CLOSING CHAPTER

The last country which we have visited, albeit for just a week, has been Uruguay – and we have been delighted by it. Calm and welcoming, and a little old-fashioned, it appears to have remained relatively uncorrupted by the greedy consumerism of many other societies. Houses are generally simple, there are few SUVs to be seen and signs of cultural life are evident.

Montevideo, where we arrived early on Weds morning (30 hours by bus from Sao Paulo), is a pleasantly undeveloped if slightly grubby city. Even allowing for it being the eve of the Holy Week holiday – here in an expressly non-religious state known as Tourism Week – the pace of life is markedly slower than in Sao Paulo or Santiago. The proximity of the sea also means that the pollution is blown away, which is just as well as the buses are positively archaic, even in the capital. In the rest of the country both buses and private vehicles range from 1990s vintage back to 1950s. Some well cared-for earlier models are seen on the roads, and any number of relics in garages, back gardens and scrap heaps.

Back to Montevideo. Founded from 1724 by the Governor of Buenos Aires, it is the southernmost capital in Latin America and also the youngest – discounting Brasilia (and Miami!) There are whole streets of late nineteenth/early twentieth century houses in the Spanish colonial style. With no earthquakes or hurricanes and little pressure to increase housing density, people have been content to live in the existing fabric, and even in the suburbs there has been little construction of blocks of flats. Along the coastline to the east of the city, behind the miles of quiet beaches and dunes, are simple villages of residential housing for people who work in and around the capital, maintaining something the character of beach houses. The port – the only natural harbour on the River Plate – is the reason for the city’s existence. It also led the British and French to meddle in South American politics after Independence to ensure that Argentina did not control both sides of the estuary.

The leader of the original independence movement in 1808 was Gen. Artigas, whose statue is everywhere. Although the Spanish were successfully expelled by 1815, matters were far from settled, since Artigas’ idea was union with Argentina, but this was discarded in favour of the formation of the “Eastern Band” into an independent country. In 1816, Brazil (then still dependent on Portugal) invaded the country, which it held effectively from 1820 to 1825. In that year the legendary “Thirty-three” under General Lavalleja “invaded” from Argentina, gathered an army and defeated the Brazilians, since when the country has been an independent whole.

We went up-country to the city of Thirty-three (Treinta y tres), four hours of gently rolling or hilly open country, dotted with stands of eucalyptus. Uruguay was never extensively forested: of its approx 2,500 species of flora almost 2,000 belong to its natural grassland, including no less than 400 graminids, the largest variety in the world. It also has a rich bird life. In the bus station Magda overheard a women talking about an eco-tourism hostel and asked about it. To make a long story short we were shortly booked into “El Capricho” for two nights. This is a farm in the hills 50km from Treinta y tres, with basic (basic!) facilities for a dozen guests. The main attraction is the famous (in Uruguay) “Quebrada de los cuervos” – Crow Canyon – so named because it is said to be home to the three indigenous species of vulture.
It also contains a micro-climate with vegetation different to the typical grassland, including broadleaf trees, palms and ferns, and a wide variety of birds and other species.
The most interesting experience for us was to find an armadillo calmly going about its business close to the path!

We had a swim in the river in what we thought was a secluded spot, only to discover on looking up that it was in full view of the tourist trail lookout point! (Centre of the picture below.)

Our last and most tempting glimpse of Uruguay was the town of Colonia del Santísimo Sacramento, (Colony of the Most Holy Sacrament), the first settlement in the country – founded by the Portuguese in 1680. It took the Spanish until 1777 to winkle them out, after founding Montevideo.


The town is a UNESCO heritage site. The old Portuguese centre is attractive and in a reasonable state of preservation: there are stretches of massive wall, a lighthouse, a much re-hashed church and the foundations of the government buildings. It is well supplied with museums and the cultural centre (in an old soap factory!) offers plays and concerts.


More modern facilities include a yacht club, and the pleasantly bustling little town has its own life besides tourism as a services centre for the surrounding agricultural and viticultural countryside.

From Colonia we took the ferry due west across the River Plate to Buenos Aires for an excellent lunch and the bus back to Chile.


THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE!

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El ultimo país que visitamos – por apenas una semana – fue Uruguay, y nos gustó mucho. Tranquilo y acogedor, y un tanto anticuado, da la impression de haberse mantenido relativamente poco afectado por el consumismo ambicioso de muchas otras sociedades. Las casas en general son simples, hay pocos 4x4 enormes, y existen indicaciones de una vida cultural activa.

Montevideo, adonde llegamos después de 30 horas en bus desde Sao Paulo, es una ciudad agradable por su bajo grado de desarrollo, si bien esto a veces se hace falta. Aun considerando que estábamos en vísperas de Semana Santa – aquí el estado no es religioso y la vacación se llama la Semana del turismo – el ritmo de la vida es notoriamente más tranquilo que en Sao Paulo o Santiago. La proximidad del mar tiene la ventaja de que las brisas se llevan la polución, menos mal considerando que los buses son realmente arcaicos, incluso en el capital. En el resto del país existen no solo buses sino también autos y camiones en uso diario que datan desde todas las décadas a partir de los 1950. Se ven incluso ejemplares más antiguos.

Para volver a Montevideo. Fundado, a partir de 1724, por el Gobernador de Buenos Aires, es el capital más sureño de América Latina y también el más nuevo, descontando Brasilia (y Miami!) Existen calles enteras de casas en el estilo colonial de fines del siglo 19/principios del siglo 20. En la ausencia de terremotos y huracanes, y con poca presión para aumentar la densidad de las viviendas, hubo poco interés en modernizar, y tampoco se construyeron muchos edificios. Por la costa hacia el este se encuentran playas desocupadas y sencillos pueblitos con construcciones del carácter de casas de playa. El puerto – el único puerto natural del Río de la Plata – es la razón por la existencia de la ciudad. También llevó a los británicos y los franceses a interferir en la política de Sud América después de la independencia para asegurarse que la Argentina no tomara el control de ambas costas del estuario.

El líder del original movimiento para la independencia en 1808 era el Gen. Artigas, cuya estatua se encuentra en todas partes. Aunque los españoles habían sido expulsados hasta 1815, los asuntos no estaban arreglados, ya que la idea de Artigas era de una unión con Argentina, pero esta se abandonó a favor de independencia total para la “Banda Oriental”. En 1816, Brasil (entonces todavía dependiente de Portugal) invadió el país y después de varios años de guerra lo controló entre 1820 y 1825. En este año los legendarios “Treinta y tres” bajo el General Lavalleja “invadieron” desde Argentina, juntaron un ejército y derrotaron a los brasileros, y desde entonces Uruguay ha sido un país independiente.

Fuimos a conocer la ciudad de Treinta y tres, en el interior que consiste en paisaje abierto con colinas bajas o a veces más pronunciadas, nunca grandes, con hartos bosquecitos de eucaliptos. La mayor parte de Uruguay nunca tuvo bosque: de sus aprox 2,500 especies de plantas, casi 2,000 corresponden a las praderas, de las cuales 400 tipos de pasto, la mayor variedad en el mundo. Hay también muchas especies de pájaros. En el Terminal de buses, Magda escuchó una mujer que hablaba de un sitio que ofrece eco-turismo y preguntó… En breve, dentro de poco teníamos reserva por dos noches en “El Capricho”. Esta hacienda en el campo a 50km de Treinta y tres ofrece alojamiento básico – muy básico – para una docena de turistas. La principal atracción es la famosa (en Uruguay) Quebrada de los cuervos – la cual debe su nombre a la presencia de tres tipos de buitre. Contiene además un micro-clima con vegetación muy distinta de la de la pradera típica, con árboles, palmeras y helechos, y una gran variedad de pájaros y otras especies. Lo más interesante para nosotros era de encontrar un armadillo cerca del camino, muy confiado, paseando tranquilamente.

Nos tiramos al río en un lugar aparentemente discreto, pero al mirar hacia arriba – ya en el agua – nos dimos cuenta que estábamos directamente en la vista del mirador…

La última – y más tentadora – visión de Uruguay era la ciudad de Colonia del Santísimo Sacramento, el primer asentamiento del país – fundado por los portugueses en 1680. Los Españoles los pudieron sacar recién en 1777, después de la fundación de Montevideo.

La ciudad es un sitio UNESCO del patrimonio mundial. El antiguo centro portugués es atractivo y bastante bien preservado: existen partes de una muralla masiva, un faro, una iglesia con varias reconstrucciones y los fundamentos del palacio del gobierno colonial. Hay varios museos, y el centro cultural (en una antigua fábrica de jabón!) ofrece teatro y conciertos.

Otras instalaciones más modernas incluyen un club de yates, y la ciudad tiene vida propia, siendo centro de servicios para la agricultura y la viticultura de la zona.

Desde Colonia tomamos el ferry para atravesar el Río de la Plata a Buenos Aires, y así de vuelta a Chile.

¡GRACIAS POR SU PACIENCIA!

SANTA LEOPOLDINA – SANTOS

We went back to Arraial to say our second round of goodbyes and for me to finish an urgent translation.

Then it was south to Vitoria on the bus again, and again it rained!

Forty km inland from Vitoria is the charming and sleepy little town of Santa Leopoldina. This was for half a century a very important port! The river winds inland from Victoria towards a rich coffee growing area until it reaches some impassable rapids, where the port was founded. In the absence of roads the coffee was shipped down in boats – I imagine small barges. There is a chute still in existence down which the coffee bags were slid for loading. Even allowing for shrinkage in the size of the river it can never have been big enough for sea-going vessels, so the coffee would have been transhipped in Vitoria for the journey to Salvador, Rio or overseas. We also heard that it was used as a port for the mining and industrial produce from Minas Gerais before the Belo Horizonte – Vitoria railway was built.

Santa Leopoldina was the centre of a conglomeration of European colonies founded from around 1850 – Austrian, Italian, Pomeranian etc. The names of the surrounding hamlets and fazendas still reflect this process: Tirol, Holandinha, Bragança. We visited the Museo do Colono in the house of a well-to-do Austrian merchant family, descendants of man named Holzmeister who immigrated in around 1860 and made his fortune. The family sold the house and contents to the Municipality in the 1980s. There was a plethora of European knick-knacks and china, a curious selection of books, many in French (I suspect the part of the old man’s library which was unwanted by his descendants), a large radio/gramophone ca. 1960 and a touchingly Victorian memorial to a son born 1888, died 1890, with a lock of very pale hair.

We stayed a couple of nights in the Pousada Tirol in the hills some 20 km from Santa Leopoldina, actually run by an Austrian who emigrated a dozen years ago, together with his Brazilian wife.
It is very “gemütlich”, and we were served huge and delicious meals in which Austrian and Brazilian cuisine were combined. The pousada is set in 200 hectares of Mata Atlantica forest, mainly untouched, and has 60 km of well-maintained trails.
They have an excellent tree reference, but take your own bird-book! The photos on the wall include views of the Alps and some butterflies – Hubert was a passionate butterfly enthusiast and has a huge collection upstairs.


From Vitoria we came to Santos, where we are really saying goodbye to Brazil – and catching up with our friend Edirle from Temuco.

Santos is also an ancient port, but is anything but sleepy, and you have to dig to find the charm!
The historic centre behind the port is rather run down but they are making a big effort to tidy it up and develop tourism.
We took a 15 minute circular tram-ride then visited the old coffee exchange, now the coffee museum. The railway line up to São Paulo is sadly no longer running, although our 1992 Lonely Planet claimed that there was a tourist train at weekends – let’s hope they reinstate it one day as it must be a fantastic trip. We came down by bus and that was quite dramatic.

Originally settled in 1545, for the last 150 years Santos has been THE coffee port for Brazil.
Coffee was introduced into the country in 1727 for the internal market but by 1840 they were producing sufficient to start exporting and Santos was where all the São Paulo coffee was centralised for export. The tiny old port grew and grew, a railway line was built, over 2 million immigrants (mainly Italian and Japanese) were welcomed to work in the plantations, the coffee exchange was built (1922) and the port went on growing to become the biggest in Latin America today, with 13 km of wharfs. Looking at old photographs of the muddy chaos in the 1880s it is hard to believe…

We walked up the Monserrate hill which offers a fine view over the city, the port and the coastal plain, to where the land starts to rise, apparently almost sheer, some 800 metres towards São Paulo and the interior. The little church of Our Lady of Monserrate goes back to about 1600 – it was badly modernised in the last century but there is work afoot to restore it to something simpler and more in keeping.
Fascinating also was the 1927 funicular – the top station is huge, with the original German machinery and a large banqueting hall which you can hire for events!

The splendid Prefeitura (town hall), built in 1937 with coffee money, is open to the public on Saturdays, and there is a large theatre (the Santos Coliseum). We visited a baroque church, also being repaired, which belonged to a Carmelite convent, the earliest religious foundation in the city.
Finally we had a beer in the Café Paulista (1911), where coffee apparently used to be negotiated (shades of Edward Lloyd!) before the exchange existed.

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Volvimos a Arraial para despedirnos (nuevamente) y para que yo pudiera terminar una traducción urgente.

De allí, para el sur hasta Vitoria de nuevo.

A cuarenta km de Vitoria se encuentra la pequeña y dormida ciudad de Santa Leopoldina. Durante medio siglo era un puerto importante! El río cruza el campo desde Victoria hacia una rica zona de producción de café, hasta topar con unos rápidos que ningún barco puede pasar, y allá se fundó la ciudad. Por falta de caminos, se llevaba el café hasta Vitoria en barco – me imagino en pequeñas barcazas. Existe todavía una rampa por donde tiraron los sacos de café para cargar las barcazas. Aunque el río haya sido mayor en aquella época, nunca habría sido suficientemente grande para barcos de alta mar, entonces habrán transbordado el café en Vitoria para enviarlo a Salvador, Rio o Europa.

Santa Leopoldina era centro de una agrupación de colonias de origen europea, fundadas a partir de 1850 – Austriacas, Italianas, Pomeranas etc. Los nombres de los pueblitos y fazendas reflejan este proceso: Tirol, Holandinha, Bragança. Conocimos el Museo do Colono en la casa de una familia rica de mercadores Austriacos, descendentes de un tal Holzmeister quién inmigró alrededor de 1860 e hizo fortuna. La familia vendió la casa a la municipalidad en los años 80. Contenía muchas cerámicas y otros cachureos europeos, una variedad curiosa de libros, muchos en francés (sospecho que serán los que no les interesaban a los descendentes del viejo), un radio/tocadiscos grande de ca. 1960 y un memento a un hijo nacido 1888, muerto 1890, con una mecha de pelo muy claro.

Alojamos dos noches en la Posada Tirol en la montaña, a unos 20 km de Santa Leopoldina, actualmente propiedad de un austriaco quién emigró hace unos 12 años, con su esposa brasilera. Muy acogedora, y la comida rica y abundante, una mezcla de las cocinas austriaca y brasilera. La posada está ubicada en 200 hectáreas de Mata Atlántica, con 60 km de senderos.

Desde Vitoria viajamos a Santos, donde nos estamos despidiendo de Brasil – y compartiendo con nuestra amiga Edirle de Temuco.

Santos también es un puerto antiguo, pero nada de dormido! El centro histórico al lado del puerto está en proceso de rehabilitación, y están desarrollando el turismo. Hicimos un viaje en tranvía de 15 minutos, luego fuimos a la antigua Bolsa de Café, ahora el Museo del Café – muy interesante.

Poblado originalmente en 1545, por los últimos 150 años Santos ha sido el principal puerto para el café brasilera. El café fue introducido en el país en 1727 para consumo interno pero ya en 1840 se producía suficiente para su exportación, todo el café del estado de São Paulo se concentraba en Santos. El pequeño puerto creció rápidamente, se construyó el ferrocarril al interior, llegaron más de 2 millones de inmigrantes (principalmente de Italia y del Japón) para trabajar en la producción, se construyó la Bolsa del Café (1922) y el puerto siguió creciendo – hasta transformarse en el más grande de América Latina, con 13 km de muelles. Cuando uno mira las fotos antiguos del barro y del caos de la década de los 1880, es increible…

Subimos El Monserrate, de donde hay una vista hermosa sobre la ciudad, el puerto y el llano costal, hasta donde el terreno empieza a subir – en forma casi vertical – unos 800 metros hacia São Paulo y el interior. La pequeña iglesia de Nuetra Señora de Monserrate data de alrededor de 1600 – fue modernizada de mal gusto en el siglo 20, pero están trabajando para recuperar su simplicidad original. Existe un elevador - como los de Valparaíso pero más grande – construido en 1927. Todavía posee la maquinaria original – alemana – y una sala de eventos que se puede arrendar!

La magnífica Prefeitura (municipalidad), construida en 1937 con plata del negocio del café, está abierta para visitas los sábados; existe también un teatro grande (El Coliseo de Santos). Conocimos una iglesia barroca, también en reparación, que perteneció a un convento Carmelito, la primera fundación religiosa de la ciudad. Finalmente, tomamos una cerveza en el Café Paulista (1911), donde dicen que se negociaba el café antes de la construcción de la Bolsa.

ON THE MOVE AGAIN

After 5 months pretty much settled in Arraial we are on the move again!

The last few days have been devoted to packing and farewells. Yesterday we got up at 0530, closed up the house, returned the keys and set off north along the coast to Belmonte - a sleepy coastal town which used to be a cocoa shipping port.

There we boarded an aluminium launch with outboard motor for a two-hour journey through the mangrove swamps to Canavieras.
We crossed the broad river at Belmonte and entered a maze of narrow channels up which we puttered gently, slowing from time to time to avoid swamping the locals paddling about their business in dugout canoes.
There were lots of herons and egrets, and a couple of small, bright green kingfishers. The bigger trees where the land was drier were hung with bromeliads and other epiphytes. We finally came out (under a shower of rain) into another broad river mouth - where we were made to put on lifejackets - up which we approached the old cocoa and sugar port of Canavieras. We were met by our Austrian friends from Arraial, Guenther and Anna, who gave us an excellent lunch before we set off on the bus inland to Itabuna, and thence overnight to Feira Santa Ana, west of Salvador. From there a taxi took us - and a couple of Spaniards whom we met at the bus station - to Lencois.



This is an old diamond mining town. The Chapada (Plateau) Diamantina is now a national park with some lovely walking and everywhere signs of the two hundred years or more of hand mining for diamonds - heaps of loose stones, channels dug in the rock. The deposits of rock, sand and diamonds date from when Brazil formed the sea bed just west of Namibia. It is mind-boggling to pick up pebbles here, washed down from African mountains... There are also deposits of different coloured sands, which are used by local artists to create pictures in bottles.


The town is old and quite attractive, although nothing like the cities of Minas Gerais which were much richer. Tourism is important here now and has grown strongly in recent years. Lots of pousadas and restaurants.

The weather has been unsettled and last night it poured with rain. Good for diamond miners but nobody else! Let's hope it improves.

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Después de 5 meses de 'inactividad' en Arraial estamos de viaje nuevamenteve!

Pasamos los últimos días haciendo mochila y en despedidas. Ayer nos levantamos a las 0530, cerramos la casa, entregamos las llaves y salimos hacia el norte por la costa hasta Belmonte - antiguo puerto de exportación de cacao, dormido bajo el sol.

Allí entramos en una lancha para el viaje de 2 horas por los mangles a Canavieras. Cruzamos un río ancho y nos metimos a los mangles por un laberinto de canales, pasando a los residentes en sus canoas hechos de troncos. Vimos garzas de distintos tipos y colores, y un par de hermosos martin-pescadores pequeños, de color verde. Algunos árboles más grandes tenían bromelias y otros epifitos. Llegamos finalmente a otro río grande por el cual nos acercamos a Canavieras - también puerto de azucar y cacao.

Encontramos dos amigos Austriacos de Arraial, Guenther y Anna, quienes nos invitaron a almorzar. De allí tomamos el bus a Feira Santa Ana, al oeste de Salvador y llegamos finalmente a Lencois en el interior.

Esta fue ciudad de minería de diamantes. La Chapada Diamantina ahora es Parque Nacional con caminatas hermosas. Se ve mucha evidencia de los esfuerzos de los mineros a través de dos siglos o más - montones de piedras, canales en la piedra etc. Los depósitos de piedra, arena y diamantes son de la época en la cual esta parte de Brasil formaba el fondo del mar al oeste de Namibia! Es increíble pensar que uno puede tomar piedras en la mano que vienen de las montañas de Africa... Existen depósitos de arenas de distintos colores usadas por artistas locales para crear imágenes en botellas.

La ciudad es atractiva, aunque no tan rica como las ciudades de Minas Gerais. Hay mucho turismo desarrollado en los últimos veinte años - muchos posadas y ristorantes.

El tiempo no nos ha acompañado - anoche llovió a chuzos. Bueno para los mineros de diamantes pero no para nosotros!

ARRAIAL D’AJUDA

Thirty years ago, Arraial was a tiny fishing village, huddled round the triangular square running away from the little church perched on the cliff edge. The only access was by a very intermittent ferry across the Burnagem river from Porto Seguro, and then along 3 km of sandy track between the beach and the mangroves, before climbing the hill into the village.

Then in the 80’s it was discovered by the hippy crowd. Our 1992 Lonely Planet of Brazil contains a graphic description of the scene at that time, “… marijuana clouds the main street, white horses gallop wildly through the town, wasted minstrels sing songs and ancient village women wear Nina Hagen T-shirts.” Well, I haven’t seen a white horse, and I wouldn’t know a Nina Hagen T-shirt if I did see one, but the rest is still fairly applicable, although I suspect it was all a bit more chaotic then. There are plenty of people still here who arrived in that epoch. Some have grown up and settled down, others, tattooed, dread-locked and wrinkled, still hang around the main square selling handicrafts (or not). There are a host of newer arrivals, some as hip as the 80’s crowd, others decidedly street-wise and C21st – this is the place where cool vibes and marijuana meet kite surfing and consumerism!

The sun, sand and surf are unchanged, making it a tropical paradise from the tourist brochures – although for various reasons (which include the year-round humidity and mosquitoes) we have decided not to stay here long-term. We are renting a little house, one block back from the road (now paved) linking the ferry and the village. It is in a sandy plot full of trees, hibiscuses and banana plants. We hear bird-song all day and owls at night. On Friday night, when the owls stop, we hear the music from an island in the river 2 km, where the tourists in P Seguro party from 0200 to 0600!!!

The human fauna is rich and strange! Here is a small selection from my forthcoming book (?!), with some small changes made to avoid possible embarrassment:

One of our neighbours is a man in his late 60’s, Alfonso, who lives with his 30-something wife, Alicia, and their 4 small children. Also living in an independent flat in the garden is an Irishwoman in her 70’s, Kath, who speaks fluent Portuguese. She and Alicia get on famously – one of them buys a bottle of wine and they go to Kath’s flat or down to the beach together to tipple. Kath has just been on the waggon for a week because she dropped a heavy weight on her toe and is on anti-biotics. Well it turns out that Kath was married for 25 years to none other than Alfonso! What is more, she originally came out to Brazil as a missionary, and threw it in to marry him… She got (inherited?) a bit of money of her own with which she bought this place and they all live there together as one happy family – she is surrogate grandmother to the children.

Ricardo is staying in a friend’s pousada (B&B). He is a psychologist in his mid-thirties and has come here for a period of quiet to get over being widowed for the second time. And in both cases the defunct was named Jorge! The latest partnership was for 9 years, and they had a business, a flat and a car together. When Jorge died he had a tremendous legal battle with the family to claim his rights as “spouse” to all their joint property, which he won – Good for him!!

Further down the road live a couple of Argentineans – they have been here for over 20 years. He is still living in the 70’s, had quite long (bedraggled) hair but last week took it all off and now sports a shaven scalp. This shows off his earring better when he drives round on his moped with his helmet worn fashionably on the wrist. You go round for a drink in the evening and he is sure to be smoking a joint… I found him trying to change a wheel on his car the other day and having a lot of trouble undoing the nuts – he was turning the spanner the wrong way! She is a bit more together but very naïve, and quite unversed in technology, while the children are permanently wired to the internet. They make a living creating handicraft fairies of modelling clay, with wings cut out of coke bottles – not quite as bad as it sounds…

I am taking classes to keep up my Russian with a guy from Odessa who got out in 1989 and has not been back. He is an artist as well as an excellent musician. Lives at the moment in Sicily but came here to escape the northern winter. He is in love with a Cuban model in Rome, but she doesn’t want to know. He paints on the theme of the “Sacred Feminine” in a curious style with elongated figures and geometrical designs – not quite my taste, but he assures us that he is a great artist, it’s just that nobody understands: “Nobody understood Caravaggio or Picasso either.” He has managed to find free accommodation and plays guitar one night a week in a restaurant in order to eat. In Italy he played the piano…

As well as picking up my ranslations again I have got a part time job managing bookings in a pousada which will cove our expenses and keeps me out of trouble, plus solving the problem of internet access...

(POST) CHRISTMAS BLOG

We finally completed our Round-the-world ticket when we returned to Chile for two busy weeks on 30th Nov. We left Arraial at the beginning of the week to see a bit more of Brazil on the way.

The first leg took us overnight to Victoria on the coast 600 km south of Arraial. We arrived in time for breakfast – the inevitable coffee and pão de queijo, a delicious cheesy puff the size of a golf ball. It is common in most places in Brazil, although different areas have their own recipes.

Victoria is a busy city and port for the industrial zones of Espiritu Santo and eastern Minas Gerais – one of the earliest railways in the country linked it to Belo Horizonte. The city has been quite heavily developed and the centre is stretched along the back of the port and the noisy waterfront road. However it contains a number of interesting and attractive buildings. We enjoyed the Carlos Gomes theatre from the beginning of the twentieth century (supposedly a scale model of La Scala) and there are a number of old churches dotted around the centre.

The most interesting sight was the Convento de Penha, also a place of pilgrimage, perched up on a rock on the south side of the river mouth. It stands guard over the original C16th foundation of the city, Vila Velha, which now has been swamped by modern development, but a little church in the main square (locked!) and a few old houses remain. The convent above was founded very early by the monk guilty of converting Brazil to christianity, one Padre Anchieta. Associated legends include a vision of the heavenly hosts which frightened off an Dutch raiding force – there is a C19th century painting in the church. We climbed up the steep 500 metre path on foot although there is now a road and taxis tout their services at the bottom. Serious pilgrims do it on their knees! The top offers a magnificent view north across the port to the city and beyond it to the green hills. North and south runs the eternal beach of the Brazilian coast, built up for a few km each way, then reverting to sand and vegetation. The highest part of convent, which is still functioning, is a church dating back to the C16th, but several times restored and now mainly baroque in character. There are pews, pulpits, a reredos and other furniture of beautifully carved black jacaranda wood and the whole is light and airy – not least because the open doors look out over the void so that you are constantly aware of being raised above the hurly-burly of daily life.

The next night bus took us on to São Paulo. This vast city is an inevitable magnet as you pass through the centre of Brazil. It was also where our flight for Chile departed from! The highlight of the visit was seeing the University of São Paulo where Magda studied. It is a huge green area with modern buildings which used to be on the edge of the city – however the tide of growth has flowed on and left it an island of vegetation among the development. There is a free bus service to take students and staff (and visitors) around the campus. We visited the Physical Education Faculty and Magda found a secretary whom she remembered from her student days who gave us a cup of coffee!

The São Paulo Art Museum (MASP) contained an exhibition of Brazilian painting which we enjoyed, seeing European trends transformed through a Brazilian lens. There was also an exhibition of photographs of the city from the 40’s down to the present. At the end of December thieves broke in and stole a Picasso (which we didn’t see) and the “Coffee labourer” by Candido Portinari, a C20th Brazilian artist, which we did. I couldn’t imagine paying what it was said to be worth…

We visited the Cathedral in the centre – gothic revival from around 1900 – and went to some of the Cebos (second hand bookshops) in the area of the Praca da Sé. In the Praca the old Treasury building has an area devoted to artistic activities and we saw an excellent performance of modern dance.

Another evening we went to a recital of songs by Oscar Lacerda, who was present, celebrating his 80th birthday. A tiresome man behind us kept clapping before the last bar had been played, and finally applauded twice in the same song when it was far from finished. He retired in confusion under a storm of furious looks. We also went to see a film, ‘La Vie en Rose’ (the life of Edith Piaf).

Our last night we went to the Bar Brahma – close to our hostel – a long-established Sao Paulo favourite, where they had live jazz: a trio circulating among the tables consisting of alto trumpet, tuba and percussion (washboard, bell and claxon)!

Our two weeks in Chile were fairly hectic. We took in Temuco, seeing friends and a bit of Admin. I skipped up to Talca from there for a day’s interpreting and back. Then we spent Saturday in Valdivia with Blanca (Magda’s sister) and family. We went to see the site where they plan to build a house beside Lago Ranco – real Chilean lake district…

Back in Santiago for the second week, arriving on Sunday, as I was working on Monday and Tuesday – interpreting for a seminar on plants! We went to Gorgias’ Christmas concert in the classical Santa Ana church – wind quintet and small choir. We also had a day in Valparaiso, taking us to the Pacific coast as a symbolic completion of our circumnavigation.


That’s enough to complete the year; will come up shortly with some comments on Arraial and the strange human fauna which it contains! A final comment for all those not up to date: much as we are enjoying Brazil we have decided for a variety of reasons, some practical, some cultural, that we will not stay here beyond our present 6-month tourist visa, so we will be moving on in March, heading towards Chile.