Visitors!

The last two weeks have been really fun, thanks to two visitors. Kim’s friend Carla arrived at the end of May and stayed for about a week. Then, on the same day that Carla left, Kim’s friend Katherine arrived.

Kim was extremely busy with class most of the time, so I stepped in and attempted to act as the tour guide—which ended up being great, because I got to do a few of the tourist activities that I hadn’t gotten around to yet. For example, I finally went to the top of the Banespa Building to check out the view of São Paulo. It was pretty amazing to see high-rise buildings stretching all the way to the horizon.

Urban jungle

I also went to the Mercado Municipal. It’s a lovely old building the size of a city block, and it’s filled with hundreds of vendors selling food of all kinds. I’ve recently become quite fond of olives (after 28 years of finding them revolting), so I was pleased to find a stall that had a couple dozen large bins filled with every imaginable variety.

Olives

Kim and Carla went to Rio de Janeiro for a few days and had a great time. My weekend was significantly less exciting; I stayed in São Paulo to finish up some work, and I left my apartment for a grand total of ten minutes. In fact, I think the only word I said on Saturday was “crédito,” when the cashier at the grocery store asked if my card was debit or credit.

Kim took Katherine to Rio as well, and this time I was along for the ride. We stayed at a hostel in Ipanema, about three blocks from the beach. Unfortunately, it was rather windy and cold (cold for Rio, that is), so we didn’t spend much time on the beach. The big waves were pretty impressive, though.

Windy day at Ipanema

Of course, we went to see the big Jesus statue. And unlike the last time I’d been there, the weather was wonderful and the view was spectacular.

View from the Jesus statue

We also went to Sugarloaf, which is the other major lookout point. Unlike the Jesus statue, which is accessible via a train, you can only get to Sugarloaf via a cable car that hangs a thousand feet above the ground.

View from the Sugarloaf cable car

After spending a few days in Rio, we continued east to a place called Búzios. It’s a peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean, and there are over 20 beaches in the area. I rented a bike one afternoon and rode around for a while, checking out about eight of them.

Beaches in Búzios

Then we took a night bus to Ouro Preto, which is a historic city located in the mountains. Back in the 1700s, it was the center of Brazil’s gold rush—hence the city’s name, which means Black Gold in Portuguese. The gold mines made a few people obscenely rich, and they liked to show off their wealth by building fancy churches. We went to about six of the churches, and they were all pretty impressive. But I have to admit that they all started to look the same after a while. Nevertheless, it was fun to just walk around the city’s streets. The buildings are very well preserved, so it’s pretty easy to imagine that you’re back in the 1700s—except for all the cars, that is.

Ouro Preto

Speaking of cars, we took a cab ride back to the bus station at the end of the evening. Little did I know it would be one of the most interesting parts of the day. The city’s streets are extremely steep, and they’re all cobblestone. So when our driver attempted to go up one of the large hills, the car definitely had its work cut out for it—not to mention the fact that it had rained a couple hours earlier, so the cobblestones were still a bit slick. As we were ascending the street, another car was on its way down. Due to the narrow eighteenth-century roads, only one car can go at a time, and the other one is supposed to pull over. Common sense would tell you that the car traveling uphill would have the right of way, since it needs to keep its momentum going. But the oncoming car apparently saw it differently, because he didn’t pull over. So our driver had to put on the emergency break as we waited for the other guy to go. However, once he went past us, we had no chance of making it up the rest of the hill, since we were starting at a standstill. So we had to roll down the hill (backwards) and take an alternate route.

Steep streets in Ouro Preto

It’s hard to believe, but our time in Brazil is almost over! Kim has final exams during the last week of June, and then we leave for our big seven-week trip through South America.