Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 28th — Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 31, 2005

Simone has some time off, so we decide to head to her par­ents beach house for a cou­ple of days in the sun. Our first stop is in the town of Ubatuba. It’s about three hours by car away from Sao Paulo. The road to Ubatuba is pretty nice (remem­ber, civ­i­liza­tion.) She’s got a Renault Clio, which is small and cute, like most cars in Sao Paulo. The one prob­lem, at least on the high­way, is the engine. It’s got a 1 liter engine. Next time you get 2 liter soda bot­tle, fig­ure the pis­ton is about half that size, and pow­er­ing an car, two peopel and lug­gage. My motor­cy­cle, my 600 pound motor­cy­cle, has a 1150 CC engine (aka 1.15 liters.) I was try­ing to fig­ure out what the small­est engine in a car is that you can buy in Amer­ica. I can’t think of any, but I do know the old VW’s were 1600 CC. Going up hills is slow and dif­fi­cult. On the free­way it sounded like a ham­ster on Coca Tea when I tried to go the offi­cial speed limit (120K/HR.) On the flip side, the car is cute and red.

We get to the beach town, and it could be a small beach town in Hawaii, and the beach house is a typ­i­cal beach house with a Brazil­ian flair. We unpack the car and go out for some­thing eat. The place Simone picked was open to the air, and pretty basic. The food was OK, but the fish was very , very, very salty. After din­ner, we walked down the street for a while, stop­ping for Ice Cream, and chanc­ing upon a small car­ni­val (not to be con­fused with Car­naval, the cel­e­bra­tion the coun­try shuts down for.) That, my friends, was pretty fun. See­ing a brazil­ian twist on Carnies was pretty inter­est­ing. In Brazil­ian fash­ion, the two women Carnies wore very tight jeans and showed much cleav­age. We ended up win­ning a small trin­ket (OK — she won it.) It was sur­real to be at a toss­ing rings for a prize at a very small car­ni­val on a small beach town in brazil, with a small brazil­ian girl, and it was a lot of fun, and some­thing I hope I never for­get (which is ulti­mately the pur­pose of this exercise.)

The house is about a block from the ocean. On Sat­ur­day, when we wake up we head to the beach for some sun and some fun. We walked the length of the beach (Maram­duba) and it wasn’t much dif­fer­ent than beaches in Florida, other than the islands stick­ing up out of the ocean in the near dis­tance. We passed some­one wear­ing a worn Tel­ly­tubby head and what appeared to be a pair of red one piece long johns sell­ing some­thing. It was the most men­ac­ing things I’d seen in the coun­try, or South Amer­ica, and over a week later, it’s still true. I’m glad he didn’t approach me, because I think I would have run away in ter­ror, jeop­ar­diz­ing my “Sexy For­eigner” sta­tus. We went down to the far end, away from every­one, and laid out in the sun. It was very nice, and I even have a pic­ture of Simone lay­ing on her stom­ach, with the beach and the moun­tains in the back­ground. It was a beau­ti­ful pic­ture. How­ever, she has for­bade me from putting the pic­ture on the inter­net, with a promise of harm if I do, in Eng­lish, fol­lowed by a long string of words in Por­tuguese that I can’t even begin to under­stand. If I under­stand the hand motions, she is either going to split a melon in half if I do, or well, some­thing much worse. She is brazil­ian, which means a small bikini, but she is also mod­est by brazil­ian stan­dards, which means a some­what larger small bikini. I, on the other hand, am wear­ing a pair of shorts. In this coun­try, where small is bet­ter, I might as well be wear­ing clothes of the Amish.

After a few mod­est hours in the sun, we head back towards the house. We passed a demon­stra­tion of Brazil­ian Capoeira danc­ing. It orig­i­nated in Angola, and was brought over by slaves. In the old coun­try, it was a fight for the hand of just fer­tile young women. Now, it’s mainly for show, and you aren’t sup­posed to land blows (or else it wouldn’t be danc­ing.) It’s pretty inter­est­ing, but with­out blows being landed, or vir­gins won, it didn’t quite inter­est me. Instead of watch­ing, we have a small lunch at a beach front cafe over­look­ing the ocean. We are drink­ing out of Coconuts, and I have a caipir­inha (the national drink of Brazil, and becom­ing hip in the US), fol­lowed by some var­i­ous seafood dishes. Pretty tasty, and really how life should be lived.

There was another city about an hour away called Parati (some­times spelled Paratay, and pro­nounced paratAi. Appar­ently, in Por­tuguese, the empha­sis is on the sec­ond to last syl­la­ble. The first or last syl­la­ble I can under­stand, but sec­ond to last?) It was sup­posed to be one of the orig­i­nal towns in Brazil, and quite his­toric, so we head there. Simone — she’s a good tour guide. When we find the city, we park and start look­ing for a hotel. Once again, we have some­one “offer” to watch our car. Appar­ently the woman who made the offer was some­what rude, and some­what crazy towards Simone after she said no. I guess it’s not a job for the men­tally sta­ble. We end up look­ing around for quite a long time before we find a hotel to stay in — some were cheap but basic, and some where opu­lent but expen­sive. Even­tu­ally we find a fan­tas­tic hotel room in the old part of town (which means walk­ing only — no cars) for more than I wanted to pay, but it wasn’t too much. The two nights were $125, but that included break­fast (with mon­keys) and a lovely pool. I upgraded to a suite because it was a LOT larger, and the bed was the size of some hotel rooms. In ret­ro­spect, this was a good idea, since Simone wasn’t feel­ing well much of the time, and spent a lot of time sleeping.

This town was very nice, and since it was a tourist town, was full of mid­dle class peo­ple. At one point I looked around, and I counted 10 peo­ple with cam­eras in hand tak­ing pic­tures, almost all at the same time. There were a lot of restau­rants, and a bunch of cloth­ing stores for tourist with “Brasil” writ­ten all over them. On Sun­day morn­ing, before we go to lay out at the pool, Simone talked me (well, shamed me is more like it) into a more appro­pri­ate bathing attire. I never fig­ured myself as a thong speedo wear­ing kind of guy, but when in Rome, do as the Romans. We got laughed at by a cou­ple of shop girls until I finally got up the gump­tion to wear such a thing. I think I was the one get­ting laughed at, but that’s OK. Even­tu­ally we head back to the pool, and lay out for a cou­ple of hours, me get­ting sun where the sun don’t nor­mally shine. Oh — and about that thong speedo, it wasn’t really. But it was small, and it was much dif­fer­ent than any­thing I’ve worn in front of other peo­ple before, at least with­out get­ting a kiss first. But don’t worry — I like to think I rep­re­sented Amer­ica well.

The city was very nice. It was old, and charm­ing, and roman­tic. We walked around, I took some pic­tures, we ate a late lunch, and napped through the after­noon. It was very pleas­ant, and very relax­ing, even for a guy that hasn’t worked for a year. We decided to stay for another night. At break­fast (included) there were a cou­ple of lit­tle mon­keys play­ing around the buf­fet. Any time you get to have mon­keys around, well, that’s worth some­thing. And these were cute, tiny mon­keys — the maybe the size of a small cat, not the dung fling­ing chim­panzees that are always in the news.

On Mon­day morn­ing, we even­tu­ally need to leave. We get up early, and start head­ing back. On the way, we take a wrong turn, and end up going into the moun­tains, on a one lane road. It was pretty crazy, mainly in that her car couldn’t make it up the hills. We came to a dead stop a cou­ple of times in sec­ond gear, because there wasn’t enough power. She is not feel­ing well, and asked me to pull over so she could drop off. I’m dri­ving, try­ing to fig­ure out exactly what this “drop off” she is want­ing to do. Luck­ily, I fig­ured out quickly that it means she’s going to be sick. Even­tu­ally we found the cor­rect road back to the town of Ubatuba, packed the beach house and headed back to the large, large city of Sao Paulo. She ask me to pull over a cou­ple of times before we get to the city, and I’m wor­ried about her, but she man­aged to sleep most of the jour­ney back. While she’s sleep­ing, I’m think­ing “what are the chances? Nah..” Then in five min­utes — “Nah. Impos­si­ble” Then “What are the chances? Nah.” It was a much longer ride back. We arrived in the early after­noon, which was much dif­fer­ent than dri­ving at 11:30 at night on a Wednesday.

So far, I’ve dri­ven in New York, Mex­ico City, and Sao Paulo, all dur­ing rush hour. Three of the largest cities in the world — I never set out to drive in these cities, but some­how it hap­pened. I won­der if I should make a goal of it — drive in the 10 largest cities in the world. Con­sid­er­ing each and every time it sucked, I prob­a­bly won’t, but it’s good to know that I’m able to. It makes me more manly, and peo­ple like that in sexy foreigners.