As we landed in Sao Paolo, Brazil, we finally figured out how 22,500,000 people live in one city. The high-rise buildings stretched as far as you could see well beyond the horizon. On the taxi ride from the airport, we had an opportunity to experience Sao Paolo’s legendary traffic but we were pleasantly surprised that the drivers’ stayed in their lanes so it was definitely less chaotic than other large cities we have encountered. Our hotel was located in a quiet area (if there is a quiet area to Sao Paolo) surrounded by restaurants and bars. Sao Paolo came to life well after we were asleep but luckily we were on the 14th floor so we slept in peace while the younger set partied the night away. Sao Paolo is not known as a tourist city so we made a short list of things to see and headed out to fill our two days. Our first day, we taxied over to Sao Bento monastery which supposedly had an amazing bakery. We walked through the impressive cathedral and made our way to the far corner for the bakery. Evidently, whoever had written about the amazing bakery had not visited in quite a few years because the bakery had been downsized to a small counter with a few baked goods and a lonely woman sitting behind the counter. Not seeing anything we wanted, we moved onto the next cathedral which was the Metropolitan Cathedral. When we entered, Bill spotted a sign for the crypts so he headed to the information booth to inquire about getting into the crypts. The man informed him the English tour would begin at 10am so we wandered about the cathedral waiting for the tour. As we entered the crypts, the tour guide began to tell the history of the crypts in Portuguese. When we asked about English, he looked puzzled and shook his head. We wandered through the crypts which were very modern but not very exciting. Our next “tourist” attraction was Japantown. Bloggers online talked about cute little shops and restaurants so we walked through the bustling city to Japantown. Brazil has the second largest Japanese population (outside of Japan) so we expected to be wowed. Again, disappointment. Ironically, Japantown was filled with shops selling cheap Chinese junk and the only décor was cheap red street lights that hung out over the street. Luckily, our day ended in Ibiraapuira Park. The park was the largest city park and reminded me of Central Park in New York. It had lakes with ducks and swans, food vendors, walking paths and more bicyclists than we could count. Young people and families were everywhere and we enjoyed walking along the path taking in some Brazilian eye candy for both Bill and me. The Brazilians are certainly fit people!
The next morning, we decided to brave the metro system and after getting some help from a nice family who spoke perfect English, we figured out the system to get to Ipiranga Museum. The stations in Sao Paolo were sparkling clean and some were built to look like they had been there for a hundred years. If only people in American cities would keep the subways as clean! When we came out of the train station, Bill knew the direction we needed to walk to get to the museum but a massive freeway blocked our way. So, we had to walk half a mile in the wrong direction to get on the foot bridge to walk back across the freeway and up a huge hill to get to Ipiranga. Ipiranga had been built by a family back in the 1920s and it was designed to mimic Versailles in France. It was a lovely building with a beautiful fountain garden. As we entered the museum, we were told that we needed to leave our bags at the check room. When we handed in our bags, the clerk pointed to my camera and told me I could not take my camera. However, we could take our phones. I asked him if we could take pictures with our phones and he nodded. When I stared at him dumbfounded, he just shrugged and took my camera. The museum was a hodgepodge of items that did not seem to have much connection to each other but we enjoyed the views and the display of pictures from 1920s. The growth that has taken place in the last 100 years was astonishing. Following Ipiranga, we taxied to the central market and had a wonderful time wandering through the displays of nuts, pickled items, olives, meats and fish. We had a mortadella sandwich which was a delicious type of bologna and we bought cheese and fruit for dinner as well. Before we continue the next few weeks traversing through Brazil, I need to take a moment to discuss the Portuguese language…..what a mess it is! We have always heard that Portuguese is a lot like Spanish. If you see Portuguese in written form, that statement holds true. Portuguese tends to delete or add letters to basic Spanish words such as “saida” for “salida” (exit) and “baneirhos” for “banos” (bathroom). In spoken form, Portuguese is nothing close to Spanish and sounds nothing like it looks in written form. For every /s,z,d,t/ sound, they insert a /j,sh,zh,ch/ sound. So it literally sounds like everyone is speaking like Daffy Duck. Luckily, Bill learned to changed “cervesa” to “cerveja” (beer) very early on so he was well served. We guessed our way through most menu items and I learned to just point in order to get fed. One night, I just gave up and ordered a hamburger because it was the one thing on the menu that was not complicated! Luckily, the Brazilian people were very patient and would say words slowly to help us learn a few but even at the end of our three week journey, we basically had “beer”, “thank you”, “good day” and “bathroom”. Anywhere that speaks Portuguese will definitely not be our forever place! After being pleasantly surprised by Sao Paolo, we looked forward to our next huge city and bucket list place, Rio de Janeiro….population 13,300,000! Unfortunately, my computer crashed and almost all my Brazil pictures are gone as they did not (for some reason) back up to my cloud. I have some on my phone but that is the best I can do.
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This week's blog is dedicated to my friend, Kathy, who retired this week! Congratulations and welcome to the club!
Our final South American adventure to Brazil started with a few days in Bogota, Colombia. To be honest, I was not thrilled with the thought of going to three of the top 30 most populated cities in the world all in one trip (Sao Paolo, Rio, Bogota). However, Bill made the solid argument that we could not be in Colombia for over a year and not visit the capital city. So, we voted to tack Bogota onto the beginning of the Brazil trip to check that box. The rainy season has begun in Colombia and we experienced first hand what boarding an airplane in Cartegena during rainy season entails. The Cartagena airport does not have companionways to board airplanes. Like most smaller airports, you walk out to the plane on the tarmac and walk up the steps. This trip was our first encounter boarding in the rain. First, we lined up under the covered walkway. Then, they handed out umbrellas ten at a time for people to walk to the plane and up the stairs. At that point, an employee who was waiting at the top of the stairs would collect the 10 umbrellas and run them down the stairs and back across the tarmac to those of us waiting in line. Luckily, we had our own umbrellas so that seemed to be the ticket to speed up the process as we were allowed to pass others in the line…of course, we still had to wait for everyone else so it did not really help too much! Once we were seated, we settled in for the short flight to Bogota. At one point, I felt something move by my feet and when I looked down, there was a dog wandering under the seats. Gotta love Colombia! I had pictured Bogota being crowded, dirty and full of swarthy characters. To my surprise, Bogota was none of those things except crowded. However, once we got settled into our little corner of the city, we found the Colombians in Bogota to be just as nice as they have been throughout the country. Once we had checked into the hotel, we went in search of dinner. We found a barbeque restaurant hidden in a small food court and were pleasantly surprised with the ribs! In the past, the ribs we have found outside of the southern US have been tough but these were fall off the bone good! As we wandered past all the modern stores and restaurants, we felt as safe as we do in any big city. Be smart and do not flash cash or jewelry….those are our words of wisdom. The public transportation system in Bogota was a sight to see! They did not yet have a subway system so it was all buses. They built these huge structured walkways that crossed over the freeways and hordes of people would walk along them to get to their desired bus stop. We have been in cities all over the world but we have never seen anything quite as complex as these walkways. One bus station often had eight different walkways branching out from it. Needless to say, we did not attempt to figure out the bus situation during our trip! We also got a chuckle on the Bogota solution for keeping homeless people out of certain areas. Under all the bridges and overpasses, they had placed huge, pointy rocks so no one could comfortably walk much less sleep in those areas! The next day, we hired a tour guide to take us out of town to the Salt Cathedral. The Salt Cathedral had historically been an active salt mine. When the mine was closed, the miners stayed on and constructed an amazing underground cathedral made of salt. The original cathedral was closed due to structural concerns but more miners started to rebuild the cathedral in the 1970s and now it is one of Bogota’s main tourist attractions. Upon entering the mine, we walked along the old tunnels until we reached the first pieces of artwork done by the miners. The pinnacle of the tour was the cathedral which was in a huge cavern followed by the underground shopping mall! Can’t have a tourist attraction without a shopping mall! After the cathedral, our guide asked if we would like to have a “traditional, farm meal” for lunch. Loving traditional, farm meals as we do, we eagerly said yes. As we pulled up to the biggest tourist trap restaurant we had ever seen, we decided something had been lost in translation. The restaurant looked like a Cracker Barrel and a Hard Rock Café had triplets. It was insane. Never fear…our waiter told us they were getting ready to open a location in Miami so perhaps the insanity will arrive in your area someday! To top off the tourist experience, we suddenly had a woman dressed as British royalty and two men in costume playing drum and fife show up at our table singing some opera song in Spanish. When she finished, she crowned us king and queen and gave us royal sashes to complete the show. The entire experience was so discombobulated and made no sense at all that we found ourselves still laughing days later! We were not sure what could top lunch but several years ago, on the Amazing Race, we had seen the contestants play a game that was invented in Bogota….Tejo. Tejo is basically corn hole but instead of calmly throwing soft bean bags at a hole, you throw rocks at a target that explodes! We arrived at the Tejo place, got a quick lesson on how to play (completely in Spanish) and took on the challenge! Over the years, Bill and I have played many competitive sports (mostly miniature golf) and the score is at least 20 to 0 in Bill’s favor. Well not tonight! Evidently if you give me a target that explodes, I am going to hit that thing! The most challenging part of the game was retrieving the rocks that had been embedded into the surrounding clay board. Bill had to use a crowbar device to pry them out….that’s probably why I won….I had more time to aim! Our final day in Bogota was spent sight seeing in the historic part of the city. There was the usual square and cathedral but Bogota had an unusual cathedral that looked like a candy cane on the inside. The entire sanctuary was red and white stripes. Quite odd! We went to an art museum that was housed in an old church and finished the day at the gold museum. This gold museum had the most native relics we had seen in South America so we figured the natives must have hidden them when the Spanish arrived. Overall, Bogota was a pleasant surprise and I am glad we took the time to visit. Next stop, Sao Paolo, Brazil…population 21,650,000 people….yikes! The cruise was quite the experience this week. The first hiccup came at the airport in Miami. When I landed, I discovered that my flight to Newark had been delayed until 9:30pm. In general, that would not be a problem but my concern was that the flight would be cancelled and I would miss meeting my daughter for the cruise the next day. After several ticket changes, I managed to get booked on the next flight out to JFK. Problem one solved. The next issue was getting from JFK to the hotel in Newark. As much as the Northeast brags about its’ excellent public transportation, trust me when I tell you that getting from JFK to Newark on public transportation is near impossible at 11pm. If I took the train, it involved at least 4 transfers, with my luggage, at midnight in New York City, by myself. No thank you. The buses were equally as difficult. Finding a transfer company last minute was also impossible. So, taxi it was….$220.00 later, I arrived at the hotel in Newark. For those of you thinking, “Why didn’t she use Uber?”…Uber was the same cost as a taxi! Luckily, the next morning’s activities went smoothly and after a quick stop at Walmart, my friend and I arrived at the cruise port and boarded the ship. My daughter boarded shortly after and I did an ugly mom cry and gave her a huge hug. As we pulled out of port, we passed right by the Statue of Liberty and under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge so standing in the cold wind was worth it. The cruise was a bit odd as the only stop on the cruise was in Bermuda. Bermuda is only around 800 miles from Jersey so it logically should take a day to get there. This itinerary had us at sea for two days, in Bermuda for 3 days and then at sea for the last day. So basically, we rode around in circles the first two days to be “at sea”. The next challenge on the cruise was the constant battle to not be run over by wheelchairs, walkers and Rascal scooters. I was the spring chicken of the cruise and I swear at least 85% of passengers were over 80 years old. I definitely got in my steps for the week because trying to take the elevator and not get my toes run over was impossible. As for ship activities, I did a lot of trivia. The music trivia was hilarious as the DJ was from Jamaica. He started out the week with songs by Beyonce, Lizzo and Drake. When I pointed out to him that most of the crowd in the room was 85 years old, he finished the week with songs by Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra. Smart man! Our favorite activity was the ABBA sing-a-long because who doesn’t love a great ABBA song?
Once we arrived at Bermuda, we spent the first day walking to Glass Beach. As expected from the name, Glass Beach was covered in glass that had been tumbled by the water and sand. It was quite beautiful and we found a small cemetery on the walk back to the ship to close out the day. Our second day, we took a taxi across the island to St. George. Trying to compete with NYC, the taxi cost $107.00 for the ride! Our driver told us that Bermuda was very rich and had no poor people and no trash. That statement was just before we passed the new airport that had been built on the landfill. So much for no trash. I also do not believe that a country where basic houses cost more than $1 million dollars has no poor people. They had them hidden somewhere! St. George consisted of a couple of blocks filled with restaurants and we had a deliciously overpriced lunch before heading over to the other “city” which was Hamilton. Our taxi driver to Hamilton announced she could cure cancer by teaching people with cancer to not worry about things in their life. She also seemed to have a prevention for dementia which involved coconut oil. She gave us her card just in case we were ever in need of cancer healing since we might have dementia and might not remember her name. I promise I do not make this stuff up! Hamilton was your usual cruise ship town with lots of shopping so after a quick walk around, we hopped on the ferry back to the ship. On our last day, we ventured back over to Glass Beach and enjoyed a cool swim before leaving port to head back to Jersey. Getting back to Cartagena was just as adventurous as getting to Jersey and after delays on the Jersey end, I made it to Ft. Lauderdale about 11:30pm, took an overpriced Uber from the Ft. Lauderdale airport to the Miami airport, spent the night at a hotel and made it back to Galt the next day. I would like to point out that my taxi ride from the Cartagena airport to the marina was $5.00. Every bit of travel was worth it, though, because having my adult child trapped on a ship for a week with limited internet was amazing! While I was gone, Bill was a busy man. He finished the benches and completed the bimini/dodger rebuild which looks rust-free and sturdy! Now my job is to paint all the panels and get them looking clean and new. He has been troubleshooting Larry the Lehman who is currently not cooperating. It seems as if all our boat projects are taking more time than usual because we have a deadline looming. We leave for Brazil this week! Once again, no blog for the next three weeks but hopefully Brazil will provide us with wonderful things to report! As you welcome summer, we will be spending winter in Brazil…so strange! Sorry! Not many pictures of Bermuda! I was too busy enjoying the company. Projects have been in full force this week. Or at least as full force as we can make them while we wait for suppliers who function on Caribbean Maybe Time. Monday was yet another holiday in Cartagena so no stores were open. Tuesday, Bill managed to borrow a jigsaw from another boater so he made a huge leap forward in the building of the benches. Our benches that we had made in the Dominican Republic were rusting through and I refused to paint the deck until all rusting items were replaced with nonrusting items. Earlier in the year, we obtained a quote from a local to rebuild the benches using aluminum. When the quote came in at just under $2000.00, we almost choked! Bill then put on his thinking cap and figured out we could reuse the galvanized grate from the current benches (does not rust) and build new frames for the bench out of teak which would outlast both of us. He located a lumber store and we purchased all the teak for just under $150.00! Next came the challenge of woodworking power tools. Bill called my dad, the wood worker, to bounce ideas of what would be the easiest way to build a bench with limited tools. Next step was to purchase a jigsaw from the Home Center. On the first cut of the teak, Bill realized the jigsaw we had purchased was not going to be powerful enough to get the job done. So, he resorted to using the Sawzall which is a tool with little to no finesse. The Sawzall is a killing machine. If you need something demolished, you choose the Sawzall. If you want to build a bench, you do not choose the Sawzall. Once again, boat life choices are based on necessity and what is available at the time. As I sat on the piece of wood to hold it as still as possible, ear plugs in place, Bill began whacking away with the Sawzall. I felt like I was in the fat burning shaking machine from the 1950s! I quit before the Sawzall did. The next day, we spotted the wood worker who had done our galley in the fall. We flagged him down and asked if he could cut the wood pieces for us. He generously took the pieces over night and brought back beautifully cut wood the next day…at no charge! Much easier than the Sawzall. Which leads us back to Tuesday when Bill borrowed a heavy duty jigsaw to finish the job. From that point on, the job went smoothly and one bench is completed! We forecast that the next bench will go much more smoothly and should be done in only a few days.
Our most exciting (to us!) project of the week is pulling down the rusted bimini/solar panel structure that covers the entire back deck. As I was removing screws, the posts were literally falling apart onto my head and black water poured onto the deck. I am not sure how it is still standing but we are replacing just in time! We are replacing the rotted posts with fiberglass posts so no more rust! Bill had them cut to size so it was time to assemble. He decided to tie the old bimini to the boom (holds the bottom of the sail) so we could just cut out the existing structure, install the new structure and secure the solar panels. Always sounds good on paper. As spaghetti arms Sally tried to hold the new crossbeam in place, Bill lifted the old structure and attempted to slide the crossbeam on to the top of the vertical post. Not an easy task when the old structure weighs 100 pounds and Bill could only use one arm to lift. And let’s face it, I was not exactly stellar help! After several tries, some Sally whining and a couple of blows with a hammer, section one was in place. When we started our project again the next day, things did not go well. For every piece we got installed, two pieces would come crashing down. In the end, Bill ended up using the trusty Sawzall to demo the old bimini. So, tomorrow, will be reconstruction with zero shade on the back deck…not going to be a fun day tomorrow! During our down time, we have been gathering a couple of quotes for painting the deck. In order to paint the deck, we will need to relocate to a working marina and move off the boat while the work is being done. I began looking for apartments in the area with air conditioning and a swimming pool which is the only way I am going to survive another summer in Cartegena! Month long rentals in Cartegena are difficult to find as most places are nightly rentals for the tourists. When our foreman who has been overseeing all our boat projects came to discuss the deck painting, the conversation was very interesting. First, he speaks no English and my Spanglish does not cover construction words. He is a madman on Google Translate. He pushes the microphone button and talks on and on into the phone for at least two minutes. Then, one or two sentences show up for me to read or listen to and they rarely make much sense. It took us ten minutes to convince him that we did not need the bottom of the boat painted. Just the deck. Then, he moved onto doing the teak and the deck. We don’t need teak, just the deck. Then, he moved onto doing the teak for “free”, doing the deck and painting the top of the boat from the waterline to the deck. I would like to say this type of negotiation was unusual for him but this is how all of our negotiations have gone. By the time we finished, we had settled on teak for “free”, strip old paint off deck, repair any damaged areas, prime, paint and marina slip cost included. He also said he was going to find us a place to live with a swimming pool. Can’t wait to see this quote. Whatever he comes up with, all I have to do is stare at him blankly and he immediately cuts it by 25% and then we usually settle at the 50% cut point. Another guy who we did not know also came to give us a quote. He was very quiet and reserved, spoke no English, nodded a lot and left. Since the boat currently looks like a bomb went off, I’ll be surprised if we hear from him again. Wish us luck this week with getting our shade restored! Happy Mother’s Day to all! ***No blog next two weeks....I'll be on a cruise with my daughter! Happy Mother's week to me! |
AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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