Sao Paulo: a colorful start to an epic trip
Farrah and I, the cheapasses we are, ended up arriving to every destination in Brazil at around 5 am to get the cheap red eye flights. We landed in Sao Paulo to our hostel (14 hours before check in) and passed out on some awesome bean bags until noon.
The next afternoon we walked around the city stupefied by the racial diversity. Coming from Buenos Aires, it was refreshing to see something different than Italian/Spanish descendents. It was especially awesome to see so many asian paulistas and refreshing to walk around without feeling that I was obviously a foreigner. On the other hand, watching us communicate was not so awesome but quite hilarious. The process generally followed three steps; we first tried “portuñol” (Portuguese and Spanish) to communicate with people, and then due to their confusing looks we would revert just to Spanish, and then finally to onomatopoeia and goofy hand gesticulations. Later that night we chilled with two Brazilian girls who studied at Berkeley at a local samba club. Some of the best live music I’ve ever heard!
HEE-OO JE JANNEIRO
We wake up the next day and take a 7 hour bus to Rio de Janeiro even though I thought Sao Paulo was cool and I’d like to live there short term. (Hard to believe I came to this conclusion even though we were there for less than 24 hours). An hour after getting off the bus, we somehow already get invited to a beach party with locals and are sipping beer and listening to some chill reggae music. It was awesome to be at my first beach and to do it with some fun Brazilians. I was definitely impressed by how open and warm people in Rio were. We had some nice extended conversations with people that night and I even played chess with this guy who studied abroad in Vancouver. It’s awesome how receptive they were to meet and help strangers—I would like to somehow let my life be more open to being interrupted. I feel that since I’ve been abroad, I’ve opened my life back up again and that has allowed me to meet tons of awesome people and build some deeper than usual relationships—I hope that I can bring some of this back to the states.
Rio was a blast, we ended up doing the two major beaches (Copacabana and Ipanema), going to the Pao de Acucar.
The last day we went to a favela tour which I definitely at first felt conflicted about. I remember learning about the concept of poverty tourism in development studies and I wasn’t exactly sure if I would commoditize their poverty to make it some sort of “experience” for me to blog about (which it kind of is). But Farrah and I realized we didn’t want to leave Brazil without at least some form of encounter with these communities. The actual tour was really interesting and totally broke down some of my perceptions from watching all those favela movies. When we first got there, I was actually scared to see BOPE Special Forces running through allies pointing their M16s but strangely enough, we found out later they were actually making a movie. We walked through the allies, saw breathtaking views of the city, watched kids preparing for their Carnival performances and visited an art gallery. The art gallery was filled with ambiguous messages about the pacification process as both violent but also as brining hope to these communities. The guide was especially helpful as he talked about all of the investments the government had been making in trying to bring favelas into the official economy as well as decrease the violence in light of the upcoming world events—the world cup and 2016 Olympics. For example, most of the favelas are going through “pacification” where they send in Special Forces called BOPE to basically take out the drug dealers and suppress violent outbreaks. They are also starting to build police stations at each favela and convert a lot of the unofficial/“stolen” public services such as water and electricity into formal services that can be monitored. To help the people transition, they are making them pay small “symbolic” fees in exchange for more efficient products like refrigerators that require less energy. Thus, it was pretty interesting to see not just a different part of Brazil, but a different part of Brazil that was changing every day no doubt in part due to an increasing international spotlight. I didn’t realize how dramatic the change was until we noticed bullet holes in the walls of certain houses and drug lord graffiti. While this was all a very surface level experience, I was glad I had at least been exposed to something beyond beautiful beaches and hot girls.
Salvador de Bahia
The next stop we made was Salvador, Bahia the center of Afro-Brazilian culture. Most of the population are descendents of slaves from Nigeria and Ghana when sugar was big in the area and they have preserved their music, dance and religion in a way that has created one of the most vibrant and interesting places in Latin America.
After doing some beaching for the first day, we walk onto the cobbled streets to find the whole city filled with percussion bands, capoeira dancers and live concerts. We squeeze between a cathedral and church to watch a live band, and then join a 50 person dance procession that is following a drumline. The procession ended at the town’s main square where there was more live music. There was so much going on that they were almost cancelling each other’s noises—it was almost borderline excessive! We eventually ended up taking a capoeira class where I was totally owned while trying to do held stands—I definitely would consider doing more of this when I get back to the Bay Area! It was a real work out.
The next day we went to Morro de Sao Paulo for a few days of paradise. We had endless amounts of Acai and Moqueca (a coconut soupy sea food dish), sat under the stars every night and whizzed past islands on speed boats. Also, Farrah has a knack for picking “interesting” hostels…turns out we stayed at a Jewish hostel where all the signs were in Hebrew and everyone was from Israel, haha! Even though this island paradise is one if not THE highlight of my trip, I’m just going to let pictures give you a taste of it:
this is the view right off hte boat: where jungle meets beach
moqueca: we ate this for breakfast, lunch and dinner. jk. but we had it with fish, then shrimp, then lobster, then fish, then shrimp...you get the idea
natural shallow pools to snorkle in the middle of the ocean!
Farrah and I definitely kept thinking “WTF are we loser students doing here!?”
It is definitely right now on my “top places for honeymoons” list.
We come back to Salvador to Christmas eve but the poverty in Salvador starts to make us feel…sadly uncomfortable. Looking back, I think it was such a contrast to the tranquil yet luxurious trip we had in Morro to suddenly come back to children and men begging for money or trying to sell us their artesian goods. There was one encounter with some guy who kept yelling “FUCK BUSH” aggressively at us to buy his wristbands that really left us in kind of a paralyzed awkward state for an hour where we just had to dissect our thoughts and our lifestyles and come to grips with reality. I later spoke with others about where the money usually went and found the typical responses: drugs, alcohol, and gang leaders. The whole situation always leaves me torn to ask What is my role in their situation, what should be my response? Is treating them like a person & looking them in the eye the extent that I could do? I realized that I personally can’t live a life of avoidance--that I want to be perpetually torn by these issues. If anything, these past four months have confirmed for me that it is more important to have a life that is meaningful than a life that is simply exciting. Traveling for the sake of traveling is awesome but neither fulfilling nor sustainable for me.
The next day my cousin Jay arrives in time for Christmas morning and the three of us go to mass at the cathedral in the town square for a nice morning praising God in Portuguese! It was definitely the strangest Christmas I had experienced yet but it was awesome to be there that morning with two of my favorite people in blazing summer weather in the capital of Afro Brazilian culture. I was blessed and thankful for not just the things I was experiencing, but also for God’s presence and friendship which helps bring color and meaning to these experiences. Of course, in traditional Bahian style, we headed to a super crowded local beach to finish off our Christmas celebrations.
barra beach christmas day
family together for christmas in brazil!
And of course part 1 of Brazil would not be the same without Farrah Moos, this random girl that I met in my Spanish class 2 years ago who I became acquaintances with only because we were trying to form a partnership between Ethical and ASUC senate (which borderline failed). But our message is that—don’t be too focused on results and achieving objectives with your classmates and acquaintances, sometimes you end up randomly studying abroad with them for 4 months then going on 2 week vacations with them. Hey if it could happen to us, it could happen to anyone haha. Anyway, just wanted to give a special shout out to one of my best friend that as we both now know, I can talk to for days and days on end about both meaningful and totally ridiculous stuff. We seemed to drift in and out of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at the same pace and at some points, we were completely on the same page in terms of thoughts like “me hungry; need to pee“—you know, real sophisticated emotions.
(PART 2 Su/Soh family time)
So Jay and I leave Farrah behind in Salvador and head over to Chapada Diamantina, the National Park in Brazil that I swear you can go 10 times and still not know fully. Apparently, Farrah was an integral part of the group because we get on a bus that is supposed to arrive to the destination at 3 am and wake up in sunlight with the bus driver tapping us to get off at the last stop. We manage to make it to Lencois, almost get onto a 3 day trek with a group of Portuguese speaking Belgium kids but then ultimately back out to go to Mixila.
Our guide to Mixila was a guy named, Jaja, one of the weirdest guys I have ever met. First of all, while we were bargaining for the price at a local Acai shop he would just not give us a price and instead for 10 minutes kept commenting “Muito bom!”(very good) on how good the Acai was Then in the middle of the conversation he manages to say “five minutes come back” in English and then proceeds to just not come back to the store leaving me and Jay completely confused. Apparently this guy’s unorthodox negotiation tactics worked because we ended up just caving in and going with him. Secondly, while he is considered one of Lencois’ few “English” guides he ended up not speaking ANY language. Since I was the best Portuguese speaker in the group (go figure) he had to revert to just “onomatopoeia language” interspersed with random English phrases he learned like “bieeg fireee” and “many girls!” which was strange and often times confusing.
Here’s a picture of Jaja
The actual trek to Chachoeira da Mixila was probably the most unique trekking I’ve ever done. At one point, we had to scramble on rocks for 2 hours bare foot, and swim across a body of water at four points in the hike to get to this:
Everybody slipped and hurt themselves at some point in the hike, but we all agreed it was worth it. Apparently, Mixila was recently discovered and is not a trek that is even advertised in guidebooks. To top off our awesome experience we slept next at the top of a waterfall under some awe inspiring stars. Jay and I just laid there staring up, chatting about Berkeley, San Francisco, his MBA school—a universe completely foreign to us at the time. The stream was literally 2 feet to the side of our sleeping bags. I was torn between thinking how amazing it was and how much it would suck if I rolled to the side and fell in the water.
COPACABANA or COPACAMERDA?
We make it back to Rio for new years on Copacabana for a crazy party at the beach. David Guetta played an awesome set but there were SO. Many. DAMN. PEOPLE. While it was awesome, the copacabana couldn't compare to the beaches up north and I don't think i could spend many more of my new years in places like this. It was definitely not for the faint of heart because even pushing through to buy a beer would take you half an hour and a crushed rib cage. Things started looking up for us around midnight where we met some Brazilian chicks and guys and all the amazing fireworks went off. I couldn’t believe 2011 was over—it had been a helluva year—junior yr second semester, ZS, then a 4 month long hiatus where I traveled all around South America and allowed my IQ to drop a few points. The pinnacle of the night was when Jay and I climbed onto a soccer goal in the middle of the beach to get away from the swarming parasites right in time for David Guetta.
I would rate Rio part 2 probably a B since it rained and we also stayed in a hostel that was more than 2 hours away from Copacabana (since we are dumbasses and booked last minute for new years). We stayed at this place called Trek and Fly whose street nobody knew about and that was filled with strange people that actually LIVED there. The owner felt so bad that he would drive us around in his van to get us even remotely near a Metro. BUT since we did get some pretty good beaching done and I spent it with my cousin, I will bump it up to a B+/A-.
Before coming back to Buenos Aires, we spent a night in Sao Paulo with about 7 BBTs (Brazilian born Taiwanese) it was fun times but also quite interesting to watch their interactions with each other. They were all super successful—most owned their own businesses and were living the ritzy Paulista life. They treated us really well—they fed us endless Brazilian skewers and made sure we head a steady stream of alcohol in us at all times. Man, the life of Chinese barons in Sao Paulo.
Anyway, so thats the end of my 3 weeks in BRASIL. It is great to be back in Buenos Aires with my family in chacarita but I must say that brasil is my favorite latin american country that I will for sure visit again in the future!
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