Two Beers and a Pretzel

Someone was complaining that I was still too pale in the belly flop video after 3 weeks in the tropics.  Well, I have some color now…

Actually, the photo looks a lot worse than it really is.  Here’s what I really look like (drinking a caipirinha – something like tequila, lime, and sugar).

The beach is fun (of course), but it would be incredible if I spoke Portuguese and if I was about 16 years old.  Actually, a really cute girl approached me when she heard me and my uncle speaking English.  She walked with us for about quite a while to practice her English.  She asked some odd questions, like do all Americans really hate the British like her friend told her?  She invited me back to talk with her twin sister, who also loves to practice English.  I’m pretty sure she was 16 or 17, so I erred on the side of caution and walked back to my place.

I think we’re on the “family” side of the island.  The ocean side has a surf beach that is probably more my speed.  However, I am hanging out with my Aunt Maria’s sisters.  We’re going to another Samba bar tonight, and they apparantly have plans to hit a few hot spots for New Years.

Merry Christmas from Santa Caterina Island!!

We got into town just before sunset and headed to an Italian restaurant that is apparently my Grandpa’s favorite place from when he visited ten years ago.  I don’t know exactly what this was, but it had ham, mushrooms, a rich cream sauce, and cheese stuffed pasta shells.   Not traditional Christmas fare, but doggone yummy!

Other than that, it was an uneventful day of riding in a car for 6-7 hours.

Look for the Statue of Liberty at 27 seconds into the video…

I took a long exposure of Porto Alegre at night with the G9:

Then my aunt’s younger sister came by after midnight to take me out for a few hours to a live music Samba bar with her friends.  They all spoke some English, so we could communicate pretty well.  We got the fundamentals down…

hello  =  olá

beer  =  cerveja (cer-vay-cha)

thank you  =  obrigado (ob-ree-ga-do)

bathroom  =  banheiro

I’m sorry  =  desculpe

you got your chocolate in my peanut butter  =  tens o meu chocolate em manteiga de amendoim

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Tonight is the big Christmas party, then tomorrow we’ll be on the road all day to Florinopolis.  I’m not sure about out web access, so if I don’t get online….

MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

My Christmas present to myself..  I’ve already lost 16.5 pounds since I left home 6 weeks ago and more than 22 pounds since I quit work!!  At this rate, by the end of this trip I may hit my college weight from back when I was on the University of Cincinnati rowing team.

Hello from Brazil!!!!

The 6th country on my world tour (yes, I’m counting Panama since I was stuck there for nearly 4 hours).

I’m with my uncle and his family in Porto Alegre.  He took me for a tour of the town last night…  It turned into a godfather/godson mini pub-crawl.  I sampled some local euro-style pizza and a number of local beers an a really hip neighborhood.

Today we dropped off my cousin at kindergarten, went shopping for the coming Christmas party, and I unsuccessfully tried to find a spare battery for my Canon camera.  We need to find a real camera shop…  the electronic boutiques do not carry the fancy pro-sumer camera gear.  Still, I tested a few camera modes and even tried the time lapse video mode, which was pretty neat.  We were just driving, so the video is not special, but it gives you an idea of the potential of this new camera on longer journey’s…

Aside from everyone speaking Portugese, this could be Miami.  Very cosmopolitan and modern.

Also, yes guys, there are some stunningly beautiful women here (no photos of them yet – wait until I hit the beach at Florinopolis in a few days), and the average is higher than normal.  For the regional battle of who has the hottest babes, so far Brazil is beating Argentina.  Word on the street is that there’s 5% more women than men, and closer to 10% if you discount the men who bat for the other team.

The downside here is that it’s expensive to get things you’re used to getting in the USA for minimal expense like cars and electronics.  Take any car and multiply the US cost by 2x to 2.5x to get the cost in Brazil in US Dollars.  A loaded Honda Accord would be near $60,000.00.  Yowza!!  You’re buying one for yourself and one for a government official…  One small 99 cent bag of Snyder’s of Hanover pretzel snacks was $5 in a “gourmet” shop (the only place you could find them).  However, commonly available items and food are generally cheaper and you get a level of service from every shop that is completely lacking back home.

My uncle was right.  I clearly had not been to a real Argentine steakhouse.  Two of my UK dorm mates, Carlos and Jonathan, wanted steak.  Jonathan recommended a place he’s been to a few times, so we walked to El DesNivel in the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires – about 2 kilometers South of the hostel.

It doesn’t look like much, and it’s not in the nicest area.  Perfect, the best restaurants are usually out of the way and nowhere near the busy tourist areas.

I ordered a sparkling mineral water, black pudding sausage (congealed beef blood wrapped in intenstine), a salad, steak with peppercorns and thin sliced potatoes.  The blood sausage tasted kind of like liver, but was very thick and syrupy.  Very good.  Then the steak came.  It was surrounded by thick sliced chips and had some kind of sauce on it.  I’m always suspect of steaks that come with sauce, but this was phenominal.  The sauce complimented the beef without masking any flavor, or adding too much of any other flavor.  The beef was brilliant.  The whole meal was $14 USD.

The presentation was minimal, the service was overtaxed, but the beef was sooooooo good that I’m already planning a return visit when I’m back in BA in a month.

I’ll rate this my 3rd best steak ever.  The CraftSteak in Vegas for Steve’s bachelor party last October was easily #1 (free – thanks to Ethicon for treating “Dr.” Maley and “Dr.” Danekind), followed by the another night out with Steve – surf and turf at some beach side bistro in Acapulco ($9.  However, any memory I have from Acapulco may be biased because I totally fell for one of the girls we were with).  My own home grilled creation is officially 4th.

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Actually, I may be in South America longer than planned…  I found a tour that takes you all over Argentina, glaciers, wine country, everything – including overnight busses and hostel’s for under $1000 USD.  18-22 days.  This includes the End Of The Earth – Tierra Del Fuego, and the southernmost town in the world – Puerto Toro.   If I do that, I have to take a guitar to Cape Horn and record myself playing Gordon’t Lightfoot’s other shipwreck song for dad (props to anyone else who can name it).

They say from the port there, you can book last minute boats to Antartica and back for about $1500, where pre-booking from the USA runs more like $5000.  Two more weeks, but if you’re going to go, you might as well go all the way!!

We’ll see…  If I keep taking diversions like this I may not see all the places I want to see by July.  I may need to find a telecommuting job for 15 hours a weeky by March or April and extend this trip to 2 years.

Holy cow, it’s 2:30am!!  Goodnight.