Brazil First Impression!

The only thing they seem to be doing small here in Brazil is the bikinis! Everything else is big! For starters the country in itself is huge and so are the portions in the restaurants! The cities are gigantic and so are the distances between them and the pot holes in the roads! The giant anteater, the giant river otter and the giant armadillo are all found here, as is the biggest snake in the world, the anaconda and biggest rodent, the Capybara. The Amazon boast the world’s biggest rainforest and on a completely different subject Blumenau boasts the biggest Oktoberfest outside of Munich! I suspect this list is far from complete.
Coming from Argentina, getting used to Brazil took some time. For one thing I was robbed of my ability to communicate properly. Portuguese is quite different from Spanish. The officer at the customs office in charge of filling out the temporary import permit for the motorcycle only spoke Portuguese. He apparently also didn’t have a clue as to how to enter the information into the computer. So he did the only sensible thing and rebooted the machine a couple of times! Obviously that didn’t help and so he was forced to call someone to come and help. To my surprise this officer spoke German! It took two hours, but eventually I was handed a big stack of papers! Welcome to Brazil! Actually, things here in general, seem to be very well organized and usually work. Traveling in Brazil is a breeze.
Brazil is not what I had pictured it to be. But it is very distinct, different from any country I have been to so far. There are certain things here that I will now forever associate with Brazil: For example being afraid of getting electrocuted every time I get into the shower where the hot water comes from a 220 Volt water heater often precariously installed! How green everything is, but also how hard it rains. And I am just amazed at the incredible variety of fruits and vegetables. Thank god the Brazilians love buffets! This is a great way of sampling all unknown dishes without having to bother trying to decipher a Portuguese menu!
I have been here two months now and I love it. I have been far too busy to write any blog updates, but right now I am spending some quite days in Lencois and maybe I will get around to it after all. By now there are quite a few stories to tell......