Brazilian buses, banks, beaches and buffaloes

Brazil is a place of surprises. This is partly because it is a vibrant country rich in both potential and contrasts and partly because neither of us speak any Portuguese and hence we´re never entirely sure what we´re going to get. As such, we tend to stumble onto good surprises more than devise them ourselves.

One such surprise was the churrascuro we stumbled into on our 2nd day. We had left our hotel in order to escape the frozen instant hamburger meal on offer and find a better meal (anything!) when we found ourselves in a churrascaria de rodezio. The concept is quite simple; one sits at a table having selected a salad plate from the salad buffet and waiters move from table to table bringing various cuts of meat on skewers from which they slice portions onto your plate. For less than GBP10 you eat until you are full and then the Brazilian waiters come around and comment on how weak you are and then you eat a little more in order to impress them.

Another surprise was Liberdade and the hidden sushi restaurant. Sao Paulo has a sizable Japanese population and partly out of curiosity and partly on the recommendation of the guidebook as a good area, we spent a night in this interesting part of the city. We arrived late at 10pm and walked down a sweaty street, laden with oriental laterns and lights, and finally found ourselves a sort-of-hotel for an incredible price with a sushi restaurant out back. Still covered in travel grime but starving we were ceremoniously presented with a massive plate of fresh sushi (salmon, tuna, eel, octopus, even fish roe) that frankly defeated us, despite our best efforts and a call for more wasabi.

We decided to spend our week in Brazil by the beach before returning to hardly-tropical London. In a certain amount of blind faith we chose the Island of Cannanea which is 300km south of Sao Paulo and joined to the mainland by a short bridge. We didn´t want to be anywhere too retro because the interior of Brazil empties at New Year as the entire population heads for the beach. Upon reflection, Cannanea seems to be just out of the way enough not to be too crowded but still has a good enough beach for a sizable population to have descended upon it.

The best beach in the area is on a neighbouring island, a short ferry and then a bus ride away. Getting the ferry and the bus can be a bit like getting on at Mbare Msika Central, if you can imagine everyone at Mbare wearing bikinis. But the brown, soft, warm Brazilian water at the end of it is enough to make you smile at the passion the Brazilians have for the beach.

Speaking of surprises, we were suddenly surprised to find that the bank machine in the little fishing village would not give us any cash. This presented an interesting challenge when it occured to us that our hotel did not take credit card and neither did the bus company back to Sao Paulo. Various options presented themselves to my Zimbabwean mind (take a cheaper bus to the next big town, sell my iPod, find some Indians, do a runner and hitchike back to SP...) but we finally decided to make it our hotelier´s problem - at which point it turned out he had a friend who did take credit cards plus an account at his store and hence could provide us with the cash we needed. A frantic 4 hours of debate and scheming over, we went back to the beach (which at least is free).

It appears to us that we are the only foreigners in this tiny town. People keep referring to us as ¨ah....Gringo¨. This is delivered in a variety of different tones. It has benefits; for instance in identifying what table we were just sitting at, and it can be challenging; for instance when disputing the bill. Contrary to popular belief which is that, although people who speak Spanish cannot understand Portuguese, those that speak Portuguese can understand Spanish this has not really proved true in our experience. But, for the most part, I am grateful that nobody seems to speak any English because nobody can understand Duncan commenting on all the fat people on the beaches. In his defence, there were quite a few buffaloes and the myth of svelte Brazilian women prancing about in bikinis has been entirely dispelled for me. This is a nation of whales!

Tomorrow we take a bus (paid for through our illicit credit card transactions) back to Sao Paulo. We will probably have a churasscuro maybe some sushi and then become resolute vegetarians upon our return to London, in protest at the price of meat and raw fish there and so that we don´t also turn into whales!

Tunquen on the Pacific coast

The Varelas have a house on the Pacific coast in Tunquen where Chilean architects dream of building their magnum opus. The house water is pumped from a well and the stove and the fridge are gas powered. The beach meets a rivermouth nearby and you can swim in either (the river being notably warmer than the Pacific, which pounds the shore with large and icy waves).

We took a supply of books, Pisco and parilla meat and spent a blissfull weekend on the beach or on the deck with a group of Chileans who patiently coached me in Spanish and never tired of repeating the comments made in English so I could take part in the conversation. What most struck me about the Chileans after 9 months in London was their effortless friendliness and social ease. At first acquintance everyone gets up from the table to greet everyone else hello with two kisses and immediately upon meeting you they incorporate you into the conversation. There is no warm up period, just warmth.

So we spent warm days and cool nights eating more amazing meat, sipping Piscola, watching the sunset.

Christmas in Santiago

Christmas in Santiago was a low key affair. Partly because we were away from family and partly because the Chileans do it differently. But I suddenly realised how much Duncan had become my family.

Two days before Christmas Eve we noticed the street performers at traffic lights, the way that people in South Africa sell trinkets, offer your jokes for money or the Big Issue. There were children juggling or girls in pink tutus with hoops and men in top hats with spangly pants. On the buses to the city, musicians get on with you too. Riding for free they sing for 3 or 4 stops (opera, hip hop, self styled) and most people on the bus give them something, even if they are very bad.

Christmas Eve with the Varelas was late, we joined them for dinner after evening mass, the meal was simple with traditional homemade sweets and the present giving to follow. We rolled into bed at 5am to sleep off the abundance of Cesar´s gran´s homemade coffee liquer (featuring Pisco of course) and wait for Father Christmas (the literal translation of whom in Spanish is ¨the Easter Old Man.¨)

Puerto Varas and the beginning of the edge of the Earth

A 13 hour bus trip south of Santiago, down the long thin country that is Chile, is a small little town on the edge of a volcanic lake. Puerto Varas looks across that lake towards two snow capped volcanos. It is approximately on the same latitude as Tasmania. It was also populated by several Germans before and after World War II which accounts for the wooden houses with decorated eaves and lace curtains to halfway down the pane. We stayed in a German-run backpackers hostel which was extremely clean and well run, although had disturbing signs in the toilet urging men to please sit down to pee (Duncan studiously ignored these entreaties, muttering things about people cutting his balls off.)

Using Puerto Varas as our base, we took advantage of the abundance of outdoor activities that are possible between the volcanos, the lakes, the rivers and the sea. We rented mountain bikes and rode up the side of Volcano Orsorno by ski road and then down it by bushpath between lava rocks (on the whole, to the detriment of my shins and bum but to the betterment of my spirit of adventure). We pulled in at Petrohue Falls on the way where melted snow pours over lava rocks and the water is turquoise it is so cold. We hiked for a day through the Alerce Andino National Park and swam in a still mountain lake, empty and silent but for us. We went canyoning (strapped into wetsuits) down rapids and waterfalls in the imaginatively named Rio Blanco. Each evening we´d return, worn out but happy, and seek out pasta or fish in the local restaurants to replenish our energies to do it all again the next day and in the village we discovered fresh oysters and Congrio as well as the local version of tempura (which was basically seafood doughnuts, but tasted good!)

While we were staying in Puerto Varas, I read The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin. It was a remnant of Cesar´s high school English literature reading that I pillaged after exhausting our own literature in our first week in Argentina. It´s a novel written in 1976 about Nazis in South America after WWII. I became acutely aware of how the south of Chile, particularly after Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt where the land breaks up into islands and further south where it becomes glaciers and fjords, is an isolated and distant place. An excellent place for dodgy people to escape to and live anonymously at the edge of the Earth. It was something of this that came to me one night at dinner in the hostel where we sat at a table listening to the shared stories of various tourists. An English couple (he wore a wedding ring, yet she didn´t) who were circumnavigating the continent, a German man named Rene who was a goldsmith but found better money in working at a German coal plant, and a wizened man from the US who described himself as semi retired from the precious gem export business. He told us that he had lived and taught in Brazil in the 60s where he´d met a Brazilian and had a couple of kids and to supplement his teachers salary had become involved with the gem trade betweeen Brazil and the US. Quite without provocation he told us that the US authorities only get excited if you try to bring guns or drugs into the country, they are ¨fairly relaxed¨ about everything else. At which point Duncan and I tried to look at eachother as neutrally as possible while simultaneously thinking - so this guy is basically a smuggler.

We barely penetrated Patagonia and the lure of the south tantilised me while we were there. Another time, another trip, it would be a great adventure to follow the trail of the Andes, cross and criss-cross the borders Chile and Argentina and finally take a boat down towards the ice.

It was with some reluctance that we put ourselves back on a bus to the north again. Until we remembered where we were headed; to Santiago, to the desert, and to friends and Christmas.

The first taste of Santiago

As we flew low over the snow on the Andes and landed in Santiago, Duncan next to me breathed a visible sigh of familiarity. Cesar and his girlfriend Cata picked us up from the airport and drove us through the dusty brightness of Santiago, laughing back and forth in joyous conversations in mixed Spanish and English with the occasional pause for translation for the benefit of Cata and me. Duncan first met Cesar when he came and taught in Chile in 2000. He came back after he finished at Oxford and he and Cesar travelled with a friend across South America. Like the Olympics, Duncan says he tries to come back to Chile every four years.

Santiago spreads out on a low lying flood plain surrounded by mountains. Those to the east are the beginnings of the Andes and are snow capped even in the height of summer. The heat is dry and windless until late in the day when the breeze picks up. The sunlight is bright on the eyes and on bad days the dust from the desert and the pollution from the congested city rest like a blanket on the flatlands. But the views from the apartment blocks of Providencia, where the Varelas live, are over leafy streets and church steeples. There you can sit out on the verandah and look across the city and then lift your eyes up towards the foothills and the snow.

The Varelas are old friends of Duncan and they know him well. Too well. They are wonderfully generous people and they have beautiful manners. We arrived in time to for Saturday lunch with the verandah door open, an abundance of avocado (ooh, those Chilean avocados) and an update on the past four years. Nobody in Chile knows anything about Zimbabwe but once I explained Mugabe, redistribution of land and leaving the country etc it was roughly translated by Cesar into a Chilean framework (ie Mugabe = undemocratic dictator, redistribution = socialism and leaving = being in exile) Pato, Cesar´s dad´s immediate response was "then you must come to Chile, I will get you a Chilean passport".

The Chileans sleep, eat and stay up even later than the Argentinians. We whiled away the afternoon by the pool, had a brief nap until about 10pm and then Cesar prepared a parilla (a braai) and Cata introduced me to Pisco. We sat in the evening breeze together, sipping and talking about Catholicism, religion, development, Pinochet, Chilean economics; eating as late as midnight and going to bed much later than that.

Parilla and Pisco are what the Chileans do well, often together. I hesitate before I begin to describe meat eating and meat cooking in South America because I fear I cannot sufficiently do it justice. It is a continental art form. They are very good at it. Not only is it ridiculously cheap, it is ridiculously good.

Pause for effect (in order to communicate emphasis on the amazing goodness of parilla).

Pisco is less of an art form, it would probably be better described as a Chilean institution, but it is just as enjoyable. Pisco is brandy made from Muscat grapes. It´s drunk as an aperitif - Piscosour - which is lemon juice, Pisco, egg white. Or as a cocktail - Piscola - with ice and Coke. Or straight, should the mood take you. It is a soft, gentle drink for which I have developed a great affection. Even now, writing this in Brazil after having 2 hefty Caipirinhas* last night, I realise that vodka is not my friend the way the Pisco is my friend.

On Sunday we met Fernando, the third in the trio who took the 30 hour bus trips across South America in 2004. We had another parilla at his apartment, laughing at his description of his mother´s reaction to his moving out of home. In the evening we joined the other Varela kids and their respective boyfriends and girlfriends for dinner at a German sandwich restaurant thus beginning our introduction to the subtle German influences in Chilean culture and the very good mix of sauerkraut with avocado.

*I should note that a Caipirinha is more correctly drunk with cane rather than vodka. But I am a sissy and a half weight and this morning has confirmed that my decision not to risk the local petrol was a good one.