July 2008 Archives

After we had worn out our welcome at The Crystal Palace, and Jean had bought a souvenir demitasse set for her boss' sister-in-law, Marcelo suggested we go look at Alberto Santos-Dumont's little house.
WHO?
Alberto Santos-Dumont, the father of aviation, that's who.

"Whoa now, what about the Wright brothers?" you protest.

Well, I'm sorry to tell you, there are a bunch of historians and how-ever-many-billion Brazilians that will tell you differently. According to studies, the Wrights never documented the Kitty Hawk thing properly when asked to. Dumont has witnesses that saw his little box plane, called the 14bis, launch, fly and land, all unaided. The skeptics say that the Wrights didn't launch unaided.

Whatever. Marcelo let us off to walk up the tiny narrow stairs to the little house. Smashed against the wall was a vendor selling souvenirs and postcards. Robo told me how he always wanted to take a trip and only snap closeup pictures of the postcards instead of buying them, then passing the pictures off as his own. It sounded good to me.

There was a slight glare on the plastic, but it's a valid idea, I'll have to say. The guy running the booth looked at me like I was an idiot cheapskate, so I hit him with an "obrigado" and tried to zoom up the little steps after Robo, but tripped on one of the uneven and unusually tall risers on the way up.

Dumont's hideaway was indeed tiny, and looked like a dollhouse. He was extremely superstitious, and thought that each journey should start on the right foot. Therefore, the stairs in his house were all half-runged, and started with the right half. I can see OSHA's reaction to something like this.

His house was nothing more than one room with a loft. There was no kitchen, because he always ordered from the hotel across the street (which is now the Catholic University of Petrópolis). His bed doubled as his storage, and it was painfully short--about 5 feet 3 inches. Dumont was a short man. There was a tiny little bathroom with hot water rigged up in there somehow, and a giant jug above the toilet for ease of flushing.

The house looks like something in Disney World, doesn't it? Robo is walking into the loft from the upper yard, which was beautifully landscaped to further hide and beautify the house.

Fun! Interesting! What's next?

The navigation of the narrow stairs back to Marcelo's car. We were either going to the museum or the cathedral, depending on which was open first. I got a nice shot of the Catholic University, former hotel and food dispensary for Alberto Santos-Dumont.

The cathedral wasn't open yet, and we weren't ready for lunch, so Marcelo suggested we go to the  Imperial Museum, which was the former summer home of Dom Pedro II. He pointed out the group of horse-drawn carriages parked in front and said, "I was the driver for Amazing Race Brazil a few years ago."

"What?" Jean and I exclaimed.

"You know the show?" Marcelo asked, eyebrows almost to the ceiling.

"We LOVE that show!" we said in unison. "You got to be involved?"

"Yes. The people had to get in the carriages and do something. I drove the camera people  and the producers here. It was very interesting and fun."

"How totally cool!" I said, like I was talking to Phil Keoghan himself.
 
We pulled into the gate for Marcelo to let us out into the light rain.

"Are you coming?" I asked.

"No," he said. "You will enjoy it. Ees very good."

I had finally figured out that Marcelo had probably seen the sights enough to suit him, and why pay the admission fee to see them again?

The Palace was a beautiful Bermuda pink color with white accents. It was big and impressive, but not any larger than some regular old private mansions. It was, after all, just a summer home. Beyond the big wrought iron gate was a lush garden filled with myriad varieties of exotic plants cultivated by DPII himself. Marcelo said the whole family were avid gardeners. The green space provided a stunning view from the front, and privacy from the curious citizens that may want a peek.

Here's a nice shot of the Palace I found on Wiki.

It had started to rain as we walked up the long driveway to the house. Tender hothouse flower Robo covered up immediately with Jean's help.

Can you see the raindrops on my lens? I put that camera through its paces, but I want it to be safe.

The porte cochére was pretty, and looked like something at a Southern country club. I like this shot of P,D&J. It looks like some kind of album cover. What sort of band would it be? Daniel as lead singer with Pettus and Jean on backup? I think it could sell!

Jean had read that you put on these oversized slippers with buffers on the bottom of them in order for you to be able to walk on the floor. I was looking forward to that, since I like the slidey feel of being in my sock feet. As we got our shoes, I started to take a picture of Jean's feet in them. The guy at the front zoomed in to stop me immediately. "No pictures," he said, not in an unfriendly tone, but matter of fact.

"I just want to take a picture of the shoes," I protested.

"No pictures, please," the guy repeated. "You will leave your camera inside."

"Oh, all right," I pouted, putting it aside and skulking to the counter where they would take it and put it in a locker. They wanted everything we had: umbrellas, cameras, the MawMaw purse. . .EVERYTHING. I wondered how the purse was gonna fit in the locker, but they managed, once one docent got behind the other to help her shove it in.

The foyer was grand and lovely, with doors opening to both of the first rooms in each wing. We shuffled down the hall to the dining room, which had the dinner table set with the finest china. It was beautiful and elegant, but once again, not any larger than many dining rooms I had seen. It was then that we all heard a strange noise and turned to each other to ask what it was. We promptly found out. Beyond the plexiglas that blocked the door, there was a mechanical thing, about the size of a sofa lamp, topped with a little video screen that played jerky, intermittent images of faces. The robot thing clicked and whirred, moving in stereotypical fashion, though it was rooted to the ground.

None of us got it at first. What the hell was going on? Was it a security camera of some kind? We then read the sign on the wall. This was just one of the installations by emerging, or prominent, or student artists designed just for the Imperial Museum. This robot thing was supposed to represent the servants that habited the palace, and how their slavery and/or servitude reduced them to their mechanical roots. The ever-changing faces were self-explanatory. I've gotta say, they started off with a bang as far as installations go, because the rest of them sucked, and were contrived and pretty stupid. And don't tell me I don't understand "statement" art, because I do. All too well, sometimes.

We skated to the next room, which was the Empress' sewing parlor. She was fond of needlework, and would entertain ladies for hours as they sewed and gossiped. The feminine room was populated by about 8 matching chairs with tapestry covers. There were small tables all around, with the centerpiece being Her Highness' sewing kit made out of all kind of weird imported ivory and stuff.

The art installation gag in this room nearly made us do just that: gag. It consisted of a gigantic pink intestine-looking thing that wormed its way through the chairs and around the room. The card said that it represented the thread that sewing provided to these ladies. Bah! It looked like an attempt to pull a Cristo in a tiny space by wrapping and decorating it. But it lacked the enormous scale and effort of a Cristo, and came off as distracting and stupid. I was in full gear and riding my aesthetic high horse proudly by this time. Daniel and Patricia and I had managed to end up in a clump together, so I entertained them with my hyperbolic criticisms and creative use of cuss words.

We had gotten separated from the others because Daniel and I decided to go find the bathroom, which was not in the house (duh). We had to shuffle across the floor, leave our overshoes, and head down stone steps into the garden to find it. The roof was very low, and it was still raining, so Daniel and I were ducking under the eaves to find our sanitário. I had turned around to say something clever to him when I ran right into a beam hanging under the eave. "Sheisskopf!" I shouted.

"What?" Daniel laughed, probably most at the injury.

"Sheisskopf," I said. "It means 'shit head' in German."

"I'll have to remember that," Daniel said. And he will, too. It's probably already part of his vernacular. He latched onto "surreptitious" the first time I said it. It became our code word. But now, "sheisskopf" was coming up fast.

We found most of the others and continued rambling through the museum. The music room was on the end of the right wing, being a late addition, as a birthday present to DPII. The instruments were exquisite, including a gold harp that begged to be played. DPII and his family were all music lovers and many of them accomplished musicians themselves. The installation in this room involved giant backlit photos of a favela put over all the windows. The artist stated that, rather than see the beautiful garden of the rich when one looked out the room, he would see the pitiful poverty of a favela. It was kind of neat, and looked very strange when we first peered into the room.

This was when we started spotting the family portraits. Woo! These were some dog-ugly folks! And portraiture is supposed to be flattering. I'd hate to see what they really looked like. D,P& I had a blast running the royals down. I was riding a different high horse at this time: the superior saddle of the unrich and unwashed looking down on the cushy lifestyle of the royals.
Of course, it's nothing but an elaborate ruse to cover some serious sour grapes, but who cares? It's so much fun! By the time we had gotten out of the place and met Marcelo, I was blasting him with a diatribe that was just this side of communist. I assured him that I was no communist, and that I work my ass off, and that capitalism is the best, but I still couldn't reconcile the favelas, or poverty in general, and can't to this day.

We passed one of the formal sitting rooms, by now looking for the art gag first. Here we were met by a little sand castle sitting like a dog turd on a gorgeous rug. We all did a double take at first, then read the sign. It was some tripe about the temporary nature of sand castles, and just because you are so powerful, everything eventually deteriorates. I wondered how much of a grant these artists had received.

The crown jewels were appropriately impressive, and served to rev me up like a proletarian chainsaw. There was a jewelry box that Robo was fascinated with, marveling at how it got across the sea without being broken, due to its incredible delicacy.

Dom Pedro's study was nice, but the most impressive item was on the desk: the first telephone in Brazil, installed by DPII after he had seen Edison's display at the International Exposition of 1876. He couldn't call many places. Well, one, actually. The lines ran only to his farm on the outside of town.

The upstairs featured a plethora of bedrooms with stupid art displays in them. The beds were all hugely austere and uncomfortable looking, and in the nursery, the two massive wood cribs looked like either one would comfortably house Rosemary's baby. Cree-PEE!

On this floor, in a location that looked more like an afterthought, was a tiny little chapel, filled with religious artifacts. If people could get to heaven from an inventory like this one had, DP and Co. would be sitting at the Right Hand of the Father. Well, NEXT TO the Right Hand of the Father. I began a schtick about DP coming up there after having beaten or killed a servant, and how he would duck into the little chapel, give a little "Oops!" prayer and be good for the rest of the day. I'm sure he was a benevolent man, but he was the only one around to pick on at the time.

As we all headed back down the stairs, we were almost garroted by a bunch of strings that ran from the upstairs ceiling down through the stairwell. This near-lethal display represented the streams of light that come in the upstairs windows and spill down the stairs. Oh yeah.

In the diplomatic dining room, there were massive, ornate sideboards on each end of the room, and a plain but beautiful table about 20 feet long, with 20 or so chairs around it. Looking at the ceiling above the table was a giant image of the table and chairs as if reflected from a giant mirror. I don't think the artist could even bullshit his way through this one.

In the serving pantry, we were met with shelves of serving pieces and odd, weird pieces of furniture with no apparent function. When we walked in, we kept hearing a tiny chorus of high pitched electronic chimes, to discover that there were little speakers placed all around the room, each one emitting a sound at a different interval. This was in conjunction with some blinking Christmas lights, also strewn haphazardly around. FASCINATING! I think this represented the servants again, as their lives were run by the various bells rung by the royals.

"Oh! I see what's making the noise," Robo said suddenly, picking up one of the speakers. Daniel, Patricia and I were still gawking at the absurdity. Suddenly the chiming stopped. Robo had obviously shorted out the music circuit. He carefully placed the speaker back down on the cabinet, and we gigglingly headed out the door, where we met Pettus and Jean.

They were about burned out on the place, so we began to peek quickly in the remaining rooms. They insisted on my looking at one of the royal portraits in one room closely. The woman looked like she had a harelip. But not really. But kind of. Did she?

One of the sitting rooms across the hall was nice, but like the girls said, an overload of elegant antique furnishings will wear you out, so I can't describe the room much or what it was for, but I do remember Robo and me laughing at the art gag: four pots of white flowers that looked artificial but harmless, until all the flowers would begin to rotate furiously in the pots for about 10 seconds, then stop. Cool. Arty. Meaningful. WTF??

On that note, we headed to the locker room to get our stuff and glided to the front door. We doffed our overshoes, gave a round of obrigadoes, and met Marcelo, who was outside waiting on us. He pointed out that there was a little refreshment place inside the garages that housed DP's carriages.

This was for royal occasions. I could imagine the ambivalent feelings of the people as the royals paraded through the streets of Petrópolis. Given that there were so many upper class living there, I'm sure they didn't receive anything more than public platitudes. . .until they screwed up.

The everyday carriage was really nice. And they also had the engine of the Leopodina on a section of track next to the refreshment center. The train was named after Dom Pedro II's second daughter, and once ran a vital route.

I sent this picture to Marcelo with what I Babel Fished as "I hope this train doesn't start to move." It's surely wrong. When you feed it back in to check it, it sure as hell doesn't say that.

Of course, Daniel got something to eat at the snack bar, then we headed out into the spitting rain to the car, bypassing the magnetic pull of the souvenir booths at the entrance. It was time to see the cathedral. 

We piled into Marcelo's car, still hee-hawing about the facially challenged royals. In retrospect, I feel kind of like a stupid American turd for my ridicule at their expense, particularly after learning more about them and how they contributed so much to their beloved Brazil. Ennnhhhh. They're dead. And I'm in the "no prize" category myself, so it gives me license to laugh WITH them. Well. Vanquished that guilt quite neatly, eh?

I don't know if Marcelo was offended at me dogging his predecessors. I tried to put myself in his place by imagining a Brazilian goofball coming here and ripping on the likes of Mary Todd Lincoln (dog) or Martha Washington (clock-stopper), but it just couldn't conjure up any indignation. Alas, our forebears usually don't look like Laura Linney as Abigail Adams.

Everything in Petrópolis was pretty close together, so the trip from the museum to the cathedral took only a couple of minutes. On the way over, Marcelo pointed out one of the flamboyants that grow all over the country. This one was a brilliant yellow color, but they range into the bright reds as well, depending on the variety. Poinciana is in the same family. With the German-style house in the foreground, this certainly looks like anywhere but Brazil.

After a couple more turns, we entered the circle that housed the Catedral de São Pedro de Alcântara. This gorgeous structure was commissioned in 1843 by DPII upon the founding of Petrópolis. Work stalled on the project for years due to financial and other setbacks, and it didn't finally open until 1929. The actual completion of the cathedral wasn't until 1969. 1969?? That's so "modern!" This place looks like something from 18th century France.

Once again, I fail to realize that Brazil is one of the Americas, and we're mighty young over here compared to all the oldsters in Europe.

Dom Pedro II and his beloved Teresa lie in state here since their relocation in 1939. After the royals were allowed back into Brazil in 1922, they brought DPII and Teresa home, but didn't bury them in the cathedral until 1939. Their daughter Isabel and her husband Count d'Eu are buried behind them, to their left and right. The chapel is beautiful, with incredible stained glass and a bunch of DPII's favorite relics--many from the famous martyrs.

I guess the Count didn't totally piss everybody off, because there he is, right next to his in-laws, like he never did anything wrong. Oh. I think that's the point.

There was a really neat statue of St. Anthony holding a poor child that prompted the hyper-reverent Robo to create a great photo gag for me. He seems to be immune to any kind of retribution from goddesses, saints and the like. What is it?

There were people inside doing something. I couldn't tell if it was a service or not. Maybe a tour of some kind.

Beautiful! What's next? A picture of my international family. Robo looks like he's feeling a little stricken again. St. Anthony? Is that you? Jean looks great wearing one of my pairs of Crocs.

On the way to the car, Marcelo pointed out a nice shot of the cathedral through the trees.

I countered with an equally beautiful shot of a pair of teal panties stuffed amongst the decorative stonework. I pointed it out to Marcelo, and asked him what kind of people attended mass here. Or were the sermons THAT fiery?

We were hungry. Marcelo didn't know of anywhere particular to eat, so we kind of cruised around till we came back to the parking lot that led to Dumont's house. Across from it was a row of "shoppes" and a restaurant through a courtyard that looked promising.

I can't remember the name of the place, but it was situated in an old house that gave it a good old country cooking meat-and-three appeal. The tiled back porch had been converted into a bar on one end, and a serving line that began on the other and ran the width of the house. There was a buffet set out that had been picked through pretty well, especially considering our late arrival. No matter. It looked fine, and if we spent all our time driving around looking for food, there was a chance we'd miss it altogether.

We lined up and found that there was all kinds of stuff to eat, and the hairnetted replenishment girl was right behind us with a panful of chicken thighs. Jean found her favorite thing in the line: hard-boiled pickled quail eggs. She went apeshit for those, while Daniel and Patricia ate french fries, black beans and rice, and any other starch in the area.

We got our plates and wormed our way into the middle room crammed with long tables and small wooden chairs, me having to turn sideways and let out half of my air to be able to squeeze by. A quickie dash for either fresh food being put out or the sanitário would have been out of the question, being as it would involve about twenty "licença"s waiting on the other sprawling diners to scoot up for you.

Robo was miserable, and spent most of the lunch sneezing and blowing his nose. I've never seen quite a look like the one on Daniel's face. It reminds me of the expression on Frederic March's face as he begins the change from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde; Pettus looks like she's wiping off some extraneous spray of some kind.

It was time to find the sanitário and split. The bathrooms were right next to the bar. And I mean RIGHT NEXT TO. Like, you could hear the blender in the bathroom, and I'm sure some sort of vice-versa would be applied as well.

The back porch had a small table with free coffee cuplets, and some sort of sweet thing that was weird. I got me a tiny coffee and headed out the door to the courtyard, which was ringed with shops, some "upscale" and some real handicrafty. At that moment, everybody behind me began to laugh hysterically. "What?" I asked. "What?"

Apparently, a local Dom Pedro-lovin' pigeon had decided to take an airborne grunt right on my white whale shirt! Wasn't THAT fun? It was the caliber equivalent to a huge goiter on a tiny neck, and I was sure everybody in Petrópolis would notice it. They didn't, but Marcelo certainly did. And told me about it. I have no idea what Petrópolin birds eat, but it goes through them fast and comes out in mass quantities.

I had asked if we could go to some kind of computer store and find me a reader for my flash card. I had stupidly not packed one of the four that I have (three bought under similar circumstances), thinking that I'd never have access to any kind of computer to dump the pictures onto, much less storage to take them home. I didn't take into account: a) the house computer at Mirante de São Francisco, or my iPod, which would neatly store all the pictures I wanted. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

But I was running out of flash card space at an alarming rate, and as we've already seen, I missed a ton of shots already. What a revoltin' predicament! Surely the little metropolis of Petrópolis would have a camera/computer store that would remedy my problem quickly for less than 30 bucks American (allowing a healthy markup rate for "technology").

Petrópolis is an unusual little city in that it has so many faces, and they're all turned in and staring at each other. Start with the outskirts, which blend quickly into little streams, bridges, and neighborhoods that could have been yanked from a high-rent Leave it to Beaver, to a giant cathedral, a palace, and suddenly a little downtown area that consisted of stores lining a horseshoe that began at the bottom of a big hill, ran all the way to the top, then back down again.

The sidewalks were packed with people, who ran the gamut from very light to very dark; very  atttractive to very plain; and very rich to very poor. They had obviously relaxed the standards of elitism that exited in Petrópolis in the early days. The way all the businesses were individually owned and not real "chainy" looking, and with the plethora of department-type stores, it reminded me a lot of downtown Birmingham when I was growing up. Daniel and I were the ones who left the car to scout out the card reader, and we passed many a place that looked just like J.J. Newberry's on 19th Street--sundries for living right there in the front window, and goods piled high on shelves lining both walls and glutting the middle.

I saw three stores on the first visual sweep that had "camera" in the name. It looked very encouraging!

First store. Nothing but digital developing.

Second store. Blank stare.

Third store. A glimmer of hope. Two nerds behind the counter! Computers on stands! But weirdness in that the recordable CDs were in a locked cabinet behind them, and they only had two sleeves of them; everything else was strewn all around the desk. The other cabinets had random things like headphones in them, and other stuff that I certainly didn't need. Daniel told the guys what I was looking for. I held up the card. They conferred excitedly, and then one of them held up a finger while the other guy rummaged through a drawer, bringing out an input bay with a Medusan tangle of cords coming out of it. In the first place, it would have to be hard-wired to the computer. But it also had nothing resembling a card reader, even if we did feel like dismantling Steve's PC and putting it in. They both looked at us, then it, berated each other in fast Portuguese, then threw it back in the drawer. "Não," they finally told Daniel. I got the message.

Marcelo and the rest of them sat patiently in the car for us, but I finally had to give up. It blew my mind how the things that we even have in some gas stations here are nowhere to be found in Brazil. Another thing that contributes to their happiness?

I was bummed out, and starting to panic a little about the flash card situation. Marcelo assured me that we would find something the closer we got to Rio. He was like a parent assuring a child that he wouldn't start the first day of school without a book bag. I had to believe him.

We began the descent back down the mountain. There were spectacular views everywhere, and the fog had lifted enough from the morning to put heavily textured skies front and center in the whole spectacle. Marcelo was amenable to stopping for pictures whenever I asked him to, but I tried not to do it too much as a courtesy to the others. This view forced me to ask him. We were coming up on a hairpin curve that jutted out over the mountain, looking like it was floating above the valley below. Cool. Cool. Cool. Robo, Pettus and I got out. This was one of the cases where I walked up on Robo as he was narrating his footage. I think I said something about there maybe being snakes in the tall grass we were standing in. It gave us both a little jolt, me especially, because I started high steppin' as a reflex.



Woo! Pretty! We passed all the rug, empty vegetable and favelette places on the way down, until we spotted this crazy spaceship thing up the next hill on the right.

"Can we stop?" I asked excitedly.

Everybody agreed, and Marcelo pulled into a parking lot that led to this interesting structure. So this was just a roadside park, eh? Where was the sanitário? Apparently these gents didn't find one either.

This thing was cool as grits! And of course it immediately put us in mind of the Niedermeyer Modern Art Museum in Niterói. But it was just sitting here, overlooking this incredible valley, like something straight from an apocalyptic Jetsons. So very, very neat. I was convinced at this time that Rio had been visited by extraterrestrials more than once. I mean, really. Deny it, okay?

Is this George Jetson's bombed out living room? Of COURSE it is! There was graffiti everywhere, and a busload of obnoxious tourists from what we deemed was Israel, so the idyllic nature was somewhat tainted. On the way back to the car, we encountered a group of locals who were playing ball on the pavement beneath the spaceship. This thing was on a steep hill, with sparse population that met the eye going either direction. So these kids walked however far, up or down a huge hill, and met here to play. They must have been in incredible shape. They were aloof to my uplifted camera and quizzical expression at first, but the longer I stood there and snapped other things, the more they warmed up. Cute. Look for the secret thumb in there. Also a good old peace sign.

We hopped in the car to continue on back to Niterói. The ride back was quieter even than the ride up, which was plenty quiet. Robo, Pettus and Jean dozed in the back seat, with Daniel and Patricia comatose in the backback.

Robo felt bad, bad, bad, but the only effect it had on our time was the decrease in bone dry witticisms from that incredible brain of his.

Marcelo didn't forget me and my card reader, and before we got to the bridge, he pointed out a huge Wal-Mart-like store off of the right service road. We wound our way into the huge parking lot, which looked just like any giant Wal-Mart parking lot in Florida. This chain's name started with an "F," and was something like "Fourier." The logo was a very nicely selected green "F." I can't remember the name, but Marcelo will tell me.

We all went inside except Robo, who said he was gonna lie down in the back seat. The HOT back seat in a stopped car with no air conditioning. Sounded delightful to me, but probably served the purpose for him.

Upon entering the store, there was still nothing to dissuade me that this was just a Wal-Mart in a samba suit. The signage was totally American looking, except for the words on it.  All the departments looked just like they do here, except there was just a slight disconnect with the majority of brands, labels and logos being unfamiliar to me. Immediately to the right was a huge stereo/computer section with a guy at the counter that knew exactly what I needed. He pulled one from behind the glass within a half minute--one of those readers that accepts all the cards, with a price that was surprisingly great, considering the high cost of technology in Brazil. It was about 15 bucks American. Marcelo thought it was such a good deal he got himself one.

I left Jean, Pettus and Marcelo there to get whatever else they needed, and for Jean to try to get money from their ATM and deal in tandem with Marcelo at the Customer Service desk. I had to flee. My goal was to get us several big bottles of agua com gaís for the house, because cocktail hour was a threat to decimate our supply.

The last couple of nights, I had begun a new ritual: tromp down two flights of stairs to the PMS 361 green rumpus room; grab as many limão as I could, stuffing them into my pockets; grab the cachaça and sugar bowl; and finally get the wooden mortar and pestle; get back upstairs as quickly and painlessly as possible; then begin to cut and smash enough limes to make drinks for Jean, Robo and Pettus. Whatever liquor I used, I always topped it with a healthy splash of agua com gaís, making the caipirinha or roska less lethal and longer lasting.

So here I go trotting down the aisles by myself. Patricia and Daniel were in the stereo department looking at stuff, and I felt confident to try the mission solo. Strutting happily in my slue footed gait, my head was like a sprinkler, going left to right and back again, stopping to gape at an unfamiliar product or smile broadly at fellow shoppers. I even threw the thumb in there a couple of times and got one in return with nary a hitch.

I found the drink aisle, which was dominated by the usual American suspects and Brazil's favorite energy drink: Guaraná Antarctica (pronounced "Gwa-RAHN-ah Ont-ARCH-tee-ka"). Guarana is one of those natural energy herbs that has been around for centuries. It was sold in the U.S. as a substitute for speed back in the day, and with today's youth's fixation on rev-me-up drinks, it's a natural. And very popular. I had one on the plane from São Paulo to Salvador. It wanted to taste like a Mountain Dew, but didn't. It was something else. I'm sure you could get used to it easily, though, and spend your days zooming around Brazil.

All well and good, but where the hell was the agua com gaís? Suddenly, a cute Brazilian girl appeared, ignoring the bird shit stain on my white whale shirt, and asked in Portuguese if I needed help. I was bursting with excitement over my card reader, and brimming with love for Brazil and her people. My response was a blinding smile and the words "agua com gaís" and "grande" (pronounced "GRON-gee"). She smiled back at my hapless Americanness and led me over two aisles. There were the waters! But the gaís was another matter. We couldn't find any for the longest time. But she persisted, looking through every bottle there until we found three big ones. The only ones they had. CRAZY. Wal-Mart, but NOT Wal-Mart. Something else entirely. I don't know what in the hell was in those other bottles, but it was certainly not agua com gaís, which is sold in every bodega in Rio, and consumed enthusiastically by all. Curiouser and curiouser.

Jean and them were God-knows-where, so I got in a checkout line with no translator or anything, just like every other outer-Rioan that was there with me. I felt so very powerful, having money in my pocket, recognizing the denominations of the coins (when given time), and knowing that all I had to do was scream "Marcelo" like a girl and he would eventually come and rescue me, after finishing whatever it was he was doing at the time, and walking as slowly as he could, stopping to look at everything on the way.

There was a young couple ahead of me who had a small cartful of stuff. When I appeared behind them, clumsily wielding the three bottles of ACG, they immediately let me in front of them. Wow! Just like in Alabama! I thought surely I could make the transaction speedily and then give them a perfectly pronounced "obrigado" and a smile, leaving with dignity.

Uh, no. "Price check on this Ag-wa com GAis" was what I heard. Somebody in a vest rushed over and she and the checker looked at the water, turning it over and over. The girl in the vest looked at the cashier with an expression that said, "Whatever," and she rang it up. My big plan to rip the money off and hand it to her in exact change was shot to hell after all this. I had crumbled long before, and babbled all kinds of shit to the young couple in my Portuguese-cum-Spaniguese. They were happily accommodating of me and my bird stain. I held out my hand with all the money I had, the checker picked out what she needed, smiled broadly while she sacked my ACGs, and we all had a nice goodbye, me loving Brazilians more than ever at that point. I am so very easy.

I met the others just about as I emerged from the line. When we got to the car, Robo was roasting inside, but at least had a door open with his legs sticking out.

Marcelo managed to find his way out of the labyrinth that was the parking lot. Then the service road, then the bridge. He commented that we had really missed the traffic for some reason. He had been expecting more. All I knew was that I wanted to get home with my new card reader and ACG, make the trek down 2 and up 2, and get the evening going. Food would be whatever it was.

We passed more incredible graffiti. The whole public art concept continued to gnaw at me. This was beautiful. But is it ALL beautiful? Who decides? And who is this guy? I see the word "Mafia." Is that a good thing in Rio? I hate to say it, but he kind of looks like Fred "Rerun" Berry from What's Happenin'?

This was a poignant shot, I thought.

The section of Niterói we were in was characterized by small winding roads with a melange of structures ranging from small houses to restaurants to larger homes hidden by fences and landscaping. Marcelo pointed to the left at a wall topped by an iron fence and backed by lush foliage. "My parents live there," he said.

To me, that was tantamount to taking us home to meet them. I was very flattered. It looked like a nice piece of property, too. Little by little Marcelo had begun to reveal himself. With the information about his sister in Petrópolis and his parents in what appeared to be cushy digs in Niterói, combined with his immense knowledge of history, botany and such, I had figured that he was well brought up, with an appreciation of knowledge, beauty and history. There was nobody better that we could have gotten to shepherd us through Rio. How did we luck into that?

We took route B home, I noticed--the one via beach road that went by Niedermeyer's spaceship--more fantastic juxtaposition. It was a spectacular ride, and as we approached it, Marcelo told us how the mayor had bought all the property opposite the museum years ago, even though there was a ban on building there. A massive, elegant condo development stood there now.

"Ees very funny. This land was to stay as it was. No building. The mayor buys the land, and suddenly there are condos here."

"Well, DUH!" I replied. Here we were, international brothers both being screwed by the elected.

The views of the bay we had sailed the day before were spectacular. I couldn't help but correlate the value of the real estate in Niterói with that in the U.S.--in Destin, for example. I just couldn't comprehend the whole thing.


We passed the Jesuit church of São Lourenço dos Indios on the hill of São Lourenáo. The church was started in 1560 and construction continued for a couple of hundred years afterwards. It is named after another church in Portugal, and if I'm not mistaken, Marcelo told us it is the oldest church in the area.


Before we knew it, we were at the McDonald's. Mirante was only a blink away. We got out, Marcelo getting out as well, like a boy with some good manners.

"Can you take us out tomorrow?" we asked.

"Yes," he replied.

"Hoo-HAH!" I exclaimed. "Okay den! I'll see you tomorrow, Marcelo! Thanks for a great day! Honey, y'all are gonna work it all out, okay?" With that, I wriggled into the house after a staggering Robo, dropped the ACG on Steve's lovely hand-made dining room table (which was our "kitchen counter"), threw the bag with the card reader at the computter, and headed down to PMS 361 for cocktail fixins. Daniel and Patricia had decided they wanted McDonald's, and none of us argued a bit. It actually sounded good to me. What a conundrum it all is.

All I cared about was getting my cards emptied and safe. The reader plugged right into the PC. And at that point, Daniel and I both discovered that there were CARD READERS ALREADY ON THE FRONT OF THE PC, with mine FRONT and CENTER! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

I had to take a break, and shoot the last picture on the current card before I made it disgorge all its loveliness into Steve's computer.

We gave our orders to D&P, who were gonna walk down the hill and possibly back up. Fine with us. It was all safe. It wasn't dark yet. Down they went. We cocktailed, and I began to wrestle with the heinous PC operating system, trying to download my pictures with enough confidence to erase a flash card. TOUGH THINKING. Required much agua com gaís and everything under it.

I hate to be a dick, but I HATE PCs. I'm a Mac boy, and have been long enough to know that my hatred is well founded. A task that would have taken 1 minute to set up plus download time on my Mac, suddenly became an "adventure" of window after window with cryptic questions that, if answered incorrectly, could result in massive amounts of calculation time on the computer's behalf, plus the erasure of all digital information in a half mile radius. Robo walked by a couple of times, shook his head and said, "My programmers won't use anything but a Mac."

When Daniel and Patricia got back (via tax--it was too much for them to walk up the hill), we all rushed the bag to get our food out. Suddenly everybody was starving. And, in true form all across the world, THEY SCREWED UP OUR ORDER and I'M THE ONE WHO GOT SCREWED! No matter. I had business to attend to.

I snagged Daniel and made him help me wade through the tangle of PC-speak to get what I needed done. I thought I'd be able to just plug in my iPod and put the pictures there. But NO! My iPod was formatted for Mac, and in order to even smell a PC's out port, it has to be re-formatted for PC. So, basically, I was saying that my pictures were more important than the music on my iPod. No question. The decision was instantly made to reformat. Why was it such an ordeal after that? I don't know. I fogged over again and let Daniel do the big nasty for me.

Tomorrow's itinerary was gonna be aladsasvafbu0u0uasn and probablymaybeseeingtheChrist Botanical gardenswhatever Maybehang glidingforRobo andPettuswhoknewbut at least Marcelo was taking us.

When the Blackberry announced the day, for once it wasn't pure torture. We had come in early the night before and gotten to bed at a decent hour, so I actually jumped out of the rack and turned the thing off before it had gotten through a whole sequence.

Something was different about the light seeping in from behind the blackout curtains. What? THE FIRST SIGHT OF BLUE in Rio! The sky outside the window was riddled with birds, so I snapped a couple of pictures. It was amazing when I first looked at them, because I initially thought it was dirt on my lens.

The pair of birds in the upper right look like a hammerhead shark. Cool.

Sylvia came by right after breakfast to get our laundry and bring us our belated bonus gift: five pairs of Havaianas! The pineapple is so yesterday's news as a sign of welcome. Nothing says "Howdy! Come on in!" to the smart Brazilian like a pair of flip flops.
They were supposed to have been waiting on us when we got there, but weren't, because of their not knowing our sizes. Jean and Pettus wanted to make sure we got everything that came with the house, so stayed on Sylvia about it. It was nice the way she lined them all up behind the sofa in a happy display.

Robo and Pettus asked her again about hang gliding, since it was more clear today. She said she'd check on it and get back to us. In the meantime, Marcelo had pulled up outside. Suddenly, Maria and Robson appeared, gathered up the clothes, and were out the door behind Sylvia's implied shooing motion. We followed.

I have no idea how we had settled on seeing the fort this morning. I think Marcelo had mentioned that it was close and would be a good early outing. We were trying to wait on it to clear up a little more before we went up to see The Christ, and the Botanical Gardens, which was also on our agenda for the day. We found out later that Marcelo leads groups of school kids through the Gardens regularly, and is quite a naturalist. I had already figured that out.

Other than to go to the restaurants, this was the only time we took a left at the McDonald's. The Bay beach road carried us past the Niedermeyer terminal (closed), then the landscape gradually changed to look like Apalachicola, Florida, or something from Destin in the really old days. This was Jurujuba, an old fishing village on Guanabara Bay.

I was about to bust, I was so excited to see The Christ. Ever since I had seen him in pictures, it had been a fascination and a small obsession. This Seventh Wonder of the Modern World combined one of my biggest fears and one of my biggest loves in one awe inspiring package. Pictures taken above the statue's head looking down would bring my acrophobia to the surface every time, but in a strange comfortable way. When I first saw The Christ upon arrival in Rio, all I could do was kind of sigh, the way he overlooked everything. And, yes, he has incredible peripheral vision.

The awesomeness of huge things is another of my passions, and poor little ole Vulcan would have to stand on top of his own head twice before he would reach The Christ, who is 90 feet tall with a 90 foot hand span. The herculean efforts required for something like this make me swell with pride for mankind's attempts to be great.

We decided not to ride the tram up the mountain, but instead have Marcelo take us as far as he could, then we would board a minivan to ride to the top for a small fee. The tram looked really neat, being the train that brought the stuff to the top of Corcovado for the construction of the statue. It went through the dense foliage that hugged the mountain, and was supposed to be a great trip.

Naah. We wanted to get there fast. Upon seeing the tram and the track it took up the mountain, I was kind of sorry we didn't do it. But we were there, and of course Marcelo wasn't coming with us. He drove his car to the top of the hill to wait with the others who weren't making the trip. I'm sure he read his history and science magazines that he kept in the car. Or napped. Probably napped. The magazines were most likely props.

The drop off point was somewhere outside of Santa Teresa, which is pretty high up already. It was teeming with people, but they were kind of just milling around: some official, some not, everyone looking kind of specious. There was a cop asleep in his car while all this loading and unloading went on. We all got in the van, waiting only a couple of minutes for it to fill up with other people. The ride up to the statue was neat, with the continually curving road draped on one side with lush green foliage and perilously seductive on the other, with tiny little Rio peeking through the small trees--the only thing that would keep us from plummeting off of Corcovado should our driver lose control of the van. WHEE!!!

The feel of the urban jungle as we ascended the mountain was strange, because I knew there were hundreds of people all around us, but it appeared that we were the only ones there.

When Carol and family had been to see The Christ previously, there were a multitude of steps to mount. We were fortunate to have arrived at the modernization of holy access. The bad part was now merely a slightly healthy flight of beautiful stone stairs at the bottom which led to a plateau with a couple of elevators up to the next level.

The crowd was big, but not overbearing by any means. We got an elevator rather quickly. This was a weird experience, in that the cars were very narrow and twice as deep, causing us to line up in there kind of like parachute jumpers. Through the green tinted glass, we could see our ascent through the vegetation that opened on another panoramic view. It was as if the elevator had no bottom when you looked straight out the window. Slightly creepy.

Our elevator operator had blonde spikes in his hair, and the look of Johnny Rotten, but he was wearing an official Jesus elevator operator vest, so I figured he was okay. I felt sure that the same rigorous specifications had been applied to this job as those for the security guards around town. When we reached the next level, the door opened behind us, we all turned around and quickly filed out, giving the operator our various versions of "obrigado/a." Instead of telling us to "wank off" or something like that, he smiled broadly and said in stilted English, "Enjoy The Christ." Indeed.
 



Gorgeous. The top tier was achieved by riding a brand spanking new escalator. Jean and I were both thankful. Well, who WOULDN'T be? At the top right under the statue, there was a throng of people milling around excitedly, everybody with cameras, many taking pictures of loved ones or companions by lying on the ground and shooting up to get The Christ in the picture looming protectively over the subject. Like the Kennemers.


Yeah, I lay down on the hot pavement to take this picture. I don't know where the hell Jean was, but my frying back couldn't take any more, so she didn't get the photographic blessing. The views from there were unbelievable--the horse track was a funny counterpoint to The Christ. He didn't look down AT the track, but you knew he could see them anyway.

There was so much hedonism for him to see, with the sexy beaches and all! But I didn't feel one iota of judgment. Not one. This beautiful bug climbing on Christ's granite (natch) base was so pretty and cool and kind of unlikely looking. What would a bug be doing up this high? How long did it take him to get here? Surely he was born here in one of these patches of vegetation. He looked so small and dedicated against the enormous mass of stone, like he was making his own trek of faith old style to see Jesus. May be.

Jean took a good picture of Robo and me, after which I took long shots of The Christ and more of the crowd.


This vertiginous shot looks like the shelf of people is fixing to crash down onto the city below. Shudder.