Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais - Brazil

Life in Belo Horizonte

Three months later and 20 pounds heavier, our time in Belo Horizonte is coming to an end. Peter is flying to Vancouver tomorrow to catch the tail end of the Winter Olympics (mostly the parties) and I am taking short trips in Brazil before I join Peter March 17th.

It was a solid 3-month period visiting with family and friends and staying at my mom's house the whole time, feasting on her delicious meals and everything else I ate as a child – sweets from Minas Gerais and the hundreds of different cheeses from the region. It was also good for me to get on the daily routine here and have a really long visit with mom. We went to Pilates classes together twice a week, we cooked together, made teas from fresh herbs in the garden, shopped for produce and groceries, hosted many relatives who visited for short periods of time and organized the house for the many parties that happen here. I even went to her doctor with her a couple of times and... let me not forget our many evenings together watching the news and the soup opera afterwords. I will miss her as much as she says she will miss me.

It rained the whole month of December which was nice at first and it only eased up mid January when we started exploring around town. We went to museums, strolled around town and also went out of town for a couple of days. The highlights of our visits were Inhotim, Tabuleiro (see previous posts), and our strolls around town. I especially enjoyed revisits to my favorite childhood, spots like Minas Tennis Club, a place my family frequented almost daily, Praca da Liberdade, where I hung out as a youth at Xodo for milkshakes and ice creams and where the craft market used to be on Sundays.

Seeing Pampulha again was also a treat. With its artificial lake built in 1940 by the well known architect Oscar Niemeyer and a series of buildings, like the Art Museum, Ballroom Hall, Church of San Francisco and the Yacht Club that became a modern reference for Brazilian architecture, have not changed much over the years. The soccer stadium, known as Mineirao was built in 1965 and is the second largest covered stadium in the world. Right next to it is another stadium, Mineirinho, a multi sport stadium built in 1980. As I visited these places in Pampulha, I thought of my childhood and youth in the city. I was surprised to see that the rides at the fairground my father used to take us children to were pretty much the same original ones. I also thought of the first (and last) soccer game I ever went to with my first serious boyfriend. I am not much of a sports fan, much less a soccer fan, so I never went to another game.

Now that I've became a “regular” family member and no longer a visitor, I think it is time to move on. My usual opinionated self coupled with cultural shocks regarding some Brazilians habits got me the nickname of “alpha bitch.” This is a name not given by any of my relatives or friends, but by my beloved boyfriend Peter. The name actually made me laugh when I confided in him that I felt guilty for interfering and wanting things to be different. For example, I have long forgotten the habit of some people being late or even not showing up at an agreed place and time. I also noticed a general disregard for others space. Some people would not flinch about talking on a cell phone in a gathering or inviting a third party to join a meeting on your behalf without checking with you first. Maybe the culture is too casual for me or maybe Brazilians are too much of a gregarious culture, but at times it was painful not having my space and time respected. And I am not even going to start talking about husbands never doing anything in the kitchen and children, up to the age of 30 and beyond expecting their parents to treat them as if they were 12! These behaviors were too foreign to me and I think I overacted to everything.

But things were usually good with my mom and her house was a good refuge for us. As the Brazilian summer got hotter, Belo Horizonte was a comfortable place to be. The weather here is temperate, even when the sun is shinning brightly in the sky. The rolling hills around town and where her house is located are always cooler than the city. We had fun hanging out by the pool and going out to bars and restaurants with my sister Jeanne and her husband Jean Michel to nearby hills. The places are hidden at the end of long winding roads, some not even asphalted, making for exotic nights out “in the woods,” yet mere minutes from some of the most urban parts of the city.

I am glad I was able to come back “home” for an extended period of time after living abroad for almost 30 years. Now I can go on with my travels, having checked out my roots and my childhood digs, filled with my mother's company and daily routine. And I am sure I will find something to bitch about the North American culture when I go back. That is the price of not belonging anywhere; there will never be a perfect culture. Until I master the skill of acceptance, I will be the one suffering.

Tabuleiro, Minas Gerais - Brazil

Tabuleiro

It was the most difficult 2 miles I have ever walked, from the park entrance to the waterfalls, the beautiful 1000 foot high waterfall over a vast cliff face into the gorge below. But the walk was well worth it, the ground is littered with crystals and there are many pools on the way, not to mention the breathtaking views of the cliffs and waterfall the whole way down.

Tabuleiro is about 100 miles from Belo Horizonte. The second half of the way, a winding road took us to a quintessential Minas mountain town called Conceica do Mato Dentro. Another 12 miles and we arrived at the small village with the same name as the falls – Tabuleiro, populated with about 20 houses of local folks who garden, take care of cows and chickens, make cheese, perform in the local church choir, and make their own cachaca, the local killer distilled sugar cane spirit.

Tabuleiro had such a calming energy and it was so lush and beautiful that Peter and I seriously considered staying for a while. My brother Henrique, his son Rodrigo and a friend, Dea also came along, and they had to return to Belo Horizonte. After the hike, we were all exhausted and sore everywhere. We stopped at “Repestre,”a local restaurant for a delicious meal. The choices of white, blond and dark local cachacas on the menu sounded very good, and after I tried all of them, my body pains were gone. But the following day I had a huge hangover and besides muscle aches, my head and my stomach were suffering.

We headed back to Belo Horizonte after breakfast and were home by mid afternoon, in time for my sister Ines' barbecue birthday party. The parties at my mom's house don't seem to end...

Inhotim, Brumadinho - Brazil

Inhotim

It rained during almost all month of December, so when the rain stopped, and all the holiday parties were over, we decided to explore the area around Belo Horizonte.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a great Modern Art Center in the city of Brumadinho, 37 miles from Belo Horizonte. Peter, my friend Bya and I went there through the back roads, enjoying the beautiful views of rolling hills, the green in them alive and vibrant. All the rain of the previous month woke up every atom in the trees and grass and I felt like I could talk to that sea of greenness, because of the aliveness I saw in them.

Inhotim is very unique, with a similar concept as the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, in the sense of mixing art and galleries with nature, but I dare say that Inhotim was even more interesting and dramatic than the Getty. It is 3000 acres of gardens, and 16 galleries, in an area where there was only small dairy farms in the past. In some areas, we can still see old farm houses, but as Inhotim expands its art shows, and galleries, the old buildings either disappear or morph into something else. Currently, there are 18 new galleries under construction.

The lagoons where black swans glided majestically, weaved through carefully manicured foliage and some ancient trees. Some of those trees did not resist the weight of time and succumbed to form beautiful large benches around the gardens. I did not waste any time laying down on them to rest and receive the great earth energy coming from them.

The art was also very diverse, and in most of the cases, consisted of installations. The highlight for me was the "Sound Pavilion" by Doug Aitken, a circular glass structure with a hole 200 yards deep in the center where sounds from the earth could be heard through special microphones. Mathew Barney's domes were also incredible, with an enormous truck inside, extracting a tree from earth. The images were reflected hundreds of times on every facet of the large dome. I am sorry I don't have any pictures of that as photos were not allowed there. In terms of architecture, Adriana Varejao's gallery was by far the most imposing and I am sure the most expensive. She is the wife of the owner of the museum, Bernardo Paez, so in a way, it is understandable.

It was a great day walking through the gardens, looking at beautiful and interesting art with a break at midday to eat the delicious buffet lunch at the main restaurant. When the rain started, it was already 4:30 pm, closing time. We took the same back road home, dropped Bya off, played with her dog Lulu for a while, enjoyed a dark beer together, and drove to my mother's home exhausted.

Fortaleza, Ceara - Brazil

Fortaleza, Ceara - Brazil slideshow

We considered bypassing Fortaleza and going to the airport directly from Prea, but I am glad we didn't. Fortaleza is a beautiful coastal city. Being there was a little like being in Rio de Janeiro 30 years ago when it was not as big and as crowded. The similarity comes from the beach front high rises and large side walks along miles and miles of beach. There were so much urban walking by waterfront that we even felt we were in Vancouver in some parts of the city.

I thought we would spend a few days relaxing in the city, waking up late, eating, going out for easy strolls for a couple of hours a day and taking it easy. But we kept our usual frantic pace every time we arrive at a place were we like. Fortaleza seems to have a lot going for it in terms of city: it is tropical but the sun is not overbearing as there is always a breeze. It is a large city of 2.4 million people but it is not overbearing or over crowded. By the end of our stay my feet was so sore I could not take another step. Good thing we were getting on a plane the next day to mom's house. All I could think was rest, relax and visit with friends and relatives while we rested from our travels.

Prea, Ceara - Brazil

Prea, Ceara - Brazil slideshow

Prea is a lot smaller than Jericoacoara, and it is the hub of kite surfing schools because the wind is favorable here as it blows southerly towards the beach. This is safer for kite surfers as their kite will drag them back to shore if they fall and can't get back on their board.

We were lucky again to get a great view of the ocean from our porch. The sea shore outside our room was very colorful with kite surfers and small sail boats used by fisherman in the northeast – they have colorful triangular sails, the same length on all three sides.

It was a busy scene in front of our pousada every morning, when the boats returned from their fishing trips that lasted from three days to a week. I heard from a fisherman that they had to go farther and farther into the sea to get a catch that was worthwhile for them. There were dozens of fishermen and every day a large group returned to shore in a flurry of activity. The men helped each other with their boats, people bought fish directly from them while they filled crates to bring their catch their cooperative. Finally, the sails were rolled up around their masts and were dragged up the beach to just above the high tide level until the next trip back into the ocean. By 10 am all was quiet again, and a few hours later, we tasted some of the catch at our favorite beach restaurant 50 meters down from where we stayed.

Life was very easy and soothing at Prea. We had a three-day decompressing time, mainly reading, writing and walking on the beach. Watching the kite surfers was a pretty good source of entertainment. Some of them make dramatic cuts through the waves, and leap in the air over the ocean swells. We don't know the next time we will be in a relaxing tropical beach again, so we said our good byes for now. We came to Fortaleza yesterday, Friday, November 20th, and we will fly “home” to Belo Horizonte from here. It is time to visit with family and friends as the holidays approach.

Jericoacoara, Ceara - Brazil

Jericoacoara, Ceara - Brazil slideshow

Many tourists hire a four wheel drive pick up truck and driver to take them on tour along the beach all the way from Jericoacoara to Cabure – this is a popular “off road” circuit in Brazil, and every day, there's at least two or three of these private cars going by. We were very lucky to find one leaving empty from Cabure to back to Jericoacoara.

Most people pay US$500 for the 300 mile ride, but the driver was willing to let us go with him for the same price the buses and ferries would cost us. Although this meant we'd miss the ferry ride through the delta, we were glad to hop on the comfortable truck with tinted windows and refreshing air-con . Had we taken our planned route, it would have taken at least 3 days. Instead, in six hours we were in Jijoca, where we spent the night – we were thanking our angels for this driver because we were getting tired of being on the go. The first part of the ride was rough, through dunes, and roads made of sand, but the last two thirds of the trip were on pavement.

The next day we took a truck/bus to cross the dunes over to Jericoacoara. The truck/bus is a fast way to get around different beaches around Jericoacoara. It consists of a four wheel drive truck with wooden benches on the back. They can easily transport 8 to 10 people, including kite boards and luggage. But most kite surfers got together and rented their own buggies for the season or a more comfortable truck to hop up and down the coast in search of the perfect wind, which is not a difficult task in this part of the world.

Jericoacoara looks festive at night. Soft colored lights hang over stores, restaurants and bakeries, where every possible type of food is available. Or at least that is what it felt like after eating overpriced grilled fish, farofa (a typical northeastern food item made with manioc flour), onions and tomatoes at Cabure. In Jericoacoara, unlike Cabure, there was a lot of competition for restaurants, so the food selection was very diverse and reasonably priced - almost as good as in a big city. There were several grocery stores and bakeries, and we could get a real cappuccino or espresso quite easily. We ate well there and indulged in more cakes, pizzas and caipirinhas than we should have, but it was all enjoyable. Also being the low season, we were offered a good deal in a central pousada with great breakfast, internet and air con.

But although stunningly beautiful beaches surround Jeri, as the locals call it, it was a little difficult to get used to it at first. At Cabure, we walked out of our pousada and we were basically alone on the river, 20 yards away, and on the beach, 300 yards away. We walked miles and miles on isolated beaches. In Jeri, although we were only a couple of blocks from the beach, there was a lot of distracting activities, like wind and kite surfers, buggies, pick up trucks, horses, donkeys, and people. There was also a lot of rocks on the eastern portion of the beach, which were quite beautiful, but difficult to walk on, especially during the high tide. But we still walked around quite a bit. On our first day we went to Pedra Furada, (stone with a hole), 2.0 miles away. Another day we got on a truck/bus and went to Prea, 12 km away, overly exerting ourselves by walking the 12 km back, half of it on mushy sand. It was an intense work out sinking our feet on soft sand. We were sore for days after that.

Jericoacoara is a very happy place, where anything a tourist would need is on offer: massage spas, salon, bars, restaurants, plenty of fresh coconut water, great sunsets, day tours to several places nearby, and constant wind and sun, a big attraction to kite and wind surfers. We've heard this is one of the top 5 places in the world for kite surfing. There were people from all over the world with their boards on the water during the day. At night, “caipirinha row” (as Peter called the lanes of makeshift bars on the beach), got very busy, as well as the many restaurants and bars in town. It is a tradition to party all night on the weekends and end it at the Padaria Santo Antonio, a local bakery that makes sweet breads with fillings such as coconut, guava, chocolate and many more. The bakery opens at 2 am, and stays open until all the bread is sold, usually at dawn.

We had a very relaxing time in Jeri and loved being there. But after 9 days we felt we needed to move on to a quieter place. That is when we went to Prea and checked into a pousada we saw during our visit there a few days earlier.

Cabure and Atins, Maranhao - Brazil

Cabure and Atins, Maranhao - Brazil slideshow

Most people on our boat had lunch at one of the four pousadas in Cabure and returned to Barreirinhas. But Peter and I couldn't leave the place. It was hypnotic to watch and experience life in this little peninsula between Rio Prequica and the Atlantic Ocean during the five days we stayed there. For starters, there is no electricity, making us more aware of nature all around us. And Cabure is all about nature. During the day we walked back and forth across beaches and dunes, awed by fine sand moving in all different directions with the relentless wind. Peter was fascinated with waterways and crevices formed on the sand, like subsystems of dunes and lagoons, created simply with the change of high tide to low tide. Sometimes the water created such deep holes in the sand, big enough for large pools perfect for bathing. To the west, the river met the ocean, across from the town of Atins, home of the large dunes. This part was greener, with mangroves. To the east, the long stretch of beach pointed to Jericoacoara. We loved hearing the wind moving fine sand across the beach, the ocean roaring and producing white foam as the waves broke, forming thousands of designs on the wet sand.

There was virtually no one on the beach this time of year, except for the few tourists who arrived at Cabure around lunch time and left by 3pm everyday. The guest houses were very empty also. During the week we were the only residents where we stayed, and the other three pousadas were almost completely empty. We saw a few abandoned fisherman huts buried in sand. We were told that they leave during the dry season (May – December) to work on farms and return during the rainy season when they fish. The beach was practically ours.

River and ocean were so close to each other, the distance separating them in the dunes ranged from zero to 1500 yards. During high tide, water crept up into the pousadas, basically all the way into the entrance. At Pousanda Pacuri where we stayed, the water covered the stilts where the generator was kept. We were told that our pousada was 1,200 yards away from the ocean 18 years ago, but since then, the ocean has encroached within 300 yards. At the rate the sea level is rising every year, it is estimated that in 6 years, Cabure will be abandoned, as high tide takes it away. A new island will probably remain where the western end of the peninsula is now.

Watching this movement of water and sand had the same hypnotic effect as watching fire – for some strange reason, it was a constant source of entertainment. In order to delay the sand from accumulating over the side of the pousada walls, the owners constantly had to arrange for barriers made of large buriti (a local palm-like) tree leaves. But the fences started being eaten up by sand almost the moment they were built. This made Cabure even a more magical place, under the spell of strong natural forces of the sun, water, sand, wind and global warming. A place that in 5 or 6 years will probably be swept away by ocean high tides.

One day we hired a boatman to take us across to Atins, the home of large dunes, 20 minutes across from Cabure, on Rio Prequica. Once on the other side of the shore, Peter and I went out exploring on our own without a guide. We did very well until we were returning to town to meet up with our boatman again to take us back to Cabure. We ran into a fisherman who told us that the local pousada/restaurant, Dona Luzia, famous for barbecued shrimp, was only 20 minutes away. We had already walked 7 hours under fierce sun up and down gigantic dunes, so we thought that 40 minutes return was not a big deal. But it ended up being a 3 hours return trip, and no time to eat shrimp or anything else. When we met our boatman, he took us to a lagoon where scarlet flamingos return to their nests at sunset.

By the time we got back to the pousada just after sunset, we were totally exhausted, not even hungry, and collapsed after sunset, completely beaten by sun, wind and sea. We slept like rocks, under the soothing gentle wind coming through the front window to the back one all night. After all, there was only natural light, provided by moon and stars. At dawn, the first rays of sunlight was our cue for another day of discoveries.