25 — 27 Jan 5
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Tues­day morn­ing I woke up feel­ing great. I was leav­ing La Paz, and with it my sick­ness. I get up some­what early for a guy with­out a job, and head down to have my last bit of Coca Tea and write some more obser­va­tions in my blog.

I order my Tea, and as I’m wait­ing, who do I see, but Mette and her brother Jesus. You may remem­ber Mette from such post as “Greg and Lou get drunk on Christ­mas Day” and “Appar­ently the Inca trail is hard if you smoke.” It was Mette from Cusco. I give her a hug, not know­ing she was as red as a lob­ster from the appro­pri­ately named Island of the Sun. We get a table together, and spend some time catch­ing up on her trav­els and mine. It was very nice — I hadn’t talked to any­one at length (or felt like it) in a long time, and she and her brother are both very nice and easy to talk to. For her mas­sive sun­burn (she’s Dan­ish, blonde, and wasn’t wear­ing sun­creen on a lake at 13000+ ft), I rec­om­mend a com­bi­na­tion of aspirin, Ibupro­fen and a ton of Coca tea. But then again, I rec­om­mend coca tea for every­thing.

Even­tu­ally we go our own way. I head to the inter­net cafe to send some mail, and say good­bye to the friendly Dan­ish (?) owner of the cafe. Back to the hotel, and I get a taxi to take me to the air­port. This guy is unlike any taxi dri­ver I’ve had before. First, he’s blar­ing jesus music — the tone was unmis­tak­able (I did grow up in the South), and I could make out the occa­sional Hal­lelu­jah and Jesus!! That made me ner­vous, because I’ve found, at least in the States, that the more peo­ple hide behind reli­gion, the more will­ing they are to screw you. If you see a cross on a busi­ness card, run. So I’m wary of him, but noth­ing hap­pened, and I was glad. The sec­ond, and best part of the trip, was he finally had a taxi that could accel­er­ate up a hill. Most of the taxis in South Amer­ica are pretty beaten and bat­tered. This guy was in a newish Toy­ota Corolla, and he was going pretty fast. That made the trip a lot more fun.

I get to the air­port, and check in with­out issue. The flight starts in La Paz, stops in Santa Cruz (45 min­utes), then con­tin­ues on to Sao Paulo (3 hours), and lastly to Rio. Even­tu­ally the guy next to me starts talk­ing to me. He is of euro­pean ances­try (most of Bolivia is indige­nous) and owns a Plas­tics fac­tory (mak­ing bot­tle caps, etc.) He was very nice, but prob­a­bly because I was a white guy, and fly­ing in S.A. is still a class thing. He was as racist any Repub­li­can in the US (if any repub­li­cans are read­ing — I’m kid­ding — you’re not really racist — Blacky is dif­fer­ent and must not be trusted.) Usu­ally I try to argue the other point, but with his lim­ited Eng­lish, and my desire to not talk to him, I let it drop, and just lis­tened. I hadn’t seen a racist Boli­vian yet — but I knew they must exist. Even when I was ask­ing him about get­ting my fake money blessed, he was putting down the indige­nous for believ­ing in such things, and I guess, to some extent, me. We didn’t talk too long.

When the plane finally lands, the first thing I notice is that I’m back in Civ­i­liza­tion again. The air­port at La Paz was about half the size of the John Wayne Air­port in Orange County, CA. I think there are about eight gates, and this is true of most of the air­ports in S.A. — Lima was big­ger, but not SeaTac big. In con­trast, Sao Paulo was huge, which makes sense — Sao Paulo is a city of 18 Mil­lion peo­ple. That’s not a typo — 18 Mil­lion — it’s one of the largest cities in the world. Land­ing, there were planes every­where, and I think we were on gate 45. To get out of the gate, and to get to cus­toms and immi­gra­tion, I walked for about 15 min­utes at a pretty brisk pace. It was huge, and it was civ­i­lized. I saw ads for the Gap & McDon­alds & New Cars! — Oh my!! Things were clean, new and orderly.

Even­tu­ally I got my bag, which was rolling by as I walked up. I found immi­gra­tion, and was asked for my Yel­low Fever vac­ci­na­tion for the fourth time (one for the Visa, once by the Travel Agent when get­ting my ticket, once by the counter per­son as I boarded the flight, and once by a guy stand­ing near immi­gra­tion in a white jacket.) It’s some­thing they are very con­cerned about in Brazil. Mr White jacket gave me some paper­work I needed to fill out, and I went through counter num­ber one, then was directed to the spe­cial US only counter, where I was fin­ger­printed (just like we do to the rest of the world.) When the US starts man­dan­tory cav­ity searches, I think my trav­els are over. My bags weren’t searched as I left the secured area at last — they haven’t been any­where yet.

As I left, I was expect­ing Simone to pick me up, and I was very excited at the prospect see­ing her. As I offi­cially enter, she comes run­ning up to me wear­ing impos­si­bly high plat­form shoes, look­ing way too beau­ti­ful to be with a guy like me. She has black hair, down the the mid­dle of her back, and wear­ing nice pants and sexy shirt. The last time I’d seen her she was wear­ing the same clothes she wore on the Inca Trail and I though she was pretty then, but today she was sim­ply breath­tak­ing. Me — I had the same clothes as I had on the Inca trail. Clean, but still the same clothes, and I’d been on a plane for five hours.

We walk out­side, and it’s more of the same. I am back in civ­i­liza­tion. New cars, nice high­ways — heck, even hav­ing high­ways — most places don’t have them. The night is warm and humid, and I’m very glad to be here. Sao Paulo is sup­posed to have the largest Japan­ese pop­u­la­tion out­side of Japan, which to me means Sushi. We go to a very nice Sushi near her house and get reac­quainted. Our rela­tion­ship (if you can call it that yet) has been a very unusual one — we met on a four day hike, spent a cou­ple days together after that, and haven’t had too much com­mu­ni­ca­tion since. I don’t speak Por­tuguese, but her Eng­lish is pretty good, in per­son. Over the phone and via e-mail, it’s pretty dif­fi­cult. We end up being up until 4 a.m., speak­ing English.

The next day, I have two goals in mind. Goal num­ber one is I want some dif­fer­ent clothes, and num­ber two was to get money. Simone knows some places where I _might_ be able to get nor­mal sized clothes. It’s a pretty good sized mall some­what near her house, and we head there early. It’s just like being in the US, except there tends to be a lot of secu­rity every­where. It’s dif­fi­cult find­ing clothes my size, but at last it’s not impos­si­ble. I get a cou­ple of pairs of pants, includ­ing a pair of very cool, very low cut jeans (when in Rome), a cou­ple of pairs of shoes and a cou­ple of short sleeve shirts. The shoes, which were dif­fi­cult to find in my size, are very cool. I expected a large selec­tion, since Brazil is the third largest maker of shoes in the world, behind China and Italy, but I didn’t expect find­ing my size to be dif­fi­cult. One pair were more dress shoes, but they were blue (not suede), and very cool. The other were white dis­tressed leather, and pretty cool too. I’m look­ing decent for a change, and I’m glad to be wear­ing nor­mal clothes. Things were sort of cheap, but not Bolivia cheap. I’d call it about half the price of the US.

When we go back home, and as I’m chang­ing into my new clothes, I real­ized some­thing very impor­tant. Over the years, there has been a lot of sexy for­eign­ers in my life. It started with the sexy exchange stu­dent in High School, then it was the mys­te­ri­ous hun­gar­ian girls in col­lege. Every­body has had a few — work, girl­friends of a friend (note — to me, these sexy for­eign types are always female.) It dawned on me. I’m now the sexy for­eigner. Yup — tall, goofy me. Ha!

This real­iza­tion has put a lot of pres­sure on me, as I must live up to the role. I don’t quite know how yet. Do I develop some­thing of a Texas accent. Prob­a­bly not — I hate Texas, and specif­i­cally a Texan (GWB, i.e. — he who must not be named.) Maybe some­thing like a Maine Accent — it seems easy to do. For right now, I’m just going with tall white guy who speaks no Por­tuguese, yet exudes an incred­i­ble amount of sex appeal.

Thurs­day was a pretty low key day — we ended up sleep­ing pretty late, since she didn’t have any Yoga classes to teach in the early morn­ing, and we hadn’t got­ten much sleep yet. Her sis­ter was in a play — “The Impor­tance of Being Earnest.” by Oscar Wilde. We got free tick­ets, which was nice — front row tick­ets to an entire play in Por­tuguese. It’s a hilar­i­ous satire on dat­ing in the 1900’s — I think. It was kind of funny — but I couldn’t under­stand a word. Then, maybe to make it up to me, we went to one of her favorite restau­rants — a place called Amer­ica. When we were park­ing, some­one was sit­ting nearby, wear­ing a orange vest. Appar­ently he wanted to know if we wanted him to “Watch” our car. I’ve come to find out that this is slang for “want to make sure noth­ing hap­pens to that nice car of yours?” I don’t remem­ber if she said yes or no, but he was gone when we came out, and the car was fine. She had apple pie (only an approx­i­ma­tion of _real_ amer­i­can pie) and I for­got what I had. But it was very american.

On the drive home, she was tired and asked me to drive. Near her house, at a red light, I stopped. Appar­ently you don’t stop at red lights in Sao Paulo at night, because peo­ple come up to your car and take stuff. One time this stuff included her purse, another time, her brother. We argued a bit “what do you mean don’t stop? the light is red?.” In ret­ro­spect, I felt like a square. Now, I run lights when­ever I feel like it, with one hand on the wheel, the other a fist out­side pump­ing the air, Spring­steen blar­ing, scream­ing at the top of my lungs “I’m an Amer­i­can, baby.”