World Car Free Day is quite devoid of any meaning here in Brazil. That doesn’t mean we can’t take the opportunity to reflect on a truly worrying fact of life in Brazil. A recent article at the Thrill of Brazil blog reflected on something that will be familiar to anyone who’s spent any time in Brazil during the last few years: monster traffic jams, once a São Paulo trademark, are becoming an unstoppable reality of life in other large Brazilian cities like Rio de Janeiro or Salvador.

Go read the article: São Paulo’s World Famous Traffic Jams Starting to Spread throughout Brazil. Salvador de Bahia-based Michael Sommers is the writer of the excellent Moon Guide to Brazil and the Moon Guide to Rio. And one of the most knowledgeable travel writers on Brazil you are likely to come across.

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Brasil, Brasil is a superb 3-hour program produced by the BBC containing a comprehensive review of Brazilian music. Here’s the link to the BBC’s website with all the data on the documentary series: Brasil, Brasil. If you search on YouTube you will find the entire documentary divided into multiple chunks to allow for easier visualization.

Our friend Ernesto (I learned about the documentary series on his A Gringo in Olinda) has listed some of the links to the YouTube videos at the bottom of his blog entry Recommended music.

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Soccer has previously featured on the Brazil Travel blog. We visited landmarks such as the Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro and the Museu do Futebol (football/soccer museum) and the Morumbi stadium (São Paulo FC) in São Paulo.

A superb alternative to attending a soccer game is to listen to a game on the radio. For those with hardly any grasp of Portuguese, ten minutes of a live transmission should suffice. While TV broadcasts tend to be bland and boring, radio sports commentators deliver their narrative on a unique and hair-raising fashion. Do listen to the following recording and let me know if you agree.

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RELATED POSTS:
Maracanã
Museu do Futebol (football/soccer museum)
Morumbi stadium (São Paulo FC)

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Those with a grasp of Spanish should learn before they arrive in Brazil that the ubiquitous pastel is a false cognate and does not mean cake or pie like the Spanish term does. Rather, a pastel (its full form is pastel de feira) is a small pasty, made of puff pastry, rectangular in shape and fried. It can contain a wide range of fillings: cheese, tomato, meat, cod, mushrooms, chicken and so on.

The ancestor of the pastel is the Chinese spring roll. It arrived in Brazil with the Japanese immigrants escaping from the Second World War. As at that time being Japanese wasn’t hold in high regard, some of the Japanese tried to pass as Chinese to avoid the discrimination their country fellow men were being victim of. And they begin cooking Japanese food with a Chinese touch.

The pastel is strongly associated with São Paulo and it is an incredibly popular snack you will find in most open-air markets (the feiras, hence the name pastel de feira). The traditional thing to do is to eat your pastel washed down with a caldo de cana – sugarcane juice.

I just received, hot from the press, my Beaches Brazil, a project where I’ve put together a selection of more than one hundred photos taken during seven years travelling along the Brazilian coast. In the link I’ve just given you can preview the first 14 pages of the book. Here’s the full thumbnail index::

Most of the 120 pages of the book have full-page photographs. I have grouped the photos by themes: landscapes, crystal-clear water, waves, relax, food, beach shopping, boats, sunset, urban beaches, sports, flowers, villages and Noronha.

You can purchase the book from Blurb, where you’ll find all the details. Books are sent from the States and Europe to destinations all throughout the world.

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RELATED POSTS:
Maranhão, images of a Brazilian paradise

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Do not let Colombians be upset by the title of this blog post. There is a slight touch of irony on it.

Brazil is the main coffee producer in the world. In 2004 it was responsible for 35% of the world exports. Its fame is due to the quality of the beans grown and the great variety of types of coffee.

The main coffee-producing states, in order of importance, are Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, São Paulo, Paraná and Bahía. The best quality coffees are found in the south and the Cerrado region of Minas Gerais, and in the Mogiana region of the state of São Paulo.

In general, Brazilian coffee is known for its soft taste, pleasant flavour and balanced content. It is neither to acidic nor too bitter.

The importance coffee had for Brazil is seen in its history. It was coffee that brought waves of Italian and Japanese immigrants to São Paulo, and it was the commodity behind the growth of the city.

Don’t be surprised if, when ordering at a café the quintessential Brazilian cafezinho (expresso coffee) you feel let down. For a long time, the best Brazilian coffee beans were exported, while Brazilians drank a substandard product.

Thankfully, the last few years have seen a renaissance of coffee within Brazil, of which the opening of gourmet cafés is an unmistakeable sign.

The best cafés are found in São Paulo (the Octavio Café is unmissable), Rio de Janeiro, Santos and Curitiba. Santos is known as the “city of coffee” and is host to one of the most interesting museums in Brazil, the Museu do Café.

The Brazilian Central Bank acknowledged recently what anybody who’s been to Brazil for longer than two months knows perfectly well: there is a serious shortage of small change in the country. The reasons are diverse. The bank blames piggy banks, poor things.

Whether the pigs are guilty or not, the truth is that a by-product of the lack of small change is the irritating practice of always rounding up the change – in favour of the seller, not the buyer. This is a constant practice in all commercial transactions, and 9 out of 10 times the balance is tipped against you. If you pay with a R$5 note for something worth R$4,97, you can be sure you will not get any change in return.

While one tends to accept this practice in the case of small shops or people selling stuff on the streets, one wonders what the impact of this practice is on the cash-flow of large supermarket networks.

Even more annoying is the practice of trading money for sweets or chewing gum. Your meal costs R$9,80 and you pay with a R10,00 note? You might be offered two pieces of chewing gum instead of the R$0,20 you are owed. Please note that this is a one-way practice. You will never be allowed to pay for your meal with chewing gum.

P.S.: of course this is a common practice in many other countries around the world. But in my personal experience, this practice happens in Brazil with an alarming frequency.

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Pororoca, a word coming from the tupi for roar, could be the perfect title for a B-side movie. The truth is that is hard not to stare at the pororoca in awe, for the mightiest tidal bore in the entire world commands more than respect.

The pororoca is a phenomenon resulting from the meeting of the Amazon waters with the Ocean waters. As the sea level rises, its waters invade the mouth of the rivers, forming waves that are dozens and even hundreds of meters wide and up to five meters high, travelling at maximum speed of 50 kilometers per hour. The irregular river basin makes it impossible to tell when will the next pororoca rise, and how strong it will be.

There are several tidal bores around the world, but the most spectacular ones happen in Brazil, in the mouth of the Amazon river and specially in the river Araguari, in the state of Amapá.

Enlarge the map

The first video I have selected contains a short documentary on the phenomenon. It contains some beautiful images. From minute 2:40 onwards you will see several shots of the effec the pororoca has on the river side. A real river tsunami.

The second video is a trailer for a documentary on the activity that has given the pororoca world-wide fame: surfing. The chance of surfing on a never-ending wave is every surfer’s dream. As the pororoca extendes for dozens of kilometers, it offers a unique chance to turn that dream into reality. Some of the images on the video are really spectacular. You will see how the motorboats have to sail before the wave to drop the surfers.

The world record for the longest distance covered on a surf board is 10,1 kilometers and belongs to Brazilian Sérgio Laus – he spent 33 minutes surfing on the river Araguari. The record for the longest time surfing the pororoca belongs to Picuruta Salazar, who spent incredible 37 minutes surfing in the river.

Yet another amazing secret Brazil keeps in store for us.

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Today we want to introduce you to one of the greatest contributions of Brazil to the world: the unmistakable, inimitable and genuinely Brazilian pão de queijo. There will be those – and not without reason – wanting a more specific attribution of fame: pão de queijo is, above all, a Minas Gerais institution.

The pão de queijo is a cheese bun made of cassava flour, eggs, salt, milk and cheese. It is rounded in shape and the size can differ quite a lot. It is eaten hot and if it has been properly backed, it should have a soft and creamy feel to it. It should never be chewy.

You might find pão de queijo for breakfast at your hotel or pousada. The more you go up north, the less likely you are to have pão de queijo for breakfast. It is also served at snack bars, where it is often eaten next to your mid-morning coffee. There is a snack bar chain called “Casa do Pão de Queijo”.

You can buy frozen pão de queijo to bake it at home, and there are also mix packages if you want to prepare the bread yourself.

Similar products can be found in other South American countries. In Colombia cheese buns take the name of pandebono; they are chipás in Paraguay and Argentina.

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The finger-licking good brigadeiro (in Portuguese it means brigadier) is one of the best known and most typical Brazilian sweets. Born in São Paulo in the 40s (so the Portuguese Wikipedia tells us) when a group of housewives began cooking the delicacy to be served in meetings in support of brigadier Eduardo Gomes, at the time running for the presidency of Brazil.

Brigadeiro is a tiny and round sweet. Its basic ingredients are condensed milk, chocolate powder and butter. Once the ball is formed, it is rolled in chocolate sprinkles. Brigadeiros are mandatory at birthday parties.

Not recommended for weight watchers.

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