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Parte Quatro – Brazil 2019

Isaac Church — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 03:48:14 +0000

Welcome to Part IV of my Brazil recap. This post will focus on two “loaves” – bread and Sugarloaf Mountain. I’m finally catching up on editing photos, so I’ll share a sample of stunning scenic smartphone shots.

Pão (Bread)

Brazilian bread is quite unique – often made from tapioca instead of wheat flour, it’s extremely soft and stretchy. Cheese and garlic butter are the most common toppings. Like in Europe, Brazilian butter has a higher fat content than the US and is made from unpasteurized milk, making it extra creamy and delicious.

Cheese bread (pão de queijo), garlic bread (pão de alho), and sweet breads accompany almost every meal. Chocolate cake/bread is practically considered a vegetable, served as a side dish for every meal.

Pão de Queijo

Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain)

The iconic granite and quartz figure of Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain) rises frp, sea level to 1,300 ft. (396m) in Baía de Guanabara (Guanabara Bay). It is perhaps the most iconic sight in Rio, insomuch as many people mistakenly think Cristo Redentor is atop it.

Urca Hill (Left) // Sugarloaf (Right)

View from Urca Hill

One reaches the top by first taking a cable car up Urca Hill, and then another cable car to the top of Sugarloaf. From the top, you have a 360° view of the bay and the eastern part of the city of Rio, including a good view of Copacabana beach.

We stayed at the top through sunset and enjoyed some spectacular views.

Favelas

Rio and other major Brazilian cities are [in]famous for their shantytowns, called favelas. Favelas date back to the late 1800s, when soldiers returning from civil war, having nowhere to live, settled in shantytowns on the hillsides. The term favela references a close cousin of poison oak native to Brazil, though the name originated from a hill in Canudos.

The largest favela in Rio is Rocinha. It’s actually so large that it has considerable infrastructure, including cable TV and banks, compared to other slums, which are fairly neglected by the Brazilian government. It’s estimated population is somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000.

The favelas are largely overrun by drugs and crime, and are known for violent clashes between police and cartels. Other favelas, like Santa Teresa, have developed into nicer neighborhoods over time.

I visited two favelas close to Rio, one in Niterói, and Salgueiro in São Gonçalo. The areas are certainly not safe for independent tourist travel; fortunately, we were with local guides who kept us out of harm’s way.

A favela reflection

Favela

Rocinha

Barra de Tijuca

In contrast to the favelas, the district of Barra de Tijuca is very upscale and modern, and is reminiscent of a well-planned, efficient European city. The shopping malls are sleek and luxurious, and the area is teeming with high-end high-rises. Barra is where many of the new Olympic stadiums were built for the Summer 2016 games.

Brazilian Christmas Tree

Driving back to the Rio city center

Conclusion

That wraps up my Brazil recap! While that’s certainly not everything I saw/did, I believe that’s about all I have pictures/time for. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for my/our next adventure. United finally gave me some credit for my delayed luggage (plus the credit from the delay on our last Europe trip), so maybe we’ll scrounge out a free flight somewhere soon.

Let me know if you have any questions, and I’ll be happy to answer them.

Pão de Açúcar

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Parte Três – Brazil 2019

Isaac Church — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 17:51:13 +0000

In this part, I’ll cover what are perhaps the two items for which Brasil is most known: beef and Christ the Redeemer.

Carne (Beef)

I may have talked about food earlier, but I’ve purposely saved the best for last: the beef. Before I can explain Brazilian beef, I first need to share a brief lesson in o açougue (butchery).

North American Beef Cuts

Brazilian Beef Cuts

In the US, butchers generally use the quickest/easiest method of breaking down a cow. Conversely, Brazilian açougueiros (butchers) break down the cow into smaller, more complicated portions that better utilize the makeup of the muscular structure of the animal.

The most famous cut of Brazilian steak is picanha, which is essentially a sirloin/rump cap with fat cap left on (cut #8 on the chart above). Almost everywhere else in the world, this cut is split up with other cuts of beef, and the prized fat cap is thrown away. In Brazil, it’s slowly roasted to render the fat cap’s flavors into the meat, and then cooked quickly to bring it up to a juicy medium-rare.

The Wonderful Sizzle of Beef

almost ALL steak should be eaten medium-rare. It’s been scientifically proven time and again, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. To quote Paula Deen, “if you want it well done, get a hamburger” (but you should eat those closer to medium too). Rant over…

Another popular Brasilian side dish is farofa, which is toasted corn flour or cassava with fried onions and bacon bits in it. Locals call it “sawdust” because of its texture and appearance. It’s delicious, but I preferred it in small quantities. In Part I, you’ll notice that I had some on my pasta.

Picanha with farofa and fries

Churrascaria (Brazilian Steakhouse)

Perhaps you’ve heard of a Brazilian steakhouse. These Rodízio-style (all-you-can-eat) restaurants serve meat, primarily beef, that’s been cooked over a rotisserie-style charcoal fire. Usually, the beef is simply seasoned with flaky sea salt, although I did have a parmesan-crusted steak at some point. These restaurants are a little pricy by Brasilian (pardon my interchanging use of Brazil and Brasil) standards, but quite reasonable for an American. I only paid USD$22, and easily got my money’s worth.

The steakhouse I went to also served sushi and sashimi, along with a variety of seafood and sides. It’s important to avoid the frivolous foods while attending these fine establishments. However, I did sample a few items from the central buffet.

Shrimp, heart of palm, parmesan fried chicken, ham and cheese roll, cheese, salmon, sun-dried tomato, salmon/strawberry sushi, spiced chicken pie

In the center of your table, there’s a simple green/red light system. Green means “hit me with the meat”, and red means “if I take another bit I’m going to explode” …roughly translated. The waiters bring long rotisserie skewers of meat to your table, explain what it is, you indicate sim or não. The waiter will either slice some of the fresh meat onto the community platter in the center of the table, or pass you by.

Beef, chicken hearts, and pão de alho (garlic rolls)

The community platter is free game for everyone, and thankfully so, because otherwise I would have probably injured myself. All the meat was fantastic; the only thing I wasn’t a huge fan of were the Coração de Galinha Frito, or chicken hearts. While a Brasilian delicacy, I thought they were a strange texture, somewhere between mushrooms, oysters, and escargot.

Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer)

High atop the mountain Corcovado, the “Christ the Redeemer” statue towers over the city of Rio. The mountain stands 700m (2,300ft) above the city of Brazil, in what’s left of the coastal tropical rain forest, preserved in Floresta da Tijuca (Tijuca Forest National Park). French architects and Brazilian engineers constructed the Art Deco-style statue between 1922 and 1931, shipping it in pieces from France and assembling it in Rio.

Floresta da Tijuca (Tijuca Rainforest)

Cristo Redentor

Me below the statue

The sculpture is 98ft tall and the arms spread 92ft wide. It’s roughly half the height of the Statue of Liberty (counting the pedestals). It’s considered one of the New 7 Wonders of the World. The other Wonders include Machu Picchu, Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, Petra, Rome’s Colosseum, and Chichén Itzá.

Cristo Redentor

The view of Rio from the top was spectacular. You could only see a small part of the city, but much of the ocean and bay.

View of Rio

While impressive, I don’t know that I’d put it on the list of the seven most spectacular things I’ve ever seen; it’s a little underwhelming when viewed up close. However, it’s quite astounding when viewed from afar. The statue is visible from a majority of Rio, as you can see in the two pictures below (taken from the Barra district).

Corcovado

Uber is the best way to get around in Rio, so we booked a ride to the Trem de Corcovado and rode the cog train to the top. It was very similar to some of the cog trains I’ve ridden in Switzerland.

Corcovado train staion

Conclusion

That concludes Part III. Next time, I’ll talk about Rio’s other famous vista, Pão de Açúcar, and share a few more photos.

Panorama from atop Corcovado

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Parte Dois – Brazil 2019

Isaac Church — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 14:38:44 +0000

Welcome to Part II of my Brazil recap. In this post, I’ll talk some more about two staples of Brasilian culture: futebol (soccer) and comida (food).

Café da Manhã (Breakfast)

Brasilian breakfast isn’t particularly different from American breakfast, save a few unique items. Eggs are extremely common (Brasilians love them so much there’s often a shortage), as are fruit and pastries.

Coconut-chocolate-chip cake, papaya, pineapple, and cheese bread

Fresh fruit at breakfast

The fresh fruit was incredible! Abacaxí (pineapple), manga (mango), mamão (papaya), and melão (melon, including watermelon and white melon) were everywhere. By far, my personal favorite was the papaya.

Like in Europe, deli meat and cheese are popular, but unfortunately neither one is particularly spectacular. European visitors often joke that the cheese is “plastic”, and I’d agree – it’s rather flavorless. The best cheeses in the country are Parmesan and mozzarella; these are obviously borrowed from Italy.

Breakfast buffet at the hotel

Sobremesa/Doces (Dessert/Sweets)

One night, we had creme de papaya for dessert. This popular Brasilian dessert is simple: papaya and ice cream blended together. It’s topped with blackcurrant flavored crème de cassis. This was definitely my favorite dessert from the week, and maybe my favorite South American food I’ve tried.

Creme de Papaya

Other popular Brasilian desserts include brigadeiros (chocolate fudge balls coated in sprinkles), pudim (a flan-like caramel custard that the locals insist isn’t flan), cakes of all kinds (brigadeiro, orange, coconut, etc.), and of course ice cream. Cake is very popular at breakfast. Actually, chocolate cake is practically served as a side dish with every meal – the country clearly loves their health food.

Ham sandwiches, cookies, and fudge cake

Citrus cake and fruit juice

Pudim

Guaraná

Surprisingly, South America gets most of its caffeine not from coffee, but from guaraná seeds. The seeds from the guaraná fruit contain about twice the caffeine as coffee, and are usually consumed in the form of soda (the most popular brand is Antartica) or juice.

Soda

Juice

It has an interesting flavor, and is the color of maybe a dark ginger ale. I definitely enjoyed the juice, but found it rather strong, and couldn’t drink the whole container. Unfortunately, I did manage to spill quite a bit all over myself, thanks to the wonderful quality of Brasil’s roads.

Impressões (Impressions)

Some more thoughts:

Brazilians are probably the friendliest people I’ve ever met. The culture is laid back, colorful, and vibrant, and the locals’ personalities reflect that. It’s easy to have a conversation with anyone – even if someone doesn’t speak good English, (s)he’ll make a joke, laugh boisterously, smile, and move on.
Meals aren’t quite the ordeal I experienced in Italy, but they’re close. Portions are huge, and these people love to eat! Everyone enjoys talking about and sharing their food, and hosts always check multiple times to make sure you enjoyed the food. It’s a huge compliment to them if you did.

Copacabana beach from our hotel roof

Estádio do Maracanã

Estádio Jornalista Mário Filho

When constructed, the Maracanã was the largest stadium in the world. In 1950, it hosted a crowd of 199,854 when Uruguay defeated Brazil in the World Cup. The stadium has hosted crowds of 150,000+ 26 times. The last crowd of that size was in 1983.

The state of Rio de Janeiro rebuilt the stadium in preparation for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, reducing its official capacity to ~90,000.

Maracanã - Image from Google

Maracanã as seen from Corcovado mountain

Clube de Regatas do Flamengo (everyday = “Flamengo”) is the local favorite team, named after a neighborhood in Rio. On our first night in Rio, there was a playoff semi-final game in the Maracanã between Flamengo and Grêmio, another team from Porto Algere, a city on the southern tip of Brasil.

It seemed all of Rio was dressed in red and black for the game. We looked into getting tickets, but the game was long sold out. Scalpers were selling tickets for over USD$400/each. Instead, I watched on TV in my hotel room.

From my room, I could hear people on the street below celebrating wildly every time Flamengo scored a goal (yelling, car horns, and fireworks – just for starters).

Match Highlights

If you’ve never seen the chaos of a Brasilian soccer game, this is worth a watch.

Flamengo actually started as a rowing club, and has professional rowing, volleyball, beach soccer, and other teams.

Conclusion

In the next installment, I’ll talk about beef and other things Rio is famous for. I hope to have time to edit more scenic photos between now and then. Thanks for reading Part II!

The famous Copacabana Palace Hotel

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Parte Um – Brazil 2019

Isaac Church — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 14:38:36 +0000

Welcome to Adventures in Brazil, Part I. I’m back already – safe, sound, and very tired. I’ll share some bits and pieces of my travels, in no particular order (except for when it is).

A few disclaimers before I begin:

Some excerpts I wrote while there, and some afterwards, so please excuse any changes in verb tense.
All the photos are from my iPhone, so please excuse the lower-than-usual quality.
I wasn’t able to photograph everything I saw, partly because it’s not safe to be waving a fancy smartphone around in public (being a red-head in South America already calls enough attention to oneself), and because I didn’t want to be on my phone constantly. Where necessary, I’ll supplement with photos from the Internet.

viagem (Travel)

It takes a long time to get to Brazil. Three hours to IAH (Houston), a 1h38m layover, and then a grueling 10h15m flight to GIG (Rio de Janeiro). The perks of such a long flight? You get two free checked bags – not much use for five days on the ground.

View of Atlanta

Sunset from the plane

Total travel time: 14h45m from CLT, more like 19 hours if you count travel to the airport, customs, and everyone’s favorite organization, the TSA.

United somehow left my luggage in CLT, so I basically arrived with two days change of clothes and a toothbrush – all the ingredients for a grand adventure!

I’m still fighting with customer service to get some kind of reimbursement for my troubles.

Out the airplane window

Flying into Rio

Travel Food

Meal on the flight

Salad in Houston Airport

Comida (Food)

Steak - Windsor Plaza Copacabana

The hotel/our host organization provided the first few meals of trip. Our first lunch was at the host organization’s cantina. All our breakfasts were at the hotel, as was dinner our first night.

Pictured: steak with a brown sauce and parmesan risotto.

Fried chicken, sausage, rice/beans, pasta with a dried pea/fried onion mixture, and tomatoes

Bread and beef are the staples of the Brazilian diet (along with the requisite rice and beans, of course). The bread is very soft and extremely elastic, or is sometimes in the form of a flavored pound cake for dessert. Rolls are often filled with seasoned chicken or beef, and breakfast breads are mainly sweet with chocolate or a glaze of some kind. Later on, I’ll probably do a section solely about beef.

Moqueca

There’s a good deal of fish as well. Moqueca (pictured above) is a traditional Brazilian fish stew, usually with fish/shrimp, coconut milk, tomatoes, onions/garlic, lime, and cilantro. Cod, sole, and salmon are also popular both in stew and a la carte.

Brazilians have a surprising love of “Italian” food; it’s on almost every menu I’ve seen so far. It’s certainly not real Italian food, or even Americanized Italian food, but it looks pretty good regardless. Maybe I’ll try some before I head home.

Fotografias (Photographs)

Copacabana

A purple sunset at the Copacabana

Soccer goals on the beach

Impressões (Impressions)

Below are a few short impressions from my travels to this point.

As I’d heard, there is immense wealth disparity in Brazil. The majority of the population lives in poverty. Favelas (shanty-towns) line the hills. These neighborhoods are mostly inland, but have breathtaking views of the bay and the beach.
The buildings here look much older/more run-down than I expected. However, the insides are modern and beautiful.
Brazilians apparently love their A/C. It’s been freezing inside almost every building. If there’s no A/C, open windows usually provide a cool breeze. Completely understandable, because it’s very hot – high of 90°F, and it’s only spring!

One of many favelas in the city

Stay tuned for Part II!

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Introduction – Brazil 2019

Isaac Church — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 15:26:27 +0000

Greetings everyone! I’m back again with a special, though brief, edition of my blog. Later this month, I’m headed to Brazil on a business trip; however, I should be able to sight-see a bit along the way.

Rather than my usual day-to-day and play-by-play posts, I’ll write a few condensed posts about some of the scenery, culture, and food I encounter.

Travel Plans // Background

Our original plan was to visit Rio de Janeiro, and possibly Recife and Manaus; however, it’s looking like we’ll be spending most of our time in Rio. It should be moderately warm and [hopefully] sunny, since it’s in the Southern Hemisphere and thus spring is in full swing.

Brazil is approximately the size of the contiguous United States, making it the fifth-largest country in the world. As you can see from the map below, this poses some travel complications when planning to visit multiple cities in a week. Things complicate even more when you consider Manaus is about as remote as eastern Montana.

Rio de Janeiro

Sugarloaf Mountain - Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro, our base for the week, is home to a wide variety of attractions:

Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) statue, which sits atop Corcovado mountain, and is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World
Famous beaches, such as Barra da Tijuca, Copacabana, Ipanema, and Leblon (no, I will NOT be listening to ~~Barry Manilow~~ on this trip, but maybe Sinatra or Getz)
Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain) – the iconic peak in the middle of Rio’s Guanabara Bay

Christ the Redeemer

Pão de Açúcar

The city also hosts the massive Rio Carnival (the world’s largest festival), and hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics. The name “Rio de Janeiro” is Portuguese for “River of January” – given at its founding in 1565.

2016 Summer Olympics // Closing Ceremonies

Rio Facts

Rio has a population of~6.2/12.3 million [city/metro area], roughly the size of Los Angeles (3.9/13.3 million). São Paulo (about a 5.5 hour drive south) is the largest city and metro area in the Americas, with a population of 11.9/21.1 million.

Flag

Coat of Arms

Conclusion

There’s a bundle of things to do in Rio de Janeiro, and there’s no way I’ll be able to see even half the main attractions in my limited free time. I expect to have a pretty full schedule, but our hosts have planned a few activities, so I hope to have plenty to share.

Stay tuned; I’ll post more closer to the end of October.

Sunset at Copacabana beach

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