We took a bus ride from Iguazu all the way up to Sao Paulo and we made this our base for the next few weeks. Brazil is a huge country in area. I believe the total area of Australia would fit into the total area of Brazil, Brazil 8,511,965 sq km, and the 1980 population was 115,000,000. The currency is Cruzero not peso and the language is Portugese not Spanish or Castejeno. Brazil had been colonised by the Portugese and not the Spanish.

Speaking of colonisation I haven’t mentioned as yet the number of times we saw statues to the local heroes that were strewn throughout Chile and Argentina. I don’t remember them so much in Brazil and well Bolivia, Peru and Equador had very different histories. The statues were of the liberators: Jose San Martin, Bernardo O’Higgins, Bolivar to name a few.

People warned us that Portugese is really different to Spanish but on paper it looks similar. We soon confirmed all the stories after our arrival, no one seemed to understand a word, or didn’t want to. We were forced to point and gesticulate our wishes time and again and by the time we left Brazil (around 2 months) we had talked with very few locals. We seemed to meet fewer travellers in Brazil as well so we were thrown onto each other’s company pretty well.

One of the few people we did meet, however, was on the bus going north to Sao Paulo. This was a Jewish young man who was travelling so that he might miss out on serving his compulsory two-year stint in the army in Israel. He pointed out to us the many poor ‘white’ looking people that were living by the roadside, for miles and miles, in the south of Brazil. He said they were Germans who had fled with the end of the Second World War; they were pro-Nazi and were afraid to stay. Many hadn’t done well in Brazil and were therefore still living in poor conditions. Another example of the fascination of travelling, the many and varied social, cultural and historical tit bits.

A friend of ours Dez Carne, who had been to South America before us, and certainly had a part to play in our decision to go, had affectionately called Sao Paulo “the arse-hole of the world”. We got a sense of what he meant while we were there. As usual on arrival at the bus terminal we took turns, one minding the packs while the other looked at a couple of hotels. Usually there were numerous places near bus and train terminals. This particular time we found Hotel Tupy. I can still see the owner’s face peeking out into the street looking for prospective customers. He had such a bright and happy disposition and nothing was too much trouble. There was a little café attached to the hotel were we often ate. The food was good and hearty but basic. A popular dish was black beans, fried egg and rice, something we had often.

We looked around Sao Paulo for a few days and found the tallest building, something like 48 stories. We got up to the top and looked out over the city. There were multi-story buildings in every direction, 360 degrees. At the time the population of Sao Paulo was over 8 million one of the largest populated cities of the world and heavily competing for the most populated. Sao Paulo had a train system with a subway, which we took one day. We were on the subway from the center of the city going out for 20-30 minutes we alighted and walked up to the street only to find we were still amongst the skyscrapers.

Even though technically Bolivia is suppose to be the poorest country in South America, it seemed, of the countries we visited, Brazil had the greatest poverty. In Bolivia it was said at the time that 60% of the population didn’t deal in the money market, didn’t use money as their main means of exchange; they still bartered goods or produce. In Brazil big business was in evidence everywhere. Favellas, enclaves of box like structures, unsewered, unserviced areas of poverty with thousands, if not millions, of people living in such conditions.

Another bi—product of ‘unbridled economic expansion’ were multi-story buildings. They were often put up with little regulation or supervision and stories abounded of collapse, fire and tragedy because of faulty building practices. At other times as we passed through the countryside you would see factories set up virtually in the middle of nowhere and on the opposite side of the road would be large favellas were the workforce would live. A Brazilian author we discovered whilst there was Gorge Armardo we had a book of short stories of his ‘Stories of the Night’, they were a great read and unfortunately I don’t have this book anymore. His stories were often about characters that lived in a favella, bringing life to the people and great human qualities of life and love.

Sao Paulo suffered environmentally with all this development. There was a thick haze that had settled permanently over the city. Whilst walking around you would regularly see thick blobs of a throaty kind of snot which looked disgusting. But within just a couple of days I found the mucus developing in my throat and within a week I also had to spit it out when possible, I hasten to add, never on the pavement.

Our hotel room at the Tupy looked out onto the street and on the other side a prostitute would often stand out awaiting customers, something that gave us some entertainment and amusement to watch. Whilst in Sao Paulo we got the local English newspaper and found a column by Ronald Biggs, the English escapee of ‘The Great Train Robbery’ fame. He had taken refuge in Brazil until his return to the UK in 2001 suffering an acute illness.

We also found notice of a BBQ for the local ‘repat’ Australian community. And anyone who’s been away from home for a while knows a few familiar faces, Australian faces, would be gladly welcomed. So we decided to go, well what a fiasco! Because it was a bit out of town it wasn’t easily reached by public transport so we decided to go by taxi. Well you might know that cars in Brazil are most often run on a kind of petrol that is made out of sugar cane, a locally grown product, found in vast quantities. Well on the street of any large city there are numerous taxis and Sao Paulo is no exception; hundreds of VWs buzzing around the place hither and thither. The driver we happened to land may not have been an exception we don’t know but boy did we get a doozy. As it turned out the trip probably should have taken about 30 minutes, 1 1/2 hours later we arrived at the party. The driver was very obliging and courteous, cheerful and full of apologies I think he simply couldn't read the map and was genuinely lost. If we went over a particular bridge once, we went over it 100 times, we went in circles in squares and in triangles. If the car could have tied itself into a knot it would have; it was amazing! We didn’t pay the metre on the ride and agreed on a mutually satisfactory arrangement for the fare. Nevertheless, when we arrived the party was in full swing and everybody seemed to know everybody else. We plonked ourselves down at a table and began to talk with the people next to us. As it turned out the bloke was South African and his wife Australian. I seem to remember him as a rep for a pharmaceutical company and he was currently stationed in Brazil. They weren’t happy and were biding their time until the next appointment.

The bloke had met his wife whilst in Australia. He worked in Queensland and noted that he felt embarrassed at the welcoming he received because he was a ‘white’ South African. The attitudes were distinctly anti-black much more than he would have ever guessed. We got along well with them regardless of our differing views and agreed to meet at a later date.

The night we went out they came into town and picked us up at our hotel. When we hopped into the car they desperately shouted “close the door, close the windows” and as we drove away told us they couldn’t believe we stayed in such a ‘bad’ side of town; the area was renowned for assault and robbery. We traveled with an attitude though. We didn’t carry large amounts of money, very low key clothes and shoes and carried our passports over our groins. I used to virtually say, I dare you to take this. Of course I would have simply handed it over if requested, but never was. I think the robbers made the correct assessment, we really weren’t worth the trouble. We never really felt in danger the whole time we spent in Sao Paulo.
I had my one and only bout of diarrhea in Sao Paulo though. We bought a cooked chicken which is probably a real no no, but we did and I suffered. I think I was down for about 4–5 days and this could well have been the source of what later became Amebic dysentery. After I returned it took me about three years and loads of acupuncture and herbs to get over it. I never suffered with the diarrhea but was nauseous for at least two of the three years.

There was a terrific market in Sao Paulo and it was here that we bought some fossils that were later authenticated by the Australian museum. One, was a very early aquatic reptile 300 million years old for just $US40. It was said to be from a period when the continents of South America and Africa were joined. And a couple of other fish fossils said to be 150 million years old. We also bought a ceramic toucan and echidna that were painted in a bright Brazilian style of painting.

From Sao Paulo we went off to the renowned city of Rio de Janero. It is said of Brazilians “they live for three things: women, football and carnival”. This begs the question, and what about the women?! Carnival is held in late February, according to our original itinerary we should have made it. Of course it was the broken ankle that changed everything, delayed our timing and we thus missed Carnival. We were there within one month of the event and therefore met a number of people who had the pleasure “It was fantastic!” “It was the best thing I’ve ever been to” “I will be coming back next year for sure” these kinds of comments only seemed to rub salt into our wounds.

Rio was an interesting city. A good example of how poverty can be hidden from sight if the visitor is not really looking. The favelas were still there but as the countryside around Rio is hilly they tended to be in the valleys or not on the hilltops. Again when you are after cheapish accommodation you are bound to end up in a part of town that is questionable. I’d say our stay in Rio was one of only a very few times where I personally felt some uneaze about our safety. It could have been the comments made by our friends from the Aussie BBQ that unnerved me but I did become more conscious of the black faces and a sense of desperation. The scenery was spectacular, particularly on the visit up to the cross on Sugar Loaf Mountain, overlooking the city with numerous small islands or outcrops scattered in the ocean. But I should quickly add being a Sydney-sider you are quite spoilt on beautiful harbours and well I didn’t come away in awe; in fact I think Sydney harbour is more beautiful. Furthermore we were told that swimming was banned in the famous or infamous Cococabana beach because of the polluted water.

We went back to Sao Paulo from here and after a couple of days set out on a grand trek up north. First to Brazillia then to Bello Horizont and then a 48 hour trip by bus up to Salvador and Reciffe. Brazillia, the capital city of Brazil, was great to visit. Quite a long way inland so it was a reasonably long trip. It is renowned for buildings such as the Parliament House and various other government and church structures these were great to see.

I guess it’s inevitable one would compare with your own home cities. I saw similarities with Canberra, not that our buildings have the same unique shape or style, of the architect Niemyre, but it was the distance between them that I saw reflected. The buildings were well spaced and spread over a large area. Like Canberra, Brazillia had large tracks of green space around the central area. The local people lived outside of the green areas. The housing standard was a step up from the favella but very basic timber dwellings that often looked like they were made from packing cases. Certainly not the quarter acre block like we are used to in Australia. I have absolutely no recollection of our accommodation in Brazillia it may have been the place where we were offered the bedroom services of a woman for just $1.

Whilst in Brazillia we took a local bus ride for something to do and partly out of circumstance, certainly not by design, we ended up at the very last stop. We found we were in a small, very poor black township, on the outskirts of the city. There were a few drinking shops on the main street and by the time we arrived it was getting dark so the blokes were beginning to get into their after work drinking sessions. The lights were on and people were on the street. There were groups of men standing, hooning in circles engaged in lively and animated conversation. A few of them looked at the bus but were too preoccupied with their shenanigans to worry much about us. I’m not sure whether they were just looking at the bus or noting our presence. We didn’t hang around to find out. We couldn’t see another white face anywhere and felt conspicuous. Thank heavens the same bus was going back to town so we just waited for him to begin the return trip.

From Brazillia we came back to Belo Horizonte which was to be a mid-point on the way to Salvador, further up north. It’s funny Belo Horizonte isn’t renowned for anything in the way of the city itself yet I have fond memories of it. I feel it was probably the most authentic Brazilian city in its own right. A very lively place. The people looked like they were doing okay. We may not have looked around enough to have taken in the favellas but I just got the sense there were less of them here. The streets were busy. Milkbars were very common and popular and they sold milkshakes made with real fruit; mind you we never bought these so as to keep well clear of the milk. As you might imagine Brazil had fruit barrows pretty well everywhere. The fruit was plentiful and cheap. I’ll never forget the passion fruit bananas, they literally smelt like passion fruit, beautiful! We bought loads of persimmons that were just ready to be eaten and huge avocados. At one point in the trip we were told the locals eat avocados as a sweet, they mash it up with sugar, a habit we began as well, to our delight.

In the vicinity of Belo Horizont there are numerous gem mines so I presume these gems have added some wealth to the area. We visited a small place outside of town called (I think) Congonhas do Campo as this is the home town of a famous church I know we visited called ‘Bom Jesus do Matozinho’. The church in itself is interesting in that it was built in 1773 but it also housed a collection of cedar statues ‘life size passion figures’ carved by Aleijadinho. As the story goes Aleijadinho was so inspired in his work that when he was in the midst of carving his most famous pieces ‘the prophets’, twelve figures carved in soapstone, he was struck by a debilitating illness that affected his hands. He was so determined to continue his work he had his tools strapped to his hands. These particular pieces are said to be one of the finest works of art, of their period, in the world!

We also went to a mining town near Belo Horizont. I think it was Ouro Preto which was also a small town where there were numerous stores that sold gem stones. Here we spent a day looking around and bought a topaz that I later had set in a ring for my mum and a rock that had water captured inside.
We went back to Belo Horizont and from there set off up north to Salvador and Reciffe. By this time we had already completed a few long distance journeys and had noticed that the front seats (opposite the driver) offer the best views of the passing countryside. So when we booked in for the 48 hour journey up north we asked, in particular, could we have those front seats. We were feeling excited and self satisfied when we set off in the bus looking forward to the journey and marveling at the views. It wasn’t long, however, until it became clear that the trip could well become a nightmare. It appeared that the road rules in Brazil were as elastic as the economic regulations. The bus we were in became embroiled in a cat-and-mouse game with another bus, that meant that we were driving very, very close to the bus in front. Out of nowhere it seemed we would pull out (more times than I like to remember) on the crest of a hill and overtake the first bus. We would be in the lead for a while then the second bus would do the same and pass us. This ‘game of death’, I’ll call it, went on for hours. We were in total shock and horror. We were so afraid we were gripping our chairs bolt upright. Suddenly I had the thought, what are the other passengers thinking of this? I turned around to see what they were doing and so help me if there were forty people onboard all of them were, like us, gripped to their seats and eyes glued to the road. Heads were sticking up over the rails and heads out into the isles staring in disbelief. I seem to remember someone going up to complain, to ask the driver to slow down, to no avail. After some hours of this madness we discovered some empty seats down the back. We decided to move down there, thinking, well, if there is an accident at least we won’t be as vulnerable. The last thing I remember was putting my head down to sleep on one of the back seats thinking, if my body is limp, I’d roll better or even die in my sleep. I can’t believe today I would have been so dismissive, maybe it was because we were in a strange country and well we were literally in the middle of nowhere; would it have been better to have gotten off?!

Needless to say, I did wake up, I lived to tell the tale. The driver changed and thank heavens the rest of the trip was relaxing, nothing like the first part. Forty-eight hours on a bus is a long time. There were regular stops at which we would alight and have a café-con-leche and some fast food. We did this so many times we decided at the very last stop to simply eat the oranges we had with us and have a walk; save our money. It was incredible though just at the stop we decided not to eat (we found out later) the passengers sat down to a beautiful fish dinner which they raved about afterwards.

We were the only foreigners, non-South Americans, on the bus so we stood out like a sore thumb. At one stage on the trip the passengers were having a noisy conversation amongst themselves, talking and laughing about things we simply couldn’t understand. But at one point in the conversation someone mentioned us, the geringos or whatever. We could understand a word here and there, they were laughing and carrying on a beauty, and all we could do was cop it; another consequence of not speaking the local language. This phenomena also happened in a youth hostel in Chile, we were sleeping in dormitory accommodation and so could hear a communal discussion. They also were talking about us and joking and laughing about an earlier discussion we’d had about children. We had said to them that we may not have children, there were many other things we wanted to do with ourselves first; having a family wasn’t important to us. They were bemused and shocked and later that night had a great old laugh at our expense and kept on saying “no importante”.

Finally, we arrived in Salvador. It was a lovely old city, much more attractive than Rio de Janero; architecturally at least. We found accommodation in an old hotel with a large room, very comfortable, and a good price. I may have mentioned earlier I would have to give eight out of ten, generally, for the rooms we had. They were always clean and comfortable with only a few deviations, and they were notable exceptions.

We continued to eat loads of delicious fruit and sat on the beach for a couple of days. The sand was golden, like ours, and the water was surprisingly warm. I must say though coming from Australia, we are totally spoilt on beaches. The European travelers were going crazy about the beaches but we looked on with a more critical eye, ours are just as good if not better. A notable difference whilst we laid on the beach, however, was the numerous bods that came along selling all kinds of food and drinks. The saying ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ is demonstrated all over South America. We were on a bus one day and as often happened a man or woman would stand at the front, hold up an item, such as a toothbrush or what have you, and then proceeded to sell it to the travelers. On one particular day a bloke stood at the front and proceeded to sell a small set of screw drivers, he managed brilliantly to gain the attention of virtually the whole bus and I’m sure he sold a good number of sets. I thought at the time if only someone like him had the opportunities we do in Australia he would probably make a fortune.

Both of us weren’t keen to spend too long on the beach so it wasn’t long before we were off to Reciffe. I was surprised while travelling around Brazil, particularly in this northern area, just how many old 1600 and 1700s churches and artifacts there were. We saw some examples of the oldest religious icons and portraits painted on timber and moulded small timber pieces decorated with golden paint. We looked at a couple of churches but really weren’t all that interested. Also, a well known Catholic Bishop lived in Reciffe who became famous because of his work with the poor; and poor they were in Reciffe. There was a notable decline in living standards the further north we went, coincidentally the proportion of black faces increased.

When I was growing up my sister Kerry used to have an illustrated medical book that we would go through for fun and gasp at the ugly pictures of graphic illnesses. I remember seeing a picture of a disease that was called ‘elephantitus’ and I actually saw an example of this on at least one occasion; a tall woman with a huge elephantitus leg. I think it was near the markets, there was a huge rubbish dump where rotting food stuffs were left. Poor people must have rummaged through this lot to see what was consumable. This woman was doing something like this walking over the stinking piles of soft and rotting fruit. One leg was far bigger than the other (two or three times) and the excess skin and fat was held together by a series of strings going around her leg from the thigh to the ankle, about 4-6 inches apart. There were numerous black people simply lying in the streets, not even begging, many of them were lying down; they looked like they were suffering with some kind of disease.

For some reason (maybe it was the general poverty of the area) we stayed in one of our worst rooms, here in Reciffe. It was like a shack built from timber and there were numerous tracks in the walls where mosquitoes came through. The sheets on the beds were very clean but I remember graphically hiding under the sheets to try and avoid being eaten alive by the mossies. Looking back, the diseases those mossies were probably carrying as well, is mind boggling; thank heavens we’d had our injections and thank heavens we came away unscathed. Needless to say we didn’t hang around Reciffe for long, I think it was only one night. Remember as well, Reciffe is in the north of Brazil getting very close to the Equator, Equatorial latitude, hot and muggy the kind of climate that bugs love.

Well, from the north of Brazil we made a pretty quick trip back to Belo Horizont and then Sao Paulo and from there made our way out of the country, pushing on to Bolivia. We’d had about two months in Brazil having little contact with other travelers and were looking forward to just talking to somebody in English.

As always though the trip leaving Brazil turned out to be eventful and interesting in itself. We went back to our trusty old guide, (the travelers bible, The South American Handbook) and mapped out a route. In the south of Brazil there is a large swamp region we wanted to visit. There is a good train link between Brazil and Santa Cruz in Boliva that you can access at Sao Paulo and that is what we set out to do. We took the train and as far as I remember had one stop-over along the way, this was at either Campo Grande, Porto Esperance in the State of Mato Grosso de sul, or Corumba near the boarder of Brazil. These places are situated on the River Paraguay and as the book says “much of the journey is across swamps, offering many sights of birds and other such wildlife”.

Thus we crossed a large swamp area that provided an interesting backdrop for the journey but I can’t say I remember seeing much wildlife. In fact we heard later that there were boat trips you could take into the swamp areas where indeed the wildlife was abundant. A funny thing about the whole trip in South America was, even though we had spent days away on walking trips either into the mountains or the jungle, an overnight trip into the Royal National Park just south of Sydney, provided more wildlife than anything we saw the whole time we were away.

I remember very clearly coming off the train into either one of these country towns of Brazil and walking with the fellow travelers we had been looking forward to meeting. I remember some of them looking decidedly hippy but then travelers tend to get that disheveled look about them. We were talking about accommodation and a hierarchy formed around the travelers and who could find the cheapest. People were bragging “Oh I got a room in … for ten pesos a night” “I got one for eight” “I got one for 5” and so it went. Bob and I had decided to pitch for somewhere mid-stream in the lower end of the market, certainly not the cheapest, and generally that range offered us very good and adequate rooms. Well, after our conversation who was going to go up-market; not us! Somehow we came across rooms that reminded me of the one we had in Reciffe, timber cabin type rooms with pretty large gaps between the boards. Fortunately for some reason, we didn’t have the same problem with mosquitoes.

On the train there was a hold-up at one stage and for large periods of time the train was stopped. After a little while people were getting edgy and the old South America initiative came to the fore. While the train was stopped one of the patrons got off and walked through the marshes, picked out some nice specimens of fern, brought them back and proceeded to walk through the cabins singing out “ten Cruseros for a piece!”. The trip was, from memory, quite a few hours but then we arrived at a whole new scene, the city of Santa Cruz in Bolivia.