Warren's 2006 Travelogues from Brazil

--Intro to trip

So, get ready for it, it looks like the Littlest Cowboy is on the
road again - Brazil & Malaysia!

So I am heading out on Thursday, Jan 26, for Brazil, on my final
trip. And to celebrate this, I am taking 6 extra days at the
beginning and heading to Rio. Yup, Rio de Janeiro, home of
Corcovado, the Sugar Loaf and the Copacabana Beach!

After that I am home for about a day and then off for about 3
weeks to Kuala Lumpur, home of the twin Petronas Towers of
Entrapment fame, pirated electronics and tandoori chicken! Colonel
Sanders must have thought he had died and gone to heaven when he
opened up his first restaurant there! Everyone eats chicken!

So we will see what wonderful happenings are in store for this
round! I am planning to stay in a hotel two blocks from the famous
Copacabana Beach, home of the dental floss bikini. So many things
to check out here, the Sugar Loaf (Pão de Açúcar),  Cristo
Redentor (statue of Christ) on Mt. Corcovado, and the Samba! Go
Latin dancing! This is the dance that Fred Astaire and Ginger
Rogers made famous in the 30s, along with Carmen Miranda in the
40s. It's okay if you don't remember these people, they're all
dead now anyway! In Kuala Lumpur I am hoping to rent a motorcycle
again and tour the mainland, heading out in to the countryside on
their little 80cc motorcycles. I even have a line on a Harley, but
I don't know if I will be able to swing that one. A motorcycle is
already waiting for me, I am told. This is a good thing. (My poor
mother will start fretting once she reads this, poor thing!)

So this will be my south of the equator holiday (23°S), and then
Malaysia (3°N) will be my north of the equator holiday. And as
always, what is important on a business trip? Palm trees! And both
of these feature palm trees, so Warren is very happy.

Will I find me another Kelly (you remember Kelly from my last
foray?). Well, we can always hope, can't we? The camera is
charged, the extra batteries packed, passport readied, website
prep'd and we're good to go! Even have my hotel already booked by
Copacabana Beach. So, if you happen to be in Rio at the end of
January, come and look me up!
	

So, I am off today, with a change of plans.

It all started on Sunday night, as I decided to find out whether
or not I could rent a moped in Rio de Janeiro to check out the
countryside. I am not a big city person other than for building
architecture, so the country always has a good appeal for me.

I soon discovered it was very, very hard to find a moped shop in
Rio on the Internet. Well, maybe they are just too small or too
poor to deal with the Internet. So I wrote to four of the big bike
tours (you know, 4 countries in 14 days type of operation) and see
if they knew of some moped shops in their neighbourhood.

Turns out the theft rate is too high in Rio. You take a moped to a
store, go in the store and come back out and ... nada! No moped!
The island resorts have them, but that's because it is harder to
drive a moped on water.

But this last guy writes back and says that with the dates I was
interested and what he perceived I was looking to do, he had an
offer I might be interested in. He had to go on Saturday and pick
up a solo rider that had wanted to go riding in the Paraná State
(of that fish fame) for ten days by himself. He now had to go and
pick him up and bring him back to Rio. Would I be interested in
coming along for the ride? I get a tour guide and a translator for
free (the other guy paid for him already), I just have to rent a
motorcycle, and be on my way.

So I told him what my finance situation was and this allowed for
about 2 1/2 days of traveling with him. We communicated a lot via
email over Monday and Tuesday, and now he has me up to 4 days on
the bike for the same price, so I guess we're getting along okay.
So, in 24 hours from me sending this, I will be on a BMW F650GS
Dakar booting southwest across Brazil. The total trip is about 800
km, with a lot of it being on dirt roads. It was the dirt roads
that got him. Apparently most of the people that come down to
Brazil want the blacktop and the big bikes. He likes dirt roads,
more scenic. I am okay with dirt roads, so I think my appeal is
that he gets to have some fun with someone else. It's all good for
me!

The change in plans, aside from this bonus ride, is that he said
that he would meet me in Sao Paulo, instead of Rio (400 km away).
So I canceled my trip from Sao Paulo to Rio as he will meet me at
the airport, and we will continue southwest to pick up the rider.

So I will not be anywhere near an Internet connection until Monday
night at the earliest. So my next update will be on Tuesday, I
would suspect. Lots of pictures, lots of stories, I am sure!

For those of you who like to play with Google Earth, click on this link
to see where I will be in Rio. Augustos Copacabana Beach Hotel

Talk to you then!
	

So, it is around 9:30 p.m. Edmonton time, corrected for Rio it is
2:30 a.m. I am sitting in Executive Class and just had my picture
taken, so I can even prove I was here! Why did they stop calling it
First Class. It is such a good phrase. Or perhaps I am just old-
fashioned and don't like the change. Executive Class, no pizzazz to
it. No sense of history, of being on a steam freighter with linen
chair, black servants, a chablis, the men shooting skeet guns over
the edge while the women held on to their floppy hats. Why don't
they just call it 'Too $$$', it gets the same thing across. And they
are expensive. My ticket here is around $1800 for just the Toronto
to Sao Paulo hop, the guy next to me paid $5300. Sucker! But then,
he's also with a company that apparently affords him that luxury.
Now, who's the sucker? I'm supposed to be in Coach. I just happen to
have upgrade coupons.

So I am wondering just what the heck I am in for, and I realize how
I haven't done something like this before and have not covered off
all my bases. No one knows who my contact in Brazil is. No one knows
who what my Passport number is. No one knows where I am staying at,
at least on Monday night. I could end up in a ditch somewhere
beneath a marauding school of piranha fish and no one would be any
the wiser. Thank goodness for my sister. She drove me to the airport
today since I had a 1:10 p.m. flight and she had a 1:00 p.m. flight.
She is going to Frankfurt, I am going to São Paulo. Don't we just
sound like an international family? So anyway, she thought of all
this along the way, what with her being the older, wiser sibling, so
I left a copy of my passport (I have several photocopies to flash
around) and the email address of the guy I am meeting up with in
Brazil. And currently all I know about him is that his name is
davis@brazilmoto.com. Not much to go on, really. But it is at least
a start. It sounds like he has at least 2 employees, a girl and a
driver. The driver is probably a boy. But it could also be the girl.
The girl could even be his wife. We'll see when we get there.

I am curious about his new place. He is in the process of buying an
'estate' that dates back to 1752, apparently, even predating the
coffee error, which I guess is important in Brazil. It includes a
barn with stables for at least 20, so it is not a small barn. So it
probably also has land around it as well to match. He says that the
area is beautiful for horseback riding, which is something that he
is considering getting in to also, bike tours and horseback tours.
People love to do both in Brazil, apparently. I know I'd love to go
for a horseback ride in Brazil. Apparently from his location, just
outside Rio, there are all sorts of short rides that you could take
that end up at one coffee plantation or another. Most of them have
been turned into a variety of Bed & Breakfasts and I can imagine
that they are probably rather pretty to look at.

The only thing I know about my trip so far is that from Rio to São
Paulo is about the same distance as from Edmonton to Calgary, so
about 300 km (a correction from my last email). He is driving down
with a trailer, going to pick me up from the airport, drive me back
to the hotel that they stayed in, let me shower and change, and then
drive me to edge of São Paulo to start the trek. We go south all
Friday afternoon, then we go a little more the next day until we
meet up with this solo rider that he has to pick up. We'll head east
towards the ocean and go up the coast towards a World Heritage Site
town called Paraty, a still 1800's themed town that used to be the
center of the gold trade in this part of Brazil until a new lode
appeared with better coastal access and the place pretty much died
overnight. So much so that the buildings were never modified to a
newer style. So they all still look the same as they did way back
then. Apparently, from pictures that I have seen, it is very pretty.
The city core is even cut off from vehicular traffic. I have high
expectations of beauty. Brazil, old town, sea port. Has all the
makings of a good photo opportunity. I just hope this Davis guy is
laid back enough to allow me to stop. I like to take pictures. A lot
of pictures. And I even bought a second memory chip so that I should
be good for about 500 high quality pictures. Which means that my
laptop is going to be running out of disk space in no time. This is
a good thing.

But I am nervous, I will admit. I really am going in to this blind.
I don't know who this guy is, he has an okay website, his written
English is excellent, but I've never met him. I have no references,
and I am about to give his 'people' my luggage including this very
precious laptop for them to drive home and 'keep' for me. I guess I
base it on the fact that I have his motorcycle which is worth way
more than my laptop to offset the price if we get in to a dickering
war. But if he just mugs me on the side of the road .... I now see
that I can't send this letter off to everyone. If my Mom reads this
before I make it out of the woods, she won't sleep!

Heck, in September I forgot to tell her that I was going to
Vancouver Island for the weekend (4 days) and she darn near had an
aneurysm, this would totally rupture everything! We'll see. If
nothing else it will be entered in the travelogue as an un-sent
email. It'll be there, but you'll have to look for it. No hints
given. So if you found this, good hunting!

Well that's enough drivel for now, I am installing Oracle 10g on my
laptop as I speak, in the background, and when that finishes, I need
to get some sleep so that I will be awake tomorrow. Not that I won't
be hyper enough just for the anticipation, but it would be nice to
be physically rested also. In the last 3 nights I haven't had a good
night's sleep as I keep waking up in the middle of the night, and
then the thought of what I heading in to just over takes me. It's
pleasant, but sleep is what I am really needing.
	

So, I made it back from my motorcycle trip. And I had a great time!
Averaged about 500 kilometres a day seeing as much of Brazil as I
could manage. It made for a great last memory of Brazil.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to really work on the pictures until
today, and there are about 300 of them, so there is a certain amount
of work involved first in the preparation of them. So that will have
to wait a day or two until I get myself organized, and on to an
Internet connection where I do not have to pay by the minute for my
use. So Thursday or Friday will be the big days for uploading, once
I get to Porto Alegre.

But I can tell you of what has happened since my arrival in Rio de
Janeiro. We made it in to Rio later on Monday afternoon. My first
shot of it was from the coast looking North. It is definitely set in
a very pretty location. So, as a last fling we drove up the
Corcovado mountain, where the Cristo Redentor statue is. There is
also a train that heads up this way and apparently in the jungle
that exists on the side of the mountain it gets held up, cowboy
style, every so often. So it was much nicer to just ride up there on
the bikes. I was also told to not stop on the way as there are gangs
hiding out at the good lookout points for 'gringos' who are stupid
enough to stop and pull out those expensive digital cameras. I did
anyway, which probably just proves that I am a stupid gringo. C'est
la vie!

I have to admit that the view from up top there was beautiful. You
get such a good view of everything! You can see the favella's, the
lagoon, Sugar Loaf, my hotel (kind of), the football stadium, the GP
track for auto racing. And a nice breeze to make a warm Canadian
feel right at home. So I took all the requisite photos and had a
bite to eat up there before heading down.

That night I went out for a high-end churrascaria. How do I know it
was high end, apart from the price tag and being told that it was
high-end? Well, for one thing there were no chicken hearts served.
They had shrimp and seafood as part of the buffet appetizers. It was
good. Pictures also will follow.

Apparently the magic number formula for determining the age-
appropriate for any given person is calculated as follows:

Take the man's age, divide by two, add seven. So apparently I am
looking for a 29 year old vixen.

Now, I have to admit that I took a look around me and I saw an awful
lot of this. I asked the three Brazilian inhabitants I was having
supper with, and their girlfriends seem to fit this formula also. In
most cases it seems that you are 2/3 the age of the mother you are
dating, so you are often within 5 years of the mom and 10 years
older than the hottie.

I so need to move to Brazil!

And the scary thing about this, the people that I was with weren't
exactly 'lookers' or overly wealthy or anything. Flush, financially,
but that's about it. And, as I write this, maybe that's enough in
Brazil! It is, after all, a poor nation.

But let's move on.

Today I prowled along Copacabana and Ipanema beaches taking pictures
along the way. And here is where things take a definite downward
turn, bleak even.  I must confess that I have discovered the dark
side to Brazil, particularly in Rio. I won't go in to detail on this
as a picture paints a thousand words, so I will let the accompanying
picture answer all for you. My apologies for those of you with
squeamish stomachs.

Now, the beaches! Does Rio have beaches! Miles and miles of beaches.
Which, even when converted into kilometres is kilometrage upon
kilometrage of beaches! It just keeps on going. On the bike we
passed two of the 'local' beaches that the tourists don't generally
know about, or care. Good waves, no vendors. But the first main
beach on the south side of Rio had to run for 10 miles, although I
will check this out in detail once I get a better Internet
connection. And then there is Ipanema and Copacabana, which are
probably the two most famous ones. Ipanema is the one written about
in the song 'Girl from Ipanema'.

Unfortunately I am doing this on a weekday (Tuesday), so the hotties
aren't out there. It was more of a family crowd actually. This is
the holiday season also, as school is out from Christmas until after
Carnival (end of February), as compared to North America where it is
July and August.

What have I learned about the beach scene?

Well, if you are truly cool, you will arrive at the beach with a
pair of sunglasses and your car keys. Nothing else. You can buy a
beach chair for about 50R, ($25CDN) or you can rent it for $8. The
cool people will always rent. So they may spend about 300R in a year
for chair rentals rather than bring one from home (how gauche). So
what you will find on the weekend is a whole bunch of guys standing
by the edge of the beach because the sand is too hot to stand on and
they can't afford a chair. But they have the sunglasses.

If you are seriously thinking about dating a person, the final test
before a date is to 'meet them' at the beach. This allows both of
you to basically check each other out before the actual date.
Apparently you might look good in your clothes, but absolutely
horrible in your bathing suit and this is the last safety check. And
I wonder why I am never gonna get me no 29 year old hottie. Not
enough money, too much extraneous skin for the beach. I am so-oooo
going to die single if I move to Brazil!

Mind you, if I was totally hot and cool at the beach, when I got
tired of standing up, holding my car keys and sunglasses, I would
actually go up to the girl of my choice and ask if I could share her
blanket. Undoubtedly her mother on the next towel would quickly eye
me once over, check the key fob to see if I was driving a BMW, then
allow it. I might even start up a conversation with the mother,
since we probably graduated in the same year, different schools, and
she would tell me what favella she lives in as she attempts to marry
her daughter off to some sugar daddy. You know, like me!

I would then let it drop that I was actually from North America and
looking for a child bride. Well, this would probably get the father
of the girl involved, if they had figured out who the actual father
was, and he would start talking to me about dowry rights and
visitation, and what kind of education she would be getting back in
North America, as they had hopes of her going to an American Ivy
League school like Harvard, Princeton or Yale. I would then casually
mention that I was Canadian, you know, from Edmonton, eh? and the
brother of the girl involved would kick dirt in my face, steal my
sunglasses and then walk away, leaving me wondering what the heck
happened to cause this outburst.

For supper tonight I chanced upon Kyle, who is from San Diego. He
has been travelling since the end of November, Costa Rico for 5
weeks and then on to Brazil, so it was interesting to hear his tales
of discovery. Costa Rica sounds like a good place to go visiting.

After that the couple next to me invited me over to chat with them.
They are from Wurtzburg (sp?) east of Frankfurt and spending 3 weeks
in Brazil. She had all sorts of questions about Vancouver and whale
watching and when to go visit. Regular type questions. So we had a
nice talk for about a half hour before I headed back to the hotel.

And here I am, 24 hours in Rio!

Tomorrow I have to pack up at the hotel as my room rental ends at
noon, but my flight out is at 8 p.m., so I am going to wander the
beach, read a book, go up the Sugar Loaf on the tram, take pictures,
try to not get too burned.

	

Motorcycle Diaries, Warren style!

So, if you have seen the Motorcycle Diaries you will have a vague
understanding of what I went through. Ernesto (Che) Guevara did a
similar trip to what I will be attempting to describe here. Mostly.
It is not exactly the same.

He did his back in the '50s if I recall correctly

	----I did mine in '06.

He rode through every country but Brazil, if I remember my history.

	----I only rode in Brazil!


He was sharing a motorcycle with a friend

	----I was riding solo.

His motorcycle was a lame old British machine

	----I was sitting pretty on a BMW.

He drove only on poor gravel roads.

	----I was hitting 140 km/hr on the straight stretches.

They had to do make-shift repairs on the roadside.

	----My tour operator phoned on his cell phone to the head BMW mechanic
	----when a fuse blew!

They were cold some times.

	----At one point the temperature dipped down to 24C and I had an
	----urge to scratch my bum at that precise moment. Totally unrelated.

He went on to become a semi-legendary revolutionary.

	----My life seems to go around in circles.


Other than that, what he went through is pretty much what happened to
me.

Okay, so I lead a pampered existence here! Sue me! I was trucking
through the paved roads of Brazil on a BMW F650GS, which is a Dakar-
style motorcycle, meaning that it is a cross between street and
trail, capable of doing both quite well.

Now, the original plan had been that I was going to meet up with
Davis, the tour operator, in Rio, where he resides, and then head out
for several days. He suggested that if I was willing to forego the
flight from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro, that he would meet me in São
Paulo and we would head out from there. Which we did. So I was met at
the airport by a guy with a sign that said Warren. That was a first
for me! Headed over to the hotel he had rented from the night before
and allowed me to shower before we headed out. We then drove in his
truck through São Paulo to the west end of town, where we started our
journey. Along the way we drove along the Marginal, which is kind of
a river-slough. Allow me to explain. You have to throw your waste
somewhere, right? In North America we have this really good thing
called the sewer system, buried deep within the earth and creating
many, many jobs for the people that maintain it. In São Paulo  we
have the Marginal, which is about 80 metres wide and who knows how
deep, where all the run-off from the favela's (slums) comes from.
Apparently, this water is so putrid and infested with diseases of all
sorts that the fire department, if they get a call that someone has
fallen in, will do everything that they can to save that person apart
from actually going in to the water. And it reeks, if that wasn't
something that should have been apparent. Urban legends tell of
people walking across it on a good day. And not getting their shoe
laces wet.

So we started off at the edge of town, heading out on the road to
Sorocaba. From there we went south and east through some rolling
country side and several banana plantations. Interestingly enough,
what they will do with the bananas just before harvesting them, is to
tie a blue baggie around the bunch to make it a more humid
environment, thus plumping up the bananas.

The rain was intermittent on this day, always cloudy, as this is the
rainy season south of the equator in the tropical zone, but it was
warm, between 28°C and 34°C, perfect bike riding weather. Speeds
varied from 80 - 100 km/hr on the secondary roads to 120 km/hr on the
major highways.

Oh, speaking of major highways, I have to comment on the driver
attitude towards bikers, especially big bikes, in Brazil. They love
them. There aren't that many out there, and they always get
attention. On the major roads between major centres I noticed very
few cars, it was almost totally a semi-trailer crowd. And these semi
drivers are wonderful to work with. The roads, as can be imagined,
are rather windy in Brazil as they loop in and around the hills and
foothill type mountains that they have. These are probably hills
closer to what the Rockies look like when they finally reach Southern
California, as compared to the Canadian Rockies with the majestic
peak concept. Very rounded, knobby almost, reminiscent of what I saw
when I was in Malaysia last year (ooooo oooooo, I am going to
Malaysia in mid-February I found out, more motorcycle adventures
coming my way!).

Oh, and just to get rid of the unnecessary email, for those of you
who are about to ask if you can come along with me, that line-up is
out the door, around the corner and circling the block real fast. I
have my own children, nieces, nephews, doctors, nurses, mechanics,
masseuses (male and female), computer people, biker people, stupid
people, but no twenty-something sirens, so I guess the list isn't
totally closed.

Back on the highway thing, drivers in Brazil don't flash you with
their headlights when they want to pass. They turn on their left
signal very politely. People always shift over in to the right lane
when they are not passing (oh that Alberta had a law for people that
didn't!) and the trucks do one better, they will signal you as to
whether the coast is clear to pass them on an outside corner. If
their right signal is on, it like they are pulling over, and it is
okay for you to pass. If the left signal is on, it is like they are
changing lanes and it is not safe for you to pass them. How's that
for nice?

And gas station fills always got some conversation from whoever was
at the gas station at that time.

I discovered corn milk!  Kind of like egg nog in appearance and
consistency, and very, very tasty. I have to admit that I was kind of
leery of this one, for we are talking about a vegetable drink (sounds
healthy, shouldn't taste good). I loved it!

At one point we also went through a park that was paved in
cobblestones. Again, being from Alberta I am not used to the lushness
of the vegetation, and with the old-style road, it was very
enchanting. So we bombed through there at like 90 km/hr. Nah, it was
too twisty for that. Oh we found some twisty roads. I am from farm
land country, an intersection every two miles, always straight.
Except for the odd lake that you have to drive around. Sure kept my
attention riveted to the road!

How pampered was our existence? At one point we noticed that Davis
was losing all electrical functions, like headlights and tail lights,
must be a blown fuse. So we pull in to this gas station, and he whips
out the cell phone (cell phone coverage in Brazil is phenomenal!) and
phoned the head mechanic at the BMW dealership in Rio. On speed dial.
So I imagine he's done this before.

First night we stayed at this kind of Polynesian looking place called
Hakuna Mutata (after the Disney thing) and it was very quaint. They
even had their very own hot water boiler and delivery system since
they did not have natural gas in each hut to make their own hot
water. It worked well, and I took pictures of it.

The second day, Saturday, we were to eventually meet up with Peter,
who was driving back from a family reunion in Buenos Aires. He had
been gone for about 10 days by the time he was meeting up with us.
The weather was gorgeous, the sun was shining, the roads were dry,
the expectations for the day high and lofty. I was not disappointed.
We hit probably one of the best stretches of road that I have ever
seen. We headed south from the town of Morrette, where we had spent
the night, heading in a clock-wise loop around the bottom of Curitiba
(pron kur-ih-CHEE-bah), across a teeny tiny ferry, into the state of
Santa Catarina, and then heading North to a nowhere town called
Apiai, which just happened to be at the end of this wonderful stretch
of road that ran for about 150 kilometres through the hills of
Paraná. It was gorgeous. Some fast technical turns, but mostly just
these beautiful swooping turns with lots of good visibility and no
potholes. Also, no frost heaves, and no tar strips. All the things
that I have grown up having to learn to ride around or through.


That's enough for now, the last two days will come in a day or so
once I organize all the pictures.

I love Brazil!

	

Motorcycle Diaries, Part II

So, Sunday morning arrived!

Cloudy, but not raining, so this was a good thing. Today we were
heading for Paraty, one of two UNESCO sites in Brazil. Turns out the
being a UNESCO site is not quite as prestigious as may first be
deemed. Basically it means that the city qualified for UNESCO funding
based on some criteria that I know nothing about. There is,
apparently, an even better city in Brazil that has been totally
restored without UNESCO funds, but rather with the GLOBO television
network money. The deal was that they were going to restore this town
to its 1800 something age in return for the television station being
able to shut down the entire town any time it wished in order to do
any filming that it wished to do onsite.

Now, what makes Paraty so totally enjoyable is knowing some of the
history that actually happened but was not recorded in places such as
the Internet. The town is set in the 1820's from what I can tell. It
used to have cobblestone streets and was the center of gold trade
back in its day. Then a better route and a different gold site almost
made it a ghost town overnight. There were no roads in to the city,
water access only, so there was never any great effort put at
improving the city. They all just lived there, same as they had the
year before. They did this for about 130 years. Then, the mayor was
getting attacked since the main streets tended to flood at high tide
due to its close location to the ocean and poorly planned design. So
he was able to get government money to raise the street by about a
foot or something like that. But rather than just raise the road and
put the bricks back, like an honest person would have, he did the
politician thing and attempted to make a buck out of it. He sold all
the stones to his friends to make great garden paths and whatnot at
their houses, and dredged up a bunch of beach stones to replace the
original flat stones. So when you are walking down the rounded stones
of Paraty's street and thinking that you have been cast back into the
past, try thinking around 1950 and a corrupt political official!

Right next door to where we stayed is the Governor's mansion. This
was apparently where he liked to hang out on weekends. Maybe it was
so he could watch the gold being loaded up, that always seems to make
rich people happy. Amazingly enough, it is a very modest home.
Definitely not a palace by any stretch of the imagine. But it is way
larger than any other house in the town.

The place I stayed at had a wall of fame of people that had stayed
there. The only one I recognized was Mick Jagger. It looks like a
mid-70's picture and he's wearing white spandex tights for pants. It
didn't work then, it doesn't work now!

I felt really bad, because the weather had turned on us the last two
hours of riding, and my boots were totally soaked. We got to the Inn
(called a pasouda) and were led up to our 1820's style bedrooms. They
had these nice white linen floor mats, almost like doilies. I had
walked over them a few times with my boots on, but that was not the
problem. It was when I took my boots off and then walked over them in
my wool socks that I left stains. Again, I took pictures. It reminded
me of a MAD Don Martin cartoon where the two guys walk in to a
Japanese restaurant, and are told to go back and take off their
shoes, which they do, leaving a wonderful trail of footsteps and
unconscious people as a result of how dirty and stinky their feet
were.

It is a quaint town, as my pictures will show for you, still worth
the visit, although it made me laugh as I walked through town and
heard some of the English comments about the road. The Portuguese
comments totally pass me by.

So, finally we make it to Monday. The last day, the ride in to Rio.
And it is totally along the coast. Which, for a land-locked person
such as myself, was great! The ocean just looks nice, especially when
you don't get to see it that much. I didn't really catch a salty
scent to it all, which surprised me, as I am used to Canadian oceans
having a very salt aroma about them. The temperature was 32°C,
perfect for riding, and the views were just pretty. Brazil is
definitely a nice place to explore.

By early afternoon we were in Rio, finally, and our last stop was to
climb the Corcovado where the status of Christ is found (Cristo
Redentor). It is a fun ride up, although apparently it is also a
great spot to get mugged, so stopping is not particularly
recommended. The view from up there - fabulous! You are the highest
thing around, the harbour is all there in front of you, it is great!

Well, I think that is enough.

To finish this off, on Wednesday I headed off for my actual work
assignment, in Porto Alegre, at the southern part of Brazil. I got to
my hotel around 11:00 p.m. and was contacted about a half hour later
that the decision to go-live with the production environment of the
software they were installing had been delayed a month. So I was to
rebook my ticket (I was supposed to be there for 10 days) and head
home the next. So, it is the next day, and I am back on a airplane
heading for Edmonton.

I ended up with a great holiday on the company credit card.

Wait for the next installment though, because on the fifteenth of
February I am heading off to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for three weeks.
That should be good. I have a friend there who is arranging for a
motorcycle for me there. This one will probably be a moped type,
around 80cc or so. But I just want to go and explore the villages and
the mountains in the area over 3 weekends.

Catch ya then!