Brazil is a marvelous country!

Hello, everybody! I’m Tanya and I would like to tell you about my journey to the far country called Brazil in October 2008. What should I begin with? I think I will begin with expressing my gratitude to the people who helped me make this unforgettable journey. They are my Brazilian friend Joao and his mother Dona Cida at whom I lived during two weeks. Two weeks is naturally too little for such a marvelous country as Brazil. Nevertheless, I didn’t have time to be bored because each day was full of events. First of all, I would like to say at once that the aim of my journey was not to lie on hot sandy beaches of full of tourists Rio, for example, no, I wanted to discover (and I did do it) “another” Brazil, much more interesting and naturally real, Brazil “from inside” so to say, because I think that character and spirit of any country are determined not by a couple of most famous and huge cities but by numerous those smaller cities and towns and even villages where the most part of the population is concentrated and where life is more natural. This is much more interesting and useful. So, I stayed at my friend’s in the city called Sao Jose dos Campos. It is not far from Sao Paulo. But I am not going to speak about this city now because at first I would like to speak about the people and some peculiarities of their way of life that I noticed and that seemed to me, as a Russian, interesting and unusual. All the Brazilians who I met during my journey (mostly Joao’s colleagues, friends and acquaintances) are very nice people! Friendly, open, pleasant to talk to. And even just the occasional passers-by and maintenance staff everywhere also seemed to me very friendly people. And Brazilians thank one another all the time, that’s why the words “obrigado” и “obrigada” (“thank you”) are heard everywhere. Ву the way, speaking about Joao’s colleagues, I went with him to his work (to a nearby town called Taubate) several days and during those days I got acquainted with so many nice people at once! They were interested and asked me some things about me, my family, Russia and so on. And I was very glad to answer and to share with them. I showed them some photos of mine too. I felt myself very comfortable in their society; it was as if I had known those people for a long time already! Really! Brazilians like eating. I should think so! With such a variety and exuberance of food products and dishes! And with relatively reasonable prices for all this eatable luxury. Wherever in Brazil you find yourself you will never remain hungry because cafés, restaurants and such like things are just at every step (almost in the direct meaning of this phrase). Many cafés work with the principle of self-service and the price for food is determined by the weight of the food you have chosen, which is quite convenient because you can taste a lot of different dishes in small portions, and I did exactly that. And the dishes are really so various that it is even difficult to describe them properly – the main thing is that they all are natural and they are mixtures of absolutely different ingredients. Another peculiarity is absence of brown bread and warm drinks after or during meals. They drink only coffee if they want (and it is clear that I shouldn’t even speak about the excellent taste of Brazilian coffee). And as for hot tea, for example, if I understood it rightly, they drink it only when they feel unwell or tired. Most drinks there are cold (Of course! In such almost all-year-round hot weather!). And they are not just ordinary juices only but also certain fruit mixtures, cocktails, cold green tea and many others. And of course fresh fruits! Oh, this is a separate topic! Brazil has so many kinds of fruits that you can be dazzled by this quantity. I physically was just not able to taste everything but what I did taste exceeded all my expectations! Delicious! I would like to speak separately about such an interesting type of restaurants as “rodizio”. It is when you pay a fixed price and can eat as much as you wish, moreover, as second helpings you are gradually given a new dish at a time. I was in rodizio twice – in the one serving meat dishes (they are called “churrascaria” and in the one serving pizzas. I, unaccustomed to overeating in restaurants, even began laughing hysterically. I remember very well: I had not finished cold collation and two first pieces of meat yet but the waiters already brought new and new portions. But I couldn’t refuse either. So, I had to eat and eat… But how very much tasty it was! As for home-made dishes, in Brazil they are, as it seemed to me, very various too. And I was very glad to see the process of cooking and even take part in it myself. Of course together with such an excellent cook and hostess as Dona Cida! Generally speaking about Dona Cida I can not help mentioning our rides together to markets and shopping centers in her old car named “Fusca”. It is something like “Zaporozhets” in Russia but only more pretty and quick. Actually, I can say that I met quite a lot of Fuscas in the streets. They look funny! It was very unusual to take a ride in such a car along the twisting streets of Sao Jose. Besides car rides I also walked on foot a lot – every-day walks to the downtown, especially in the evenings. I (accompanied by Joao, of course) visited a lot of big and small shopping-centers, city parks, catholic churches and just interesting streets and places. I would like to speak about the city parks separately. Sao Jose dos Campos has more than ten parks and each of them without exception strikes you with its cleanness and well-cared. There you can find everything for the rest of the soul and body. And generally speaking, I can say for sure that the whole city is very neat and it can be seen everywhere there. Joao explained to me that it was the achievement of the municipal authorities for the most part. So, that’s good. And as for me, I also found the public transport (buses) in Sao Jose dos Campos very modern and convenient too. And I was very surprised to know that they always stop only if someone requests either from inside or from outside. Just in Russia, for example, it is not this way and buses halt at every bus stop. And the churches deserve mentioning specially. The matter is that I had never been to the inside of a catholic church before, that’s why it was just very curious for me to see with my own eyes what it looked like. I even visited some short church service together with Dona Cida but, to be honest, I didn’t feet myself very easy there, though it was interesting. And generally speaking, Brazilians are very religious people. So as to understand the atmosphere of a Brazilian city you should be there yourself, I think, because it is very difficult to describe it. It is a kind of paradoxical mixture of being busy and being lazy, relaxed at the same time. On the one hand, people seem to be rushing somewhere on business, concentrated, but on the other hand you gradually get to understand that under the hot Brazilian sun they simultaneously also have free time to enjoy the walk dropping in shops, cafés and just looking around. This is good! And really! Why not drop in some place on the way to somewhere if even the doors everywhere are always open – to be more precise, there are no doors at all. Only at nights the doors are rolled downwards. This is due to all-year-round warm weather. With such weather also such a thing as an opportunity to drink free clean water everywhere is connected. Because in any premises you will easily find a cooler for water and outside you will find special taps with water running right from under the ground. And in my opinion, you can understand and feel the real atmosphere of a Brazilian city in the best way in the evening when the streets become even fuller of people of different ages, going outside to rest, to talk, to have fun, to cool themselves with the evening breeze, and music and voices are heard almost everywhere. Just you understand suddenly and very sharply that people enjoy life this way. It is so simple. And so nice… Speaking about the architecture of a Brazilian city I can say that it is not exactly definite – it is just a mixture of different styles, as well as Brazilian culture in general is a mixture of the cultures of different countries and nations. But as for traditional houses to live, they are quite interesting, different from the Russian ones. In Brazil houses are usually painted light-colored and their roofs are red, and especially unusual they look when you look at them from above (from the mountains, for example) – a kind of “a red field”. The roads and transport in Brazil deserve speaking about too. First, the roads (especially the ones between cities to be paid for) are quite good, which I can not say about Brazilian drivers – it seems that they just don’t know the traffic rules! There are a lot of cars there but motorcycles seem to be even in much greater amount than the cars there. And all of them rush at high speed and with terrifying noise. Maybe it is just my own subjective opinion, I can’t say for sure. And by the way, as for huge trucks, there are a lot of them on the highways there too because they are one of the most important vehicles there that transfer cargos (more important than freight trains even). I can say with 100% certainty that flora and fauna in Brazil are the most diverse and rich in the world! When you go along a highway you willy-nilly catch with your eyes the green spacious masses of both the natural forests and the forests planted by people. The most widespread tree there, in my opinion, is palm-trees, the number of the types of which you can’t even count there. They are everywhere. They make city landscapes much more beautiful. As for the animals, more than others I saw birds, especially big parrots called macaw (“arara” in Portuguese), ostriches and toucans (very beautiful birds), which live there both in zoos or farms and at liberty. As for ostriches, I also tasted their meat, which is considered to be dainty there. It is hard to cut but quite tasty. I liked it. And I can not forget to mention about an interesting animal called “capivara”. So, I saw it in a city park (a lot of them live there free). We a kind of hunted it – but please don’t think that we wanted to hurt this miraculous creature! Not at all! We just wanted to take a photo of it and, as capivara is very afraid of people, it could easily plunge into the water and swim away? which it did in the end, but before it did that we had managed to take a photo of it and take some photos of ourselves with the capivara in the background. And I also liked that almost everywhere in Brazil you can see a proudly fluttering on the wind brightly-colored national flag together with a flag of the state (accordingly I saw flags of the Sate of Sao Paulo) and a flag of the city. They always are in one row. Sao Jose dos Campos is also famous for its aviafactories of the company Embraer. And I managed to see one of its factories with already constructed and ready to be sold planes, I visited a small museum of aviation near, walked along the green meadows around and I also visited a modest but an interesting show-competition of the best models of planes when they were sent up and the special commission estimated the best model according to certain criteria. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to see the whole show because it occupied the whole day but even so I was very glad and I liked seeing a lot of people all over cheering up the participants. And now I would like to describe in a greater detail my trips to other cities not far from Sao Jose dos Campos. Though all of them are not far from one another, each of them is still unique and interesting in its own way. Aparecida. This town is famous for the biggest catholic basilica of not only Brazil but of the world. It can house about 75.000 people simultaneously. It was constructed in honor of the saint patroness of Brazil – Virgin Mary Aparecida. October 12th is a holiday all over the country to honor this patroness and a lot of pilgrims go to Aparecida. And though this holiday was exactly at the time I was in Brazil, we didn’t risk going to Aparecida on October 12th and we did it a few days before the holiday. there were not many people there. I visited the basilica and I was astounded by its grandeur and greatness. In the same way I was fascinated by the marvelous landscapes around: the green hills, the rows of the tall palm-trees. There is one more interesting place in Aparecida, which represents the history of Jesus Christ’s birth. A lot of statures, stony fountains, palm-trees and of course Jesus’ cradle and the Bethlehem’s star towering above all this splendor. Atibaia. We went to this nice town to visit the so-called Peach festival. For this purpose there had been put up special pavilions to sell various goods (fruits (inclusive hero of the occasion – peaches), flowers, other plants, clothes, cosmetics amd other goods and souvenirs (inclusive hand-made ones). I was curious to look at all that. In Atibaia I managed to have a ride in a pond in catamaran in the shape of a swan and admire the views around the pond. I remember the museum with its exposition of the local fauna (different stuffed animals, birds, fishes, dried insects). And of course I remember the super-delicious big ice cream in a café. Ice cream in Brazil is just fantastic! I, as the biggest lover of this sweetie, at it there in big quantities. Campos do Jordao. This city high in the mountains is especially unusual. But not for me. For Brazilian. Because this city is famous in Brazil for its cold weather, of which I am tired of in Russia. But the local inhabitants… They come to Campos do Jordao in order to cool themselves, so to say. This city has a lot of shops selling warm clothes – from scarves to coats and even fur coats. But the main sightseeing here is the untypical for this region architecture. The matter is that all the buildings here are in purely European style, to be more precise, in the German style. That’s why you can feel as if in some small town in Germany. Only everywhere around you there are Brazilians and you can hear the Portuguese speech around. In Campos do Jordao I visited a local palace, which serves both as a temporary residence for the President and the Government and a museum too. Unlikely the palaces of European or Russian kings that palace seems to be a little bit more gloomy but still it has something attractive and charming. And I also want to remember that on our way back home in the late evening we decided to make some stops and take photos and admire the panoramic sight of the Paraiba Valley. And as it was rainy and the height of the mountains was really considerable, unfortunately, I was not able to see the panorama – I saw just thick clouds. But it was something too! I felt as if high in the sky! The view was that of from the airplane but I was standing on the solid ground. Super! Sao Fransisco Xavier In fact, it is a small town in the mountains too (but not as high as Campos do Jordao that I spoke about above). But it is truly worth devote a t least one day to visit this town. In Sao Fransisco Xavier itself I liked the quiet unconstrained atmosphere, interesting Brazilian houses standing in rows along rising and lowering narrow streets, numerous shops offering souvenirs, especially hand-made ones (various decorations, clothes, statuettes, cosmetics and other stuffs. I couldn’t help buying some cosmetic items made by a local inhabitant – a girl whose name is the same is mine, Tatiana. On the way to Sao Fransisco Xavier we made a lot of stops. First, so as to admire the breathtaking panoramic view of the valley from the mountains. Second, so as to visit a pretty shop of cloth toys and dolls (hand-made again). As far as I understood, Brazilians like this combining of the pleasant and the useful – I mean that they get joy out of creating something with their own hands and at the same time it can become a good source of profit and even a business if to sell the things – why not? So, that place was called Monteiro Lobato. There were a lot of such toys and dolls in that shop but I liked the hero of Brazilian myths and legends – the one-leg boy with an interesting for Russian speakers name Saci-Pererê. And on the way we also stopped in a picturesque place at the waterfall of the mountain river, where I climbed on the rocks reviving my carefree childhood when my greatest pleasure was to climb somewhere. And I will never forget the way back home that dark evening along the curvy mountain roads accompanied by the ceaseless sounds of the chirring crickets – in that region they chirr so load every evening! Ilhabela. This nice word means paradise. Exactly paradise and in no other way can I call this indescribably marvelous island in the Atlantic Ocean, which is abundant with the beaches. The beach… Beaches can be different but the beaches in Ilhabela are something very special. To get to the heart of that beauty was not a very easy task – there were a lot of people willing and the huge ferries bringing people and cars from the continent to the island and back were only two. So, we had to wait in the traffic jam and in the crowd for long. But it was worth it! Because what I saw later amazed me almost to tears! The tears of joy and happiness. The endless row of the beaches along the coast, with many palm-trees, white and golden sand, transparently blue water of the ocean, people having fun and rest, the hot sun and the line of small and big motor boats. We chosen a small but very cozy beach called Praia de Garapocaia (Sino) and finally I could swim and lie in the sun. And in the evening we walked in the center of the town a little bit, visited some souvenir shops , ate awesome ice-cream and tired but happy went back home on the curvy mountain roads in the darkness of the night. But before going home we had to reach the continent first on that very ferry we had used to reach the island. But this time the “cruise” was thousands times as interesting as it had been before, because it was dark already and everywhere around there were lights… It was a fabulous sight! I remember myself standing on the deck, motionless, looking at that miracle. And repeating to myself, “Ilhabela, I am not saying “farewell” to you – I’m saying to you “see you soon!”. Because I will be back some day…” Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo… One of the hugest and most cosmopolitan cities in the world. The capital of the state of the same name – Sao Paulo. We mannged to find a day to visit this gigantic city. Inside the city itself we moved by subway (which is very good, by the way) and of course on foot for the most part. At first we walked along the central street called Avenida Paulista. It is a very beautiful wide street with a lot of sky-scrapers. We walked along other streets in the center too. We also visited various markets, shops, a book-store where I acquired some books in commemoration of Brazil and Sao Paulo. I visited a big monastery Sao Bento, admired a beautiful cathedral Se, which reminded me of Notre Dam de Paris. I also managed to see the place from which Sao Paulo began. This is a square with a tall memorial to the founders of the city. In other words, I experienced a lot of events and impressions during one day at once! And I will also never forget that long traffic jam that we had to have while leaving the city late in the evening. It’s clear that crazy motorcyclists and car-drivers swerving among the cars were there too! Now I think I am going to finish my long story. It is possible to speak about such a fantastic country as Brazil for hours and hours and still it is impossible to share all the impressions of the journey there because there are really a lot of impressions and reminiscences. And all of them are unforgettable! Thank you. Warm Regards, Tanya PS. And if you would like to see my photos of the journey, follow this link http://foto.mail.ru/mail/chickenpox/

Trip's date: October 5, (2008)
Submitted date: December 27, (2008)