Cultural differences

A brief stop in Sao Paulo

   Paraty was a beautiful little town, it was only a shame we didn’t see its beaches in the sunshine.  Kizzy was well-pleased with her breakfast table though.

   We met up with another couple, Dan and Gita (Aussies, again, although they lived in Lime Grove in Shepherd’s Bush until recently) as we were waiting for the bus out to Sao Paulo.  That was quite fortunate as they were much better organised than us and knew where they were going and what needed to happen to make the transfer to Foz do Iguaçu.  It was also quite handy having company around when I inadvertently struck Kiz in the face with the cricket bat.  I bent down to pick up my hand luggage and the bat handle extending over my right shoulder made a beeline straight for her forehead.  I’m not sure how much longer it will be travelling with us. 

   While Dan and Gita travelled on the 17:30 bus to Foz do Iguaçu, we decided to brave the monster and head into central Sao Paulo, city of 18 million people, before following on the 20:00 bus.  I’m glad we did.  It was raining (it has rained every day that we have been in South America) but not too heavily and we found a tube map that looked a lot like London’s, making us feel very capable in navigating foreign mega-cities.  We headed to the Pinacoteca do Estado for our fix of contemporary art, and swung by the Teatro Municipal and Praça da Republica to take in some of the architectural delights. 

 

   I wasn’t overcome by Sao Paulo as a tourist destination and I’m sure that there are better ways to approach it as a visitor than to spend two and a half hours wandering around a small patch downtown.  What was startling was the very present reality of desperate and pitiful poverty that coats the surfaces of what our guidebook describes as “the gastronomic, fashion and finance capital of South America”.  Where we exited the tube at Luz we were surrounded by rundown buildings.  One office block, 20 stories high, was boarded up and no windows intact below the 10^th floor.  It showed all the signs of having been derelict for a decade, and yet it was crowded with people living there to the point that they were spilling out onto the street, sheltering in its cornices under sheets of blue plastic. 

   As we wandered 900 meters from the art gallery to the theatre, we passed countless homeless and also a woman in tears outside the police station, clinging to a cart with a meagre load of plastic carrier bags and a few sheets of cardboard.  It’s not that cold in Sao Paulo in January and I get the impression that the main change in climate is that it rains less from May to September.  However, the number of people bedded down under any shelter, be it viaduct, doorway or underpass came as a shock in this epicentre of the oft-referenced economic miracle of Brazil.  The favelas of Sao Paulo are a good deal further away from the city centre than is the case in Rio and that seems to have created a space in which those with little or nothing can be stranded between begging in the centre and somewhere to sleep at night.  Although that said, no-one asked for money.  To be truthful, there weren’t really many other people around on a wet Saturday afternoon to beg from. 

Beaches and body image

   Vincenzo asked for more pictures of all the beautiful people that Brazil’s beaches are so famed for.  There have been a number of men on the beach with a great interest in photography.  They stand out and look somewhat sinister.  I’m not trying to cultivate that look and Kizzy has refused to take the photos, so sorry to disappoint you Vincenzo. 

   There is a frank appreciation of the human form on the beaches, especially in Rio.  While we were lazing about on Copacabana there were two guys, dressed in bikinis and wigs, doing television interviews as they passed.  My Portuguese is terrible but from what we could gather they were interested in finding pretty girls in their early twenties and then discussing with their subject an appraisal of their boobs and bum.  The girls were mildly embarrassed but didn’t really seem to mind; they were possibly even flattered, judging by the reactions.  It was also surreal in sleepy little Paraty to see a car going down the main drag towing a billboard advertising the local sex shop.  But that seems the way of it here.  On the beach, it was very clear that Kiz and I were tourists, not just from my white or pink glow, but by virtue of us not wearing a thong and speedos.  They seem to be the national uniform, often accessorised with a large tattoo covering a shoulder or a calf muscle. 

   The young are indeed good looking.  Kizzy holds that the men are actually better looking than the women.  But there is a strange diet in the places we have been and it seems to take its toll on people past the age of thirty.  The five fruit and veg a day is actually eight a day in Brazil, but that is no doubt to make up for the other two food groups being stodge (doughy baked goods with any cheese or meat filling you might want) and grilled meat with an enormous amount of salt.  The men over thirty all seem to have developed beer bellies.  I actually hold my own quite well against my contemporaries, although perhaps not with my presently “bubbly” complexion – the sunburn has settled down into hundreds of mini blisters: not at all appealing.  The women over thirty have an almost universal furrow to their brows, as if they are regularly shaking their heads at the deteriorating state of the menfolk.