Two Beers and a Pretzel

On Thursday the 22nd my uncle and I headed North from Porto Alegre to visit the hill country of Southern Brazil.  We made a brief stop at the airport to change my ticket back to Buenos Aires from the noon that day to February 4th.  TAM airlines told me to contact the issuing agency.  Expedia said it was not possible to change, but I could book another fare for $250.  The TAM office at the airport was more than happy to change my fare to the 4th only 2 hours before the flight for a whopping $30.
The airport in PA has a huge mural depicting the history of flight

Brazilians credit Santos Dumont (a Brazilian) with inventing the airplane.  Being from Ohio, I checked up, and Santos apparently built and flew an airplane in Europe 3 years after the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk flight, but he had more witnesses and launched without a catapult.  You can read about the controversy here.  Besides, their mural actually has 2 Tie Fighters in it.  Seriously, George Lucas may want more say in his role regarding the history of flight.

Of all the things in the airport, I found a GAP authorized retailer.  One of the duty free shops has a taxable store near the entrance.  An extremely limited selection, but it is there…  The actual area containing GAP clothes can be completely seen thru the window – about 10 ft by 10 ft.

After settling my ticket woes, we hit the road to Gramado.

See the Google Map Here

German immigrants settled in Gramado in the late 1800′s and seemingly convinced the original Portuguese settlers of the benefit of Bavarian architecture, then invited the Italians over.  So what you get is a Bavarian village where they speak Portuguese, full of furniture makers, Italian restaurants, a growing eco-tourism industry, and loads of beautiful scenery reminiscent of the Rhine River Valley in Germany or Gatlinburg Tennessee.  And, it actually does snow here occasionally in July because the altitude is around 850m (2,700 ft) above sea level

We spent much of the day checking different ecotourismo companies for whitewater rafting trips.  Some companies advertise 4km, others 8km.  The river here that is about class-3 or 4 for about 4 km; after that, you could take a canoe with little trouble.  Considering the price and that it would eat up hald a day, we decided against the rafting.

That night we dined at a Brazilian Churrascaria (chur-hask-area) serving traditional Brazilian food (something like rotisserie barbecue over a wood fire) along with cultural music, costumes and dancing.  Since this region was populated by Germans, there’s a lot of half-samba, half-polka music.

Before the food and the main show, a guide explained the traditional Southern Brazilian tea – Yerba Mate (also called Cha Mate when the leaves are toasted).  The tea is held in a gourd and sipped thru a metal straw with a filter on the end that goes into the tea.  In my opinion, it tastes like crap, but I’m not a fan of tea in general.  The Brazilians love it.  You’ll see them carrying a gourd with the metal straw, and a thermos of hot water.  On Sunday’s in the park in Porto Alegre, you’ll be the only person without a gourd in your hand.  Drinking this tea is a social experiment in germ warfare…  They share the same straw with everyone and anyone in the vicinity of the gourd.  It’s a social bonding activity in Brazil that goes against the common North American behavior of “this is mine, that is yours, and we don’t drink from the same cup.”

With that in mind, I donned the Goucho hat, found a dancer and a gourd of tea and paid about $4 for this picture.  No, I didn’t drink it.  I’m sure that particular gourd was in the hands of about 50 people that night.

Then there was a lot of dancing that reminded me of German dancers wearing cowboy costumes instead of lederhosen.

The show also included the Gaucho (South American cowboy) skills that you often see at North American theme parks where a guy takes ropes with balls on the end and dances with them, then lights them on fire and gets his groove on…

The rope with the balls is essentially a type of lasso.  The Guchos would throw the rope to lasso the legs of the cattle.

Pronounced ih-tie-poo…

The Itaipu dam is a partnership between Brazil and Paraguay that started with a major bi-national treaty back in the 60′s.  It features the concrete structure in addition to an earth-rock-clay structure, an impressive concrete spillway, a 10km long fish migration channel to help spawning fish navigate the 120 meter change in altitude, an ecological preserve, and technological education center.  You can find out much more at http://www.itaipu.gov.br/index.php?q=en

At over 7.7 kilometers, Itaipu was the longest dam in the world until Three Gorges was built in China.  With very similar design (multiple semi-hollow pyramids).  Itaipu has 20 turbines versus 30 at Three Gorges.  Despite the higher design capacity in China, Itaipu set the current world record for power production (94.68 million Megawatt Hours in 2008) due to the high flow of the river (the reservoir here only fluctuates about 3 meters from max to min), and one of the best maintenance and operational down-time ratings in the industry.  They say Three Gorges is only seasonally able to generate part of it’s power because it depends on meting ice in the spring and summer, and even then it still has not hit max capacity because its’ reservoir is not yet full.

Officially, Brazil owns 1/2 the generating capacity and Paraguay owns the other 1/2, but Paraguay is currently generating 96% of it’s power needs from the dam (with the other 4% from another facility) using only about 2 of its’ turbines.  Paraguay runs on 50Hz and Brazil runs on 60Hz, so Paraguay sells it’s excess power to Brazil which is transmitted to a Sao Paulo substation before it is converted to 60Hz.

On Saturday, our tour started outside the dam on the lower level…

These photos give you an idea of the hollow pyramid structure…

In the preceding photo, you may be able to distinguish the original riverbed – 70 meters below where I’m standing.

then we went on top…

Into Paraguay (though technically still part of the international area of the dam, thus avoiding visa requirements) and finally inside the dam to see the control room which straddles the border between Brazil and Paraguay (the dark line on the floor – pic taken from the Paraguay side)…

… into the 1 kilometer long main hall.  The red sections of the floor are removable plates to allow service access to the generators and turbines.

Look at me getting skinny.  I’ve lost 5 more lbs since Christmas!!  Those pants barely fit back in Ohio – now they’re almost too big.

Now, a video of one of the turbine shafts…

Aside from the noise, you could sense the power of the turbine.  Considering that just over your head is a massive electromagnetic field generating 700 Mega-Watts of electricity.  The whole structure vibrates, but the turbine shaft will exhaust you just standing nearby.  It’s a very strange feeling, like all the energy is being drained out of your body as you watch the turbine shaft spin.

Aside from a slight dehydration headache (Rafa and some Canadian girls we met on the waterfall tour forced me to go drinking Friday night) and being a little sick from ingesting some river water in the boat under the falls, it was still very worth seeing Itaipu, and definitely worth ponying up the extra money for the special facility tour…

Later that afternoon Rafa and I caught separate buses.  I went back to my uncle in Porto Alegre, and Rafa went back to her home on Santa Caterina.  A sad goodbye after spending nearly a month together.  I’m really going to miss her, but I know I’ll see her again.

After 14 hours on a bus, I’m finally back with my Uncle in Porto Alegre.  I need some downtime to plan the next part of my trip.  We’re also planning an eco-tourism excursion into the nearby mountains next weekend.

I’m not really sure how you spell Iguasu.  I’ve seen Iguasu, Iguazu, Iguassu and Iguacu.  However it’s spelled, it’s one impressive waterfall.  The falls are split between Brazil and Argentina.  The views are supposedly better on the Argentine side, so that’s where we went on Friday…

Here’s one panorama of one part of the falls.  The actual falls are under you, the visible portion on the right…  Then imagine as the falls stretch to the center of the picture they make an isthmus and there are more falls on the other side.

There were walkways at all levels in the jungle over and under the falls…

Rafa and I booked a tour to the Argentine side of the falls, including border crossings, a train ride, views of the two different major sections of the falls and a very wet boat ride into the falls.  These boats are essentially big motorized rafts that fit 50 people.

Our boat was full of teenage Chinese girls.  They were astonishingly annoying.  When we were on the boat I barely noticed them, but you can really hear them on this video…

If that doesn’t show up, you can watch it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOr2CQNm_9Q

After the falls, we rode down the river for a while and did a little jet-boat style whitewater rafting.  We got off the boat and had to walk up a long staircase to the jungle tour.  This is where the torture came in…  The 20 or so Chinese girls doused themselves and everyone else in the worst smelling bug spray I’ve ever encountered, then whined and moaned the entire time while climbing the staircase.  It was like fingernails down a chalkboard.  For a while I entertained the fantasy of throwing one of them back into the river as an example to shut the rest of them up – or at least make them run back to the river to help her and alleviate my aural suffering.

Once that calmed down, we got on an open-air vehicle thru the jungle and a guide explained to us that all the really neat animals like Jaguar’s and Puma’s are nocturnal…  Thanks buddy…

After the Catamaran ride, we found a bus to Paraty.  It was a local bus, and we had to stand for the first 45 minutes of a 2 hour ride.  Up and down the mountains; hairpins and switchbacks.  It was exhausting.  Then when we finally arrived, the town was a muddy, dusty pile of dung.  Literally.  Only 2 days before, a dam upriver in the mountains had broken and completely flooded the town.  It was a mess.

We had booked a hostel outside of town, but tried one closer to the Colonial old-town center.  Yuk!!  We eventually made it to the hostel we originally reserved and it was much nicer, and 2km away from the mess.  Although the beach was still a bit dirty from all the mud that had recently washed into the bay, it was much better than the town.

The biggest dissapointment for me was the water restrictions, but in lieu of the suffereing in the town, it was a minimal concern.  I was in dire need of having laundry done; so much so that I took a few essentials in the shower with me and improvised a clothesline.

Going back to town there was a nice route that avoided most of the mess, and since the colonial center is the tourist draw, they had cleaned that up before anything else.  There were a few old churches, a ton of cafe’s and shops, old cobblestone streets (ankle breakers).  The city was founded by the Portuguese in 1667 and became a huge exporter of gold after the nearby discovery of one of the world’s richest gold mines in 1696.  This church is right on the seashore where the river meets the bay…

…and the opposing view.

Apparently somewhere in that tranquil water there are a hundred or so cars and a number of sunken boats that washed out into the sea with the flood.

The next day we took a local bus to a town where Rafa lived for a few months 8 years ago…  Trindade (trin-da-gee).  It was very nice, but I was ridiculously tired from a sweltering room with no AC and being eaten alive by mosquitoes all night, so I just slept on the beach while she went to find her old house and friends.

On the 14th, we took a 6 hour bus ride to Sao Paulo (on a nice, executive bus) and caught another 18 hour overnigt bus to Foz do Iguacu, where I am now.  On the first bus I sat next to a stunningly beautiful girl with haunting blue eyes, Ulane, from Estonia, who had lived in Cincinnati for a few years, so it was fun to talk about home with someone who knew the area.  I think I have a place to crash in Estonia now, as she hosts travellers on hospitalityclub.com.

She told me that the previous day in Paraty someone tried to assasinate the mayor, and did kill the water minister.  Even though you saw the trucks constantly going back and forth, apparantly only the friends and family of government officials were getting water delivered, and after a few days of that a few people cracked.

So today we’re relaxing all day and catching up on internet time.  Tomorrow we tour the Argentine side of the falls and take a boat ride under the falls, then the next day we tour the nearby Itaipu Dam – currently the 2nd longest hydroelectric dam in the world (7.7km) behind the Three Gorges monster project in China.

I don’t know about you guys, but I just love a place where the primary vehicle in the law enforcement fleet is one dune buggy… followed by a few golf carts and motorcycles.  That’s Ilha Grande…

On the 10th we took a 2 hour bus trip from Rio followed by a 2 hour ferry ride to reach Ilha Grande.  We arrived on a dock near the hostel associated to the hostel in Rio, but they were full, so we had to walk about 1/2 a mile on the beach (very loose sand) to get to town and find a campground.  I was carrying my regular pack on back, day-pack on front, and all of our camping gear on my shoulders.  Roughly 120 pounds.  Once in town, we walked about another mile on dirt roads and up a hill that seemed like Mt Everest at the time to the Hostel/Campground.

The new hostel’s grounds were very cool, and they luckilly had an open double room (thus negating the need for the big blue bag and everything in it)…

The rooms were all separate bungalows that looked like a little Hobbit town.  Luckily, they had awesome bathrooms – even without hot water (which you really don’t want here anyway).

After being completely exhausted and drenched in sweat, we took showers and rested before dinner, then headed back into town along what proved to be less Mt Everest and more like a cute little path down the hill.  In town, the Christmas and New Years decor was still up.  We never saw the Reggae festival – must have been on another side of the island.

That didn’t matter.  It was a beautiful night with a full moon.

There were a lot of Hippie artists along the main street.  One had some really cool looking incense smokers made of carved and painted bamboo and local jem-stones for about $40 each.

When we got back, there was a guy playing guitar on the porch of the main building.  I joined him and we played until about midnight (when they kick you off the porch).  It turns out that he was Brazil’s national Judo champion, and had represented his country in 3 Olympic games – and a darn good guitarist.

Anyway, that night we booked a boat tour of 4 locations on the island for the next day.  The boat was a lot of fun.  About 70 people comfortably on a big boat with fresh fruit, live music, and a very fun staff…

We snorkeled at Lagoa Azul (blue lagoon) where I proved that my indestructible camera is still waterproof.  The previous problem was obviously sand in the seals and had nothing to do with alternate use of the camera as brass knuckles back in Argentina.

Lots of fish, some large polyp stony coral, and a few sponges.  More than I expected with hundreds of tourists and a dozen large boats right on the reef.

I’ll spare everyone in the freezing midwest the beach pictures and simply let you revel in the fact that I somehow managed to reaquire a sunburn.  Then I realized that I’m right around 20 degrees South of the equator, and the summer sun is almost directly overhead.  This is literally the closest I’ve ever been to the most direct sunlight of my life.  My next bottle of sunscreen will be factor 45.  However, on a side note, sunscreen is ridiculously expensive in Brazil.  Roughly $20 for 8 ounces of any decent uva/uvb factor.

Our tour to 4 spots ended up being only 3, so Rafa negotiated a discount on some sweet travel back to the mainland…  The next day we set out for Paratay (par-a-chi) on a very smooth catamaran.