The Land of Sugarcane

Sugarcane? sounds pretty mundane, doesn’t it?

When Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral  and his crew stumbled upon Porto Seguro and claimed the Brazil territory in 1500 in an attempt to find a new sea route to India for precious spice, what they saw was a vast but undeveloped land and natural resources. At the end, Portuguese did not find desired minerals as they had hoped for and instead brought and established successfully an empire of sugarcane which is indigenous to tropical South Asia and Southeast Asia.  In fact, for the subsequent 100 years, Portuguese, along with the Dutch, monopolized the exports of sugar to Europe.  Even today, Brazil is still the top sugar producing and exporting country of the world.  It is not surprising that one can find sugarcane infiltrated into fabric of life and heritage of Brazilians.  However being the only Portuguese-speaking country of the Americas, we are also reminded constantly who were the ultimate victors and dominant colonial powers. 

Copacabana Beach at Night

A visit to Brazil would not be complete without seeing Rio de Janeiro.  It was Brazil’s capital from 1763 till 1960 when the brand new city Brasilia was built anew and became the capital.  From 1815 to 1821 Rio was the capital of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarves after the Portuguese Monarch exiled to Brazil in 1807 when Napoleonic forces captured Lisbon.  With the beauty like the famous Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, rainforests, morros, and hills, it is one of the most scenic cities in the world.  

Panoramic View of Rio from Corcovado

The best panoramic view of the Rio can be seen from the granite peak of Corcovado (hunchback)

Christ the Redeemer

Jaca Fruits

mountain where the 100 ft feet tall (excluding the 31 ft pedestal) sculpture of Jesus Christ - Christ the Redeemer stands in a welcoming gesture with open arms.  For its international fame and popularity, there are many local jokes about the gesture. My favorite is the one that claims there is another Christ statue in Brazil whose hand points towards to the Christ the Redeemer.  That Christ is quoted to be asking Christ the Redeemer do something about the chaos and misery in Rio.  Christ the Redeemer, in response, opened his arms in resignation and said “what can I do?”, thus the gesture.  Nevertheless with a territory comparable in size to the United States and a 200 million population, Brazilians did manage to have the statue win the title as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.   The 20 minutes tram ride to the top of Corcovado is very pleasant and relaxing.  Along the way, one travels thru the Tijuca forest and can see from time to time the ridiculously large Jaca fruits, the largest tree-borne fruit of the world.  

The other popular scenic attraction of Rio is the Sugarloaf Mountain, so named for its appearance.   At almost 1300 ft high off the peninsula in Guanabara Bay, it takes two cable car rides to reach the peak from the shore with a transfer at the lower Urca mountain.  The view up there is breathtaking as well.

Sugarloaf Mountain, seen from Morro de Urca

In contrast to Buenos Aires, Rio’s demography is a lot more diverse.  Historically, compared to other countries in the Americas, Brazil was the largest “importer” of African slaves with a total well over 3 millions (compared to an estimated 645,000 to United States).  With no land and no jobs when slavery was finally abolished in late 19^th century, these freed slaves gathered and settled in bairros africanos that evolved to the slums interspersed on the hills now known as favela.    Despite repeated government attempts to eradicate them, favela (now officially renamed “community” by Brazilian government) has been growing in cities like Rio with mostly black and multi-racial residents). 

The obvious deeper problem is a social-economic one.  Brazil, while enjoying being one of the fast growing nation of the world for some time, has had also one of the highest parity of and widest gap between rich and poor of the world by various measures including the well-known GINI coefficient and the ratio of the average income of the richest 10% is to the poorest 10% (at 51+ compared to 16 for U.S.).  In Rio de Janeiro, about 1 in 5 now lives in a favela and for the nation, about 25% although services and life in favela arguably have improved.  If taking the newly available favela tours is too much for you, watching the 2002 Oscar-nominated Brazilian movie City of God will definitely give you a dramatized sample of life there.  

When Argentina and Uruguay were busy inventing tango from their Spanish and African heritage in poor the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, Samba dance and music of African and central European origin became popular in Rio de Janeiro and other parts of Brazil.   Today, this highly rhythmic and dynamic music and dance is the most well-known cultural icon of Brazil, thanks partly to the highly publicized annual Carnival of Brazil, 40 days before the Easter and one of the most exotic regular public parties of the world.   The 90,000 capacity 2,000 ft long cement Sambadrome Marquês de Sapucaí in downtown Rio de Janeiro is a major tourist attraction that always appears on TV worldwide during the Carnival.  Numerous Samba schools with strong local and favela ties compete in parades with their costume, music, and dance, stretched over several days and nights till you drop dead. 

If you don’t want to, or can’t be in Rio at the Carnival time, you can still get a pretty good idea of it at one of those Samba shows that are catered to tourists.  Compared to Argentina Tango which is seductive and dramatic with elegance, Brazilian Samba is sexy, colorful, and full of raw energy with sustained high frequency hip movements.  The contrast is also evident in the music and instrument as well.  Here are some photos from a show at the Plataforma, a popular venue in Rio. 

In the same show, we also saw a performance of the fascinating Brazilian martial art called Capoeira that is a mix of fighting styles/forms and acrobatics, danced to music.   As much as I would love to claim that all martial arts came originally from China, there is no evidence that is the case with capoeira which can be traced back to African slaves with native influence as early as in the 16^th century.   Its theatrical display of the skill and masculinity made it quite popular and sometimes can be seen on the streets in American major cities.  Below is a very nice presentation of capoeira I found on Youtube.

Everyone knows the national sport of Brazil is soccer (or fútbol).  The 85,000 capacity stadium Estádio do Maracanã, a major landmark of Rio, is currently undergone renovation in preparations for hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics.   You can see and feel the pride, confidence and optimism from Brazilians as they walked out of the shadow of the horrifying inflation of the 80’s and 90’s, became one of the largest and fast-growing economy of the world, and earned those honors.  When Maracana was built to host the 1950 World Cup, the official figure of the attendance (many standing) was nearly 200,000 for the final game when Brazil lost to its rival Uruguay.  You can find many of the superstars’ footprints (or handprints for the goalies) from Pele to Ronaldo, on the one of a kind Maracana’s Walk of Fame.

Don’t miss Churrascaria when visiting Brazil if you are a meat eater.  These Brazilian steakhouses offer wonderful buffet and all you can eat meat where skilled Passadores (meat waiter) continuously and tirelessly come to serve you at your table with knives and a skewer until you surrender with a red card/flag.   On the skewer, it is strung with cut of beef, chicken, pork, lamb, or even pineapple (which tastes surprisingly good).  Don’t miss the delicious palm heart which is the bud of certain palm trees and gave you a temporary relief from the heavy texture and BBQ’d meat.  The real cure though is Caipirinha, the Brazilian national cocktail made with cachaça (sugarcane liquor at about 50% alcohol), sugar and lime.  Can you think of a better way to help Brazilians to consume the abundant sugarcane they produce every year?  OK, ok, I know Brazil is also the largest bio fuels producer and leader of the world using sugarcanes.

Well, our two weeks vacation is coming to an end; time to go home to shovel the snow.  Talk to you soon!

Big Water - the Iguazu Falls

In the 1986 movie classic The Mission, the story of the redemption of Captain Rodrigo Mendoza (played by Robert de Nero) was set to take place above an incredible waterfall.  An early scene of the movie shown on the movie poster at the right depicts the episode when Guarani people tied a priest to a cross and threw him over the falls to his death.   The fall is the mighty Iguazu Falls as the native Guarani people called it – the Big (-guazu) Water (I-).

Picture in your head that you traverse north and northwest along Rio de Plata (the Silver River) from Buenos Aires, you will reach one of its two primary sources - Paraná River which, at ~3,000 miles long, is one of the longest rivers in the world.  A few miles before you reach Itaipu Dam of Brazil and Paraguay, the largest hydroelectric power station in the world for now (China’s Three Gorges Dam will exceed it when the planned turbines are all completed), you can bank east at where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet and get onto Iguazu River, an 800+ miles long east-west tributary.  It will not take long before you see the mist and then hear the roaring of Iguazu Falls where Iguazu River drops suddenly from a plateau of 360 ft high.

Iguazu Falls is actually consisted of a bundle of 275 falls of various sizes and heights along a 1.7 miles wide irregular cross-section of the Iguazu River between Brazil (at north) and Argentina.  It is no doubtedly one of the most scenic waterfalls in the world and is also one of the 28 finalists in the ongoing competition for the titles of the New 7 Wonders of Nature of the World.  While there are many famous waterfalls with their own attractions, it is useful to highlight some of the obvious attributes, short of visiting them all in person.   Iguazu Falls is not the highest waterfall of the world.  For that, you need to travel to Venezuela to see the Angle Fall at a height of 3,200+ ft.  Iguazu Falls does not have the highest average flow rate either, the popular Niagra Falls at the U.S. and Canada border tops it with 85,000/292,000 (vs. 61,000/452,000) cubic feet per second in average and max recorded, respectively according to the World Waterfalls Database .  However, with its 1.7 miles of width and 275 falls, it is most scenic and offers so much nuances that one can easily spend two full days to enjoy the walks and distinct views of it.  Better yet, you can also get soaked in it, literally.

With two thirds of falls on the Argentina territory, there are several walkways on Argentina side that bring you different vintage points close to the falls.  The largest falls of all, Devil’s Throat (Garganta del Diablo) never disappoints.   With the mist from the volumes of water falling at high rate, one can

Devil's Throat

easily mistaken being transported into landscape paintings of traditional Chinese painters.  The next largest, San Martin Falls and Bosetti Falls are as popular that can be reached through the upper circuit.  By the way, San Martin is José de San Martín, a name and statue that you would find in many places of southern South America including Peru, Chile and Argentina for his contributions and military leadership in the independence of these countries from Spain.  

Bosetti Falls

San Martin Falls

If you are venturous, don’t miss the speed boat ride to the falls reacheable via the lower circuit walkway.  In addition to some quick turns and the sceneries of the falls from the river, the boat takes you into the edge of the San Martin Falls and let you enjoy being showered by a powerful waterfall for some brief moment (sorry, can’t do it with boat ride from Brazil side since this falls is only accessible from Argentina).  On the way back to the Sheraton Hotel in the park (expensive but worth every cent of it) from the dock by a 4x4 truck through the rain forest, we saw a pair of wild toucans in their hallmark of colorful big bills on a tree top at a distance.  What a beauty!

A pair of wild toucans

Devil's Falls at Sunrise from Sheraton Hotel

Crossing the border by car to Brazil, one can take additional and different views of Iguazu Falls. The one kilometer long walkways along the Iguazu river in the National Park offers views of the falls on Argentina side.  The walkway ends with acclamation below Devil’s Throat.   You then realize how much water there really is since the view from Argentina side was from the top.  One angle of

the falls we did not explore was from the air; there are helicopter tours offered at the Brazil side.  The real regret is that we did not have a chance to taste the golden Dorado from the river.  A favorite of fly fishing sportsmen, Dorado is so flavorful that I still remember it from my first visit of Iguazu 16 years ago! 

Well, time to continue on to Rio de Janeiro of Brazil.   Talk to you soon!

Argentina – the largest Spanish Speaking Country on Earth

Struggling through flight cancelation, reroute, and delays resulting from the notorious X’mas blizzard of 2010, we finally reached the sunny Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina 56 hours behind schedule.  The only event of the original itinerary we managed to salvage was an evening Tango show and dinner at the Tango Porteño, right next to the 67 meter high Obelisk, (a mini Washington Monument might be the best way to picture it) the most obvious landmark of the city. 

If you have never seen Tango performance before, here is the unforgettable tango scene of the 1992 movie Scent of a Women in which Al Pacino gave his Oscar winning performance of a blind, depressed, and difficult man who carried out his wishes in last few days of his life before his planned suicide.   Of course, the tango you see on this video is a Ballroom style tango which is just one of many styles of tango and is quite different from Argentina Tango.  One would have to do a lot more research to understand the intricacy of different styles of tango. 

If you are more into music than dance, you may want to try the Libertango, performed by Cellist Yo Yo Ma et.al including the essential tango music instrument Bandoneon.  Libertango was composed by Astor Piazzola, the famed Argentine composer who brought Tango music to the international stage.   It is also the opening music of Yo Yo Ma’s best seller music CD Soul of the Tango. 

Situated at the southeast part of South America, Argentina is the 8^th largest country of the world with 40 million people over a little over one million square miles of land.  Its history, following the familiar pattern of the Americas, was demarcated with the Spanish Colonization that began at the discovery of the area by the Spanish navigator Juan Díaz de Solís in 1516.  The name Argentina came from the Latin word Argentum that means silver.  Río de la Plata, the widest river in the world (140 miles wide at its mouth where Buenos Aires is located) literally means Silver River, so named because of the rumor and belief in early days that there were rich silver mountains upstream that turned out not to be true.  

Today, Argentina is a predominantly white nation with over 86% of its population self-identify as European descendants, followed by 8% of mestizo (mixed of European and Native Americans).  There was one time a third of its population was Afro-Argentines during colonial time but now disappearing with a widely varying estimates and confusing theories about a upward close to 5% of population with Afro ancestry.   Less controversial statistics are available for Amerindians: about 1% of the population is Amerindians and 3% if you include anyone with significant Amerindian ancestry.   As one can guess, Argentina had its share of notoriety of genocides in its history.  The Conquest of the Desert of the 1870s killed about 1.3 million of aboriginal people in Patagonia.   Indigenous population now stands at approximately 600,000 (or about 1.5% of the total population).

Patagonia is the geographical region of the southern part of today’s Chile and Argentina between Pacific and Atlantic oceans, totaled to a little over one million square kilometers.   The name came from Spanish word patagón where pata- means big leg or foot, a reference to the mythical local people Magellan and his crew saw and met in the region in 1520 on its first around the world voyage.  Some depictions put those giants at such a height that sailing Spaniards and Portugese could only reach their waists.   In reality, the Tehuelche people of Patagonia averaged about 6 ft, a bit taller than Spaniards and Portugese but hardly qualified as giants.  For more on the myth, one can refer to e.g., Austin Whittall's blog in 2009.

Patagonia does have however what believes to be one of the largest (longest and heaviest) dinosaurs on earth, the Argentinosaurus, whose story and discovery was told vividly in the movie Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia which has been shown in many Natural History museums.   While one can only found fossils and models of the remains of giant dinosaurs at a few places, one can see and touch parts of Patagonian Ice Sheet of the current ice age since few million years ago.  Over the Andes mountains, this largest ice cap outside of Antarctica and Greenland feeds 47 large glaciers out of which 13 flowing east towards to the Atlantic ocean.   The most popular destination of all is the 1700+ square mile Parque Nacional Los Glaciares of Argentina that was created in 1937 and declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Sites in 1981. 

Flying southwest from Buenos Aires, one reaches El Calafate in about three hours, a booming tourist town.  People flocking to this town with at least one activity in common – visit of Perito Moreno Glacier.  At a mere 200 meter above sea level and 1 hour ride 30 miles west of El Calafate where it ends its eastward march at the Lake Argentina, Moreno Glacier is one of the most easily accessible and visited glaciers.     On top of it, it offers once in a while a spectacular scene of rupture when a whole section of the glacier front collapses in front of naked eyes.  Here is a Youtube video of the last rupture in 2008.

As one of few growing glaciers in Patagonia, the 3 miles wide Perito Moreno Glacier advances as fast as 1.5 meter per day towards Lago Argentino (Lake Argentina), the second largest lake of South America.   When the glacier meets the land (where the park viewing platforms are), it becomes a ~200 meters high natural dam that dissects the L-shape Lake Argentina in two and as a result, the water level the pressure of the southern part of the lake continues to rise, sometimes reaching as high as 30 meters.  Every few years, unannounced, with the increasing pressure, the “dam” broke with the rupture of the glacier wall, a unique incredible scene in nature.   Here is a panoramic  frontal view of the Moreno Glacier taken from the viewing platform a few hundred yards away.  Walkways and viewing platforms have been built along the lake front.   One can take time strolling down the walkway enjoying the views at various angles of the bluish ice formations.   Even better, one can quietly listen to the roar and occasionally see the crumbling of pieces of the glacier.  In addition to some longer cruises of the lake seeing other glaciers and icebergs, one can also take a short one hour cruise to the south wall of the glacier to get a close-up view of the 40 meter (100+ ft) high wall of the glacier from the lake (see photos below). 

Flying back to Buenos Aires, we enjoyed a stroll leisurely at the La Recoleta Cemetery, one of the top tourist spots of the city, where many rich and famous Argentines rest in peace.   Most people come here to visit or pay tribute to the late Eva Perón (full name: María Eva Duarte de Perón) in her (Duarte) family tomb.  Before late 70’s, Eva Peron may not be a well-known public figure outside Argentina.  Andrew Lloyd Webber (for music) and Tim Rice (for lyrics) changed it with their powerful musical Evita.  More than three decades later, its best-known song Don't Cry for Me Argentina is still widely circulated and referred to globally.  Here is a Youtube video of it, performed by Elaine Paige on Webber’s 50^th birthday celebration in 1998.  Of course, Elaine Paige was the one who delivered perfectly the combative and passionate Evita in the 1978 premiere of the show in Westend of London.  If you have not heard of the song before, I promise you will love it.

There seems no doubt that Eva Peron was an ultimate populist political figure with her humble upbringing and ambitions yearning for attention, love and glory.  She was a huge factor in the success of her husband Juan Peron’s political career and the formation of Peronism and feminist movement that drew strong support from labor, workers and women.  At the end, her ambition was stopped short by the male-dominated society and military power, and finally terminated at age 33 by cancer.   However despite her short life, she still occupies an important spiritual and mythical role deeply imbedded in many Argentines’. 

Six months earlier in 1951 before Eva Peron’s death, 23 years old upper middle class Argentine Ernesto 'Che' Guevara took a year off from his medical study at the University of Buenos Aires to embark with his friend Alberto Granado on a 5,000 miles journey across South America.  The experience was documented in his famous The Motorcycle Diaries  which was made into a movie as well.  Che later joined Fidel Castro for the Cuban revolution in 1956 and was captured and executed in Bolivia when he waged armed revolution there in 1967.  No, Che was not buried at the La Recoleta Cemetery.  His remains were eventually recovered in mid 1990s in Bolivia and laid to rest in 1997 in Cuba.   For more about Che, see my blog 269 minutes with Che. 

What both Eva Peron and Che Guevara experienced and saw were social economic, welfare, and equity problem of Argentine society. Despite the political instability and military dictatorship in the ensuing years, Argentina has been doing quite well economically with a large middle class compared to many other countries although one can see some villa miseria (the Argentine slumps) in parts of Buenos Aires.    Recent global financial crisis did hit Argentina hard and Inflation is threatening to be getting out of control.  I wish Argentine can overcome the difficulties and the shadow of its association with fascism, military dictatorship to advance the welfare of all their people.

Last note: Unless you are a vegetarian, don’t miss the Parrilla (Argentina Grill), see photo to the right.  Try the wonderful Argentina BBQ beef, chicken, pork or lamb.  You may prefer the American corn- fed beef for its tenderness, I found myself like a lot the better flavored, leaner, more textured grass-fed Argentine cattle from pastures.  I was told they are free of growth hormone and antibiotics as well.   Of course, Argentina pizza is wonderful too, with its strong heritage of Italian immigrants.  I found their pizza is a lot closer to Italy’s than the American version.  In any case, whenever in doubt, order a glass of Argentina Malbec that will make any food agreeable. 

Next stop: Iguazu Falls.  Talk to you soon!