WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 2012
So here I am on day six of my honeymoon in Brazil, sitting downstairs in the open air dining area, waiting for breakfast while looking out at the tropical rain that’s been coming down all night.
Normally that would be a bad sign, but right now I’m glad for it. It is a cooling rain, that somehow is relaxing, and reminds me that I’m in a tropical rainforest, and not back home suffering from a drought that I hear is plaguing the east of England right now. Everywhere is green, lush and the unfazed by it all. Just as I type a humming bird flew just a few feet away dipping it’s beak into the red flowers of some exotic plant that I don’t know the name of.
I’m currently on day three of my stay in Ilhabela, an island 225km south of Rio. This is a holiday island for the well heeled from Sao Paulo and Rio. The small island is about 25km in length with one road on the west side facing the mainland. If you want to go east, you take a boat round!
The road on the island, like much of the mainland, is largely mettlled, but the state of the Tarmac is random, with vicious speed bumps slowing down the traffic on approach to and through the towns, even if the road bypasses the actual town. But that is the least of the driver’s problems. Apart from pot holes regularly appearing from blind corners, the driver has to be wary of workmen making/repairing holes in the road. The one good thing (?) are the number of traffic cones you have to negociate is much less than the UK, where we have to queue for hours to be filtered into single lane traffic miles away from the road woks (where no one is actually working). In Brazil, they use, on average, one traffic cone, and they are actually working. The gangs consist of two guys digging, one guy to hold a ladder, a fourth supervising, and only the fifth guy having a cuppa.
Worse still, though, is the traffic. Or more precisely, the drivers. Brazil is a busy and populated country with over 200 million people crammed into the massive cities, particularly Sao Paulo and Rio. As a consequence of over population, a general disregard for rules and Latino hot-headedness, means politeness is not top of their agenda. Cutting in is. As is getting past you, no matter how fast you are driving. If all else fails, they completely ignore the lane markings and squeeze as many cars onto the road as possible. When completely full, they add suicidal pedestrians, and maniac motorbike riders who weave in and out of traffic to complete the experience.
Meanwhile, back on the island watching the rain ease up, I’m contemplating where to go today. With any luck the rain will stop soon, and the clouds will burn away, to reveal another hot, sticky day for us to lounge in.