The long version volume 2: Thumbs up

After three fun filled days in Rio, we took off for Ilha Grande which is on the stretch between Rio and Sao Paolo known as Costa Verde. It was Christmas Eve and our only reminder of the holiday season was a bizarre TV show we watched in the evening. Brooke was sick and after coming back from a hike I found her in the room, watching the tube. The title of the show was something like the ‘Philanthropic Bikini Patrol’ and consisted of five very attractive and buxom ladies decked out in red bikinis and Santa hats. They were also accompanied by an unattractive midget who was also wearing the special red attire. The Bikini Patrol was patrolling, as patrols usually do, through some not so good neighborhoods in Sao Paolo and bestowing good will on the local residents.

The first group of guys they encountered appeared to be homeless and were given wine and cake by the swimsuit models. It was expensive wine and from what little Portuguese I knew at the time the announcer seemed to be making fun of the fact that they had never drunk wine before and didn’t really appreciate how nice it was.

The merry band of bikinis then traveled onward and found an encampment in the street. Basically a tarp pulled over some scraps of wood. Some poor guy was pulled out and then given an instant makeover on live TV. The leader of the posse proceeded to squirt hair gel onto the top of his head and run a comb through his matted locks. They then pulled off his shirt and pants and began spraying deodorant in his armpits, his old clothes were replaced with brand new ones which were much too big for him. He now looked like some poor confused homeless guy in oversized clothes with far too much product in his hair.

After also loading him up with cake and wine some of the patrol made motions like they were going to kiss him, but then pulled away at the last moment in disgust. What teases! Now it became apparent why there was a midget in the group as she was then pushed to the front of the group so she could give the homeless guy a big kiss on the cheek. And then they were on their way again, ready to do more good deeds. I suppose that's one solution to the homeless problem.

The next day I hiked along the coast and along the way several groups of people warned me that there was a snake up ahead. I was able to gauge that it was green, it was by the side of the path and it was right before a blue house. As I got close to the house I started staring at the ground and every vine, tree root and branch looked like a snake. A leaf fell on the ground and I almost peed my shorts. I finally got so nervous that I made a quick u-turn and calmed myself over coffee and ice cream back in town. I had no idea there were so many fuckin’ snakes in this country.

After a couple of rain filled days on the island we headed back to the mainland and onward to Paraty, which was a couple of hours away by bus. Paraty is a beautiful coastal town with cobblestone streets and lots of restored colonial buildings. Here it is.

The highlight of our stay in Paraty was not the beautiful waterfall we saw, the world famous puppet show we watched or almost being killed every five minutes trying to ride my rented bike to a neighboring town. It was the black eye I got from my travel chum. One night we got back to our room and there were hundreds of mosquitoes waiting for us. Luckily these were the slow kind and were pretty easy to kill. After massacring most of them, Brooke tried to jokingly kill one on my back. She missed and ended up hitting me right in the eye. I almost fell over from the pain and could not open it. I stumbled into bed and the next morning I had a real shiner. To think that I had been such a good friend to Brooke while she was sick and this was how I was repaid.

Portuguese for Dummies

I think I made a pretty decent effort to learn Portuguese. I had a couple of lessons before the trip and I tried to study at least fifteen minutes every day. In a few weeks I was at the point where I could comfortably ask basic questions and do Brazilian Sodoku puzzles, but in two months I never really got much beyond that. Compared to Spanish, Portuguese is really hard to understand and the words all seem to blur together. I really did try to talk to people, but after someone asks you where you're from and you ask them to repeat it four times, there’s not much chance of a conversation happening. I think if you speak a lot of Spanish, you can learn Portuguese pretty easily, but if you’re like me and just know a little you end up being muddled and confused. The languages are so similar that most of the time I didn’t know which one I was speaking.

Portuguese is a beautiful language to listen to, but hearing the Brazilians pronounce English words was really comical. I was walking around Olinda (a town in Northern Brazil) one night with my Brazilian friend Rosangela (pronounced Hosangela) and we stopped for a beer. ‘Peachy stoppy’ she said and the other Brazilian guy we were with nodded in agreement. ‘Peachy stoppy’. I had no clue what they were talking about, but after inquiring further I discovered that we were all in the middle of having a pit stop. Then a few days later I heard another Brazilian talking about Bradgie Peachy. Surely you know about Bradgie Peachy. He is a famous American movie star and goes out with Angelina Jolie. They are very happy together.

So here are a few basic pronunciation rules if you want to speak Portuguese.

T sometimes has a CH sound. Boa noite (good night) is pronounced boa noich.

R has an H sound. Rio is pronounced Hio.

D sometimes has a J sound. Boa tarde (good afternoon) is pronounced boa Tarj.

And a lot of words that end in consonants seem to have an ‘ee’ sound added on.

Here are a few examples

Banana Spleechy - Banana Split

Peeky Neeky - Picnic

Milky shaky - Milkshake

Ketchy Shoopy - Ketchup

Fas chee Fuji - Fast Food

Pinky Floy jee - Pink Floyd

Hock and Holl - Rock and roll

Heggae - Reggae

Hippy Hoppy - Hip hop

And so on…………………

So even though I never really learned that much Portuguese and undid all of my Spanish, I ended up being saved by my thumb. You see in Brazil all you have to do when you see someone on the street is stick out your thumb and ask the question ‘Tudo bem’ (all well?) and all your communication problems will be instantly solved. This is no exaggeration. Throughout my trip whenever I would stick out my thumb I would be instantly greeted with a huge smile and the prompt response of ‘tudo bom’ (all good). Even the grumpiest frowns would turn into smiles at the sight of my outstretched thumb.

Here’s Brooke and our surf teacher, Leandro executing two perfect thumbs up. Note Brooke’s beautiful technique even while clasping a longboard.

And here’s another one, performed while also cradling an ice cold beer.

I did this move just once as it’s really only supposed to be used on special occasions. Try not to focus too much on my bulging surf muscles and look at this beautiful double thumbs up.

A round of smiles please bartender. Oh and a Caipirinha for me. Don’t know what that is? Well stay tuned.

The long version volume 1: Rio De Janeiro

On December 20, 2005 I went to Brazil with my friend Brooke and flew to New York to meet her the day before. The next morning when we left it was twenty degrees and thousands of transit workers were striking for luxuries like health care and job security. It was the first day of the transit strike and millions of people were trying to make it to work on time. We were trying to make it to paradise.

Now I am all in favor of workers’ rights and the environment and all that business, but not when it affects my ability to buy whatever the hell I like for the lowest possible cost and do whatever I want with the least possible hassle. On Tuesday morning these crazy strikers were severely affecting my ability to get to the airport. The car service we booked flaked on us and Brooke had to call one of her friends to take us for fifty bucks. What if we never got to Brazil and just froze our asses off in Brooklyn all winter? No one would ever see our matching wax jobs.

The car service finally showed up half an hour late and as we pulled into our terminal at JFK I once again affirmed my support of the workers and their right to strike..

I am in solidarity with you brothers and sisters!! And Fuck you Bloomberg you fascist twat!!

We finally got into Rio 14 hours later where we would be staying with Brooke’s ex-boyfriend Dave, who had been working in Rio for the last year as a freelance journalist. I slept on the most uncomfortable bed you could imagine, which felt like a few chairs pushed together. Some of the other trip participants, however, were lucky enough to share a comfy bed with our host.

The next morning we woke up late and spent the day sightseeing. First it was Sugarloaf Mountain for spectacular views of the city and then later on we wandered around downtown before ending up in an area called Lapa to hear some samba music. Now I have been a fan of Brazilian music for a while, but hearing it live is something else. It gets in your joints like some kind of musical arthritis. As I was listening to the music, two questions crossed my mind: how did these people invent such great music and secondly why can everyone in this place from teenagers to senior citizens dance so much better than me.

Is it genetics that makes the Brazilians who they are or are they just products of a vibrant culture? Quite an interesting question don’t you think? We will be exploring some of the biological aspects of this nature vs. nurture debate later on in the blog, but watching the crowd was certainly as enjoyable as the music.

The next day we took a bus about half an hour away from Rio to a nearby national park, Tijuca. We were only a few miles from a city of almost ten million and yet we were in the middle of the jungle. All the jungly bits you could ever want were there; bird noises, vines, waterfalls, and dense greenery everywhere. In fact, after we climbed to the peak of one of the mountains we came across the jungliest bit of all.

Brooke, who was walking in front of me, all of a sudden jumped back and shouted, “snake!” And there it was coiled in the middle of the path, partly camouflaged underneath leaves and twigs. As later internet research taught us, it was a pit viper. It’s not the most poisonous snake, but it causes more fatalities than any other in South America. We had to bushwhack to go round it, but it really scared me how close we came to stepping on what we also learned has a ‘highly irritable disposition’. When I look back at the bravery and cool demeanor I showed throughout the whole incident I can only think about how lucky Brooke was to have such a calm and collected travel partner.

After the jungle adventure and the muscle sores I acquired on the trek, there was no more fitting activity than to partake in a little beach action the following day. We were staying in Ipanema and the beach was just a block away. I’m not such a beach person, but this was a treat. Ipanema is a serious hive of activity. Just look at this picture, for example.

Even if you are only a fraction as pervy as me, you could easily spend all day gaping at the wondrous sights on the beach. It seems that the dental floss bikini is in fashion this year again in Brazil, for something like the 40^th year in a row.

After looking around for a while I remarked to my friends that I had never seen so many guy friendly bodies. You know, really skinny, beautifully tanned, a well pronounced bottom and perfectly spherical 36DDs engaged in a continual fight with their surrounding fabric.

Do you get the picture? I was too shy to take one myself.

I was shocked to discover later on that a lot of these boobs are fake, but unless there is some new ass enhancement surgery I don’t know about, the bums are all real and right there in 3-D for your viewing pleasure.

Later on in the trip a couple of Norwegian friends and I made up a game called true or false. It’s really easy to play. You just lie on the beach tanning and sipping fresh coconut milk, and when a girl walks by you look at her boobies and shout out TRUE or FALSE. It’s great because even if they happen to speak English they have no idea what you are talking about.

I promise there will be no more crude sexist observations about ladies’ bodies in this blog, but some people have been asking me about this.

A few years ago the New York Times published an article about increasing rates of obesity in Brazil accompanied by a less than flattering photo of some beachgoers. The article caused uproar in a country which takes extreme pride in baring their beautiful bodies and even more so when it was discovered that the fatty bum bums in the picture were all from Europe. One woman from Czechoslovakia was planning on suing the New York Times when she got back from her sun soaked adventure in Brazil.

The Short Version.

So here’s the short version. After reading about how bad airplane travel is for global warming I feel a little bad about this map. Since my last blog i have been to England, Italy, back to San Francisco, New York, Brazil, Bolivia, back to SF and then back to England.

The long version will be posted up here in the next couple of weeks. Just to whet your appetite, though, here are some upcoming morsels.

• How farmer Simon became surfer Simon.
• A picture of the $1.25 haircut I got in Bolivia.
• A run-in with a poisonous snake in Rio.
• My failed attempt at smuggling coca leaves into Miami.

Paying members also get to read about all the hot Brazilian girls I shagged and explicit descriptions of my stomach problems.

I also started a music blog

Farmer Simon