Channelling the Cane Spirits

Monday 20.08.07

While trying to get a visa sorted to visit Paraguay, i discovered that this was the final day i was allowed to stay in Brasil. Facing a fine somewhere around AUS$900 if the visa lapsed, i quickly extended my Brasilian visa for AUS$40 with about fifteen minutes to spare before the Federal Police closed for the day. Finding myself once again donating money to bureaucracy in South America, I'll take this opportunity to tell the tale of this country's currency.

Brasil's currency story reminds us that big does not always mean better, less is more and perhaps, the original is often the best. When the long-standing Real, the country's official currency from 1690 to 1942 was hit by inflation severely toward the end of its lifespan, the Cruzeiro - Brasil's new currency was issued at a rate of 1000 Réis to 1 Cruzeiro. Following a brief flirtation with aluminium coins, the value of the Cruzeiro plummeted, and the Cruzeiro Novo started in 1967. This in turn fell to the ill-fated Cruzado in 1986 which was closely followed by the Cruzado Novo in 1989, all valued at a ratio of 1:1000 units of the former. The currency was renamed the Cruzeiro again in 1990, but with inflation at a runaway rate and perhaps a bad choice of name, it was succeeded by the Cruzeiro Real in 1993. This monetary unit lasted just one year and by mid-1994, the original unit of currency - the Real, was implemented and exchanged at a rate of 1 Real to 2750 Cruzeiro Reais. The Real has stayed relatively stable since. Bringing up the subject in Brasil brings forth all kinds of personal stories. People recount the day the President decided that the Brasilian government needed money, and emptied the citizens' bank accounts into their coffers, and tell tales of supermarket prices changing every day to keep up with the devaluation.

Foz do Iguaçu is the largest of the three towns that make up the tri-border area, serving the mighty Iguazu Falls, the second greatest waterfall by volume in the world. The falls are shared by Brasil and Argentina, and by early afternoon on Tuesday, i had arrived at the Brasilian park. My first encounter with the local wildlife was to see a few Coatis rummaging through bins. So much for unspoiled wilderness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coati

My first sight of the falls at Iguazu was the secondary set, a nevertheless grand set of falls centred around Isla San Martin in the middle. As the track progressed, more waterfalls came into view, dropping in one or two steps from the relative calm of the plateau above into a raging torrent below. The climax of the journey was soon upon me - the Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat), an incredible horseshoe-shaped crevice with unfathomable volumes of water pouring down from all angles. It is one of the Earth's great natural wonders, and when a Brasilian man exclaimed to me "Look at what God gave us!", despite not being a religious man, i could hardly disagree.

I spent the next hour exploring the Parque dos Aves next door to the national park. Seeing majestic birds in cages really isn't the best way to appreciate them, but it is probably the only chance i will get to observe (and interact with) creatures such as the endangered Harpy Eagle and Hyacinith Macaw.

I crossed the border to Puerto Iguazu in Argentina the next morning, and checked in at a youth hostel recommended by several people I had bumped into. What i didn't expect was it to have the appearance of a grand country club, even sporting a swimming pool out the front. Tourism took a turn for the bizarre at night when i looked up and saw in excess of one hundred people sitting at tables eating, as if they had all been recruited into Backpackers Boot Camp, ready to invade, photograph and drink everything that was in their path. It got stranger still when a Carnaval Samba show began, featuring Brasilian dancers and possibly the world's biggest Caipirinha in a giant plastic tub. The dancing and debauchery continued in a fashion only gap-year tourists can keep up, and i slunk off to the corner to play pool with the remainder of the over-19s.

Once inside the Argentinean side of the national park on Thursday, we jumped aboard an old army truck to reach the Rio Iguazu about six kilometres downstream from the falls. Once there, we transferred into a motorboat powered by two 250hp outboards, and made a beeline for the falls. The river, seemingly benign in these reaches, soon showed signs of turbulence, and within minutes were were lurching through rapids. Once at the foot of the secondary set of falls, the driver applied the throttle, driving us toward the deluge and drenching us in the blinding spray, then spinning the boat around and going back for more.

We soon got a chance to dry off and explore the Argentinean side on foot, along trails that afforded us all possible views of the many separate waterfalls around. Rainbows sprouted out of everywhere, while two opposite symbols of nature - the raw potential of flowing water and the fragile flutter of tiny butterflies were seen together in abundance. All around was fresh and beautiful and full of life.

The experience on the Argentinean side culminates once again at the Garganta del Diablo, this time observed from much closer and from above, and to a roar of pure white noise. The water flowing over the precipice at the top seems to keep its cohesion for some metres before gravity tears at its bonds. There in this region, the flow shatters utterly into droplets and mist, while the reflected colour, originally blue-green, turns to white in the free-fall. The falling water, many hundreds of tonnes per second, then completely vanishes from view into a great white unknown - a turbulent realm of mystery at the foot of the falls where air and water become one, pierced delicately by that most transient of sights - a rainbow.

Thursday 16.08.07

On the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley having left the earth, me and a Brasilian friend Raquel celebrated at night (without pharmaceuticals) at a bar playing his greatest hits and, when we tired of that, at another playing bad 80's ballad clips on Rua Augosta, a famous 'nightlife' strip in São Paulo. Walking down the hill, away from its intersection with proud Avenida Paulista, Rua Augosta gradually takes on a more seedy atmosphere. Eventually the reputable bars and restaurants give way to pink neon lit strip clubs and brothels. A couple of kids, with faces far more weathered than their height would suggest, were chroming on the footpath in front of one such place. The two security guards standing by the entrance did only that as the kids took another hit and pressed their grubby faces to the neon-framed front window. Further along, prostitutes in various states of disrepair walked the streets, and finally, in the Republica area, both club and street walker wavered in gender until it all became a blur of fake breasts, platform heels, deep voices and heavy jawlines. I heard stories of men, so desperate to become more feminine they give themselves D.I.Y cheek implants using a glass plate held against the face and a syringe full of industrial silicone. Naturally, this risky process sometimes results in permanent disfigurement.

Saturday morning the two of us went around the corner to Praça Republica, a nice-looking park (during daylight hours) dotted with rubber trees. A small street market is here, featuring crafts made by hippies locked in somewhat of a turf war for rug space. We made the long trip back to Kyle's apartment to gather my belongings, and then headed with him to Barra Funda, in the west end of the city to help paint a wall that several artists had been working on all day. From there, i said goodbye to my friends old and new and boarded a bus heading to Foz do Iguaçu, on the border of Argentina and Paraguay.

Waking up still aboard the bus on Sunday, I looked through the window and the scenery outside was changing. The landscape now was dead flat, and abound were farms and farming equipment, rodeos and ranches, sugar cane and corn, punctuated all over by monkey-puzzle trees. After lunch, I finally arrived in a cold and clouded-over Foz do Iguaçu, a phenomenon I wasn't entirely equipped for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_araucana

Out of town, in the middle of farming land stands the hostel I stayed in. The land a far cry from everywhere else i have visited in Brasil, and a fresh (if somewhat chilly) change to almost tree-less São Paulo. The first thing was to go for a walk amongst the nature, along red dirt roads, splitting fields of green-grey grass, with cows and sheep grazing amongst lichen-covered and leafless trees, yet to embrace the approach of spring. As night fell, an incredible chill settled over the area, and I equipped myself with several layers of winter clothes I had so far not needed during my travels. It appeared winter had finally caught up with me a few hundred metres from the edge of Brasil.

Monday 13.08.07

From our suburb in the city's southwest, we caught a bus into the centre. São Paulo is a gigantic metropolis, and with over 18 million people living in one of the world's largest metropolitan areas, it has an equally huge car-culture. There are bus-only lanes on the trunk roads, meaning this mode of transport is often faster than driving. Motorbikes are also popular with their obvious advantages, though with roads best described as 'Sydney streets on crack' - a maze of appearing and disappearing lanes and tunnels, unsignalled merging and erratic driving, all done only a reflector's distance from oncoming traffic, it would help one not to be too precious about the fragility of life.

From Avenida Paulista, a huge road lined with tall buildings which could be said is the pulmonary artery of the city, we went underground to catch the metro to the centre. Two lines and six or seven stations later, we had finally arrived, and emerging from beneath the city, we found ourselves in the plaza of an enormous church, Catedral Metropolitana. Able to hold several thousand people within, the cathedral's concrete pillars stretched skyward like gigantic grey trees, and there was enough stained glass high on the walls to start a Jesus-themed vegetable farm.

We now walked through the city's centre, a maze of pedestrian-only streets. In amongst the crowds of people we weaved, past street vendors, charlatans and police, business people and the homeless. Street preachers could be found everywhere, letting loose with barrages of rhetoric, working themselves into a righteous lather, surround by people (at a safe distance) who were nodding or observing with a little amusement.

São Paulo is the most multi-cultural city in Latin America, and among the most diverse cities in the whole world. Boasting immigrant populations from many countries world-wide, São Paulo has the world's largest group of Japanese living outside Japan, and a sizable Italian population as well. Immigrants are not the sole reason for São Paulo's incredible expansion, for people from the drought-prone northeast of Brasil (the country's poorest region) have been flocking here to set up slums and shanty towns for more than 40 years. As a result, there is no 'typical' Paulistan, a testament to the city's incredible diversity.

On Wednesday, after being in Brasil for almost 3 months, I finally had a chance to try one of its most famous dishes - Feijoada. It is prepared as a black bean soup, with various pork products floating around in it, and comes accompanied with collared greens and a Brasilian favourite, farofa (Cassava flour)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava

The weather in São Paulo was perfect, so i went to Edificio Altino Arantes, a 35-storey building standing atop a rise in the centre of the city. The tower on top, reached by two lifts, a set of narrow steps and finally a spiral staircase, offers a 360º view of the huge metropolis. The city stretches into infinity in all directions, and the thousands of tall buildings remind one of bleached white coral outcrops left high and dry from a vanished sea. During my time up there, the tower was buzzed by one of the city's many private helicopters, used by the very rich to get from meeting to meeting without having to endure the terrible traffic below.

Thursday 09.08.07

Everyone who has flown before knows the layout of airports - ground floor is for Arrivals, first floor for Departures. But what is on the second floor? In most airports in Brasil it is a great place to hang out or pass out on the floor amongst your baggage during the inevitable delays. This particular moment I was 'Doing Time on the 2nd' waiting for a bus to take me to meet my friend Kyle, who I had previously met in Rio de Janeiro. After an unknown amount of sleeping time, i was approached by a cluster of curious teenage Evangelical Christians, in São Paulo for a religious seminar of some sort. Their opening line, interestingly enough was, "Do you believe in Jesus?" This of course was followed by a lengthy (and somewhat broken) explanation of my views on the whole saga, which I'm not sure they fully comprehended. In conformity with expectations, the whole thing ended in an awkward stalemate and I ran off with my baggage trolley to catch a bus.

Kyle met me at Hotel Renaissance, where I couldn't have traded the cost of my entire holiday for one night in the Presidential Suite even if I had wanted to. We boarded the bus toward Morumbi, in the city's middle-southwest. Apartment blocks stood in every direction, standing in groups like couples schmoozing their way around an immense concrete benefit ball. The air was thick, not with expensive cigar smoke, but of smog - a perpetual haze over the city.

I visited another Terreiro of Candomblé on Friday night, with a friend I had just made, Elaine and her family. I was surprised to discover that this particular branch of Candomblé was different than the one practised in Bahia. The Orixás here, standing watch over the room, looked extremely similar to certain characters from the Bible. It is true that the African slaves of old incorporated the figures from the Bible as counterparts to their Orixás so they could continue their worship, but here it seemed they were paying more than just lip service to these icons. So how does one invoke the spirit of a character in the Bible? I may never know...

São Paulo's mayor at the start of this year, disgusted at the sight of billboards and advertising everywhere, decided to ban all of it. Excepting for signs on the front of shops (allowable only on a ratio of 1.5m per 10m of frontage), everything else had to be taken down or painted over in grey. The fruit of the radical behaviour is a gigantic city turning monotone. Look up, and instead of being informed of the latest sunglasses, prestige car or that essential pharmaceutical, one now sees rusting metal skeletons of billboards, fluorescent light innards now laid bare to the open air. Shop fronts are similarly empty - just blank spaces (left by logos removed) or the same metallic skeletons are all that remain. Ironically, the companies that can afford to replace the sign are often the same ones that were responsible for the majority of billboard pollution. São Paulo now is a multitude of greys, from roads to footpaths, power poles to fences, concrete houses and apartment blocks, smog, fog and the banks of the two fairly-polluted rivers that run through the city.

Grey paint is being used to paint over graffiti as well. São Paulo probably has the best street art in the world, and even has its own style, Pixação - almost looking like a form of hieroglyphics, but readable to Portuguese speakers who recognise the letter shapes. The style itself is generally quite ugly, but impressive for the prominent places where it has been scribbled. One can find the giant form of lettering simply by looking up, to overpasses, the tops of apartment blocks and other near-impossible to reach areas. Pixação differs greatly from the street art in the city due to its nature as a ‘tag’ for the local gangs, and as such, is practised far more by these groups than by regular artists. There are a certain amount of deaths per year attributed to enthusiastic (and often shoeless) Pixadores taking their art a little too far.

We arrived in a working-class suburb in the northeast of the city on Saturday with several graffiti and street artists for an afternoon of painting the walls in the street. Like a working bee of sorts, it was a family affair, and while all the painting was going on, i busied myself with the Churrasco (barbecue). In contrast to the government's grey politics, here was a group of people lovingly painting the walls in all kinds of colours and designs, making this corner of São Paulo a little brighter, both in colour and spirit.

Sunday 05.08.07

Salvador is home to many churches, many of them designed in the Baroque fashion, which was very popular at the time of building. The churches, usually ornate on the outside, contain even more detailed structures on their often-gilded interior. We visited two of Salvador's most famous churches today. The first, Igreja da Ordem Terciera de São Francisco, has a beautiful sandstone façade. Igreja Nossa Senhor do Bonfim, a church with an impressive gilded interior stands north of the city centre, the most famous in Salvador for its ability to heal invalids and the sick. In an antechamber off to the side of the hall is a shrine of sorts dedicated to the healed ones, apparently numbering in their hundreds. From the roof hangs more than a hundred plastic body parts and the walls are covered in photos.

Out on the street about midnight, a middle-aged man tows a bag of empty cans. Desperate with hunger, he loiters outside a restaurant begging for the people inside to give him money. The manager confronts him and forces him away, while a policeman hearing the commotion watches the pair from a distance. The defeated beggar slumps against a wall on the opposite side of the road and begins to cry; the manager turns on his heels to return to work. A few minutes pass, and a wandering pastry salesman approaches and offers bread for free to the starving man. The man hungrily takes a couple of rolls, and the salesman walks away. What must it be like to have nothing, to be desperate, destitute or derelict? How must a person feel not knowing when they will next eat? Shelter, another of humanity's basic needs, is also taken completely for granted. Buildings cease being a sanctuary to the homeless, and become a barrier between them and society, a barrier that becomes higher, wider and thicker with time and neglect.

Northeastern Brasil is home to many unique dishes, among them Carne do Sol (meat of the Sun) - dried and salted beef; Acaraje - fritters made from brown beans and shrimp fried in palm oil (served by women in Bahian dress); and Moqueca - a Bahian seafood stew containing coconut milk and palm oil.

I spent a decent amount of my time in Salvador up rickety flights of stairs trying to find a decent Candomblé ceremony to attend. Finally, on Tuesday night i was picked up in a van and taken to a Terreiro in a poorer neighbourhood. On the way we learned how the ritual worked. The particular ceremony we were attending was in celebration of the Orixá of nature and the forest. The religion of Candomblé came across with the African slaves, and is distantly related to Voodoo. The Orixás are the spirits, or saints of the religion, based on the archetypes, and part of the ritual involves going into a trance to invoke the Orixá.

The Terreiro was simple, indistinguishable from the concrete dwellings that surrounded it, and the ceremony conducted in the front room. Several people were dancing in a circle, while others were drumming or singing. Most were wearing white. Little by little, the dancing and singing became more intense and after a while, a few members stumbled, caught in a trance by the hypnotic music. Presently a figure previously sitting in the corner on a throne of sorts got up and started singing and staggering around. This was the Babalorixá, in this case the father of the household. The ritual was only just beginning.

The entranced members retired, and during a short break, the floor was covered in leaves. They returned having dressed up a little in what appeared to be women's clothing, while wielding leafy branches and smoking cigars to ward off the bad spirits. The Babalorixá took centre stage, and singing and rhythmical drumming filled the room. We clapped our hands to the music as it rose and fell in tone, while increasing steadily in tempo. It was intoxicating, the atmosphere thick with emotion and cigar-smoke, singing, laughing and drumming into an incredible crescendo. Nothing seemed to exist beyond the immediate space, while the Babalorixá pulled out some wild dance moves, the likes of which haven't been seen since the heydays of Rave. Now the old man retired into another room, and the next entranced member stepped up for the same ritual. Soon, i was invited into another room to be granted 3 wishes and blessed by the Babalorixá, which involved being brushed by a leafy branch and a popcorn shower.

Back in the Pelourinho, a street festival held every Terça-Feira (Tuesday) was in full swing. The ever-present drums of the Pelourinho were even more frantic than usual. There was a hedonistic edge to it all, and of course the beggars and thieves were making the most of the situation. Police were stationed everywhere as usual, but now wearing helmets for protection. The Caipirinhas were to once again prove my undoing, possibly because my Chakras were now aligned to the spirits, but probably because each plastic cup-full was about 60% cane spirit, 40% lime and sugar.

Capoeira is another of Bahia's many charms, invented by African slaves for self-defence. Disguised within dance, Capoeira survived through the times of slavery despite prohibition, and finally in the 1930's developed into the form seen today, usually performed in a circle of drummers, strummers and clappers. Singing also accompanies the music, and the strumming refers to the playing of a one-string instrument called a Berimbau, which has the appearance of a coconut stuck to an archery bow. Wednesday night i left Salvador behind, on a plane to São Paulo, the second largest city in Latin America and by my reckoning, the 5th largest in the world.