Two Beers and a Pretzel

Goodbye Brazil!!  I’ll be back – there’s so much I haven’t seen, and I made way too many friends.

Lat night we made Grandma’s recipe Lasagna at my uncle’s house, then went out for a milkshake.  Julia met me at the cafe and took me out for a last night on the town with her sister-in-law, her brother Rafael, and another friend who was already at the bar.  We went to Rafael’s house first so Julia could have some dinner, and I got to play his guitar – satisfying a fix I’ve had since the hostel on Ilha Grande.

I have no idea why I’m squinting in that pic, but it’s the only one I got last night, so here you go…

I flew back to Buenos Aires this morning and I’m going to a tango show / dinner tonight (one of the things I didn’t see last time).  I’m currently trying to book an overnight bus to Puerto Madryn (leaving tomorrow) for some whale watching and hiking (and a slim chance of actually seeing orca pods hunting baby seals).

My weight is about even for the last 2 weeks, having eaten a lot of great food lately.   All that food in Gramado, the best Thai place in Porto Alegre (actually ranked the best restaurant of any kind in the city), a few “barru” sandwiches, sushi, etc…  I guess that comes with settling in to a routine tht involves staying up until 6 am every night, and the fact hat there was ice cream in the house.  The next few weeks of travel will include a lot of time on busses, sometimes 2 days on a row, so I should get back to losing weight – simply from not having the opportunity to overeat.

I’m not sure how often I’ll have internet access, so FYI, there may be a few days between updates.

On Thursday I met Julia (friend of a friend) and visited her at the restraunt she works at where there was a comic book release party going on.  I chatted with Deborah, who’s brother wrote the comic.  Then Julia, Debora and I went to a Rock club where a decent band was covering the Strokes.  I somehow got home around 6 AM.

I was supposed to go out with them again on Friday, but I think my tolerance it improving because both girls were hungover and/or sick that night, but I was fine.

On Saturday, my aunt and uncle took me to the Ibere Camargo art gallery.  He and my aunt’s father were friends.  I liked his use of texture, but the paintings on display were pretty dark.  Even so, the gallery is a neat building.

Those small windows in the walkways had a great panoramic view of the city.

One last artsy shot of the building.

Yesterday, my uncle took me to a park that has an outdoor flea market every Sunday.  The park has a pond with paddle boats, a mini-zoo, and rides.  Fun for the kids, but I was enjoying the market with Peruvian Flute bands, Guatemalan indian rock bands, hippie art, and bizarre collections of junk.

I almost bought the Michael Jackson BAD LP – thinking of my buddy Ken who does a mean moonwalk…

There were also masked people in black with white words on their chest performing a silent protest against Oppression, Imperialism, Injustice, Exploitation, etc…  I decided that someday I would march on Washington to protest against people who protest against abstract concepts.  That’s almost stupid enough to make it on to CNN.

Last night (Sunday), Julia picked up me and her best friend Mariana for a night on the town.  We went to a dance club on the shady side of town – similar to the Samba bar back in Florianopolis.  Also similar to when I went out with Bile and Rafa are the looks on people’s faces that seem to say “who the heck is that gringo and with those two babes?”   But the same as everywhere in Brazil, the people turn out to be really friendly.

The band was kind of Samba / Reggae / Funk.  Interesting to listen to, but you had to wait for them to play a fast enough song to really dance.  That place slowed down after midnight, so we left for a street full of bars that are usually hopping…  except with most of the city out at the beach for the holiday weekend, the bars decided to close early.  We ended up eating, drinking, and having some fun conversations at a corner cafe until almost 3 AM.  Here’s me, Mariana, Julia, and part of Christopher Walken’s face.

We asked an old guy at the bar to take our picture.  About 30 minutes later, Julia comes over cracking up because this 70 year old guy was asking if I was her boyfriend.  When she said no, he told her that she needs a real man with experience to teach her the ways of the world.  I wish I had taken a picture of that guy.

We’re supposed to all go out again tonight, then possibly to the Alanis Morissette concert where Julia is working tomorrow before I fly out on the 4th.

Through the course of the evening I learned that McDonald’s is open until 6 am on weekends, and everyone goes there after drinking.  That niche is seemingly secure unless White Castle, Steak & Shake, Waffle House, or Skyline Chili ever make it down to Brazil.  Boy, do I miss Skyline…

My cousin Julia wanted to show me the Children’s Science Museum in Porto Alegre, so we went today.  It’s a holiday weekend here in Brazil, so it wasn’t very crowded.

Among the typical exhibits on electricity, sound, light, leverage and music, they had an entire section on geology that included some of the crystal geodes that Southern Brazil is famous for…

It’s hard to tell in the picture, but this geode was about the size of a large laundry basket.  That display bumped up against the kid-favorite, dinosaurs!!

One thing that would not happen in the USA, they had a whole section on human reproduction, showing the reproductive systems, development stages in the womb, and then a birthing video that showed everything.  I seriously doubt you’d see that last part in a kids museum in the States.

Anyway, after that, I found out the REAL reason I was asked to come along…  Julia wanted to see me on the Human Gyroscope…

Just outside of Canela there is an alpine slide, arboretum, another crescent shaped canyon and a very neat looking waterfall.  My uncle and I visited the alpine slide first, but they wouldn’t let me take a video.  It turned out to be a pretty short ride and my still photos of the track were not impressive enough to post.

Next, the Parque Das Sequoias.  They had some 50 year old Giant California Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) and Chinese Dawn Redwoods (metasequoia glyptostroboides) among many other trees.

A Giant Sequoia (Sequoia gigantea) was listed in their literature, but I didn’t see one.  After seeing them in California 2 years ago, I was wondering how they could live in this relatively mild climate at a much lower altitude.  Apparently, they can’t…  The park had one for about 50 years that just recently died.  If you haven’t seen a Giant Sequoia in person, you owe it to your self to go to Sequoia National Park and see the General Sherman Tree.  It’s the largest (by mass) single living thing on Earth.  Here’s my pic from 2 years ago.

Yes, those are fully grown people near the base (it’s 275 ft tall), and the trunk of the tree would take up 4 lanes of traffic on a typical US freeway.  So hearing they had Sequoia’s here in Brazil, I was expecting something like that.  Oh well, they had some nice trails and over 120 tree species from all over the world.  They actually had the young redwoods, which are in the Sequoia genus and already towered over the other trees, but that was still kind of dissappointing – like going to see a humpback whale and they say “Oh, sorry, it died.  But here are some nice dolphins to look at.”

From there we drove to the Crescent Canyon park for some hiking and finally on to the iconic waterfall.  It’s about 400 meters tall and flows over a large cave-like opening.  We rode a chairlift up to a high vantage point, but the best views were from the path below the lift.

After all that exhausting riding on an alpine slide, walking thru a tree park, and sitting on a chairlift, we decided to get some food.  Actually we hiked up and down about 300 steps in the crescent canyon, so we really were tired and hungry.  Fortunately, we met a local the previous day who recommended the “best Apple Strudel in town”.

This was my kind of place.  A number of my friends would appreciate that the rafters were lined with cans of every beer imaginable…

The owner and head chef, Norbert, chatted with us and recommended the smoked pork chop, schnitzel and sausage with some sides from his home region of Germany around Ramstein, including a homemade spicy mustard and some decent saurkraut.  In what has become a recurring theme, he fell in love with a Brazilian girl and moved here.

Of course, the finale at a place named the “Strudelhaus” was his Vienna-style Apple Strudel with heavy sweet cream and vanilla ice cream on the side…

Yummy!!!

We then left for Porto Alegre via New Petropolis.  Continuing the German theme, New Petropolis has a park at its’ center that preserves the original buildings of the early German immigrants.

On Sundays (which it was), a polka band plays for beer as a surprising number of people show up to socialize, listen to polka, eat German food, drink beer, and dance.

Needing to wash down the Apple Strudel, we opted for the beer, splitting a potato pancake and listening to the music..

Considering that my “Lonely Plant – South America on a Shoestring” book dedicated barely one page to Canela and the National Park, and did not really mention Gramado or Bento, I had a great 3 days in this beautiful region.  It may not fit their criterea for ‘shoestring’ travel, but it just goes to show that it’s always worth it to use a guidebook as a simple guide, not as a travel bible, and make friends with the locals (even if he is already your uncle).

The city of Bento Gonçalves, the hub of Brazil’s wine country, is about 2 hours Northwest of Gramado by car.  The surrounding hillsides are a kind of mix between Tuscany and Napa.  This region is reputedly the second best place in the world for the champagne grape.  Of course, since this isn’t France, they have to call it Brut.

The morning of the 24th I was a little stuffed up from the air conditioning back in the hotel, and my ears completely failed to pop as we descended from the high hill country into the valley.  Additionally, I had a pretty painful headache that I assume was related to all the sunburn I had acquired yesterday.  My scalp was actually blistering.  Of course, I left all the decongestants and pain killers back at the hotel.  It was a painful day, but not enough to stop me from sampling some vino.

The roads down to Bento were great.  My uncle commented that these twisty mountain roads would be fun in my car.  Granted, we’d have to be driving about 3x faster than 60 km/h, but It really made me miss my car.  I would have gotten about 30 speeding tickets.

This brings to light a few interesting facts about driving in Brazil.  There are speed bumps everywhere preventing what I would consider to be an ideal driving speed (roughly 120 mph).  They also have well marked photo-radar speed check stations every few miles that will automatically send a ticket to the registered owner of the car.  Similar to the USA, you get points for tickets, and after about 12 or so, you lose the right to drive.  Unlike the USA, you can simply say that you were not the driver, and get the “actual” driver to agree and assume the points and the penalty.  Many men’s wives have no idea how close they are to losing their license.  This has also sparked a cottage industry where people of legal age who do not actually own cars or drive will get their license, advertise in the paper, and sell you their driving points.  Similarly, if you own a business with a fleet of cars, you can simply apply your points to any of the cars in the fleet.  If you get too close to the point limit on your existing fleet, the company mysteriously acquires more vehicles.  In spite of this ingenious way of dealing with speeding tickets, there are not really highways in the sense that most US citizens picture…  more like a lot of state routes with many intersections and speed bumps, so real excessive speed is not a viable option – not that I would ever do that

OK back to the wine…

We started at the large vineyard in the photo.  MIOLO is an established winemaker that came to this valley about a decade ago.  We toured the vineyard and cellars with an English speaking guide, then proceeded on to the tasting.

Wine aging in American and French barrels…

Champagne racks…

We tasted about 8 wines here even though the tour package was only supposed to include 5. The red’s were decent, but a little bland for my taste.  Not quite up to par with Italy or California in my opinion.  It may be a little too wet in this region to pull really complex flavors out of the grapes.  The white’s were better, although I’m not much of a white wine drinker.  The champagne was another story.  I usually don’t like champagne, but this was really good.

The tasting was R$15 (about $6 USD), and they let you use the entry ticket as a coupon for the same value in the shop on the way out.

We moved on to another vineyard that shuffled us around between existing appointments, but we ended up skipping out of there to the Villa Valduga vineyard.  The winery has been around since 1875, so I believe it’s the oldest in the valley.  Oddly, they said that they mow down and replant the vines every 12 years.  My headache was in full effect, so I didn’t take many pictures of the grounds, although the peacocks made me get the camera out.

We took another tour of this winery and the cellars.

By the end of the tour, I was feeling much better – just in time for another tasting…

This place had great wine – I even liked the red’s.  The Cabernet Sauvignon was tasty, as was the Merlot.  Cabernet Franc was so-so; I was too wowed by the Franc back in Cali at Chateau St Jean to really give this one a good rating, but it was better than at Miolo.  Here, they actually had a Gewürztraminer that was good, and the white’s were all very good.  Their Chardonnay almost converted me to white wine, and the Champagne was some of the best I’ve ever had (apparently it won an award in France).  The server even had us try their 15 year Brandy (pretty good).  I asked why they had Brandy, but not Port, and he went behind the counter and opened a very tasty bottle.  When I get home, I’m going to look for their wine in local shops.

The price was also R$15 per person, but rather than a discount on purchases, they included some monster sized wine glasses with engraved Valduga logos.

After the tasting, we went for a quick dinner at a hotel where we talked with one of the outgoing chef’s in the lobby, but I was not feeling well again, so I didn’t eat too much.  However, the hotel had a heck of a view over the valley.

The drive home was equally as uncomfortable as the drive there until we arrived at our hotel and I downed an Alleve and fell asleep.

Here’s a nifty new trick…  I’ve added a GEO Mashup mod to my blog so that I can link posts to a location and give you a google map of where I am.  There’s also a map on the “Sean’s Maps” page that shows my route, and has stick-pins at the locations where posts were geo-tagged.