A Chilly Reception In Bogota

Bogota, few degrees north of the equator and less than a month until the start of summer. Within minutes of landing I swapped out my Brazilian beach uniform of the previous month for pants, a long sleeve shirt and my winter jacket. At an altitude of 8K feet the approaching summer was obviously taking the long way around. Weather notwithstanding it felt refreshing to be back in a Spanish speaking country and back in the shadow of the mighty Andes.

La Candaleria is the colonial epicenter in the southern part of Bogota and is in a word ¨gritty´´ The origninal structures are in decidedly different states of disrepair, poorly lit streets buckle and open holes approach without warning. Despite these pedestrian woes it retains a charm of cultivated neglect. The grid pattern is simple enough to figure out though, Calles run north south and Carreras run east west. I was pleasently surprised to see arepas being sold at regular intervals on the street. I had previously understood the arepa to be an exlcusively Venezuelan treat, at least thats what my arepa bar in the East Village would have me believe. In fact the arepa is simply a staple of the North Andes gifted down from the native indians. If you haven´t had the pleasure of indulging in an arepa they are basically corn bread and cheese patties cooked over an open grill. This is the more traditional approach but you can also opt for the arepa rellena which is two arepas filled with either chcken, pork or shredded beef. Hot off the grill at 75 cents a pop they are a street food conniseur´s nirvana. That being said the empanada bars are also a worthy option. The Colombians eschew the traditonal emapanda dough and use cornmeal trade oven cooking for that of an overworked friolator. I often hear people speaking of the South American cooking as spicy but this is either a regurgitated fallacy or most folks have a very threshold for spice pain because outside of Colombia I have yet find a salsa with a good kick. You average empanda stand here always has a bowl of dark brown fiery salsa at arms lenghth and each bite seems to be rehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.video.gif
Add Videowarded with a large spoonful by the locals. Good stuff. With blistering mouth in tow you don´t have to walk very far in Bogota to see a Fernando Botero image tacked up in some rincon bar or dry cleaner. Botero is to Colombian painting what Gabriel García Márquez is to literature. Fortunately these sun bleached and cigarette stainded reproductions can be upstaged by the originals in the Donnacion Fernando Botero which has an impressive collection of 200 paintings and sculptures. I visited the museum a few differnt times to look at his paintings. He is famous for those blimpy, fleshy and dimuntive people as well as pictures of sliced fruit. Bogota´s north side might as well be light years away though, lots of concrete and steel spaced generously far apart. A place for shopping not walking.

An over night bus deposited me in Calli a few days later. It seems to be a requisite stop on most folks iteneraries. Its chief natural resource being the gene pool. It is known to produce the most beautiful women in all of Colombia and beautiful they are. The problem I found with Calli is that the women are as overwhelming as their city is underwhelming. Aside from nightlife it is about as interesting as watching wet paint dry. It didn´t take long to board a departing bus. I did what any self respecting coffee drinker would do while in Colombia and headed to the Zona Cafetera in the Quindio Valley.

Salento is the smallest and oldest pueblo in the Zona Cafetera. It is the type of place where little old ladies look out window, smile and say hello as you pass by their houses. Surrounded by lush green hills dotted with coffee farms the mist and moody weather lend it a mystical quality. Oranges, lemons, beans, bamboo, tree ferns, bananas and, pineapple grow unattended on the sloping terrain. I think it is one of my favorite places. Needless to say the coffee is as good as coffee gets. On an afternoon hike I stopped into a tiny nondescript Mom and Pop finca to get a tour. The short tour concluded with a tasting. The beans were skillet roasted, ground and percolated in front of me. The subsequent cup of coffee proferred up was pure magic. Doctoring up the brew with sugar or milk was never a consideration, black gold! I am not one to go in for black coffee but there was not the slightest hint of bitter to be found anywhere. If the world had access to this caliber coffee on a daily basis I think the world would be a different place.

Just east of Salento is the Cocora Valley which is real cowboy country. Trails that traverse the farms of the lowland soon give way to thick jungle vegetation, river and waterfalls. It was fun to share space with horses in groups of four or five moving freely about on and off the trails grazing on scrub plant. If I hadnt seen sign of branding on them my assumption would have been that they were wild. After three kilometers of challenging inclines the jungle abruptly ends and you arrive in the cloud forrest. A local farmer had set up a mirador with benches in front of his farm. He was keen to take a break from brushing fresh pitch on his fence posts and chat. There is something very relaxing about talking to a local while clouds pass by in a direct line of sight. One curious element of Cocora are the prescence of wax palms. These palms average a height of 12 stories. At times the fronds of the top appear to be floating on top of the clouds like an ethereal sombrero. Lovely stuff.

The only strking contrast to all this natural beauty up here is the prescense of well armed military personel. The FARC guerillas at one time were well entrenched in the mountains just east of here. My understanding is that they have taken flight much further out and the soldiers are mostly here for visual reassurance. While I as visitor here certainly appreciate that, I find that I feel much better when M16s aren´t around.

Anyway ...

Some pics can be found
HERE

And some newer pics can be found HERE

Some Observations

The following are some recurring themes I have noticed while wandering around Latin America.

1)The dreaded 50 peso note:
Stop at any bank in any city and the ATM will gleefuly burp up your withdrawl denominated in as many 50 peso notes as will fit in you request. The problem is that when you produce one of these 50`s for payment someplace it creates pandemonium. A look of panic comes over everyone`s faces behind the counter. A hain reaction ensues which involves much talk amongst all of the employees in the establishment. Momentarily somewhat will dart out the door with your 50 and go across the street, next door and maybe even upstairs in an effort to break that bill at a neighboring business. If you happen to find youself in a time-sensitive situation the 50 dollar bill is useless to you. Note this situation occurs sometimes with 20s but not as frequently.

2)The Tyrany of the Receipt:
Recibos, facturas, whatever you want to call them are a required part of any business transaction. There are signs up everywhere imploring customers to make sure they have their receipt with them when the leave. I can understand the importance of a receipt with a big ticket item like for instance - a laptop. You are most likely to want and/need that receipt. However if I walk into a kiosko and ask for a small bottle of coke it is no different than if I were purchasing a laptop. Once I have handed over the 50 cents for the small glass bottle of Coca Cola, the dot matrix printer behind the counter will kick into action, spitting out an entire page itemizing my Coca Cola purchase. Sometimes when the printour is finished it will recieve a stamp before being handed over to the recipient. If the business is not of the computer printout variety, the clerk will scribble out your purchase on a small triplicate receipt book and hand it to before you leave. Sometimes the hand written receipt will recive a stamp as well. I haven´t a clue what the stamp says as it is always illegible.

3)Flourescent Lights:
There is only one type of light bulb that exists on the continent and that is the Fluorscent variety. Often the long cylindrical ones that sit in metal fixtures on the cieling. There is no socio-economic correlation either as towards where one finds Flourescent bulbs, a bank, a decent hotel, office buildings, and homes. You are never not under the alien green hue emitted by these awful bulbs. Perhaps this light is actually a thing of reverence down. How else do you explain the fact that none of the ceiling fixutres are fitted with the plastic covers that serve to diffuse the harshness produced by these bulbs? Note to General Electric - a massive PR campaign extolliing the virutes of "soft white" lighting in South America would be revolutionary. It would also likely increase profit margins by 900 percent.

Top three questions I have been asked:

1)Do you know/like The Ramones?
I think the Ramones are possibly the most popular band on the continent. If you answer "yes you like and have seen The Ramones many times", the conversation will include alot of smiling and handshaking. If you mention that you have seen Joey Ramone in a Deli on 2nd Avenue they will most likely offer to buy you a beer and start referring to you as friend. Strange but true.

2)Sept. 11th
Where were you? Who do you think did it?
I think lots of folks recently saw the `Loose Change` conspiracy theory documentary here. It seems to be untimely topical.

3)"What language was that they were speaking in Brokeback Mountain?"
Nobody believes when you say they are speaking English its just a dialect. They refuse to believe or seem very suspicous and will retort something along the lines of "I speak English and I didn´t understand a word those guys were saying. Why wasn´t there subtitles?" Ha ha ha. I kid you not.

Anyway where was I ....

C.

17 Million Paulistas Can't Be Wrong ...

but they might be crazy for living here in Sao Paulo. Sampa as the locals refer to their city is a megalopolis cosmopolis metropolis. Big Scrabble words for a big city. I believe its the the third largest in the world behind Mexico City and Tokyo. This morning over a cup of overly sweetened Brazilian coffee I calculated a route from Jardim Paulista to Centro, simple enough I thought. After a walk that took slightly less time than the gestation period of a baby elephant I reached downtown. After some furtive ducking into doorways to consult my map(I didn't want to look like a tourist and my back pack and beach attire from the day before were obviously fooling everyone) I finally found Edificio Altino Arantes. This was long ago the tallest building in the skyline and suspiciously resembles the Empire State Building. The mirador on the 35th floor is the place to "take it all in." If you envision a pie cut into 64ths and the island of Manhattan represented exactly one slice, that whole pie would likely resemble Sao Paulo. It makes the sprawl of Los Angeles look like Mayberry. The coarse concrete geometry of landscape can only explained by the abscence of any sort of urban planning. It's all very Bladerunner, I have to say I like it. I took a snipped of video as I was fortunate enough to be the only person on top of the Altino Arantes yesterday afternoon. You can find it HERE

Some Room with a View

Morro de São Paulo is one of a handful of villages on the island of Tinhare´. The island is one of an archipelago of 3 small islands 100 miles off the coast of Salvador in Bahia. The primary mode of transportation here is the wheel barrow. There are no cars on the island and if there were I am sure plying the narrow sand streets would be problematic at best. Luggage, dry goods and sometimes small children are all moved along inside the wheel barrow taxi. A true negative carbon footprint!

The village of Morro is easy enough to navigate. The naming conventions are handled by ordianl numbers. There is the 1st Beach(Primeira Praia), the second, third etc. The only anomoly to this naming scheme is the Encanto Beach which is truly a deserted paradise. The beaches get less populated as the numbers increase.

The beaches themselves are the stuff of stock image photography used in travel brochures the world over. The first beach has a break and some nice waves but the rest are held still by surrounding reef. Tracing the coast you find well-spaced Mangrove swamps mingle the clear, cobalt blue and emerald green tones of the tepid bath water. Beyond the beach are hills of Atlantic rain forrest that are dilineated by bougainvillea and coconut groves.

Every lodging on the island is a Mom and Pop shop with no structure exceeding two stories and not a corporate name among them. It has been a week since I traded in the iPod for alternating sounds of breaking surf and the rustling of palm fronds at night. Atmosphereic Ambien, the good stuff.


Some pics can be found HERE

Bountiful Bahia

Salvador is black, Salvador is beautiful. It is also the capitol of the state of Bahia. Back when it was the capitol of Brazil it was also the largest center of the slave trade in the new world. The fact that Portugal abandoned Salvador as a capitol may have played a part in the preservation of the culture of the millions of Sub-Saharan Africans who ended up here. That´s just a guess of course but all that is quintessentially Afro-Brazillian can probably be found in Salvador. More specifically it can be found in the Pelourinho. The Pelourinho is the old district in the high part of the city. Pelourinho is Portuguese or pillory which as you know is a stockade or whipping post or some other form of restraining device uses for public flagellation. Lovely no?

Bahian cuisine is found all over Brazil but its difficult to dispute the authenticity of what is to be found in Salvador. Moqueca is a stalwart of any Bahian menu. Moqueca is a fish stew cooked in cocount milk, sweet red peppers, and a palm nut oil known as dende.(Everything is cooked in dende up here.) This is usually served over rice with and some hot chili pepper salsa. It is both divine and inspirational. If you want to go more heart you can always order a bobó which is moqueca that is thickened with manioc gravy. Both of these are served as hot as molten lava in a black earthenware pot. On the street you can find the "Baianas do Acarajé", these are women dressed in all white tradition African dress who sell Acarajé which are fried black-eyed bean cakes which are served with various exotic tasting sauces. Some of the Baianas also sell abará which is fundamentally the same except that it is wrapped in banana leaf and boiled instead of fried. Lastly Carne do Sol is a local specialty which is a dried salted meet. l None of these are ever far from arm´s reach in Salvador and we´re all better for it.

Saturday night I was fortunate enough to witness a Candomble service. Candomble is syncretism. The Yoruba slaves brought Orisha faith with them from Africa. Since both The Catholic church and slave owners on the coffee plantations seemed somewhat "spooked" by the "pagan" religious practices the slaves took it underground by hiding their Orishas or spirits behind Catholic Saints in order to continue to practice their religion without the threat of persecution. An Orisha which is a type of guardian angel is the basic element of Candomble. During a service many parishoners will under go a trance and become possesed by the Orisha. Candomble is an oral tradition with no holy book. The services are led by a Mae/Sae do Santo which is the equivalent of a priest and the momentum of the 4 hour service is led by a contigent of drummers. The service is a fascinating kinetic ritual, as the drums weave ever evlolving polyrhythms the parishoners, dance and chant and support one another. A couple of hours into the cermeony a select few will enter the trance state and begin convulsing and become possesed by the Orisha. Soon after some will disappear to the back and reappear wearing a constume image of the Orisha. The constumed and possesed worshiper will then go into a special dance which is not them but rather the orisha making the movements. This is followed by more dancing and chanting and eventually the intensity winds down. The service usually finishes with a celebratory meal which is taken outside. Fascinating stuff.

Capoeiria is a martial art/dance which was created in Salvador. The origin is likely in a martial art from the old world of the slaves that was turned into a jocular dance in order for the slaves to sustain its practice. It is a martial art and a dance and is highly entertaining. You can find a roda which is a circle of Capoeiristas with the active participants in the middle of the circle in many public places in Salvador. To add to the spectacle the roda de capoeiria is accompanied by music. There are usualy a couple of berimbaus which look like a hunting bow which are played with a wooden stick, then there is a pandeiro which a type of hand drum resembling the tambourine. Sweeping round house kicks, elbow blocks and back flips are exhanged in rapid succession. If you were to combine the violent precision of Bruce Lee with raw energy of break dancing crew you might have a loose approximation of the entertainment value of good Capoeiria.

Besides the crime in the Pelourinho the only other problem is lack of a quality beach. The city is dived in to the Cidade Alta and the Cidada Baixa. In order to shuttle between the two involves taking one of the old Jesuit Elevators. the beaches along the Cidada Baixa are small rocky and slightly polluted. Finding the good beaches involves moving north or south of Salvador which is where I am heading next.


Anyway I have some pics in and around Salvador HERE

Football, Forro´and Fio Dental

It is quite conceivable that one could come to Brazil for a month and never venture beyond either Rio or the Zona Sul. There would be nothing wrong with this scenario either. However in any country that spans 4 or more time zones this constitutes a postage stamp-sized tether. Here are some of the ways I filled up the proverbial bucket before leaving.

A Churrascaria survey tour. Churrascarias are the Brazilian equivalent of the Gaucho Asados found in Argentina, basically a slow barbequeue. Where they differ of course is in the method of delivery and the variety of their offerings. The meat is served Rodizio style which is where the waiters circulate throughout the dining room with a skewer of meet and a knife. If the token on your table is facing green side up the waiter will shave off a cut of whatever he is serving, if the token is red side up he will keep moving along. They all operate on a prix fixe scheme so you are only limited by your intake capacity. At any given time there half a dozen waiters moving about the dining room with a seemingly endless selection of beef, chicken, lamb, pork, duck. Further, within each category of meat early every type of cut is offered as well. The winner hands down was Porcão which without any touch of irony means "big pig" in Portuguese. Although opinion seems to be split between Plataforma and Porcão as to which is the best Churrascaria, my vote rests with Porcão. In addition to its quality BBQ it has its share of that "see and be seen" element. I thoroughly enjoyed my friend Fabio, a Leblon local pointing out the different TV stars, football players and politicos while detailing their accompanying scandals. That´s entertainment.

On Wednesday night I attended a football game at the fabled Maracana´ Stadium. Maracana´is the biggest football stadium on the planet. Before receiving a face lift for last summer´s Pam American Games the capacity was 200K. After removing the terrace style seating the number is somewhere closer to 120K people. The game was between Flamingo which is Brazil´s most popular team and Sao Paulo´s Corinthians, a classic rivalvry for urban supremacy. A football game at Maracana´ has no comparison in any of the big 3 sports in USA. The Flamingo fans make the Red Sox fans on Yawkee Way in Boston look like choir boys. I think with the exception of automatic weapons everything is permitted to be brought into the stadium. I am trying to think of a 20 piece samba troop trying to enter Madison Square Garden with their drums on game night and it just doesn´t compute. There were passages of time where between the smoke from the fireworks and flares and the flag waving it became very difficult to see the field. It was like the Nuremburg of sporting events. Everything reaches an apoplectic peak of course when Flamingo scores. The movement of 80K fans in unison causes the concrete beneath your feet tends to undulate ever so slightly but enough for it to register. It also begins to rain, it rains beer, water, coke, plastic cups and cans. It also becomes evident that this is no place for a freshly pressed button down shirt. The game ended with a 2-1 victory for Flamingo after which the madness moved from the stadium to the street.

A visit to a Favela. Initialy I had mixed feeling about visiting a Favela. On one hand there seemed to be something touristcally exploitive about it. Yet on the other hand with a population of over 2 million people and a growth rate of 6 percent the favelas are clearly a legitimate part of the social fabric that makes up the city. After doing a minute amount of research I found a guy named Marcelo who donated a majority of the money for a guided tour to the community there. The favela I visited was Rocinha. This is the biggest favela in Rio. There doesnt seem to be any type of official census type data but many estimates put it at 100K people. I think most peoples impressions of the favela were culled from the movie "City of God" and up to that point mine were as well. True, drug lords and there soldiers run the favela but they do so along with an elected favela predident. Not everyone in a favela is a drug dealer either in fact these would be a minroity. Many of the maids, porters other service industry people who work in Copacobana and Impanema live here. Most of Rio´s construction workers are favela dwellers as well. Despite the illegal prescense of drugs and guns in the favelas there is little crime. Windows and doors remain open, there is no armed robbery, muggings or rape. This is one of those self regulating elements that are sometimes found in marginalized areas. In the abscense of a police patrol justice is meeted out by the Command which is the reigning power structure of the neighborhood. The Command is generally one of three different drug gangs that control the neighborhood. The kids with guns on the street are soldiers of the command. They are the eyes and ears on the street and report up the chain of command. They are not out for the wallets and jewelry of of tourists in any way. Their armed struggles rests with the police and rival commands looking to make inroads in their favela. The only real danger in visiting a favela or I imagine living there for that matter is getting caught in the cross fire between these elements. Another misconception is that in these neighborhoods there is an abscense infrastructure however this is patently untrue. There are supermarkets, restaurants, bars and bus stations in the favela. Every resident also has access to power and running water. The favelas also have their own community radio and cable TV stations. I dont mean in any way to portray a rosey picture of but what became obvious to me during the afternoon here was that there is a difference between poverty and being "down and out."

Next it´s off to the North East to the state of Bahia, the African heart of Brazil.

CT