peace is a salty breeze

Sitting at the edge of a pier in Uruguay´s Punta del Este, gazing at the azure of the sky meeting that of the sea, smelling the breeze, I found peace. My mind emptied and a calm washed over me. Some people need religion, some love, some drugs. I needed the breeze.

brazil is a teenage girl

Disclaimer: the following post is bloated with wild generalizations and slanted points of view, exaggerated for a laugh or two; the author pokes fun at everything that makes Brazil Brazil, but he does so with love. Spanish and Portguese have a word - conocer/conhecer - which is an experiencing. Each traveler needs to conhecer in her own time, and these are my conhecimentos of Brazil.

I like to think of cultures like people. America is the high-school football hero who hasn't realized his glory is past; Canada is the middle-aged manager still resenting his older, cooler brother, not realizing how good he has it; Japan is the respectable old CEO who goes home to dress up in lingerie and fantasize about tentacles; and Brazil is the teenage girl on the bus yapping into her cell and crying over her latest drama.

Like teenagers, Brazilians love their junk food. Deep-fried snacks, meats stuffed in dough, aneurysm-inflictingly-sweet coffee, caipirinhas, sugary beer and chocolate milk. They brag of their brigadeiro, a fried mess of sweetened condensed milk mixed with cocoa, which sends glucose levels high enough for children to run face-first through glass doors. Like teenagers, Brazilians aren't interested in branching out; rice, beans boiled in fat, fried meat and cheese are essential. Raw fish, spices, and vegetables don't make the cut.

Like teenagers, Brazilians love their drama. The nightly telenovella is the only thing they're punctual for and girls emulate these nightly forays into madness. They learn to walk in the high-heels of the rich and whiny and are shocked when life doesn't deliver their bonbons on tv's silver platter. Their boyfriends put up with this silliness and together they ride the merry-go-round of hysterics, shouting their curses and moaning their te amos. Jealousy runs thick and, like teenagers, the most innocent relationship with the opposite sex is viewed with suspicion. Lots of fun to watch from the outside but it seems like a lot of work.

Like teenagers, Brazilians live with their parents (until marriage, at least). The contradiction of sexually-liberal people in a Catholic country means that many evenings spent in love motels where Princess can get her freak on and go home in time to say goodnight to daddy dearest.

Like teenagers, Brazilians are clueless about contraception. Condoms are less prevalent than teenage mothers, abortion is unimaginable, and people send e-cards to sexual partners to say "You've Got Herpes!"

Like teenagers, Brazilians are vain to the point of distraction. Lives are spent in the gym, steroids are part of the doctor's visit, and plastic surgery is something to which many aspire. I met a 22-year-old who had injections in his stomach to burn off fat, because pursuing risky elective surgery is better than having a belly. All this fine-tuning washes up at the beach in white budgie-smugglers and string bikinis, making the gringos feel chubby and wimpy as these beauties frolic.

Like teenagers, there's no communication between the rich and the poor. Favelados (those who live in favelas) are the furthest thing from the minds of the rich kids as they drive in air-conditioned cars whose windows are blacked-out for security. The wealthy are more concerned with staying away from the poor than with fighting poverty. In 10 weeks I've heard countless conversations on the problems of crime, but not one on how to improve the lives of the poor. When I raised the topic with a friend, he said: In my house we have four people who work for us. I don't like that. I was surprised and thought he was going to talk about the divide, but he followed up with: Yeah, it's just weird having strangers in my house. I thought his black maids and gardeners were lovely and much more reliable for bus information. (Read this excellent editorial on racism and economic disparity in Brazil).

Unlike teenagers, Brazilians are a joy to be around. They're beautiful, easy to befriend, great dancers, social, always ready for a party, and proud of their country. They're patient with people trying to learn their language and go out of their way to help visitors. They don't harbour the rancor of Mexico, the greed of Peru, or the xenophobia of South Korea as they watch their country become an economic- and cultural-powerhouse. This economic growth spurt needs to be matched in social-awareness; private schools should shut their doors and force the wealthy to study with the poor, the corrupt police need to be paid better to give them a reason to be honest, and a middle class must be born. Unlimited growth only increases the divide. Until then we're left with an gorgeous, if imperfect, nation of charming, ambitious, hospitable people. And they never asked me to eat a guinea pig.

belo horizonte, brazil

It was a sprint to tick off the boxes before leaving Salvador: trying capoeria, dancing samba, going to a candomble service, and spelunking the caves of Lencois. In the end I just saw the caves of Lencois and drank a lot of beer.


Last night in Pelorinho, Salvador. This is the location of They Don't Really Care About Us and O Pai O


Açai, the magical desert of Brazil


Lencois, Brazil


This photo is upside-down. This stalactite (hanging from the roof of cave) is unique in the world.


More awesome stalactites.








Oh, hey!




The colour leeches into the river making it run a rusty brown.

The 24-hour ride from Salvador to Belo Horizonte was exhausting, but visiting friends and spending nights out got me back of the horse. Belo Horizonte is a bore by day and rocking by night; it's famous for its pub culture and a disproportionate number of women to men. My kind of city.

My first night I caught a bus on to Ouro Preto, a colonial city that once produced mountains of gold for the Portuguese. Today it's a dried-up student town full of museum-churches and trinket-shops. Pass.


Ouro Preto, Brazil

Later, we went to an Atletico match and watched the fanatics let loose. Screaming, cheering, booing, cursing, and gasping... like North America but louder. Football culture in Brazil is compared to the Roman circuses - a religion of entertainment encouraged by the government to keep the poor's minds off how badly their lives suck. A few chances a week to scream at a television; to live and die by the fates of these prima donnas in knee-socks. It's spectacular and sad.


Want to rush the field? Get past the first row of guards, leap over that deep pit (and hope you make it), then get past that police dog. Makes you feel all warm and gushy, no?


Parachuting at Topo do Mundo, Minas Gerias. A stunning sport to watch, but one of the parachuters died shortly after this photo when he crashed into the hill in a failed landing.




Thiago and Fernanda. Thiago is a fanatic Atletico fan, while Fernando supports their rivals. This causes more drama than you'd imagine.

there is a time to every purpose

Tom at Road Junky 

A good part of the reason that many of us travel is that our own culture seems so impoverished. Every town in the developed world seems identical with the same commercial, alcohol-driven culture, a vacuum of values, beliefs and magic now that we're too educated to have religion and the void of meaning sends us looking for snake charmers and shamans, exotic passion and mysterious ceremonies.

Divorced from nature, the traveler who comes from the city has probably never known what it's like to await the coming of the rains anxiously to see whether the crops will grow and the animals survive, water comes at the turning of a tap, after all. Likewise, light comes from the flick of a switch that renders the sunset meaningful only in its distant call to bring out the nocturnal section of our wardrobe and maybe to take taxis in dangerous neighbourhoods.

So when we see Brazilians dancing in trance in Candombe rituals or an Indian woman offering a few drops of water to the sun each morning, we're enchanted. Finally, a world where meaning and magic exist, yet to be chased out by scientific certainties and the fruitless chase for materialistic consumer happiness. There are mantras to be learned, herbs to be smoked, meditations to be absorbed, abstruse texts to be pondered, sacred and unintelligible religious ceremonies to be respected; in short, we swallow it all.

After a few years on the road, however, it becomes apparent that much of it is the same old shit. The Hindu priests are often on the make, the religious rituals maintain social hierarchies, the sacred herbs are another form of escape and those ancient texts are often so hard to understand because they're trying to express something that can't be expressed with words.

We approach foreign cultures and systems of beliefs out of context, gulping it all down with the desire to believe, but not really relating to any of the cultural values inherent in our newfound panacea for the soul. Try as we might, totem poles and spirits of the mountains will only ever really be fairy tales to our cynical minds. Arranged marriage might be the way to go but it s not likely that we'll ever turn back the clock and marry someone we've never met.

We're 21st century orphans, deprived of the rituals, ceremonies and beliefs that hold a society together. Movies and music are about the only cultural references let that we share but they hold little answers as to what life is ultimately about. There's no one who occupies the office of local wise person and we're as likely to turn to Yahoo Answers for help to the questions of our lives as anywhere else.

And so we search and search, hoping to fill that cultural gap in our own societies. We see that in older cultures in the undeveloped world people still have meaning to their lives and are so much more content for it. The Catholic Church might be a corrupt, ruthless economic parasitic body but it makes life special for hundreds of millions across the world. Hinduism might be the least compassionate religion in the world but it brings the divine into the most impoverished of Indian lives. Who the hell are we to judge anyway? What's clear is that though a Nepalese Buddhist may never have read a book in his life, he may be a good deal calmer facing his death than we will be in front of ours.

Yet any traveler who's seen a number of cultures and belief systems knows that it's all made up. The stories, the rituals, the creeds - they're all arbitrary, going back enough centuries that they became sacred along the way. If a book, religion or teaching has survived a thousand years or more its age alone guarantees it a following regardless of its content. Yet for the followers, the believers, the faithful, life is good. There are rituals to get them through the day, answers to the ancient questions, someone on the other end of the cosmic telephone line.

We can try, like the beautiful hippies of the Rainbow Gatherings to invent our own rituals. Standing in a circle with joined hands, singing songs of thanks to Mother Nature and Ommming before each meal, they try to bring the moments of appreciation into the daily routine that passed out of our culture so long ago. But knowing it's all made up makes it hard to take it seriously. Even the kidnapping of the Om, the sound that precedes all sounds - does it really mean anything to us? Can we really just Make-Believe?

Maybe. Hey, with the right drugs anything is possible.

Meanwhile the curse of the traveler is to see just how much everything is relative. There can be no cultural value or religion that has a monopoly on the truth. Everywhere we go humans are humans believing in saints, spirits and gods and the only thing consistent is their willingness to believe. We can admire their faith, find the rituals moving and poignant but ultimately few of us can really adopt another culture for our own. We're just too post-modern.

Then again, who knows, that might just be our saving grace. That having seen so many cultures, societies and beliefs, the veil will eventually fall before our eyes and we'll decode the Matrix. We'll see that all is one, learn to live fully in the moment and lose all fear of the imminent death that stares every traveler in the face. We'll look into the face of that little street kid in Brazil and see our own reflection.

And when he runs off with our watch we'll feel our karma lighten for it.

There's a weariness to travel that comes from so much unfamiliarity and disconnection. I spent yesterday with an ex-student and his bombshell fiancée. As we sat and drank he bragged to her about my travels and this couple, so obviously in love, cooed at how much they envied me. And I, sitting alone on my side of the table, had to wonder about trinkets and flings.


It's my eighth month abroad. I've shaken countless hands and kissed as many cheeks. I've had the peaks and the valleys in the most unexpected places, but after each valley there's less energy to climb back up the peaks. There's a weariness. When I tell friends I'm coming home they ask, for how long? This isn't me, this caricature of travel.


South America was meant to be an adventure - and it has been - but it's been as much an expiation. For two years I've been trying to find peace of mind. It comes and goes like an faithless lover and wearies me. It mocks this vapid road and laughs while the girls I adore find boyfriends and disappear.


Still lies the road ahead. Mountains, beaches, churches and bars. They blend until the sand here feels like Ecuador's and the church smells like Peru's. The beer tastes like Mexico's and my clothes are still falling apart. People are still white, brown or black. Life goes on and reminds me of what the great faiths teach us: to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose. There is a time to every purpose. That's the beauty I've been looking for. Maybe faith lives.

cuencana

Cuencana, originally uploaded by www.robinryan.ca.

often go awry

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

I like that. It excuses so much.

It's been five weeks in Salvador and I'm ready to wrap it up. The job I'd planned for fell through and it's time to start heading home. I want to get back to work, my own culture, my friends, so I've got a ticket for the end of January taking me home.

Until last week, the biggest theft I'd experienced was a pair of sandals knicked in the Galapagos. That all changed last week when muggers got off with my cameras and passport. I've been working on getting a new passport by mid-November so I can leave Brazil, but the camera's gone for good. It's infuriating. I'm not going to let it get to me.

I'm not leaving angry. I like Brazil. I think it's a great country, I'm just not ready for this kind of relationship right now. It's not you - it's me. Maybe one day I'll be in a place where we try this out again. Just not now.

I'm making my way southwards to see friends and places, and the road ahead is long.

travel videos!

I've finally posted some videos I took, so check out these updated posts to see the videos:

Guayaquil, Ecuador

Chan-Chan, Peru

Salvador de Bahia, Brazil

photo: el viejo

El Viejo, originally uploaded by www.robinryan.ca.

private world's article

“All of our young people today derive their pleasure, entertainment, communication and information from virtual worlds,” he declared. “And all of those worlds have one thing in common: They’re making young Japanese weak.”
Adbusters - Private Worlds

salvador de bahia, brazil

Salvador de Bahia is a city dripping with colour and resounding with the beat of drums. 50km of coast clings to the city and beach culture pervades. Nobody lies on towels. We use chairs, sitting under the shade of beach umbrellas, crowded around tables and sipping beer. The temperature sits at 30 but the sea air calms it. This is a Black city, the Afro-Brazilian capital with 80% of the population claiming African ancestry. It doesn't matter much. The Blacks are still the poorest, although everybody is mixed. Race matters.

It's the city of Carnaval, of Candomblé, of Capoeria and Acarajé. It's a city of g-strings and big butts; steroids and pot-bellies; cachaça and Johnny Walker. It's broke and beautiful. Even the poorest live on the water's edge and play on the beach. My friends are all going to be doctors, lawyers, and engineers, but I spend more time with the coconut-sellers and cheese-hawkers. You say hi with a thumbs-up and a hang-loose sign... it's an attitude thing.

I like Brazil. People think I'm a local. The women are beautiful and the guys friendly. Friends are easy to make and the roads safe to drive. After the honking madness of Peru there's a tranquility to the traffic here... if there is space for 3 cars, there will be 3 cars. We lay off the horn and flash a thumbs-up. I prefer to keep the windows down. It's hot, but I like it.

I know this is a shallow understanding so far, but it's what I've got. I hope to know the city better by the time I leave.














Pelorinho, tourist neighbourhood where music is played and beers are drunk in the night. Also location for Michael Jackson's "They Don't Really Care About Us" video.


A gringo puppy in a litter of black ones. I named him Robinho.


















One of the gods of Candomblé, the ancestral religion of many Bainos.


These white cloths are wrapped around trees and figures by members of the Candomblé faith.




A favella, a Brazilian slum, sits at the edge of the Atlantic.