Brasil: Dia Seis – Brasilia to Búzios

I’m sitting on our balcony overlooking the Atlantic listening to Maria Rita on the CD player as I write this recap. I’m fighting a head cold that has dogged me since leaving the US but otherwise, I feel great. Below is a picture of Rio de Janeiro.

Segunda-Feira, 10 Março 2008

We got up before the crack of dawn (aka “oh-dark-thirty”) to ride to Brasilia’s Aeroporto with Serge e Lu. They had a 7:00 TAM flight to Rio (pronounced “Heeoo” in Brazilian Portuguese) to catch a connecting flight to Buenos Aires. Serge asked if we’d like him to see if we could ride the same flight to Rio with them. “Claro! (sure/absolutely)” we said. Serge spoke with the counterperson and we were loaded on. It meant we would arrive seis horas early but it gave us time to rent a cell phone ($R130 for the week plus $R2/minute for each call) for emergencies and also allowed us to simply rest. The phone came in handy to call the owner of the condo and have him arrange for Mario, the taxi driver (Taxi Buzios 24 hora), who speaks no English, to pick us up earlier than planned.

Mario came into the terminal and found us. He drove very prudently and we felt quite safe. The ride contrasted greatly with our trips with Antonio and Mr. Toad’s wild cab rides I’ve had in Mexico. We sat back to enjoy the sights. Rio de Janeiro is a huge cidade of around 17 milhao. It is not the largest cidade in Brasil, that is Sao Paulo with around 30 million. One forgets that besides being a major tourist destination Rio is a major shipping port

We started out to Buzios on BR-101, the main artery of Brasil. Buzios is a two-hour ride. Here is a partial list of what we noted along the way:

• in Brasileiro jeito (Brazilian way/style): dirt roads connect to the highway without any exit, heading straight uphill, or right into the subdivision;
  many people walking along the highway, pushing wheelbarrows, riding bicicletas, and crossing the highway. People (sometimes with little children) waited between gaps in the concrete barriers. (According to Lonely Planet, about 80,000 die each year in Brasil from traffic related accidents.);
• alcohol for sale by street vendors on the side of the road;
• a man on a motorcycle wearing rubber boots for shoes;
• gas at $R1.79/liter (around $R6.89/gallon or $4/gallon);
• a priest in full-length robes on a cell phone at the Esso gas station;
• a mother riding her bike on the shoulder of highway, with child on the back with his legs splayed;
• the hills reminded us of California’s Sonoma County;
• lots of in-ground pools for sale—at least 4 displays of them;
• satellite dishes in the favelas;
• stores on the side of the road with statues of Christ the Redeemer (like the huge one in Rio) and bean bag chairs (why this combination of items was particularly common, we didn’t figure out, as we haven’t seen any bean bag chairs or Cristo statues anywhere we have been);
• lots of Retornos for turning around and going back;
• stacks of bricks in front of several partially-constructed houses (people will complete their basement and then work on the above ground portion as time and money permit);
• roadside stands that are no more than a small table and an umbrella;
• billboards proclaiming “Se beber, nao diriga” (If you drink, don’t drive);
  a profile of a cow as a caution sign;
• an incomplete pedestrian bridge in a small settlement with only flagging across the entrance to stop anyone from using it (if you walked up it, you could plunge about 25’ to the ground);
• a man on the side of the road wearing Speedos, socks and tennis shoes, and using a rake working on some kind of landscaping project;
• a man hand-tying something (hammock?) in macramé

Around 4 PM, we arrived in Búzios, one of the most charming towns in Brazil’s St. Tropez. Búzios was a sleepy fishing village until the early 1960s when Brigitte Bardot and her Brasileiro boyfriend ‘discovered’ it.

Mario wound through the narrow cobble-stoned streets of the peninsula to the condominium of a couple that we have a home exchange arrangement with. They will let us know later which of our residences they want to use for their as-yet unscheduled trip to the U.S. We hung out on the varanda, watched the boats go by, and relaxed. Our trip, which had begun at 5:00 a.m., had finally ended around 4:00 p.m. We were exhausted.