An Update from Brazil

Brazil is an incredible place. We pulled into port on Wednesday, February 1st and are now sailing towards South Africa. I wanted to update this blog though before I get too wrapped up in school work and planning for Cape Town though. Thanks for everyone’s love and support so far on this voyage, you all have been wonderful. Ok a summary of my time in Brazil…here we go.

We pulled into what is called the “lower city” of Salvador alongside two enormous cruise ships around 8AM and proceeded to go through customs. I was off the ship by about 1PM and was greeted by women in local Brazilian costumes and a huge sign welcoming us to Salvador. I spent the first day in Brazil walking around and exploring Salvador, and as far as I am concerned to explore properly you need money! After getting off the ship I had to find a place to exchange my money for Brazilian Reals (pronounced: Hay-ALLS). In the process of entering a bank I got stuck in a sliding glass door contraption. Basically one glass door slides open and the security guard working at the bank looks you over and decides if you look safe enough to allow into the bank, and then if you do, the guard will open the other glass door to allow you to enter the bank. Well, it either took an extremely long time for the guard to decide if I looked safe enough, or the door mechanism was broken. I’m pretty sure it was the latter. I stood there for what seemed like forever as my friend Liz stared at me through the glass looking quite panicked from the street. They eventually fixed the door and I was able to enter into the bank. I exchanged some money without any problems and was on my way. I was a little surprised at the over abundance of security officers in uniform carrying machine guns at the bank… it was a little intimidating.

I went up to the “upper city” on what the locals call “the elevator.” It is literally an outside elevator that would be inside a typical building that takes you from where the docks and market are (the lower city) to the upper city where some of the historic buildings, shopping, and beaches are. The whole ride takes about a minute and costs 5 centavos or about 2.5 cents. There are streets that connect the two portions of the city, but they are very unsafe to walk on even during the day, so we just stuck to the elevator.

That evening I went to a welcome reception at another local university similar to the one in Puerto Rico, however, since it is summer in the southern hemisphere, the students are out of school for there summer vacation. There were not too many students that were around, but the ones that were there were extremely friendly and taught us all the Somba, which is the local dance of Brazil. I was having a great time, but my mind was on the early wake up call that I was receiving the next morning. How early you ask? Try 3:00 AM.

After the welcome reception I packed, and went to bed. I got about 2.5 hours of sleep and woke up at 3 to meet my group and transfer to the Salvador airport for my flight to RIO!! The flight was relatively uneventful and we flew a 737, the crew spoke both English and Portuguese, and I tried to sleep as much as I could to get a little caught up on the sleep deficit. One thing that I did notice about the local Brazilian people that were on the plane is that they do not like to wait in lines. When a plane lands in the states everyone waits for the fasten seat belt sign to go off, then people begin to collect their luggage, wait for the cabin door to open, and file out of the plane by taking turns in order of your seat number. It’s a pretty good system, right? Well… Brazilians ignore the whole waiting in line process and rush to the front of the plane ignoring the seat belt signs and practically trample people in their way. I don’t think they mean to be rude as they do it, but I suppose they just want to be the first ones waiting for their bags as baggage claim. Who knows. Anyway, I watched several people do it and it was just the strangest thing to me. A few other students commented on it to me and we all agreed that it was just a little bizarre.
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After we arrived in Rio, we ate at one Brazil’s famous churrascarias. These are all you can eat meat type buffets where the meat is brought to your plate on sword type skewers that are about 3 inches wide and about 3 feet long. The server brings the dozens of kinds of steak, chicken, pork, and other mystery meats including frog legs and camel to your table and cuts them off the slab of meat that is on the skewer and it falls to your plate. I ate so much I thought I was going to explode. After we left the restaurant we boarded busses and traveled to Sugar Loaf Mountain which via a series of cable cars that take you to the top of the mountain which offers some of the most amazing views of the city of Rio. The weather was a perfect 80 degrees and the sun was shining. After we came down from the mountain we checked into our hotel on the infamous Copacabana Beach. That night the group went out to a local Irish Pub and welcomed ourselves to Rio. I was so excited to see a sign outside the pub that said they would be broadcasting the Superbowl that Sunday. (By the way I’m so excited that they Steelers won… and no I didn’t get to see any of the game. There is supposed to be a tape that is on its way to South Africa from one of the professor’s husband. I am hoping to watch it soon.)

The next morning the group (there were 50 of us) headed back into the city to see the Christ the Redeemer statue that gracefully watches over the city. The statue stands 1145 feet from base to top and is currently undergoing some renovations. The area around the base of the statue also provides some breathtaking views of the city and I just had to keep telling myself… “Leah YOU ARE IN RIO!!” It was quite surreal. After visiting the statue we boarded open air jeeps and drove through the rainforest that is on one side of the mountain and stopped for lunch at a local fish restaurant.

Later, we stopped at a social project that’s main responsibility is keeping kids that live in the flavellas (the slums) of Rio out of drugs and other problems. There are 2 million people that live in flavellas in the city and there are many social projects that do their very best to help the situation, but there is still so much that needs to be done to give these children a decent life. The poverty I saw in just a few short hours was amazing, yet the children still had smiles on their faces. I got my digital camera out of my bag and started taking pictures of the children once they realized what I was doing they started posing. They were so exited when I was able to show them the pictures I had just taken on the back on the camera. It was almost as if they didn’t know who they were looking at on the screen and once they realized it was actually themselves they got so excited. All they wanted to do all afternoon was take pictures of us, the tour guides, and themselves. No wonder my camera batteries died that afternoon.

After we left the social project we drove through the streets of Rio and got a little bit of a city orientation from our guides who were wonderful to us and then it was back to the hotel. I had dinner with my friends at a local Brazilian restaurant in Copacabana and then it was off to experience more of Brazilian nightlife. Wow… those locals can party!

My last day in Rio was incredibly bittersweet. I was so excited to see more of the city and stay as long as I could, but at the same time I know that there is just so much to look forward to in some of the ports that are in front of me. I flew back to Salvador in the late afternoon on Saturday.

Sunday, I went to a Brazilian soccer game. I am sure you have seen or heard about the soccer games in Brazil, but until you have actually gone to one, you simply haven’t experienced it. There were 400 students from the ship that went and we took over an entire section in the stadium. It was great. Most of us cannot speak Portuguese, but as long as we were screaming Bahia (the local team) as loud we you could the locals were happy to have us sit with them. There were people that were lighting fireworks, sparklers, and other colored flame throwing objects from inside the stadium and there are army officers with machine guns that protect the referees as they walk off the field between halves. It was nuts.

I had such a good time in Brazil. I would love to come back sometime and bring my family as see more of this amazing place in the future. Thanks for reading and look to hear from me after South Africa!