Taxi Ride

After a pleasant afternoon in Liberdade, we took a taxi to the airport. Our driver turned out to be a second-generation nikkei Japanese man, about 76 years old. He had never been to Japan, but his parents had immigrated to Brazil in the 1930s and he spoke fluent Japanese. He said he had moved from Mato Grosso State to Sao Paulo city from the countryside when he was in his early 20s and worked at a Japanese company there. He was a nice guy and we all chatted on the way to the airport. At the end of the ride, after helping us get our luggage out of the trunk, he smiled and waved as if we were distant relatives and he was sending us off. It was quite a nice end to the day before our flight back to Japan.

Liberdade ni Funjatta

We arrived past midnight at the Nikkey Palace Hotel in the Liberdade neighborhood of Sao Paulo. We chose to stay in Liberdade because it is known as "Little Japan" since so many Japanese (and, these days, Chinese and Korean) immigrants settled here; in fact, it's the largest Japanese community outside of Japan. It's been 100 years since the large migration from Japan to Brazil, so the "Japanese" living here now are largely second- and third-generation; in Japanese, "second-generation Japanese" is nikkei (日経), hence the name of our hotel. Nikkey Palace Hotel turned out to be a nice place, with staff that speak Portuguese, English and Japanese, so we were able to communicate quite easily.
Suzuki-san and I decided to meet at 9 a.m. and walk around the neighborhood. It was a slightly chilly Saturday morning, but there were plenty of people out and about. We walked up the street towards a square where there is a market every weekend. As we walked up the street, we passed a busy restaurant and Suzuki-san realized he'd stepped in something. Whatever it was, the color was a slightly rotten yellowish-brown; almost the color of a day-old egg yolk. We decided it was either something made of egg that someone had dropped coming out of the restaurant, or it was something a doggy had dropped after eating something made of egg that someone had dropped coming out of the restaurant. In any case, when we arrived at the park, we found some puddles and Suzuki-san washed his shoe off clean. Then a middle-aged man came up to us sounding rather irritated saying something in Portuguese. When we told him we didn't understand, he switched to Japanese and asked if we understood. He was a nikkei Japanese-Brazilian of course, and once he found out that Suzuki-san was Japanese, they had a more friendly conversation. He told us that homeless and drinkers make a mess of the park on the weekends, and the people who sell things at the market are left to clean it up. He had hosed his part of the park down, and that's why there were puddles there in the first place. We told him Suzuki-san had probably stepped in egg, and the guy was nice enough to agree it looked like it was probably just egg. We apologized anyway and then moved on to continue our walk.
Walking around town, we found there is a Japanese Immigration Museum in town, but it doesn't open until the afternoon, so we are going to go back later. We also found a shop called Toji Funjatta, which means "Stepped in (it)" in Japanese. The shop was closed, so we weren't sure what it was (maybe a bar?), but I took Suzuki-san's picture in front of it to commemorate out morning adventure.
Other parts of town were quite nice, and when the sun came out around 10a.m., we walked through an outdoor fruit & vegetable market, and then stopped at a stand selling fried pastries filled with cheese and meats. I managed to order one filled with ham and cheese (we just ordered at random) and we sat down and shared it. After another short walk, we arrived back at our hotel for a short rest...which brings us to the present moment. We still have quite a few hours before we need to head back to the airport, so hopefully we'll find something fun to do nearby. But in any case, it's nice to have time in Sao Paulo to see some sights and not just the airport.

43 kilos

Our flight from Manaus to Sao Paulo went well, although checking in took
a little more work than we had anticipated. We knew we had luggage over
the limit--43 kilograms, to be exact--but we didn't know that we had to
go to a separate airline counter to pay the fee. I don't know what the 3
people in front of us were doing, but it was taking a long time and
everyone involved looked frustrated. When we only had 30 minutes until
our supposed departure time, it was finally our turn. We only had a
limited amount of local currency on us, but managed to scrounge together
just enough to pay the fee, then go through security and boarded
immediately. The flight left the gate just 10 minutes later and we
arrived in Sao Paulo on time.
Before catching a taxi to go to our hotel, we put our luggage with a
storage service, then decided to hit an airport restaurant for dinner.
We ended up choosing a place called On The Rocks since they served beer
and light meals. My colleague had a Bohemian beer and I ordered an
Itaipava Premium beer, which was dry and crisp. For food I got what was
basically a huge salad atop two thinly sliced cuts of rare roast beef. A
"meat salad" might sound like a contradiction, but proportionally, it
seemed like a good balance, and tasted great.
After dinner we went to the taxi information booth and told them the
address of our hotel. They gave us a taxi slip with the cost of the trip
printed on it and the address of our hotel. The driver took it, nodded,
and opened the door to his cab. Cozy in the backseat, and a little bit
exhausted, I snoozed most of the way to the hotel, looking forward to
seeing Sao Paulo tomorrow.

Between Saturday and Sunday

We arrived at our hotel around 1am, having flown to Sao Paulo in the
late afternoon and then catching the 8:30 TAM flight to Manaus. One of
the engineers on our team had already been in Manaus for most of the
previous week and he greeted each of us with a liter bottle of water and
two Bohemian longnecks. Upon arrival in almost any foreign country,
emerging economy or not, bottled water is a must, and the beers were a
perfect gesture to welcome us to town after many hours of travel.

A day in Curitiba

After getting breakfast, I made arrangements with the hotel for a late checkout until 2pm, and told Suzuki-san to meet me at the lobby at five to nine. Paulo had told me about a bus that circles the city perimeter, stopping at scenic and historical spots along the way. Since the buses run every 30 minutes, you are allowed to get on and off up to four times to see the places you're interested in. Waiting at the stop in front of our hotel, the sky was overcast and there was a cool breeze. The pedestrian street was already full of people walking through. A road passed through part of the square, but it was the opposite of what you regularly see; the walkway was wide and expansive with people and bicycles while the road seemed a perfunctory add-on to convenience pedestrians who need to catch a taxi or for service vehicles. This part of Curitiba somehow reminded me of Prague, although the revolution that had taken place here was not political, but in city design.
The bus arrived and we got on, bought our tickets, and then climbed up to the open-air top deck. No sooner did we sit down, though, when the wind picked up and a light mist soon turned into a misty rain. Suzuki-san told me he was an ame-otoko (雨男）, literally "rain man", which in Japanese means someone who always seems to attract rainy weather, so we road the next 20 minutes on the lower level until we arrived at the Jardim Botânico, a French-style garden with a picturesque greenhouse. We bought rain ponchos at the gift shop and made our way down the main path flanked by green, triangular hedges. After passing through the greenhouse, the rain subsided for a while and a blue sky showed itself.
Our next stop was the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, which features the Brazilian architect's famous eye-shaped building above a pond. It was truly and impressive building, and Suzuki-san and I decided to spend an hour or so there and see some of the exhibits inside, since the entrance fee was only $4 BRL (about $2). There was some great contemporary art, sculptures, installations and paintings, and afterwards Suzuki-san bought some DVDs at the museum shop.
We were running a little short on time at that point, though, so we skipped the next bus and jumped in a taxi to go see the Ópera de Arame, a wire opera house made of steel tubes, accessible only by crossing over a long bridge (some pictures here). We soaked up the scenery while sitting in a small cafe on the ground floor near the pond where we could hear a nearby waterfall.
As it was nearing the end of the day, we went back to the town center and strolled around Tiradentes Square and ducked inside the cathedral for a bit before heading over by the Paço da Liberdade, an historical palace which was restored and reopened last year. Then, asking locals for directions along the way, we made it back to our hotel, caught a taxi and made it to the airport in plenty of time for our flight to Sao Paulo and then on to Manaus.

Curitiba

We arrived in Curitiba around one in the afternoon and were soon met by a casually but well-dressed man named Mr. Camillo. He told us that Paulo and Jose were stuck in traffic and would arrive in about 20 minutes, so we set our things down and I read over our itinerary again to solidify plans in my head. After a while, we were on our way in a Fiat rent-a-car that held all 6 of us rather comfortably. Our destination was a co-processing facility for recycling owned, at least partially, by Mr. Camillo. As we drove through Curitiba, I looked out the window ready to catch my first glimpses of this rather famed town, rated by Reader's Digest as the best place to live in Brazil. However, the jet-lag from our nearly 30 hours of travel caught up to me, and I passed out in the car. When I awoke, we were at the recycling facility, where we saw a brief presentation about their business by a well-spoken young environmental engineer named Carlos. He gave us a tour and my colleagues were excited about the crushers and the stacks of containers and used tires, snapping photos and asking lots of questions. I found it all interesting enough, and jotted down some notes, but was feeling in a daze and a bit chilly since the temperature had dropped to about 60. When we were finished at the recycling facility, we caught a ride to our hotel, the Hotéis Slaviero in central Curitiba. It was nice to put down my bags and throw myself on the bed, and after a good night's sleep, am ready to head out with our engineer Suzuki-san to see the town via double-decker bus.

Back to the Jungle

This will be my last trip to Manaus for this project. It's such a quick
trip, we'll barely be over the jet-lag before we get on another
airplane. I think I'll be in an airplane so much--8 flights in 12
days--I might be more likely to experience "land-lag". Anyway, it will
be a busy trip, but will try and update here and there on the blog.