The Road to Uruguay

I woke up feeling like crap. The last bus ride killed my immune system and I had picked up a bit of a cold but we had to forge ahead. We grabbed lunch from the grocery store and then I slept on a bench for a couple of hours until it was time to go. My beard was getting a bit shaggy by this point so I probably looked like a bit of a hobo, but no one left me any money.

Our plan was to get to Porto Alegre and see how we felt. It was about 14 hours, which felt like nothing after the last trip, and we had a great sunset to send us off. I slept amazingly well (no bus like a South American bus) and got rid of my cold, passing it on to my wife. 

One funny thing did happen on the way though. I got racially profiled! Our bus stopped in the middle of nowhere at about midnight and some policemen with serious faces and enormous guns hopped on. We were the only obvious tourists on a bus full of Brazilians so one of them walked slowly down the aisle, hand on holster flanked by another officer, glaring left and right, until he came to me. He looked me up and down, in my travelling clothes and unshaven glory, and barked something in Portuguese. “Não entendo,” I said. He looked at me, smiled slightly, and asked in perfect English if I understood that he was a police officer. I ignored all the witty responses that came to mind and just nodded. He proceeded to pat me down with enthusiasm and dug through my bags with one of those drug flashlights. They didn’t find any cocaine on me so they took a cursory look through the rest of the bus and then told everyone to get off so that they could search the bags underneath. It took another hour or so for them to dig through everyone’s underwear, and slightly disappointed at finding nothing else, they let us move on.

As we left, we saw them stopping another bus so we figured afterwards that it might not just have been a random search; it’s possible that they had been tipped off about some tourists travelling with drugs on them and that’s why they went right for me. We wouldn’t see such well-funded drug enforcement officials again until we got to Colombia. 

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We had some breaded chicken on a stick (a rest-stop staple) for breakfast and I took some more pictures of the Brazilian prairies.

Despite the police delay, we still made it to Porto Alegre in good time. There wasn’t anything that we especially wanted to see there, and we felt well enough to push forward, so we made plans to head for the border the same day. A couple of tickets and a bus station hamburger later and we were on the way to Chuy.

My wife was feeling fairly sick and slept most of the way but I saw some cool stuff out the window. I saw my first real cowboys. They didn’t look exactly like the guy on Wikipedia, but they definitely had the hats and various other pieces of gaucho apparel. Imagine this carried forward a hundred years:

(Wikipedia photo)

Later, I saw some gigantic waterfowl that looked a little like something I remembered from the bird park (but didn’t take pictures of because they seemed boring at the time) and finally capybaras frolicking in the ditch beside the road! I woke my wife up for those and she just muttered something about “big rats” and went back to sleep. I was excited though.

(Not a particularly wild capybara – taken at the Buenos Aires zoo.)

We finally got to the border town, Chui/Chuy (Brazil/Uruguay) at about eight in the evening. Passport control was a breeze and we found a cheap hotel quickly enough. 

Chuy is a bit of a strange place. It’s a town divided in half, with a Brazilian side and a Uruguayan side, making it a kind of neutral territory as a whole (border crossings are outside of town). The first two things you notice are casinos and beer-bellies hanging out of open button shirts. Casinos are outlawed on the Brazilian side but dominate the Uruguayan side, and older Uruguayan men have a very. . . relaxed sense of style. Overall, Chuy is pretty much exactly what you would expect from a town that thrives on duty-free, smuggling and casinos. There are an awful lot of homeless people for a population of 10,000 and there’s way too much swagger for the average belly size of the town. It’s the sort of place you might expect a South American Han Solo to hide from debt collectors. 

I couldn’t complain too much though; it was definitely a place with character and we were happy to finally escape Brazilian prices. At about $25, the fairly nice private hotel room we got seemed like a steal and dinner from the supermarket felt basically free. Still, I was more than a little bit sad about leaving Brazil. We had a lot of fun there and I would really like to go back. I still miss Rio regularly, especially when it’s damp and dreary here in the fall. Apparently this is a common side effect of visiting Rio. The guidebook warned me about the saudade disorder but I didn’t listen, and now, every so often I get sucked into a memory of the Ipanema sun. 

Here’s a little map of how far we’d come by this point. Still a long way to Cartagena!

Foz do Iguacu

Although there isn’t a lot to do apart from the waterfall excursion (and maybe a trip to the dam), Foz do Iguacu is a nice enough city. There’s a lot of greenery and at a modest 350,000 people it felt pretty relaxed compared to the other cities we’d been to. 

We staggered into town and grabbed a taxi to an arbitrarily chosen pousada called Sonho Meu. It ended up being the nicest place we stayed in Brazil and also one of the cheapest. There was a pool, air-conditioning, great showers, and a solid breakfast buffet – absolutely fantastic after our epic bus trip. It also happens to be near one of the best restaurants we ate at the whole time we were traveling. It's an all-you-can-eat Brazilian barbecue place with waiters who come to your table and slice freshly grilled meat for you until the button pops off your pants. After a few kilos of every animal and a bottle of wine, we stumbled back to our room, ready for a day at the waterfalls.

Lonely Planet says: 

“A total of 275 individual falls occupy an area more than 3km wide and 80m high, which makes them wider than Victoria, higher than Niagara and more beautiful than either.”

As someone who has been to both (though I was too young to remember Victoria Falls very well), I’ll happily support that statement. Foz do Iguacu is an incredible place. The jungle backdrop is gorgeous and the walk to the falls is half the fun of the trip. There are tons of little creatures that cross your path, everything from birds and butterflies: 

to furry things called coatis:

They're perfectly harmless as long as you don't feed them hamburgers.

Along with the pitter-patter of little feet, you can hear the falls long before you arrive. You get a few tantalizing glimpses and then suddenly: breathtaking view

...after view...

 ...after view...

 You can also walk underneath on a platform right above the torrent of water. Yeah, we got a bit wet.

 (No, that naked guy isn’t me.)

After a couple of hours hanging out at the falls, we decided to take a romantic walk through a bird sanctuary that was just next door. 

 Barf - Ok, it wasn’t that romantic I guess. Actually a few of the birds seemed a bit crazy: 

 Check out this guy trying to eat a German tourist’s toes:

 (He’s not stuffed; don’t put your toes in there!)

 There was also this creepy lizard watching us.

We talked to some of the tried to talk to one of the residents but he just laughed at us:

We took a hint and set off back to town. Next stop Uruguay!

(Hamburgers!)

Belo Horizonte and a loooooong bus ride

A few hours up the road is the sixth largest city in Brazil: Belo Horizonte (downright tiny after Sao Paulo and Rio).

(From here)

We didn’t really plan to stay for more than a day or two. Brazil’s almost European-level costs were pushing us over-budget a bit so Belo got dropped and was mostly just a stopping point to arrange transport to Foz do Iguacu. There is some cool stuff to see, especially architecturally if you’re a fan of Oscar Niemeyer who has a bunch of creations clustered in the Pampulha district.

A great side trip from the big city’s modern architecture is a visit to the prehistoric cave paintings at Gruta Rei do Mato. On the way there, we got another little taste of Brazilian Wisconsin with more cows grazing under palm trees mixed in with evergreens. I didn’t have any idea how far it was or where to get off but the driver was friendly enough to drop us on the side of the highway just across from the cave. So far, so good. We got some tickets and sat with some other (very) young couples waiting for the mandatory guide to arrive for the tour. Apparently the cave is dating hotspot because the only other people we saw there were teenagers giving each other googly eyes. The guide was great, a really friendly kid who was happy to practice his English for us. The cave itself is impressive enough but being able to see the 6000 year-old paintings (and a zebra monster - Xenorhinotherium bahiensis -skeleton replica!) was a great bonus and made me glad that we at least stuck around in Belo long enough to do make that trip. 

(Gruta Rei do Mato)

(From here)

(From here)

(The great Xenorhinotherium bahiensis!)

Getting back was a bit of a trick. We knew that the bus would go past on the road outside the cave but getting it to stop was a problem. We waited for about fifteen minutes and finally saw a green and white bus that looked like the one we came on. With my timid Canadian upbringing I weakly waved at the bus from the side of the road, sort of the way you might hail a cab. It blazed past. Ok, no worries, we had about an hour and half until the buses stopped going, which meant three to five more chances. Another one came. It was a different colour but I thought I should practice a bit and figured it might go back to the city anyway. I waved with a steady hand full of confidence, but again it wasn’t interested in stopping for us. My wife was getting a bit agitated by this point and fortunately we saw our tour guide starting to walk home. I went over to ask him if the buses did actually stop. While we were talking another one came and he leapt onto the shoulder of the road and started jumping around, waving and shouting. The bus missed him by about a foot as it barreled on, but it stopped about twenty metres down the road in a cloud of dust. We hurriedly thanked him for risking his life to get us home, and ran to catch our ride.

We celebrated yet another successful adventure with an excellent per-kilo meal at a shopping mall near our hotel. Brazilian barbecued everything with tons of different sides. I wish they had spreads like that in Canada so cheap.

After cave day came bus day and our first brush with the kind of truly long distance land travel that comes to define most trans-continent adventures. It was supposed to be 27 hours but it ended up being about 32. It was comfortable, and it stopped every once in a while to let us get food and stretch a bit, but there are only so many hours you can fill sitting on a bus. After you’ve looked out the window on and off for 3 or 4 hours, read for another 5 or 6, slept for 8, listened to miscellaneous songs on your iPod that you didn’t know you had for a few more sluggish ticks on the clock, and read again until your eyes dry out, you realize that you still have and 10 hours to kill. That’s when you’re about ready to die.     

(One of our many stretch stops – could almost be Canadian prairies if it weren’t for the slight hills.)

We didn’t die but it was a close one. It was around the 25 hour mark, just after I had reminded the remnants of my sanity that we must almost be there, that the bus started to splutter and jerk as we climbed a steep hill. It got slower and slower inching its way to the top. And then it never sped up again. Some part of our bus’s spirit was extinguished on that hill and with each hill that came after it, we could feel the bus gradually fading from this world. The driver stopped on the side of the road a few times to give it a pep talk and each time it started up well only to get even slower at the next hill. We crawled in to Foz do Iguacu a good five hours late and thanked Christ the Redeemer that we didn’t have to hitchhike. 

However, for our saintly patience, we were rewarded with a great hotel and one of the best meals of the trip. And a waterfall. . . yeah, that too.

Mariana and back to Ouro Preto

After exploring Ouro Preto, we ventured a little further down the road to a place called Mariana. On the way, we stopped off at one of the biggest mines in Brazil, Minas da Passagem. 

The mine itself wasn't as atmospheric as I'd hoped. The guide asked if we all spoke Portuguese, we said no, and he just shrugged his shoulders and carried on. Fortunately there was another couple with us that gave us a rough of translation. We got a few translated comments from another, Brazilian, couple that was down there with us. We were told that people used to get lost in the mine pretty easily because it stretches for 30km, almost all the way back to Ouro Preto. It was once the most important mine in the region, producing most of gold for Ouro Preto and launching it to political and economic significance. He also showed us a place where you can scuba dive through a section of the mine that's now underwater. Sounded cool, but neither of us are divers. All-in-all, it was a bit pricey, and we could only visit a disappointingly tiny amount of cave systems, but we did get to ride in a mine car, which was as awesome as it sounds.

Mariana is pleasant enough, but looks a lot like Ouro Preto. Actually the main reason we wanted to go there was because we have a Brazilian friend with the the town as her namesake.

More churches. . .

. . .squares. . .

. . .and great hilltop views.

We wandered around for most of the afternoon, and then headed back to make plans to move on.

If you only see one colonial town on a trip through South America, I think it has to be Ouro Preto. It has a certain historical character that hasn't been touched by the thousands of people that visit every year. I wish we could have spent more time in the area, visiting some of the more out of the way colonial mining towns, but I'm quite confident we got the best of it in Ouro Preto.

Ouro Preto

Our first overnight bus trip was mostly uneventful. Good morning Ouro Preto.

That was the view from the balcony of the hostel we booked into. We were staying on a huge “plantation” just on the edge of town. There were some fruit trees and a lot of tangled undergrowth that I’m pretty sure hid a marijuana grow-op. The guy who checked us in was a bit surly but the other staff were friendly and the breakfast overlooking that view every morning was wonderful.

Ouro Preto is built on a bunch of hills, not pansy hills like Sao Paulo, but proper mountain foothills. Actually the hills are so absurdly tough that all the locals are in great shape. You have to climb at least two brutal hills to do anything in town, and that’s probably why we only saw one fat person the whole time we were there. . . and she was sitting in an internet café at the bottom of the valley in the centre of town. I assume she lives in the valley and never leaves. 

We saw more than one little car get stuck trying to navigate through town. Most of the streets don’t wind cutely or anything, they just head straight into a climb as if they’re trying to get it over with. I suppose that reflects a sort of Brazilian personality. . . assertive/direct. 

(Notice all the fit people struggling up the hill and all the cars with well-used handbrakes.)

On our first day, we went and looked at a billion different types of rocks in the “Museu de Ciência e Técnica da Escola de Minas” and then went rock shopping as is the requirement of all visiting tourists. We bought a few things but the great deals we were hoping for weren’t really there. Brazil is just an expensive place. Later that day we also went to see the great architect Aleijadinho’s bones.

Actually, the story of Aleijadinho is quite something. He was the son of a Portuguese architect and a black slave. He’s presumed to have learned the fundamentals of architecture and sculpture from his father but when still quite young, he joined the military. In his early 30s he developed some kind of debilitating condition, either syphilis or leprosy, and lost his fingers and toes (Aleijadinho means 'little cripple' – as affectionately as possible). Undaunted, he continued sculpting with hammers and chisels strapped to his arms and he went on to become one of Brazil’s most famous artists. If this all sounds a bit improbable to you, well, apparently there are some academics who question it as well. There has been some discussion about whether or not the little cripple really existed, as there isn’t much of a historical record about him.

Here’s some of his work - the church of St. Francis:

(from wikipedia)

Anyway, we took a look at somebody’s bones in a crypt and later that evening we found an awesome restaurant for dinner, got drunk on red wine and went to bed happy with our day of climbing hills.

Rio: Part 2

Our next trip was up Pão de Açúcar (Sugar Loaf Mountain) another day. We were told the views were better up there than from the more expensive Christ the Redeemer hill so we skipped the latter.


Here’s a nice view of Copacabana beach:

And Jesus peering at us through clouds and scaffolding:

The disappointingly well-built cable car (I firmly believe that rickety cable cars have more soul) offered some views of the mountain and some crazy people climbing to the top.

We also found some monkeys that were much easier to photograph than the ones from my jungle excursion.

The night after our Sugarloaf trip, it rained like I’ve never seen before. My wife almost lost her flip-flops (and subsequently almost got hit by a car saving the flip-flops) in the torrent that raged through the streets outside. It only rained for a couple of hours but it flooded so badly that we had trouble getting between our hostel and the food-by-weight restaurant we’d decided to try. On the positive side, we learned that food-by-weight in Brazil can be an awesome deal, possibly the only truly budget friendly tool at the disposal of backpackers in this country. On the negative side, we found out later in our trip that there were some pretty bad landslides around Rio that night, and a few weeks later as well. The later ones buried more than a hundred people who were living in favelas attached to the cliff sides. We estimated later that the night bus we took out of Rio might have actually gone right past one of the affected neighbourhoods, us asleep, oblivious to the damage of the previous night’s downpour. But I guess that’s one of the facts of life in Rio. There’s a dual reality that’s pretty hard to break through.

Rio de Janeiro: Part 1

At best, my image of Rio is that of the wealthy middle class, and at worst it is some kind of twisted tourist's impression of a city of beaches, scantily dressed people, and volleyball, but I’m happy to revel in it for the moment. We didn’t visit a favela (though you can see Favela Vidigal scaling the hills in the picture above), we didn’t see Christ the Redeemer, and we weren’t there for Carnaval. But it was sunny, gloriously sunny, and besides, one of the most significant influences on the culture of Rio is its fabulous coastline. Where else can you visit walk past Brazilian bikinis in the supermarket? That might be the single most important cultural experience for anyone visiting Brazil.

So, with that out of the way, I proclaim Ipanema to be one of my favourite places in the world. I'm not usually one to daydream myself into wealth and the easy life, but I would be much more than content to buy an apartment in Ipanema and do nothing with the rest of my life. I love city-by-the-sea culture. Cariocas are relaxed and friendly; there’s that vibe of permanent holiday. If you can play beach volleyball after work almost all year ‘round, you are probably going to feel pretty good about your place in this world. I'm pretty sure I learned more about the city, by sitting on the beach than a lot of other things we could have done.

One very important cultural difference between Brazil and most other parts of the Americas is society's perception of the ideal female body shape. On our first day there, my wife pointed out two groups of women walking down the beach. One group was mostly slender, pretty in a Californian kind of way. The other group was mostly busty with giant Brazilian bums. Now guess which direction the male heads turn. As if Rio needed to belabour this point further, later that evening we caught some weird Brazilian dating/game show on TV. The models were all just like that second group we saw on the beach. Simply, Brazilians don’t like thin women. So, next time you see that Pitbull music video, understand that he isn’t playing on cultural stereotypes to market his music, he’s just a product of cultural realities in Brazil.

Although it was amazing to finally have some proper sun, we didn’t just laze around and drink beach beer for 5 days. One day we went to an antiques fair, where we found a few cool Rio landscapes painted on bits of Coke cans, made into magnets, and some post cards. We also contemplated mugging what appeared to be an expensive camera owner convention. We saw about twenty people with Leicas milling around one end of the antique street, taking photos of each other posing with their cameras. Unfortunately, we didn’t have access to a Carioca fence and we weren't sure how to carry away twenty $5000+ cameras discretely. The logistics of the operation just wouldn't work themselves out so headed back and took a look at Copacabana beach on the way. It’s just not as nice. The sand is dirtier, the water’s murkier, and streets are seedier. Call me snob, but the Ipanema life is the only life for me. 

Ilha Grande: Part 5 of 5

For those thinking of going to Ilha Grande one day, here is what you stand to gain, if you manage to see the sun and find the right path. Pretty okay I guess:

Photo courtesy of here.

I took my time on the way back, looking at flowers and bugs and hoping to see some kind of wildlife even though it was raining. Initially I didn’t see much, but I kept hearing chirping noises in the trees. The chatter turned out to be monkeys, dozens of them. In fact, I realized that I had heard these chirping noises pretty much the whole time I had been walking but I hadn’t once just stood still and looked up.


If you’ve ever experienced dense tropical foliage, then you probably know how annoying it is to try to take pictures up into the trees. Everything is either too dark, too fuzzy or both. Worse, trying to capture animals leaping about overhead, without a good quality camera, is nearly impossible. But after some persistence, I got this:

Not an award winner, but clearly a monkey, beating out my other hundred or so photos by factors of between 50 and 500,000. I do not envy nature photographers; that is one brutal job.


I spent the next hour walking with my eyes on the trees, slipping, and falling a couple of times on the muddy path, once almost taking out a couple coming up the hill towards me. Soaking wet and covered in mud, but triumphant with my monkey photo, I returned to town and was ready to make plans to continue on to Rio.


Ilha Grande has a lot going for it. If we had had better weather, we probably would have stayed a bit longer and tried to get further away from the main town. You can hire a guide to take you to some more far-flung areas of the island, and there are small boat tours that might be worth taking when it isn’t raining. There are a whopping 102 beaches on the island. Bird-watchers and monkey photographers will love the immense, relatively untouched national park. The down side is the cruise ships that come in every day from December to March. The woman who ran the hotel told us that May is a much nicer time to go. Although it’s colder, there is less rain and no cruise ships. The town is busy, but friendly enough and I still feel that, in spite of the down sides, it was a worthwhile stop.


One final view of the main bay without cruise ship clutter.

Next stop, Rio.

Ilha Grande 4

The next day my wife was feeling lethargic and I was feeling adventurous, so I left her to the balcony and the beach to go jungle romping. I had two goals. I wanted to find a waterfall and I wanted to get a look at Praia Lopes Mendes, supposedly one of the most beautiful beaches in Brazil. I took a quick look at my guidebook before heading out to see if they had any recommendations. All it said was, if you head off the beaten track, “poorly marked trails and poisonous snakes can make things challenging.” Well, I didn’t plan to go off the main waterfall and beach paths so no problem. Of course, about 25 minutes out of town, the beaten track starts to look less and less well-trodden. Gradually the edges of the path close in, to points where you have to walk through high grasses and shrubs. Perfect “challenging” poisonous snake territory. I’m not normally one to be easily worried about silly things like The World’s Deadliest Creatures (!) but there I was in middle of nowhere, by myself, no longer entirely sure I was going in the right direction, imagining snakes in every bit of shrubbery, trying to remember what you’re supposed to do in the event of a snake bite. . . When suddenly, a couple bursts from a bush around a corner of the path, wearing nothing but their respective Brazilian swimsuits (read: tiny bikini and not-quite thong-like mankini). If they didn’t die on this path, then I probably wasn’t going to either. Eyes horizontal, I gave them a respectable nod and forged ahead.


I did find the waterfall after a couple of wrong turns, and a helpful park guide. It was small, but a pleasant place to sit for a while and watch more scantily clad survivors struggle down the slick mud slope, so they could splash around in the pool.


I did a bit too much camera experimenting, so most of my photos are either too dark or too bright.

I finally pulled myself away to go and look for this special beach. With some more wrong turns and some more asking fellow trekkers, in my zero-level Portuguese, for directions, I eventually found the wrong beach.


Here it is, as seen through my camera which has no wide-angle or panorama capabilities:

Nice enough to sit for a while but nicest beach in Brazil? I think not.


I prepared myself to try again, but it had started to rain once more and it seemed kind of pointless to try to get a beautiful beach photo in such poor weather. So, I started the trek home.

Ilha Grande 3

Most of the island is an ecological reserve and it’s managed to stay so well-preserved (in spite of being on the developed south coast) largely because of its history. It started as a pirate’s hideout, then became a leper colony and quarantine area for mostly European immigrants entering Brazil, and finally a prison for only the most dangerous and deranged criminals. The prison functioned until 1994, also serving as a political rival, erm, retreat for some time, so development has only happened quite recently.

There is still a part of the hospital/quarantine area left and it’s quite a creepy place. It was called Lazareto and you could expect to get stuck there if you were a new-comer to Brazil and you had a cold (or worse). Hell, even if you didn’t when you arrived, you’d probably pick something up before you were able to head to the mainland. Cholera was the main concern. Here’s what’s left:

There was also an aqueduct, built around the time of the hospital, which still runs through the jungle.

After pondering the ruins, we walked past a small waterfall with a pool filled with fat, speedo-clad men, took pictures of butterflies, and sat on the beach until it started raining.

We had an amazing dinner on the beach that night, Brazilian seafood and a bottle of wine, proper honeymoon stuff.