart.
Abriggada..
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