Have you ever wanted to Glad wrap your whole head?
...actually scratch that.
Have you ever seen one of those machines in a warehouse that is used to wrap a pallet in plastic?
Have you ever considered using it to tightly wrap your whole body in a protective water tight cocoon?
Well until two days ago the thought never crossed my mind…but that was two days ago!
Drinking in the pub directly across the street I was drinking a few quiet beers with my friend Nick and his house mate. His house mate was Brazilian and spoke very little English. Despite this fact there was very little doubt as to what he wanted to do that night. Although I may have lived across from this small drinking hole for some 6 weeks I was unaware that directly above it was Club 22…. a strip club. Nick house mate, who I will call Renzo as I have forgotten his real name was very very keen to move the quiet drinking session upstairs but unfortunately met some mild resistance from the two of us. Fortunately for him, he had not yet played his trump card. “It costs R$10 to enter, you get 3 free beers and can play pool all night”. Cha-ching! Knowing that pool costs R$15 and hour, I, and you will be surprised to hear this, decided that it was probably worth it due to the fiscal benefits. I was of course very wrong.
In Nick and my mind the club would be a huge place with shows at one end and pool tables at the other. There was no doubt we would be harassed at some stage but we though the interruption every twenty minutes was probably worth it given the savings….we were of course wrong. Luckily for us, Nick convinced the door lady to allow us to look before paying entry, and a good thing too. The whole establishment was about as big as the average lounge room and the two pool tables were about the length of my forearm and I guessed they were probably not up to international pool competition standards. Size of the table, of course, was not going to be the biggest issue when playing pool. To walk around the table once you would have to ask the seven ladies sitting around it to move.
…and speaking of the ladies, what a treat! I was transfixed by one girl who wore a bikini with straps on the bottom which crisscrossed her somewhat chubby body 7 or 8 times. The effect of such a garment was to make her look somewhat like a Christmas ham and was a sight that almost caused me to start giggling…but this was no giggling matter. The hunters having fixed on their prey, two rich gringos and there almost certainly rich friend, were now in sight and, more importantly were the only people, other than the workers, in the establishment. Standing up in the “sexiest of ways” the girls moved forward and we were forced to perform the standard Brazilian greeting of kissing them each on both cheeks. I considered buying some tequila to swab each of their cheeks but decided it was probably a touch rude. It was at this stage my mind crossed to the image of the pallet wrapping machine and the relative safety it could have offered me. If in two weeks I break out in a mass of buboes I’m blaming Renzo!
Saturday, 6 October 2007
Wednesday, 26 September 2007
The gas man cometh...
Spending many of my days wandering the streets of Rio De Janeiro, it can be expected that I get the desire to eat something, most days, which I’ve never seen before. It was during one of these walks that I purchased Cashew fruit.
Cashew fruit provides a very simple example of how wasteful we Westerners are. It is my understanding that most cashew fruit is thrown away or burnt as it is too difficult to transport and sell so we only sell the seed (about 1/30 of the total mass of food). The fruit itself is fist sized and mostly red with a great big fat nut on top (bigger than what we see by about three times due to the large shell). So how does it taste?
It’s really hard to say…and I’ve eaten two. The fruit is quite juicy but somehow manages to dry your mouth out. The only thing I know which is similar in this way, is deodorant….I know, I know most of you aren’t stupid enough to put your finger in your mouth after spraying your pits, but personally I’m up to about 37 incidents so am familiar with the situation, so I guess you’ll just have to take my word that they are similar.
Anywho after bringing all the cashew fruit and numerous other fruits home, I then had to get my housemate to tell me what I had purchased and then how to eat it. As I had, unsurprisingly, bought all the fruit that required some form of preparation, most was left to rot in the fruit bowl. My housemate (Adriana) found my stupidity to be quite hilarious and also watched in awe as I quartered oranges (footie game style) and proceeded to eat. “What you doing, this not how you eat and orange!”.
Eventually we turned in and Adriana wandered off to her room shaking her head, wondering how someone so large could no so little.
In wasn’t until about 4 am that my unfamiliarity with this place would hit again. Waking in the middle of the night, I smelt what I thought was gas. So wandered over to our hot water system (a small box covered in burn marks and needs to be lit every time you have a shower),situated just outside the kitchen. I smelled the air again and could smell something that might be gas, slightly concerned I spent half and hour putting my nose into every part of the box to try and find the source. No positive identification was made. Not wanting to wake my house mate at 4am, in my sleepy haze I picked up a box of matches and considered lighting one to identify the leek, after a short time considering this option I decided that I had read enough “Darwin Awards” to know that this was what is called a “shit idea” and quickly put the matches down.
So with my nose still picking up some odour but unable to identify the source I decided to listen to the gas unit. Pressing my ear against it I could hear a hissing sound. Unfortunately the unit was connected directly to the water pipes and the sound was not definitively gas hissing.
By 4:45am and I was getting a little jumpy. I turned the mains gas off (still a hissing sound was present) and I closed the door. I also went to my room closed the door and piled clothes against the crack at the base to stop the gas seeping in. Having watched Myth Busters blow up a using gas, I figured this would probably suffice. I opened my window up to maximum (despite knowing this would make me the number 1 mosquito target in Rio) and turned the air conditioner fan on full. Considering the other possibility, asphyxiation, I slept with my head at the foot of the bed so that the outside air blew directly into my mouth. I thought I would be kinda ok.
Waking late the next morning my house mate was in…lets say a “not so good mood”. She was not angry but disappointed here gas system was broken and she couldn’t have a shower.
“Ummmm…”
Before my explanation could spill forth, there was a knock at the door and the gas man arrived.
“Bugger!”. Knowing the cost of trades men I could see this might cost me.
The gas man quickly got to the job at hand and determined the failure was due to the fact that the mains were switched off (surprising!). It was at this stage the stupid gringo got the chance to explain the situation to his housemate.
Adriana became mildly concerned and asked him to check for gas leaks just in case there was a problem. As you may be aware, in Australia this is done with one of the gas probey thinga majigs. A safe and reliable way to find a leak. Not the case in Rio. They light a match and waggle it around seeing if things go boom (Genius! I could have done that last night). Despite the odd smell and the presence of a large white man hightailing it out of the kitchen at triple speed nothing went boom and the whole situation was put down to me “being an idiot”.
…oh and as an aside I did find the source of the gassy smell. It seems that cashew fruit along with drying your mouth out are quite smelly….I expect them to deport me in 8 days!!!
Cashew fruit provides a very simple example of how wasteful we Westerners are. It is my understanding that most cashew fruit is thrown away or burnt as it is too difficult to transport and sell so we only sell the seed (about 1/30 of the total mass of food). The fruit itself is fist sized and mostly red with a great big fat nut on top (bigger than what we see by about three times due to the large shell). So how does it taste?
It’s really hard to say…and I’ve eaten two. The fruit is quite juicy but somehow manages to dry your mouth out. The only thing I know which is similar in this way, is deodorant….I know, I know most of you aren’t stupid enough to put your finger in your mouth after spraying your pits, but personally I’m up to about 37 incidents so am familiar with the situation, so I guess you’ll just have to take my word that they are similar.
Anywho after bringing all the cashew fruit and numerous other fruits home, I then had to get my housemate to tell me what I had purchased and then how to eat it. As I had, unsurprisingly, bought all the fruit that required some form of preparation, most was left to rot in the fruit bowl. My housemate (Adriana) found my stupidity to be quite hilarious and also watched in awe as I quartered oranges (footie game style) and proceeded to eat. “What you doing, this not how you eat and orange!”.
Eventually we turned in and Adriana wandered off to her room shaking her head, wondering how someone so large could no so little.
In wasn’t until about 4 am that my unfamiliarity with this place would hit again. Waking in the middle of the night, I smelt what I thought was gas. So wandered over to our hot water system (a small box covered in burn marks and needs to be lit every time you have a shower),situated just outside the kitchen. I smelled the air again and could smell something that might be gas, slightly concerned I spent half and hour putting my nose into every part of the box to try and find the source. No positive identification was made. Not wanting to wake my house mate at 4am, in my sleepy haze I picked up a box of matches and considered lighting one to identify the leek, after a short time considering this option I decided that I had read enough “Darwin Awards” to know that this was what is called a “shit idea” and quickly put the matches down.
So with my nose still picking up some odour but unable to identify the source I decided to listen to the gas unit. Pressing my ear against it I could hear a hissing sound. Unfortunately the unit was connected directly to the water pipes and the sound was not definitively gas hissing.
By 4:45am and I was getting a little jumpy. I turned the mains gas off (still a hissing sound was present) and I closed the door. I also went to my room closed the door and piled clothes against the crack at the base to stop the gas seeping in. Having watched Myth Busters blow up a using gas, I figured this would probably suffice. I opened my window up to maximum (despite knowing this would make me the number 1 mosquito target in Rio) and turned the air conditioner fan on full. Considering the other possibility, asphyxiation, I slept with my head at the foot of the bed so that the outside air blew directly into my mouth. I thought I would be kinda ok.
Waking late the next morning my house mate was in…lets say a “not so good mood”. She was not angry but disappointed here gas system was broken and she couldn’t have a shower.
“Ummmm…”
Before my explanation could spill forth, there was a knock at the door and the gas man arrived.
“Bugger!”. Knowing the cost of trades men I could see this might cost me.
The gas man quickly got to the job at hand and determined the failure was due to the fact that the mains were switched off (surprising!). It was at this stage the stupid gringo got the chance to explain the situation to his housemate.
Adriana became mildly concerned and asked him to check for gas leaks just in case there was a problem. As you may be aware, in Australia this is done with one of the gas probey thinga majigs. A safe and reliable way to find a leak. Not the case in Rio. They light a match and waggle it around seeing if things go boom (Genius! I could have done that last night). Despite the odd smell and the presence of a large white man hightailing it out of the kitchen at triple speed nothing went boom and the whole situation was put down to me “being an idiot”.
…oh and as an aside I did find the source of the gassy smell. It seems that cashew fruit along with drying your mouth out are quite smelly….I expect them to deport me in 8 days!!!
Tuesday, 18 September 2007
Ilha Grande (kinda weird)
Don’t you hate it when travel shows use the phrase “….is a world of contradictions”?
In my book it’s up there with the all too common misuse of the term “ironic”. “Hey, isn’t it ironic that I want orange juice and we only have apple” ….umm no!
In any case, it is for this reason, I shall try to stick to the more hick phrase “It’s kinda strange” that way neither you nor I will be forced to punch each other or our respective computers.
We traveled to Ilha Grande on Saturday morning and were welcomed by a sun drenched island paradise with no cars and only a handful of vehicles ( 1 backhoe and 3 motorbikes to be precise) which were either used by the police or for general maintenance.
The island itself was originally used as a pirate hide way, later became a prison and, at a some stage, a leper colony. It was these facts that meant the island was left unsettled by “Rodrigo Average” and has become one of the last remaining slices of “forest type x” in the region.
So how does it all work? Well, as you can imagine, after looking at your average tropical paradise post card, the island has amazing beaches, fruit hanging from every tree and sun drenched happy people swimming, tanning and getting happily sozzled on the beach. But there is something kinda strange on this island, something as peculiar as my daily breakfast at the hostel. When walking on the beach you are very likely to find vultures, on mass, flying over head and bouncing around on the beach. I’m not sure if they are waiting for people to die of pleasure on the beach or if they’re simply waiting for sun drenched Yanks to begin peeling due over exposure, providing them wafer thin morsels, but they are bloody everywhere….it just doesn’t seem to make sense.
Similarly strange is the need for the local tour companies to drive you 2 hours to a “special lagoon” for swimming, only to find it is the same as the seventy three you passed on the way and almost identical to the one you can fall into from your bed if you’re not too careful.
This boat trip also elucidated another strange fact and that is the presence of an enormous oil rig, about 100m from the shore of this world heritage site. There is nothing more bizarre that happily bobbing past 194km2 of pristine wilderness only to find a hulking great oil rig around the corner, 3 or 4 tankers, a pipeline and a disused rig which is being left to, shall we say biodegrade, at it’s own rate. I don’t get it!
To be honest the place is pretty cool, but in keeping with the place we were rained out of our island paradise and thus after eating our all too familiar breakfast - 1 slice of ham, 1 slice of cheese, 1 roll, 1 piece of pineapple and some chocolate cake (breakfast of champions) we left swearing that we would return.
I know you may have been hoping for slightly more exciting stories, but the truth is, now that life is settling in and I have tightened the purse strings (I’m sure some of you are wondering how I could tighten them anymore) the shenanigans have slowed down for now. I’m looking at heading to the Pantanal (wildlife area) sometime next month and may even have a crack at fishing for piranhas…but this still a little way off now.
In my book it’s up there with the all too common misuse of the term “ironic”. “Hey, isn’t it ironic that I want orange juice and we only have apple” ….umm no!
In any case, it is for this reason, I shall try to stick to the more hick phrase “It’s kinda strange” that way neither you nor I will be forced to punch each other or our respective computers.
We traveled to Ilha Grande on Saturday morning and were welcomed by a sun drenched island paradise with no cars and only a handful of vehicles ( 1 backhoe and 3 motorbikes to be precise) which were either used by the police or for general maintenance.
The island itself was originally used as a pirate hide way, later became a prison and, at a some stage, a leper colony. It was these facts that meant the island was left unsettled by “Rodrigo Average” and has become one of the last remaining slices of “forest type x” in the region.
So how does it all work? Well, as you can imagine, after looking at your average tropical paradise post card, the island has amazing beaches, fruit hanging from every tree and sun drenched happy people swimming, tanning and getting happily sozzled on the beach. But there is something kinda strange on this island, something as peculiar as my daily breakfast at the hostel. When walking on the beach you are very likely to find vultures, on mass, flying over head and bouncing around on the beach. I’m not sure if they are waiting for people to die of pleasure on the beach or if they’re simply waiting for sun drenched Yanks to begin peeling due over exposure, providing them wafer thin morsels, but they are bloody everywhere….it just doesn’t seem to make sense.
Similarly strange is the need for the local tour companies to drive you 2 hours to a “special lagoon” for swimming, only to find it is the same as the seventy three you passed on the way and almost identical to the one you can fall into from your bed if you’re not too careful.
This boat trip also elucidated another strange fact and that is the presence of an enormous oil rig, about 100m from the shore of this world heritage site. There is nothing more bizarre that happily bobbing past 194km2 of pristine wilderness only to find a hulking great oil rig around the corner, 3 or 4 tankers, a pipeline and a disused rig which is being left to, shall we say biodegrade, at it’s own rate. I don’t get it!
To be honest the place is pretty cool, but in keeping with the place we were rained out of our island paradise and thus after eating our all too familiar breakfast - 1 slice of ham, 1 slice of cheese, 1 roll, 1 piece of pineapple and some chocolate cake (breakfast of champions) we left swearing that we would return.
I know you may have been hoping for slightly more exciting stories, but the truth is, now that life is settling in and I have tightened the purse strings (I’m sure some of you are wondering how I could tighten them anymore) the shenanigans have slowed down for now. I’m looking at heading to the Pantanal (wildlife area) sometime next month and may even have a crack at fishing for piranhas…but this still a little way off now.
Island paradise
but what's that on the horizon?
.....oh how lovely!
THe entry to acaia Climb through this hole and down the tunnel and...
THe glow of the ocean is really intense and this photo doews it no justice. It's pitch black and all you can hear is the roar of the ocean echoing through the rocks and the deep green rippling light as it bounces up into the cave.
Monday, 10 September 2007
Maturity
Some have suggested that through travel one broadens their mind and becomes more mature. As I suck down yet another Acai, a drink made from the berries of a plant found only in the Amazon (and would you believe touted by the all knowledgeable Oprah Winfrey as this years “Super food”), I am forced to consider this concept.
…it’s a load of rubbish really, isn’t it? As a rule one of my favorite past times when traveling is to laugh at the way people in other countries do things (classy huh?). I know this concept is probably not exactly “PC” but damn it, it’s my holiday and I’ll laugh if I want to.
…can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t have a small giggle about the fact that all poodles here seem to wear tiny little doggy shoes, or the fact that whilst in Chile, I was fortunate enough to actually witness the blind leading the blind? …I’m serious
One chap got rather tired of waggling his cane around, got bored and instead put his hand on his mates shoulder, forcing him, in turn, to take over all the stick waggling requirements. The one thing the leader forgot is that he now needed to waggle in a wider arch due to the increased width of the two fused companions. To be fair, they never faltered and never tripped, but I must admit, there was a little black part of my soul that was yearning for a small “funny home videos” style incident.….I’m going to hell aren’t?
So all in all, whilst people hang one handed out of 12 story building to wash the outside of the glass and the orthodontist van parks near my house offering discount, roadside, dental tune ups, this place will keep me entertained for quite some time…although I don’t think I need to see too many more 70 year old men jogging around the block in just a pair of shoes, socks and a striking pair of budgie smugglers. Graphic!
…If at all possible I’ll try and get some photos so you can truly appreciate the ludicrousy of some of these facts…just don’t hold your breath for a photo of the “blind leading the blind””, I’m guessing that may have been a one off.
It's almost as as if they had trains developed by people who'd only heard about them. "They're kinda like giant underground buses (note the fact the train has tyres).
Ï was impressed by the fold up steel cage that went over the car and buses windows...surprisingly my mate from Northern Ireland was less interested in heavily armoured police vehicles.
I'm not sure this beer brand has international marketing potential?... we later found out that it is widely considered the best Chilean beer.
…it’s a load of rubbish really, isn’t it? As a rule one of my favorite past times when traveling is to laugh at the way people in other countries do things (classy huh?). I know this concept is probably not exactly “PC” but damn it, it’s my holiday and I’ll laugh if I want to.
…can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t have a small giggle about the fact that all poodles here seem to wear tiny little doggy shoes, or the fact that whilst in Chile, I was fortunate enough to actually witness the blind leading the blind? …I’m serious
One chap got rather tired of waggling his cane around, got bored and instead put his hand on his mates shoulder, forcing him, in turn, to take over all the stick waggling requirements. The one thing the leader forgot is that he now needed to waggle in a wider arch due to the increased width of the two fused companions. To be fair, they never faltered and never tripped, but I must admit, there was a little black part of my soul that was yearning for a small “funny home videos” style incident.….I’m going to hell aren’t?
So all in all, whilst people hang one handed out of 12 story building to wash the outside of the glass and the orthodontist van parks near my house offering discount, roadside, dental tune ups, this place will keep me entertained for quite some time…although I don’t think I need to see too many more 70 year old men jogging around the block in just a pair of shoes, socks and a striking pair of budgie smugglers. Graphic!
…If at all possible I’ll try and get some photos so you can truly appreciate the ludicrousy of some of these facts…just don’t hold your breath for a photo of the “blind leading the blind””, I’m guessing that may have been a one off.
Red wine and ice cream, together at last...actually it was pretty nice
It's almost as as if they had trains developed by people who'd only heard about them. "They're kinda like giant underground buses (note the fact the train has tyres).I'm not sure this beer brand has international marketing potential?... we later found out that it is widely considered the best Chilean beer.
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