1 Feb­ru­ary — 14 February

I’ve put of writ­ing about Brazil until today, the 19th of Feb­ru­ary. I’ve for­got­ten a lot of what I would oth­er­wise write about, but it’s some­thing that I have to try. We got back from the beach on a Mon­day after­noon. This was the week of Car­ni­val, which is a dif­fer­ent week most years, but cel­e­brated all over the coun­try in a big way. As such, every­one takes the week off, and one day — Tues­day I think, is an offi­cial hol­i­day. This made for a much dif­fer­ent week than most, since the place was pretty dead, traf­fic included.

We had talked about try­ing to go some­where for the week, but couldn’t find any­one to watch her dog. Her mother was burned out from watch­ing him dur­ing our trip to the beach, and I’m not really sure any­one likes her dog — except maybe her brother. This dog — Thothe, is a walk­ing bad habits. If you name a bad behav­ior, he’s prob­a­bly got it. Jump­ing on peo­ple (he caught me a cou­ple times in a very sen­si­tive area), bit­ing, luck­ily play­fully (Simone has sev­eral small scars — he still has sharp teeth), bark­ing, whin­ing, chew­ing on clothes and shoes, hav­ing his way with pil­lows, tear­ing up fur­ni­ture, beg­ging for food, doesn’t play well with other ani­mals, and sev­eral oth­ers I for­get. Thing is, he’s not really a bad dog — he just acts like it. It’s really more Simone’s fault — she never says no to him. When he does some of these behav­iors, she just laughs and does what he wants. While I was there, a cou­ple of things hap­pened. Dogs are pack ani­mals, even among fam­ily, and I was the leader of the pack. When he would bark, I would just put him out­side. He learned quickly that if he did bark, he would go out­side, and it cut his bark­ing dra­mat­i­cally. He is a very smart dog, and like all dogs, just want to make you happy. I’m sure he’s back to bark­ing just as much as ever now, but he’s far away, so I can’t hear it.

Since we were stranded watch­ing this dog (remind me never to get a dog), we just ended up stay­ing in the city all week. On Tues­day, I woke up and had one of the worst days I have had in a long time. First, I had been work­ing on her com­puter. She had Win­dows 98, and an amaz­ing num­ber of viruses and spy­ware, includ­ing sev­eral key­log­gers (which keep ALL key­board input, includ­ing logins and pass­words and mail it to another server.) At one point she e-mail some­one a let­ter with 28 viruses in it. That was a very funny, in a “I’m glad it’s not me” moment. So I’d been try­ing to get her sys­tem clean again, but well, some things just aren’t going to hap­pen. So I ended up destroy­ing her com­puter. I don’t feel too bad about it in ret­ro­spect, since she was send­ing viruses to peo­ple who she e-mailed, and she was doing that sev­eral times a day, and I sus­pect she was being used as a spam relay. But, as you can imag­ine, she wasn’t very happy about that. Luck­ily, that was the worst thing I did this day, but not the last.

I took apart her water fil­ter to see if I could clean it. It had been so long since it had been apart that the washer crum­bled, and then it leaked when you tried to use it. Next I tried to take a shower. Her shower, like almost all in South Amer­ica, were an elec­tri­cal shower head that heated the water in the shower. I bumped it with my elbow while wash­ing my hair, break­ing it. All of the sud­den — cold show­ers, for her and for me. Later that night I was try­ing to watch TV, and when I turned on her 35″ TV, it would only come on for about two min­utes before shut­ting off. Later I find out that she’s been hav­ing prob­lems with her TV, so that wasn’t me. She’s teach­ing classes this night, so she is gone while I’m break­ing stuff left and right. I’m think­ing that her house is going to be a heap of rub­ble before I leave, so I just want to go to bed. The next day might bring a fresh start.

Her mother has been less than happy that a strange man is stay­ing in her house, and mak­ing Simones life mis­er­able. Simone is upset at all the stuff I broke, espe­cially her com­puter, and I’m not too happy being around her dog and his bad habits, so I get a hotel room (after I fix the shower.) It was an apart­ment hotel, about 10 min­utes by car from where she lives. It’s some­what expen­sive at $36 a night, but it’s very nice, and in a decent part of town. Her mom seemed to think that it was the best deal around (then again, she wasn’t pay­ing for it.) The hotel is very nice. Break­fast is included (for both of us) there is a pool, sauna and weight room, and free, secure, under­ground park­ing. In the room, there is a refrig­er­a­tor, a 24th floor view, two TV’s, and a HUGE shower/hot tub. There is still a sep­a­rate trash can for toi­let paper, but oth­er­wise, just like home. Oh, and the INTERNET. Hurrah.

On Thurs­day, we (OK — I ) need to fix her com­puter, and this means win­dows XP. In Sao Paulo, there is a dis­trict where you can buy any­thing elec­tri­cal you can think of. I’d read about this place online when I was in Seat­tle, and had for­got­ten about it. I was very excited about going there, well, at least until we got there. We found XP and Win­dows 98 from one of the many guys sell­ing CD’s on the street. Later we found out that Win­dows 98 was some­thing like Corel Draw, but that was OK — it gave me an excuse to install XP. While you could get any­thing you wanted in these small store­fronts, things were very expen­sive. I looked into buy­ing a wire­less router/firewall for her, but it was almost $100/US for a very basic unit (some­thing that would cost, at most, $40/US), from a com­pany I hadn’t heard of before. If the crime and pol­lu­tion weren’t enough, expen­sive elec­tron­ics would be a deal breaker for me. Oddly enough, in this same area, I saw my first pros­ti­tutes in South Amer­ica. I fig­ured there had to be some, but I hadn’t seen any yet. And they were gross. I guess pros­ti­tutes are like that.

One of the goals I had was to find good cof­fee. I’d read that all the good cof­fee is exported, but I did man­age to find one place that served decent expresso — It was called Vienna. It was a chain, and the cof­fee was only decent, but bet­ter than any­where else I could find. I really, really look for­ward to a good cup of cof­fee from Seat­tle. I don’t really care where — it’s all good coffee.

One of my other goals, and one that proved to be equally as frus­trat­ing, was find­ing an ATM. Brazil, which was much more devel­oped than any other coun­try I’ve vis­ited so far, had a lot of ATM’s, but most of them wouldn’t give me cash. I had more trou­ble get­ting money here than any­where else I vis­ited. Even when I con­sid­ered using my secret stash of uni­ver­sal cur­rency (the dol­lar) I couldn’t find a place to exchange it. It took me almost six days to find money. Luck­ily, Simone was with me, so she took care of the small stuff, and I paid for the larger things (hotels, din­ners, etc.) on a credit card. On a related note, you can’t get more than a very small amount of money ($15?) out of an ATM after 10 p.m., and it may now be that the machines are just turned off at night. Crim­i­nals were kid­nap­ping peo­ple, then dri­ving them from ATM to ATM , forc­ing them to with­draw all the money from their accounts.

On Thurs­day, I finally got my ticket to Buenos Aires, leav­ing the 14th. It was about $340, which was about what it cost to get from La Paz to Sao Paulo. I was told flights were cheap, but I’ve yet to see it. Once I real­ized my time was short in this town, that mean I wouldn’t be see­ing my favorite meat places any more. This made me sad, but in the mean­while I’m going to eat as much meat, and drink as many Caphar­i­nas (sp?) as pos­si­ble. One night Simone took me to a chur­ras­caria that was sup­posed to be very nice. I didn’t real­ize until we were there that she is a veg­e­tar­ian, or in other words, how the hell would she know if it’s good or not. I deserved what was com­ing next. The brings of meat were cow­ardly, and the selec­tions they car­ried sub­stan­dard. The next night, and three times in the next four days we went back to the first chur­ras­caria, with the manly men, and their fan­tas­tic cuts of meat. Dr. Atkins would have been proud.