As our last stop in Brazil, we visited Foz de Iguazu, a city on the Brazil/Argentina border. We visited the beautiful Iguazu waterfalls from the Brazil side the first day and the Argentina side the second day, and a few of us also went to Itaipu, currently the largest hydroelectric plant in the world. Here´s everyone right after we got to the falls:
Some views from the Brazil side:
Andrea got very excited:
Itaipu dam:
We wanted to try out the video feature, so as a test here is a video of a funny sign I took in Curitiba. ´Quente´ is Portuguese for ´hot.´
-Lauren
Here are some highlights from the two days we spent at Dario´s house in Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. This is a drawing of young Dario on the wall. The ones of his brothers were a little more masculine.
Derrick needed to pick up some souvenirs since he only had a few more days with us. Here he is getting assistance from a VERY helpful (and admiring) saleswoman.
We saw some very funny monkeys that live in someone´s backyard. Apparently they steal cake during parties, and here one is eating a roll we brought.
After Paraguay, we embarked on a 20 hour bus trip to Buenos Aires in executivo class. The bus was almost empty, and we spent the trip watching movie, sleeping in the reclining chairs, and getting meals and drinks from the attendant. Greyhound should take a lesson from these people!
-Lauren
One of the things we´ve most enjoyed while walking around the cities here has been checking out the ubiquitous graffiti and street art. Here are some highlights....
Banned books?
Hello all,
Tim here with a short update. We made the trip by bus from Dario´s home in Asuncion to our hostel here in Buenos Aires with no problems. For the past few days we´ve been checking out the city and enjoying the local restaurants and attractions. On Wednesday Derrick flew back to the U.S. and Dario returned to Paraguay yesterday, so it´s just the four of us (Andrea, Lauren, Nick and I) for the remainder of our trip.
Sorry for the lack of new posts/pictures -- the computers at the hostels we´ve been staying at here are in pretty heavy demand, and the one I´m on right now doesn´t even have a USB port. We´ll try to add more information when we can.
Adios,
--Tim
This is Lauren with a belated update on our second-to-last stop in Brazil. Since the keyboard in the Buenos Aires hostel barely works, this entry will be mostly pictures. Andrea, Nick, Dario and I spent two days in Curitiba, a medium-sized city about 12 bus hours south of Rio. Dario, his friend Jose, and Jose´s girlfriend met us for a drink. Andrea, Violeta and I particularly enjoyed the sweet Italian-style wine.
Jose got us a deal at a hotel along a downtown pedestrian street. Here´s the view from our window-
We met this nice dog outside our hotel.
We checked out the merchandise at a huge street fair, and since it was surprisingly cold, we picked up some hats.
Curitiba is known as one of the most sustainable cities in the world primarily because of its excellent bus system. Here´s one of the stations- it´s elevated so you just walk into the bus.
Dario says this model of Volkswagen truck, which we´d never seen before, is very fast.
We went to one of Curitiba´s many parks in the hopes of seeing carpinchos (capybaras in English). We saw some from a distance on an island in the middle of the lake and almost left disappointed when a whole group of them swam across to eat the grass right next to us. I snuck up on one and touched it, then ran away.
On the last day, we hoped to take a tourist bus around the city, but since the bus along with most other attractions in Curitiba was closed on Monday we took a maraton walking tour instead. The tour resulted in a few blistered heels, but we also made it to this beautiful museum for the architect Oscar Niermeyer.
Other highlights of the visit included visiting Russian, Mexican, and German bars, and for everyone except me, a huge meat buffet. Curitiba wasn´t as outwardly environmentally friendly as we expected, but it is a well-planned and pedestrian friendly city with great public transportation. Recycling bins were widely available, and as in many other cities here, people with carts go up and down the street s at night picking cardboard and other recyclables out of the trash to sell. We had a fun and relaxing visit, and hopefully we´ll be able to update you on the rest of the trip soon!
Hey All!
We just arrived at Dario's house and so the blog is back. We have been pretty busy this last week or so traveling in Brazil and then staying on Dario's estancia (ranch) in Paraguay. However now that we have reached Paraguay's capital, Asuncion, we will have more time to write. One thing Lauren and I wanted to post was a series of pictures from our tour of two of Rio's favelas. I'll start by giving some quick facts about favelas: 1) the word favela was orginally used to describe a dry plant that would invade areas in the desert but now refers to largely unregulated settlements on invaded public or private lands, 2) there are 752 favelas in Rio today but up till the 1980s Rio refused to recognize them and they would appear on maps as forests, 3) the people who live in favelas range from very poor to lower middle class which in Rio means someone who earns twice the minimum wage $400 Reals per month, 4) Most of the favelas developed during the two construction booms in Rio during the 1930s and then again after world war II. The city had to import workers from the north to complete construction but the new workers couldn´t afford to live in Rio so they built favelas.
Below are a couple of photos Lauren and I took during the tour. Our guide was a woman named Martha who had been trained by the Brazilian government's tourism department and decided to specialize in the favelas, Rio´s forests and colonial Rio. 
Unfortunately, we did the entire tour in the rain so lauren and I got to wear the really cool ponchos above. One perk of the rain was to get to see how the favela dealt with flooding. 
This next picture is a view from a rooftop in the favela. This favela is called Rocinha and is one of the biggest. The government claims that it only has 170,000 people but Martha thought it was closer to 300,000. Rocinha was the worser of the two favelas we visited as it was more heavily controlled by drug lords. We were surprised to learn that these drug lords actually import drugs from South American countries instead of exporting them and then sell them to local favela inhabitants or rich cariocas (Rio residents). 
This third picture is of an electricity pole in the Rocinha favela. Lauren and I were amazed as the number of split wires on the line. It turns out most of the electricity in the favelas is stolen from Rio itself.
Next is a picture of Lauren walking through some of the homes in Villa Canoas, the second favela we visited. Something that struck both Lauren and I was the lack of ventillation in the community´s maze of underground alleys.
This last picture was outside of a school in the favelas. 80 percent of the money that Martha and other guides earn from their favela tours go to a school built for the community. Amazingly, only 3 percent of children in Brazil who go to public school are able to pass the Brazilian state test to entire university. In Brazil public schools are all half day due to the large population but this favela school gave kids a place to go after normal school to do their homework while their parents work.
That is all for now, although we need to blog again to tell the ridiculous story of Lauren, Nick and my ride to Curitiba...
- Andrea
Derrick and Tim arrived in Sao Paulo on Friday evening after a 6 hour bus ride. The trip was comfortable, although the monitors overhead were showing an odd selection of American movies with Portugese dubbing and subtitles (What Dreams May Come and the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants). At the bus station, they spotted their friend Apoorva, a fellow Rice graduate who has been living in Sao Paulo for the past several months. After a ride on Sao Paulo´s expansive subway system, they checked in the hostel and Apoorva brought them to a secret nearby hole-in-the-wall restaurant. It was hidden in the back of a community bar and stuffed the four with Brazilian fare for the fantastic price of 14 reals per person.
A well recognized modern architect, Oscar Niemeyer, designed the building where the next event of the evening unfolded. It contained a modern stage within its modern frame. The audience sat on two sides of the stage, thus viewing the side of an orchestra accompanied by a choir of 200+ school children who sang bubbly feel-good songs in Portugese, English and Spanish. Among the performers was a guitarist friend of Apoorva´s. Outside afterwards this friend was hilarious; he spoke good English but with a Portuguese twang and sentence structuring. It was a delightful introduction to the city. This friend then loaded all into his car and gave a tour of Sao Paulo´s nightspots (and more). As a musician and frequent performer he knew the streets and land with precision and depth, unloading one funny bit after another. After driving around and seeing a seemingly impossible number of sights, the gang went to bar. The guitarist knew the performers and managers and hence got the gang one hell of a bargain.
The following day got off to a most peculiar start. While waiting for a bus on the streets near the hostel, Derrick, Tim and Apoorva noticed a small crowd was building up 30 feet away. Upon the glass window were posted many signs advertising the appearance of Ronnie Coleman, the world´s best bodybuilder (this guy has been on countless weightlifting magazines and has won Mr. Olympia more times than Arnold). Minutes later an impressive hummer/tank/limo looking celerity wagon vehicle pulled up with police escort in tow and out came Mr. Coleman (he was rather short, which must help the illusion of his impossible muscularity to limb length ratio). Inside was a free event.
Later that Sunday the boys wandered about to see the the sights of the city: Colossal marketplaces, gorgeous parks, the Brazilian equivalent of Wall Street, a monetary museum, a 9th floor view, and the modern Art museum of Sao Paulo. All this walking about bore a grand appetite and they ventured to the Japanese district of Sao Paulo, Liberdade. Little Japan was utterly packed with vendors of the strangest of things. An all-you-can-eat Japanese Sushi buffet proved all too enticing and quite the steal.
Now, with the group´s bellies full, Apoorva recalled a soccer match that was scheduled for just an hour later. ´Why not´ was the collective response, so they boarded the metro once again off to another corner of the 18 million person metropolis. The stands were full of only the most ardent fans. From the moment the whistle blews the fans were engaged, swearing at every bad call or pass they didnt approve off. In spite of the crowd´s tenacity they did have a strange fear of rain. Nearly everyone in the stands bought an overpriced plastic bag poncho and it never even rained during the game. The people had a definite fear of cold and water. The drumming and cursing lasted for all of 90 minutes except for the celebration of a goal in the 65th minute. Everyone rejoiced, hugged and couples kissed. The gringos clapped and let out a hey.
After the game Apoorva showed that the Sao Pauloan equivalent to the beaches of Rio are the malls of the city, where the locals hang out every weekend. The group walked through one. American products are very pricey here and financing, which is new to Brazil, is a hit. The price of anything significantly high will have the installment price featured more prominently than the total price. Apoorva recalled how, just a few years ago, financing was not available for any purchase in Brazil and all houses had to be bought with cash, making houses a sign of only the very wealthy.
Sao Paulo is immense and daunting and lacks the tourist attractions of a city like Rio. The transportation system is overwhelmed by the sheer number of people. Fortunately, the Sunday traffic is far lighter. In a strange way Sao Paulo reminds one of Houston, another sprawling city with the troubles of congestion, a eclectic mix of people and a suffering, but not necessarily deserved, reputation. Both cities possess charms that are not broadcasted, but must be discovered. Thanks to the aid of Apoorva and his friend the charm was found right away. The city still has evidence of the jungle it replaced. In the few spots where buildings haven´t been erected stand massive tropical trees. Graffiti art is common and, since these gringos don´t know the words, it gives the city a sense of non-vulgar personality and character beyond the endless maze of buildings and pastel (pastry) shops.
Due to poor thinking everyone forgot to bring a camera along on Sunday´s excursion. So instead a description is used here to describe the best image of the day: the essence of Sao Paulo. The shot would have been taken from the top seats of the soccer stadium. Outward from the seats, in the foreground were the raucous fans, then a wide gap separating fans from the field (a security mechanism no doubt), then of course the field itself. Past the stadium was a thick dense area of tall trees, and beyond that miles away rose the skyline of countless skyscrapers. Contained in this shot would have seen the spirit and people, then the reality of the dangers of the city, then the object of the passion of the people, then the jungle that still has a pulse but is now replaced by a booming metropolis that looms overhead, impressive yet seemingly mocking your insignificance.
On Monday, Derrick and Tim set off for the best sights from the previous day with camera in hand, traveling as well to some destinations that Apoorva recommended. We´ll take time to post those photos later, but for now we have to get ready for a 16-hour bus ride to the Brazilian city of Foz de Iguacu, where we will rendezvous with the rest of the group.