9/27/12 Porto Alegre
I built a box for the Bike Friday in Denver
and packed the bike without any issues and bought a suitcase for $6 at a resale
shop for the panniers and boarded a plane to Porto Alegre. In Dallas
a family from Sao Paulo
befriended me and immediately the language began to take its hold. The 24 year
old daughter, Camila, insisted I sit with them on the plane to Sao Paulo and so accommodations were made and
I did so. The conversation (in Portuguese) made the flight pass quickly and upon arrival I
gathered my box and suitcase and cleared customs and obtained a new ticket to Porto Alegre as I has
missed my flight due to a late arrival. Upon arrival in Porto Alegre I took a cab to the hostel and
my cab driver, being proud of his city, took the scenic way.
There are no westerners in the hostel. Almost all of the
folks here are Brazilians here to study long term or short term (I also met two
Uruguayans, one here for medical care). Nelson (named after Mandela), a
bearded, thoughtful, and intellectual fellow talked of my journey late into the
night on Wednesday. He gave me a good route to get to the coast and I will
follow his advice. Anna Maria, who works here, lived in Queens for 20 years
before returning to South America due to poor
economic conditions in the states. She’s from Montevideo originally, but speaks fluent
Portuguese.
I'm far more handsome in person. Also, the sign "organic trash" is not pointing at me.
Of all the things to delay my departure—I had wanted to ride
to the coast on Thursday morning, but won’t begin until Friday, tomorrow--I had
a big problem installing my Schwalbe tires on the rims. They wanted to fight my
thumbs. I’ve had tough times with tires, mostly wire-beaded tires, but these
fellas were real, real bad, made worse by their small size and high tension. I
finally prevailed, but I had to steam the last tire over the stove in the
kitchen. Schwalbe needs to put out some
good advice with their tires or provide a free coupon for a bottle of cachaca.
The rest of the installation went perfectly. I put locktight
on all rack bolts, I tightened the headset to perfection with a 40mm headset
wrench, I adjusted both the height and angle of the saddle, and inflated the
tires to their maximum of 70 psi. Paulo and Virginia, two of the proprietors,
really dug the bike. Everyone asked if the smaller bike required more work.
I
rode around the city aimlessly for a few hours. Many areas had been
redeveloped in the 60s and 70s with highrise blocks. Some newer
office buildings are scattered about. The old part of the city is paved
in
cobblestones and there are still a few older artifices remaining,
including
several old, beautiful churches. The pedestrian areas are filled human
beings
of mostly European descent—30% Italian, 30% German, 30% Portuguese, and a
10%
mixture of other folks, all of them worth mentioning, but too numerous
to
mention.
When I returned I was instructed in the art of drinking erva
mate. I had incorrectly
purchased
toasted erva mate—what is really called tea here—and had put it in the
gourd (chimarroa)
from the kitchen and drank from the typical metal filter straw (bomba).
This is
how Fernando, the 18-year-old I rode with recently in Colorado, prepared
his erva mate, so I
figured I knew what I was doing. When I returned to make another cup, I
was
informed I wasn’t drinking erva mate, and that even if I was I wasn’t
doing so
correctly. One gentleman came out and poured a large amount of a ground
green
herb into the gourd and then turned the gourd on its side so that only
half the
gourd was filled with the erva mate. He then poured in hot water—not
boiling,
but hot—so that the erva mate clumped on one side. Somehow the clump
stayed
together, the top of the clump still dry. One takes a sip from the bomba
and
when the water is emptied from the gourd a delightful noise is made. One
then
continues to drink the erva mate in this manner, pouring in new hot
water from
a thermos. The drink is both a social and a solitary drink. In a large
group,
the person who makes the erva mate drinks first, then passes the drink
to the
next person who fills the chimarroa with hot water, drinks, and passes
on once
again. But the drink was also a gift from God to a tribal chief, who,
when
alone in the wild, would have a the chimarroa as a companion to keep him
company. It is a perfect companion for a lonely cyclist, and on Friday morning I was given a gift of a chimarroa
and a bag of erva mate and I expect it will be an excellent
companion on
solitary nights. It provides great mental clarity and cures most
ailments. I was also given a
great t-shirt of the hostel, which solves my issue of buying local
clothes to fit in.
(From a night in Terra de Areia)
The Hostel Tche is a fine place.
“Tche” is a local gaucho (the name for inhabitants of Rio Grande do Sol) term, kind of like “dude.”
I’ve made a lot of friends here already, among them Dutta (an Indian with deep
roots here),Nelson, Paulo, Virginia, and Uda (I’m leaving out at least 10
people from last night—please excuse my overwhelmed head) who have been
incredibly helpful. The Paulista family on the plane seemed to be underwhelmed
by Porto Alegre,
and I’m very confused. This is the capital of the gaucho state and isn’t
touristed at all—it’s a perfect starting point for exploration in Brazil. At
Porto Tche hostel and the surrounding environs of Porto
Alegre I have been able to experience a very diverse snapshot of
gaucho culture and the various Brazilians who pass through Porto
Alegre from all parties of Brazil. Perhaps most importantly, I
learned to drink from a chimarrao and now have the strength of erva mate, given
by god to solitary travelers.
9/28/12 6:58
p.m. Parobe
The ride out of Porto Alegre was tough
because the traffic was fast and dense and aggressive and the roads were windy
and the shoulders were littered with trash, glass, and sand. The large trucks
had to get where they were going and on the exits it was tough to stand my
ground but I did. A fella I know had told me to ask a local for good directions out
of town to avoid the favelas, and I did ask but I still hit all the favelas as I just got plain lost.
Just 30 minutes in to the ride, after going the wrong way once, I found myself
riding along side shanties made of found wood and sheet metal and open sewers and
horses and donkeys grazing in the grass along side a super modern highway.
There is a middle class in Porto
Alegre, but the dirt poor people contrast
significantly to the middle class and the clash is ponographic compared to the
large, shiny factories and the high end stores nearby. Horses and donkeys
pulled carts, but I didn’t know what they pulled. Did they bring goods to
market? What goods were they? Were the horses and donkeys a form of protest,
like skaters in the 80s at the mall? If they had goods, what were they?
Certainly not fruits in vegetables grown in the favelas? Maybe they had horses
for the same reason I have a bicycle: it’s a sweet form a freedom not tied up
in some fucked up matrix. I’ve already written about the horse and the bicycle (they
are close brothers), so I should know this. (Update: far outside of Porto Alegre, rural folks still use horses and carts just to get where they are going, because cars are expensive. This was probably also the case in Porto Alegre--people were using the horse and carts to get across town. I still like my earlier and angrier version, though.)
I didn’t take
any good photos of the favelas because I didn’t have time to get in their and
make friends and learn stories and I don’t know with all my gear if that would
have been a good idea. But I wanted to learn stories and then take photos. But
I can’t just take photos of something everyone thinks is somehow exotic. I
don’t know if favelas mean poverty. I don’t know what the fuck poverty is.
I reached a
highway that was very modern but prohibited bicycles. In retrospect, I should
have just followed the highway and gotten off when I needed to, but instead I
took a detour and found myself in miserable, highly trafficked industrial
areas. A bus driver first told me to turn around and my spirits deflated. Then
he told me an alternate route but I could not follow him. Eventually I followed
a large elevated concrete train platform. There were more shanties and just
behind them nice villages I wanted to explore, but it would involve climbing
and take me off my route. Right now I’ve resolved myself to riding off course
and exploring these cities, because Parobe, for example, can’t be seen for what
it is one mile off the side of the highway. It hides its value deeply within
its hilly streets and reveals its old, sharp stone cobblestones, and hundreds of cafes and meat shops and vegetable stands and
bars and butchers and sweet shops.
Things got
better in Novo Hamburgo.
I realized I had no chance of hitting the coast but was gratified that I was
out of the shitty industrial hellhole I had been riding in for 50km. I asked
three times for the turn off for the highway that would take me to 101 to the
coast. I finally reached the highway and not too far in to my new route I ran into Raphael, who was on a mountain bike. We rode together for 10km and
he spoke of Brazil in very intellectual terms, told me he was coming back from playing soccer, and asked me if I was documenting my journey with some
sociological or anthropological society. I gave him my email and told him there
would be some account.
The
road began to reveal green pastures and foothills with
huge grazing cattle. I had told myself that I would stop riding at 5
because a very smart woman at the hostel told me not to ride at dark
(because "it gets complicated"), as it
gets dark at 6, and, in looking at the map, Parobe would have to be the
town.
After climbing up and down the very steep hills of Parobe, I began to
think I
would have to commando camp on the outskirts, perhaps not a good idea.
But I
stopped to speak with a man in front of his shop and he gave me
instructions to
the only hotel in town..I will hit the beaches
tomorrow and plan on camping there.(Update: not even close--keep reading).
In
the morning as I ate bread, cheese, papaya, melon, jam, and drank my
cafe de manha (o cafezinho) I spoke another 30 minutes with Ledomara
about her small hometown, about the spirit of adventure, and about
becoming Facebook friends. Facebook really has its hooks in
people--there is no more convenient way to keep in touch with people
while traveling, but I don't want facebook to know what I'm doing or who
I'm meeting or what I'm thinking or what I think is important. I hope
Facebook just can't figure me out. I hope I ruin its marketing data as a
big fat tail outlier.
