The Iguassu Waterfalls, what a spectacle!

In the indigenous language tupi-guaraní, Iguassu means big water. A simple name for such an amazing natural wonder! It left me so speechless that here I can`t think of any nice adjective from the many available to really describe the impact of the waterfalls...So, I guess that instead, I´ll show what was gifted to my sight!

Enjoy it!

All that shines is not gold

Smiling at life, Brazilian spirit after all

Everyone warned us before going to Rio. Everyone reminded us how dangerous the city is and recommended to be careful and watch our staff all the time. Nothing happened because we stayed in the Rio that shines...

Rio definitely has what Sao Paulo lacks: beauty and charm, it is indeed the cidade maravilhosa, beautiful city! It has beautiful beaches and the sea is a relief from the continuous heat. Coming from smoky Sao Paulo, as soon as we arrived in Rio Copacabana beach and its Pâo de Açucar looked like a paradise! The sea and the lagune look lovely, no one seems to run to work (or work at all) and you need no umbrella because there won't be any rain in the afternoon as it does in Sao Paulo. But as the say goes, all that shines is not gold.

If walking around the neighbourhoods of Ipanema and Copacabana, it is easy to forget about its favelas, the linea vermelha (called by some 'Gaza Strip') and all that dirty business people know from the movies. Everything seems fine and people seem to have no worries but the way they look! The most unbearable thing is indeed the way cariocas behave. They totally adhore to show off. They have the cult of their bodies and don't even care whether their tanned legs have cellulite or not. I found it contraddictory. It seems that the carioca feels it natural to walk around naked all the time...According to a local joke it is very simple to distinguish a carioca from a paulistano: the latter would walk in his shirt while the former would be simply in his bare skin. Though, when driving, they are all indistinctly crazy dangerous!

At night it is again the same show. Senhoras in their nicest dress and jewelleries, the youth seeming to say 'I belong to the United Kingdom of Ipanema'. I am not saying I didn't enjoy it! Ipanema is totally lovely! The wild ocean and the softest white sand I have ever walked on are difficult to forget. I just had the feeling that that was a bit of a fake world. A ball of air.

Pizza and Sushi

Migration flows to Brazil at Museo da Lingua Portuguesa

I have come to the conclusion that it is food to reveal what Brazil really is. Yesterday a Japanese-Portuguese woman prepared an italian dish for us, using a recipe Italians don't use. It was still a delicious plate! Few days ago, Roberta brought us to a pizzeria, insisting that the best pizza in the world is made in Sao Paulo. Despite skeptical, as soon as the first bite of pizza paulistana met my mouth I had to frankly admit that it was indeed delicious! The sushi in Sao Paulo can be a delicatess and the 'food of the slaves', the feijoada, is today a typical Brazilian dish...What does it all tell? 

Of course food and recipes travel along with the people and folks that use them...when Italians started to move to Brazil from the 1870s didn´t bring with them only hope for a new life in the new world, but they also brought along their culinary habits, gnocchi and pizza! According to the numbers, Italians are the biggest immigrant group in Brazil with some 1,5 million Italians of which 70% seems to be concentrated in Sao Paulo...No wonder a pizza can be so good here! Then there are also Portuguese, Spanish, Germans, Russians, a big colony of Japanese people, and even Chinese, Korean, Lebanese, Jews and...Africans (theirs is another story).

This diversity in faces, languages and food is the richness of this big country. At the Museu da Lingua Portuguesa you learn that since the Portuguese came to Brazil in the 1500, the portuguese language evolved and enriched itself by meeting other cultures. A lot of names and names of places derive from tupinambá, the indigenous language the portuguese met first. Words like moleque, bunda, tanga come from African banto. Açougue, açucar, àlcool come from Arabic. The portuguese language is extremely rich, and so is this culture and this place! Personally, I adore its diversity!

Sampa

A modest piece of São Paulo city

São Paulo is the Brasil the world is unaware of. Lovely called Sampa by its inhabitants, it doesn't have the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, nor has it the blue blue sky of Salvador de Bahia in the north, nor that sort of 'Europeaness' of certain cities in the south. São Paulo is a huge, enormous and almost monstruous metropolis...and being the economic-financial heart of Brazil, it attracts a special kind of turist: the business man. Believe or not, it is almost hard to find postcards in São Paulo!

Paulistanos are very proud of their city. According to a local saying, Brasilia is the head of the country, São Paulo is the heart, whereas Rio de Janeiro is the penis. Funny, uh?! Sure Rio is represented as such for the body's worship and the usual show off of suntanned tatooed body along the beaches of the former capital. Paulistanos like to remark how easy it is to recognize a Paulistano in Rio de Janeiro: unlike cariocas, s/he would wear at least a t-shirt. Now, I'm not buying it at all, but I still find such jokes and implicit rivalry way too funny! ...'We work while they just sunbathe!' (guess who is who)...ahahah!!

Afternoon storm on the Avenida Paulista

What I like of São Paulo is that its summer days have four season in one day: like spring in the morning, summer around noon, sort of winter during the punctual afternoon rainstorm, and autumn right after the storm. Lovely. They all know it and that's why Paulistan@s smartly walk around in summer clothes plus umbrella :) 

What I can't possibly like of São Paulo is the driving style of its people. They are completely crazy. And I come from Palermo! They all jump in their cars and immediately lock the doors (the reason being to prevent that someone opens the car and robs you or pulls you out and takes the vehicle. No, it is not some science fiction story). Then they speed up from 1 to 5 in ten seconds, run like crazy and, like in Napoli, they wil decide whether they feel like stopping at the traffic light or not (mainly for the same reason already explained). Let's just take it as local custom.

Overall, we are still discovering the city. Our friends are clearly spoiling us with culinary experiences, churrascos, feijoadas, sushi and so on. Maurice and I keep saying that we are made for good old man-sized Europe, yet we are fascinated and curious to discover what all other capitals and metropolis in South America look like!

No pain, no gain

We arrived on Ilha Grande in a totally improvised way. The bus to Angra dos Reis was late and left us with no ferry to get to the island. It was 8 pm and we didn't like the idea to remain in that fishermen-town knowing that a tropical paradise was so close to our reach. The Brazilian way has it that in difficult circumstances everybody comes together in a spirit of mutual help. And so, everybody started to talk, to check options and possibilities...We managed to find a fisherman with a relatively small boat who was going to Araçatiba and we got on while the tropical rainfall started to become heavier. What an experience! Our backpacks were luckily the driest thing on the whole boat, but the four of us had to stay in the rain for almost one hour and a half. We got TOTALLY soaked and none of us got sick! :P Personally, I was already surprised that I didn't feel any sea-sickness...there was probably no time to feel sick as the main thought was that of surviving the rainy trip without passport and money getting wet and unusable.

On our way we could only spot some distant lighthouses and some shapes of near small islands. When we got closer to the island, a big, high volcano-shaped thingy welcomed us to Ilha Grande. We arrived in total dark, crossed a river and walked up until our chalezâo with the only help of our flashlights. Although back then it felt sort of impossible, now I can say it was totally cool!

It rained for almost three days without stopping for a single minute. We enjoyed this strange tropical summer chit-chatting and drinking local beer, playing some weird Brazilian card game, which is all about bluffing, and imaging what the island could look like beyond the fog that was all around us. We passed New Years Eve drinking champagne, listening to the rain and watching the fireworks in Rio de Janeiro on tv until the power went off...since then, we never had electricity again!

On the morning of January 1st, hundreds cicada's (cicale in italian, cigarras in portuguese) woke us up with a sort of intergalactic sound. Amazing. According to the island inhabitants, that particular sound means that after the storm the sun is finally coming...We couldn't believe it! Because of all that rain that seemed to never end we almost gave up to the idea we could ever go to the beach and lay in the sun.

Vox populi was right. The sun came and it was stronger than ever. Ilha Grande is amazing. Its tropical vegetation is dense and compact, big high palm trees are everywhere with their cute green coconuts, there are plants of every kind and an immense all surrounding green everywhere. The sea was calm and the water still warm and very enjoyble. The sand red, yellow and even white. Small villages, colourful houses, sleepy boats. What a view. Totally beautiful. It took me few minutes to realize that I was finally on that tropical island I longed for during winter in Europe. The sun finally was on my skin! I loved it!

Maravilhosas praias vermelhas, Ilha Grande, Brasil