If Bolivia is cold then Brazil is most assuredly HOT. The sun beats down interminably, the terrain rolls and undulates as if molten, occasionally
punctuated with smooth brown monoliths, roads cutting deep gashes into the rich red soil. When the few clouds break and a warm shower bathes the land it appears to bleed. Much of Brasil has been stripped of its
natural blanket of foliage, from the Atlantic forest to the jungle of the Amazon. As a consequence it is often dusty and barren. Yet you can feel the latent power of life trying to break through and as soon as a patch
of trees is cleared new growth begins to appear. In the Amazon the slash-and-burn of elementary geography lessons is still practiced by manioc root farmers. The land is used for six months and then left to regrow. It
takes just 2 years for a canopy of trees to cover the once scarred earth.
Brazil is also a mighty big place. At first I though I was suffering Fat Leg Syndrome but then realised it was just temporary swelling caused
by spending 30 hours at a time sitting on buses.
The initial welcome in Rio, having flown across the glittering Andes from Santiago, was inauspicious. Greeted by low drizzling cloud and reduced to the state of 'If
you wave that card in front of my face again I will staple it to your testicles' by the taxi touts in the arrivals lounge, I thought that it was set to be as depressing as Lima. But oh Rio, I'm sorry. On the second
morning the clouds broke, Christ the Redeemer appeared arms spread wide and the parade of scantily clad sun-worshippers began.
Rio is a cliché of course, but it deserves the repetition. The star attractions live up
to their billing, albeit with a heavy gloss of tourist veneer, and it genuinely feels like a living city rather than a film set. Life is real and death is common. In a city of 8 million people, over 7,000 are murdered
or 'disappear' every year. The affluence of the beach sides is vividly counter pointed by the steeply climbing Favelas which rise from behind Copacabana and Ipanema like noxious exhaust fumes.
Next door to Rio is the
vast, sprawling urban nightmare that is Sao Paulo. 20 million call it home and I'm still trying to work out why.
Much further up the coast is the spicy capital of Bahia state, Salvador. A melting pot of African and
Latin American flavours, a picturesque city of beaches, pastel colours, and packs of tourists out hunting for tasteless souvenirs. One steamy night, when the old city came alive to the sound of tribal drummers and the
groups of pale, ageing package-goers were having seizures trying the to keep the rhythm, a man with designs on Formula 1 drove us to a secret venue where the traditional ceremony of Candomble was in swing. A fusion of
voodoo, Catholicism and general inebriation, it promises to drive evil spirits from body and mind. Arriving at night in an increasingly unnerving part of town we tottered down crumbling concrete steps, sets of eyes
assessing our net worth, and stopped in front of ramshackle building. Our host took us to one side before whispering conspiratorially "Tonight, you will see homosexuals!". When we failed to recoil in abject
horror, he continued more vehemently "But when the drumming stops, they will become men!!".
And what drumming. Just one man, but he beat the patterns of a dozen. Some rather rotund women and two - how shall
we say - 'dainty' men circled what appeared to be an old school desk on which were placed several symbolic items, and occasionally cried out and fell to the floor before scrambling up and being mopped with a dripping
cloth. After two hours of this and having been personally 'cleansed' by whom I supposed to be the spiritual mother of the congregation, we left and returned to sanity.
Manaus – jungle city. Where the ink-black Rio
Negro and the muddy-brown Rio Solimoes meet to form the Amazon proper, their waters running side by side, unmixed, for many miles before finally merging. On arrival at the hostel I was met by a grinning midget with
approximately four teeth who introduced himself as Wilson. He told me that his chronic cocaine habit had recently been treated and his teenage wife and child lived with him next door. He seemed so respectable that I
didn't hesitate to ask for his services as a guide and set off for four days in the jungle.
Four days of washing and swimming in a piranha and caiman infested river, of eating nothing but things caught in the forest
and water, of trekking for hours through tangled and insect infested undergrowth. So naturally I was surprised when I got ill on returning to Manaus.
Wilson insisted on treating me, not with conventional medicine,
but with some herbs carefully selected at the local Indian market, one of which tasted like fermented grass, the other a little tarter than battery acid. When his friend tried to convince me I had a parasitic worm which
would have to be extracted, I was ferried to the hospital for a sane diagnosis. In the Amazonas General Hospital, they gave me a drip and two injections and left me to wander around with a tube sticking out of my arm.
At one point a helper led me into a room full of pallid people all staring blankly at a Portuguese soap opera. A few moments later a nurse came in, told the man off and led me back to the main treatment area. I was
grateful as I had begun to suspect it was an area set aside for terminal patients.
Once my eyes could focus again (not sure what they gave me, but it was good) I was set free. Before I left I wandered past the
consultation rooms, all of which had their doors wide open. In one a cluster of doctors crowded round a chest x-ray and were discussing a cloudy, lozenge-shaped mark on the lungs while a woman wept uncontrollably in the
corner and various passers by lent by the doorway listening transfixed. Privacy clearly is not a Brazilian thing.
After a brief stop in Brasilia, having flown through a huge row of thunderstorms blinking like a
celestial pinball machine, the path led westward to Cuiaba and the baking tray of the Pantanal. 42 degrees and all pervading humidity. The weakness of altitude replaced by the lethargy of heat. In the Pantanal a
wonderful menagerie of exotic creatures, living side by side with cattle ranchers, strut around waiting for the zoom lenses to point their way. Top wildlife moment was chancing upon a Tapir grazing in the waterlillies.
Marcio, the guide, exclaimed "You are very lucky!" before gunning the boat's engine and racing towards the terror-stricken creature which promptly ran off into the bankside undergrowth before I had a chance to
get a picture. Idiot.
The final stop in Brasil was Foz do Iguacu, on the tripartite border with Argentina and Paraguay. The falls are magnificent and made me feel utterly insignificant. Not hard I hear you cry, but
standing virtually underneath such an enormous volume of water hurtling to earth, surrounded with beautiful unspoilt rainforest, makes you want to crawl into a little ball, hoist the white flag, and admit that nothing
we make will ever threaten the majesty of the natural world.
Nice way to finish. A little hop, skip and a jump (well, without the skip cos Immigration were watching), it was over into Argentina (again).
Brasil is
rotund (like many of its people I'm afraid to say), lush (ditto), taxing, hot, spectacular and emotionally charged. I have barely scratched the surface and yet feel I know it better than some of the other countries I
have visited. It responds well to visitors and it rewards those prepared to stray just a little from the beaten track with unforgettable sights and unique experiences. Having said that, I was absolutely knackered when I
left and it has taken me this long (nearly 2 weeks) to recharge enough to write this note.
I have less than 2 months left on this fascinating continent and I'm inwardly dreading the day I have to leave.
