Carnaval in September

Say what? Well, today is Sete de Setembro, Brazil's national holiday. The day started with military parades all over the country, but some people really know how to celebrate. I'm talking about our neighborhood bloco de carnaval, which was founded on this day twenty-one years ago. It's almost five-thirty in the afternoon and the samba is in full swing a block away from me. All I need to do is open my windows and start dancing. No need even to go join the small crowd, if I don't want to. I took this picture earlier today as I got off the bus coming back from the market in Ipanema. This lovely lady is their proud standard bearer.

I've mentioned Brazil's national music here twice this week, so I feel sort of obligated to reveal some of my preferences. Starting with sambas de enredo: I think my all-time favorites are "O Amanhã" and "É Hoje." Paulinho da Viola's "Foi um rio que passou em minha vida" (technically not in this category, but composed in honor of Portela) has got to be one of the most gorgeous songs ever to come out of Brazil. As far as songwriters, names that come immediately to mind and must, therefore, be at the top of my list: Cartola and, I must write his name again, Paulinho da Viola. You can try looking for these songs and samba composers on YouTube...I'm sure there's plenty out there. But here are the beginning lines for the first song I mentioned: A cigana leu o meu destino, eu sonhei...The gypsy read my palm and I dreamed...Easy to like it, isn't it?

Perhaps It's the Pitangas...

For several weeks now I've been debating whether I really want to go back to the U.S. There's no doubt in my mind that eventually I will, for reasons both of the heart and practicality. But when I think about it, I'm immediately swamped by premature feelings of longing for all the things I love about Brazil. I was told to make lists: a list of the things that I enjoy down here, a list of the things that make me crazy; a list of all that I miss from the U.S., my beautiful daughter being number one. Lists are supposed to help me make this painful decision: at my age, I can't afford (financially and emotionally) to make another move such as this one. If (or rather when) I go back, Brazil will become once again a place to visit a couple of times a year, visits carefully timed to coincide with the season for jaboticaba and pitanga, to see blooming quaresmeiras or abricó-de-macaco, to pick up the newest style in bikinis at a favorite store in Ipanema. I have yet to take pencil and paper (I refuse to do this on my MacBook Pro!) to start on one of them, but in my mind images and words have been floating around for days on end: all the fruit I don't think I can live without, the forests of the Brazilian tropics, the friendliness of perfect strangers everywhere. But I think that, without realizing it, I've started to say goodbye in a very subtle way: I linger over my breakfast papaya, I savor every drop of my coconut water or my passionfruit juice, and I pay daily visits to the pitangueiras at the Botanical Garden. My favorite tree is loaded with tiny, orangy-red fruit and the pathways are dotted with squashed, half-pecked pitangas. Birds love them as well as we do! I picked these three up and arranged them atop a nice mossy rock.


Whatever happens, these have been unforgettable months! Before I forget, included in my list (but fortunately easily smuggled into the country) are these inexpensive, adorable, miniscule dried flowers that people dye in a rainbow of colors. I've always been extremely fond of them; is there a better way to add a splash of red and fuchsia to brighten up a room?

Without Sadness There's no Samba *

I didn't make this line up, I pinched it from a documentary I saw this afternoon called "O Mistério do Samba" (The Mystery of Samba). I didn't really know what to expect from this film besides great music. And indeed, there was plenty of that: I even caught myself singing along a couple of times (oops, sorry, but great sambas are irresistible!). But what I enjoyed the most were the stories, sad and funny, told by the great sambistas and singers of Portela, the revered Old Guard of the samba school based in the suburb of Oswaldo Cruz. And the little excursions to the tiny suburban houses and backyards and bars where they have been living their modest lives and composing their incomparable songs. The men are great storytellers, but I found the women especially moving and hilarious: in one scene at a hairdresser's, one of them is talking about her philanderer of a husband; she still remembers the day when she went after him, picking up rocks from the street and throwing them at him. Another unforgettable scene: a group of sambistas is sitting around a table, drinking beer, playing, singing. An older woman walks by with her shopping bag, stops, dances a few samba steps, bows to them, and keeps on walking. According to the director, this little scene was completely spontaneous and unexpected. I'm glad that they could film it; it's precious and revealing of the soul of this most musical of cities.

At the end, we're all applauding and, mirroring what had just happened on screen, an older man dances a few samba steps, too. And I'm thinking: what a good reason to stick around a while longer! If you come to Rio, don't forget to check the papers for rodas de samba, including the ones at Portela! The women of Portela's Old Guard are also renowned cooks and the subject of a gem of a book called "Batuque na Cozinha."

* In Portuguese: Sem tristeza não tem samba. And this reminds me: yes, there is that contagious rhythm and percussion, but samba is also sweet melodies and melancholy, passionate stories.

Photo (featuring singers Marisa Monte and Zeca Pagodinho with members of the Velha Guarda da Portela) credit: Bruno Veiga

Lazy Days of...Winter?

Winter in Rio has been anything but. Blue skies and comfortable temperatures for weeks on end. Makes you wish for a couple of drizzly days, at least I think plants around here would welcome the change. But this unusual weather makes my daily walks in the Botanical Garden much more pleasant: no mud on my shoes and very little sweat on my face. This morning I wanted to photograph another old jaqueira I had come across a few days ago and a very strange-looking "paper tree" from Australia. I think I've said something in the past about the arboretum being home to a variety of animals as well as plants? I've seen monkeys eating jackfruit almost every single day and birdwatchers galore tiptoeing around with binoculars around their necks (I hear different songs and calls, but have never actually seen the little creatures they're looking at). Anyway, along the way from one tree to the next, I saw this little fellow coming very slowly across the grass, as it should be for a sloth. So I had plenty of time to stand there snapping away (or clicking or whatever you do with a digital camera) while thinking that this is an amazing place, indeed! A large metropolitan area where people can still be in such close proximity with the natural world.


I think this is the most gorgeous jaqueira I've seen in all these years of visiting down here. It stands next to the administration building near the Bromeliarium, in case you want to pay it a visit someday.

By the way, about ten minutes later a guard came and took the sloth back to the forest. For as long as I walk the trails up there now, I'll be looking for him (or her)!

Let Me Out!

Or perhaps I should call it Surreal Rio Part 2? I was hoping I wouldn't find anything else that bothered me in this beautiful place (besides rampant crime, widespread corruption, bad manners, etc.) and here's to this being the last post on the subject! But I went out with the camera (well hidden in my purse) and took these two photographs the other day to illustrate a sad situation that boggles the mind of visitors. I'm from the days when none of this existed, so there must have been a time when this city was relatively peaceful (or crime was contained).


You'll notice that the metal grille in front of this building is not part of the original design nor are all those bars in the bus. They are there to make life more difficult for assorted robbers, usually very young and heavily armed. So, one wonders about what happened here in the last thirty-somewhat years that it became necessary for people to put themselves behind bars, in order to feel relatively safe. And, in the case of the buses, to make it increasingly more difficult for passengers to board and pay (try going through one of these with a child or holding shopping bags!). I've been reading the papers and magazines and I've asked this question of many of my friends. Everyone comes back with the same answer: the collapse of government, law, and order. This shouldn't surprise anyone, they tell me, considering that crime and the authorities have a long tradition of promiscuity in this state and city. At present, a large percentage of elected officials are in trouble with the law, including two former governors, and indictments and scandals are daily newspaper and TV fare.


I'm also posting a picture of delectable jaboticabas that I found at the market the other day. Maybe this will serve as a reminder that there are good reasons for me to be here at the moment, along with the splendid music and the heartwarming interactions with my Brazilian buddies!

The Bluest Sky

I read somewhere that Rio is supposed to have the bluest sky in the world. Whether that is true or not, we've been blessed with a string of perfect days this July and if you look up this is what you see. I took this picture Friday morning at the Botanical Garden, during my daily walk.


I went in search of blooming pitangueiras (more on this later). On the way back, I took a detour to an area I hadn't explored yet (there are plenty of those since the arboretum is quite large) and discovered this gorgeous old jaqueira. Here's a good piece of advice: first thing you do when you come across one of these beauties is look up; jackfruit as big as the ones pictured here are also to be found hanging from branches and there's no telling when one of these watermelon-sized babies will come down and make a big, messy splash on the ground (and hopefully NOT on your head).

I hope our luck as to the weather holds on a bit longer. Nights have been rather cool, a little cold even, but it's such a welcome change from Rio's sweltering summer and such a great excuse for some good red wine!

PS - There's a great song that includes a jaqueira in its lyrics. It's called "Meu Romance" and it's indeed memorable like the CD's title ("Memorável Samba"), especially when sung by Marcos Sacramento! The words sort of go like this: Under that majestic jaqueira that grows up on the hill, from where one can see the sambistas from Mangueira, it was there, who'd have guessed, that our love was born, the afternoon of that memorable samba, etc. etc. As I've said numerous times, I wouldn't have found love under that tree. I'd have found a jackfruit, or rather a jackfruit would have found me (by falling on my head!).

Obstacle Courses 2

Once again, I seem to have my finger on the city's pulse or, at least, some pretty good ESP for what's going to be on the Sunday edition of O Globo. I was having my coffee and pão canoa na chapa (which translates to a French roll reduced to its crust, buttered, and toasted...scrumptious stuff!) and reading the paper this morning when I came across an article about urban chaos in Rio. And one of the subjects was, you guessed, parking on the sidewalks. It turns out that the iron posts I mentioned below are routinely sawed off or broken (?) at the base and the concrete pillars are somehow demolished (maybe someone comes with a sledgehammer in the middle of the night?).


These two pictures I took yesterday in my neighborhood show perfectly good examples of how far people go in their efforts to keep cars where they belong, that is, on the street or inside parking lots. Apparently (at least according to the newspaper) it's a losing battle, due to a widespread urban pathological condition called "so what if it's illegal."

Obstacle Courses

No, I'm not going to tell you that I'm training for the Olympic Games in China, even though I DO have something in common with athletes, mainly a tendency to hurt myself. Having recovered from the latest injury (to my right hip), I'm proud of the fact that I have resumed my long walks in the Botanical Garden. But that's not where I face a daily obstacle course and have plenty of opportunities to acquire new bruises. No, I'm talking about the sidewalks of Rio. And I'm not referring to the small black and white stones in different patterns that make it impossible for a woman to wear high heels; one of those gets loose and you're bound to slip and fall. And I don't even mean the street peddlers who spread their wares wherever they can. I mean the iron posts, cement blocks, planters, and assorted other impediments to the free flow of pedestrians. Do you want to know why they're there? In typical Rio-style, it's to prevent cars from parking on the sidewalks. Wouldn't it be simpler to slap the owners with a hefty fine and tow their beloved Fiats and Peugeots? Not in this city where everything seems to function according to a perverse logic. And yes, I've managed to walk right into one of these hurdles one evening a few years ago and still have a collection of small scars on my left shin as a souvenir.

So, here's another thing I marvel at when I go to Miami: I can actually walk around town without having to weave my way through a hodgepodge of obstructions to circulation.


I took these pictures one very lovely afternoon in Urca: the first one perfectly illustrates this little story. The other...well, don't we all have moments when we wish this crazy metropolis was this serene and bucolic? Ah! Notice the good, old, plain sidewalk by the bay!

Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me...

When I'm Sixty-Four? And that happens to be today. I've been thinking about how an amazing life it's been so far (and hoping it'll continue to be so until one day, luck be my lady today, I just drop dead). And in the process of playing this film backwards in my mind, I've come up with quite a few scary, breathtaking, and downright funny memories. For example:

1 - My first earthquake in Central America in the seventies. I remember waking up thinking that I must have the flu and realizing that the tumbling toys and cracking walls meant that something totally unusual (for me) was taking place outside my body. Next thing I know, we were scrambling to get my daughter out of her crib and looking for a safe spot (the banana plantation across the way looked pretty good at that point). That same year, a couple of visiting friends and I drove down into the Irazu volcano crater (no sign in sight to tell us to stop) only to find out that volcanic ash is worse than sand when it comes to getting your car stuck. If it weren't for a pair of very strong German tourists, I'd probably still be there arguing with an angry policeman.

2 - Cut to Iguazu Falls at the border of Brazil and Argentina a few years later. It was mid-November and the weather was very hot and muggy. The clouds were dark and low and it definitely looked like it would pour very soon. We were taking a walk in the woods behind the hotel and got to a spot where the river was quite wide and not moving very fast (at least it SEEMED so). There was a man sitting in a small canoe and he invited us to get in: "I'll take you somewhere to see the falls," he said. I remember asking where exactly and the answer was "Devil's Throat." That didn't sound like a place I'd like to be, but he came back with something like "this is the last trip I'm making, because of the storm coming." So we had to make a split second decision to hop in. I still don't know what possessed us to do it, but a few minutes later we were in the middle of the river and I could see a little bit of mist ahead. We found out then that he was only taking us half way; from that point on another rower took over who knew the currents ahead. If you've seen the movie "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" you'll remember the sweeping, spectacular shots of the falls. If you looked carefully (and you can bet I did!), you saw an outcrop of rock, roughly a yard and a half from end to end, surrounded by zillions of gallon of rushing, falling water. Well, that's where we got off the second canoe and that's where this woman who suffers from vertigo and used to be really, really afraid of water, did the victory sign. I still have the photograph to prove it! This brings us to the last little story and the reason why I wrote "used to be."

3 - Cut once again to the British Virgin Islands in the mid-nineties. What do you do when you reach fifty and would like to celebrate in style? I decided that I needed to go see the wreck of the Rhone and NOT from the surface! So I spent a few weeks with a lovely young female instructor at a pool in Ohio who taught me the front and back crawl strokes; for someone who was terrified to put her face in the water, that was no mean accomplishment already. Now came the hard part: actually breathing underwater, through a regulator. Another woman (a fabulous divemaster at Peter Island) and another pool later and I was actually feeling pretty confident that I could manage that too. If you're thinking that I got this far to tell you that I failed miserably...well, you're wrong! As a matter of fact, I didn't want to come back up and haven't stopped talking since about how exhilarating (but peaceful) it felt to be down there with the fishes. I bought a book about the Rhone and the DVD of "The Deep" with Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset and everytime I feel like revisiting that afternoon I pull them out of my shelf.

And there were countless flights across the U.S. in a Mooney 201 and crisscrossing Ohio on a Harley-Davidson and numerous hurricanes in Miami and starry nights in the Arizona desert and hikes and camping in the backlands of Brazil and walking in the Amazon with a (literal) spider monkey on my back. I'm really enjoying this ride!

That's my hand holding my precious book.

Perfume de Gardenia

Last Sunday I went to a birthday party for my friend Alicia's oldest son, Andre. They're part of a large Cuban-American family who all live in the general vicinity of Calle Ocho in Miami, so such get-togethers occur with amazing frequency (and I'm not even counting weddings, christenings, quinces, and other assorted celebrations). I was enjoying a plateful of arroz, frijoles, and yuca con mojo while practicing my Spanish with her dad when I happened to glance out the back window. I just meant to check on the rain (which was coming down in sheets), but my eyes didn't turn back to my food for a long time. There in the backyard, in full view of anyone sitting around the dining-room table, was the most magnificent gardenia bush. Aha! That explained the freshly cut flowers I had been getting drunk on a few minutes earlier...I'm nuts about their scent; Perfume de gardenia, perfume del amor, as the song by Rafael Hernandez goes. So, yesterday during the long flight south to Brazil, I would close my eyes and revisit that garden. The white blooms scattered among the deep green leaves, a perfect trio of reddish mangoes hanging from the tree, and a typical Miami summer downpour.

But what my daughter asked me to write about are my daily trips from her island down to the heart of South Beach in the comfortable, smooth-riding, air-conditioned Miami-Dade buses. In a nutshell, using public transportation in Miami is a colorful, rather exciting, experience; after a few rides, you sort of learn to expect the unexpected and the bizarre. Apart from the youngish, clearly not-quite-there woman who asked me, in earnest, if I was going to sue her for falling into my lap when the bus turned the corner, there was this big guy screaming profanities and racial slurs from the back of the bus (I was afraid he would become violent at any moment and kept wondering why the young female driver didn't use her radio to call the police). My favorite, though, has to be the old lady in a loose print shirt, large hoop earrings with dangling blue beads, and a baseball cap in the style favored by Iowa farmers while riding their combines. Having been yelled at the day before by a tall bird who informed me on no uncertain terms that he had a right to sit down (whereas I, I assumed, being merely a 64-year-old woman who was about to faint from the 87-degree heat, could ride standing up in the overcrowded bus), I got up and moved back as soon as I saw her boarding the bus. Lucky guess, Sheila: even though there were about six or more empty seats in the front of the bus at that point, she proceeded to say out loud in Spanish (to no one in particular, but waving a finger in the air) that this was HER favorite seat.

I confess that I've come back to a transportation system that's best described as disastrous. Buses in Rio are generally dirty, rattling, hip-dislocating, hot-as-hell in the summer, non-handicapped accessible, and driven by maniacs to boot. On the other hand, your fellow passengers, from school kids to professionals to beautiful girls on their way to the beach, aren't likely to provide you with stories at the end of the day. Unless, of course, your bus happens to be the unlucky one where armed robbery takes place or urban tragedy unfolds (as in route 174).

The gardenia pictured here is not from a Miami garden.