Chapada dos Veadeiros

On the weekend we went to a huge national park 3 hours drive away from Brasilia called "Chapada dos Veadeiros". We arrived on Friday afternoon and decided to break ourselves into the camping experience by going to the recommended camping ground on the edge of the park. There was a waterfall 100 meters away, and it had all been well thought out and there was plenty of space.... well we were the only people camping, so we were a bit spoilt for choice. In the evening we decided to go to the "games" room and play some table tennis and pool. We put the Groove Collective on the stereo, drank some beers, and inadvertently annoyed the people staying in the posh Pousada rooms next door, as there were external speakers as well; something you don't realise when you're inside.


The next day we packed up and headed up the dirt road to São Jorge, the town next to the entrance to the park. This area used to be a crystal mining area, and when they closed the park to make it a heritage site they retrained all the miners as guides. When we arrived it was early and we tried to get some breakfast - most people were already drinking in the bars. We ended up getting breakfast and then heading of to Raizama - a forrest reserve with loads of canyons and waterfalls and the like. After lazing about in the water for a bit, we went back to São Jorge and managed to pitch our tent in some bloke's back garden for 5 reais (about a pound) - as we were pitching the tent the people next door were listening to loud reggae and doing the sorts of things you do when you listen to loud reggae - they were friendly, and so were the dogs. For one reason or another my portuguese decided to vacate my brain that evening and things became quite difficult trying to converse with guides to take us into the park the next day. I hadn't realised that in effect this would be a lecture, and the bloke bargaining with us was not the friendliest in the world and I felt we would leave it until we found a more chilled guide who might be a bit more tolerant of my lamentable portuguese. We headed out to various cool bars and restaurants that evening - the town transforms itself by night.



After a very good sleep accompanied by all sorts of strange noises from unknown animals and various multicoloured frogs, we headed up the road to the Almega waterfalls. These were truly amazing, the best yet, the first in particular being brilliant for swimming in. You can see some pictures from our stay at the Chapada here.

Brasilia (slight return)

I'm going to try and describe to the best of my abilities what Brasilia is like. It is a 1950's vision of a modern city and was designed with the motorist in mind. The city is formed in the shape of a plane, hence the main town being called "Plano piloto". There is the fuselage, along which the huge "Eixo monumental" runs, surrounded by the ministeries and parliament buildings. On each wing there is an "Eixo Rodoviario" which is the main artery of traffic to and from the "centre". There is no real centre to speak of, just districts which serve some purpose or other. Nearer the meeting of the two main Eixo's where you might expect a centre to be, there is the main bus station, and around it the banking and hotel sectors. Along each wing the blocks are made up of numbers. The even hundreds are always on the east side of the Eixo Rodoviario on that wing, and the odd hundreds are on the west side. There is a south and north wing, and so if you know the address then you can find it without needing a map. For example 203S would be on the south wing, the first commercial district east of the Eixo Rodoviario about a kilometer along. What makes things harder though is that you can't turn left off any of the main roads - so you have to go past the exit, turn at a designated "Retorno" and then turn right. Taking this to its most absurd is the problem of going into town on the north wing along the Eixo Rodoviario from the East side of the wing. You have to go west underneath the Eixo, turn right onto the retorno so you are now going into town on the Eixinho West, turn off and go round both retornos until you are out of town on the Eixinho West, now do one more retorno onto the Eixo North going into town. This is probably better demonstrated by the following diagram, for which I needed all of my exemplory cartography skills to achieve the obvious clarity. Just follow the pink spots for the path of the vehicle.

There are of course cool bars and places to go in the commerical districts, but unfortunately nowhere to just walk around and peruse. I don't really want to make any subjective judgement about whether I think this is good or not, as I prefer a place with a town centre which you can walk around. People here love the way Brasilia is set up. Presumably once you know the place well you just know where you're going and you drive there and don't really feel the need to walk. The problem I have with this is twofold: Firstly, there is the obvious environmental issue of making it an absolute necessity for everyone to have a car by constructing the city like this (even if the buses were good it would be hell to get around as every shop you want to go to is miles apart from any other); secondly noone walks anywhere for fear of attack since there aren't that many people on the streets. If there were more pedestrians the whole place would be very safe to walk in, but the design of the city produces the vicious circle that noone wants to walk because noone else is.


The architecure on the Eixo Monumental is quite impressive - indeed the Cathedral is spectacular, but this is not continued in the residential or commercial districts where most of the buildings are quite delapidated, apart from in the posher areas. On the East side of the city, there is a huge lake, and you can see the truly enormous houses of the wealthy on the other side. This is another world, and demonstrates the vast difference here between rich and poor. It is one thing that makes me feel uneasy here - the tolerance of this divide by the rich. I have not had the feeling before of being in a society where I exist in a different class altogether from someone else, and that somehow there is a well defined divide between us. I don't really want to say too much on this before I am able to consider and experience it some more. You can see some pictures of Brasilia here

Pirénopolis

Finally I managed to buy a car. It is not something I really ever envisaged buying, but it seems to be ok, with the odd little thing to fix. It is a 93 chevrolet monza, which sounds impressive, but in fact it's basically just a vauxhall cavalier. I would have loved to buy a beetle, but it seems that beetles that work are in fact more expensive than I'd thought. The car we have is naff, which is probably a good thing as we're fairly inconspicuous in it. It has air conditioning, which is a comfort I didn't expect, but turns out to be quite pleasant. You can see it, parked at the disreputable place where I bought it here. I looked at, and broke, several million cars before buying this one, and I have to admit that it was mainly out of extreme boredom and exasperation that I eventually went for this car. Had I reached the same level of boredom earlier on, I may well have opted for something entirely different.

The upshot of this memorable and important event is that we were able to go to Pirénopolis - a truly beautiful old colonial town about 100 miles outside Brasilia. The drive there was an experience in itself, and I arrived in need of some refreshment, which we quickly found in a very cool little place. As usual we tried to ask for one meal to share, but they assured us it wouldn't be enough, so we bought 2 and left 1 and a half. The food here has many beans, much rice, and generally large quantities of meat. This was a particularly good lunch. We found our pousada (or hostel), which was really beautiful and headed off to this waterfall. You may not believe me because I have no evidence as yet, since my camera ran out of batteries. The road there was arduous to say the least - when we arrived we noticed that everyone else were driving jeeps. I had to cross a river and nearly grounded the car on many occasions. When we did arrive though it was virtually deserted and we went straight into the water. Being a sarcastic git, I'm not really sure how to enthuse sincerely, but it truly was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. The whole area is covered in these waterfalls, and you can probably only manage 1 or 2 a day, so I'll try and make sure the battery is charged for the next one we go to. On the way back from the waterfall we had to stop in front of some sort of countryside police heist. Six youths in a fiat uno had been asked to get out of the car and were being searched. The police had their guns drawn and it was quite tense. We had just crossed the river again and the car was quite hot, so the fact that there was loads of steam eminating from the engine didn't make me any calmer. Eventually the police moved the cars so we could just about squeeze past on the dirt road, and I was very relieved.

At night we went out to eat and drink. The main road had now been well and truly opened and there were beautiful young people posing all around. They were quite annoying, and definitely from the bigger cities. We wandered out of the main centre to a cheaper bar, where the locals had clearly been drinking profusely for some time. This was much more like it - people turning up on horseback and leaving almost comatozed trusting the horse to take them home. We drank quite a lot that night.

In the morning I was delighted to see that the mosquitoes had left us well alone. This delight was shortly followed by the realisation that they had probably done that for a good reason, and I stumbled nursing my head to the little garden outside the pousada where we had breakfast... coffee, bread, pastries... really nice. Next time I'm going to go to bed sober. We made our way next to a fazenda called Vaga Fogo, which is a kind of nature reserve where they make all their own food and so on. Here they had bits of the river you could sort of swim in but mainly it was just for lying around in the water. It was a really beautiful place, we stayed for a long time trying to pluck up the courage to leave. The hammocks weren't hastening our departure.

Pictures from our stay (unfotunately not including one of the abáde waterfall) can be found here.

Health service

I decided I would include this small section to illustrate both the efficiency of the Brasilian Health Service, and quite a significant event in my life. In order to sign my university contract, I had to go for a medical exam. As many of you may
know, I have not been very well for some time, and the doctors in Edinburgh basically told me there was nothing very much wrong. However, it transpires that after one day, the doctors here diagnosed that I had a parasite which I must have got while swimming in the countryside in Mexico - 3 and a half years ago. It's not very nice and it enters through your skin, and ends up in your lungs giving you bronchitis or pneumonia (which I had shortly after returning), and then after that sits in your stomach eating your blood and making your immune system weak and your iron levels incredibly low. It basically explains the kidney infection - the trouble eating, the loss of weight etc.... When I went to get my certificate of healthiness, the nurse gave me the results verbally in front of all of the other patients which is an experience not to be missed, especially if she has to repeat the portuguese of "YOU HAVE WORMS" very many times at the top of her voice, because I didn't understand the technical name for it (strongyloides stercoralis).

Here ends the brief personal aside....