Financial Updates

Now that we are out of Brazil, we thought we'd post some financial information.

Brazil: With visas ($130 each), and including the time that we spent in the rainforest in Manaus, the average was $118 per day. The visas account for about $10 each day. The average would have been less had we travelled more slowly since buses are expensive in Brazil. However, the total amount spent would have been more. If you aren't stuck on seeing quite as much, it might be well worth it to take a couple flights. They aren't cheap, but are about the same as a couple of overnight bus trips.

Also, a tip on food in Brazil. Pay by weight restaurants are very common, but don't actually seem that cheap unless you just get a plate of meat. Many places also offer a plate of the day (prato feito) that is really cheap with rice, beans, salad, and whatever meat you select. They may also offer a single plate option for the buffet that is as much as you can get on the plate for a set price. These are both better than actually paying by weight. Also, if you turn down the side street or go one block from the main square, food is often half the price or less. The restaurants may not look as nice, but the food was nearly as good in our experience.

Paraguay: $158 per day, but this is rather unfair to Paraguay since we were only there for 1.5 days and had to pay $90 for the visas. The country is about half the price of Brazil and is small so transport is cheap. You could definitely live decently for $50 per day once there. Note that in an effort to completely discourage tourism, a mandatory fee of $5 exists anytime you take money from an ATM if it is a foreign card. $5 is about the same price as the average person in Paraguay makes in a day, I think (not kidding). So, you are better to take cash if you can. Foreign exchange places exist everywhere and seemed to take any major currency since every currency is more major than the Paraguay Gurani.

Foods of Paraguay! (and a few stragglers from Brazil)

First, a little catching up on foods from Brazil.

In Foz do Iguacu, our last city in Brazil and a border town with both Paraguay and Argentina, a whole new street food cropped up: pao de queijo, or cheese bread, at the insanely cheap price of 7 breads for 1 Real (50 cents US).

Very happy Tara with her bag of cheese breads, which were kind of like a cross between a cheese rock from Big Booty in NY (aka Colombian pan de yuca) and a popover.


Also, when we showed up for the night bus to Paraguay, we had about $3 US left in Brazilian currency, so Andy dashed across the street to a convenience store to spend it on random snacks. He came back with (l to r) knockoff peanut M&Ms (I had been craving the real ones bad, but they are expensive in Brazil), maracuja (passionfruit) ice cream, and Kuat, which is Coca Cola´s guarana soda, sold everywhere in Brazil.

The soda taste was kind of sweet and sour, and way too carbonated for me. Guarana is a rainforest fruit that is supposed to have naturally stimulating properties, kind of like acai...I don't know about that, though, since we both fell asleep as soon as we reclined our seats on the night bus.

OK, on to foods of Paraguay!

I had read in our guidebook about the many types of chipas, or cheese breads, in Paraguay, and after the tasty pao de queijo of Brazil I was eager to try one. So when we went out for breakfast in Asuncion, I ordered the chipa guazu, or cheese bread made with fresh corn.

Too bad it was not so much a bread as a gloopy, quiche-like substance. I despise quiche, and Andy had to laugh at the look on my face when they brought this out.


I did manage to force down about 3/4 of it, eating verrry slowly. The tutti frutti juice I ordered with it (kind of like a fruit salad smoothie) was fortunately much tastier.

Just in time to wash the taste of the chipa out of my mouth, we stumbled on a lady with a stand in the park selling tereré, which is the national beverage of Paraguay.


It is yerba mate tea served ice-cold with "digestive herbs," whatever those may be. Basically, you end up with a cup filled with green stuff floating in water...


...and you suck the liquid up through a filtered straw.


Then you refill, and refill, and refill from a giant pitcher of ice water. (Or, if you are Paraguayan, from your personal thermos of mate, which you carry around with you whereever you go. Seriously, we saw a stockist at a supermarket trying to fill the shelves with one hand and carry his enormous mate thermos with the other. Quite amusing.)

Note that mate accoutrement was for sale everywhere in Asuncion. I am sure that the kind of mate cup you use and thermos you carry says something important about you in many countries of South America...


I had told the lady that it was my first time trying mate, and she laughed and let us take pictures and tutored me through it, including grabbing my cup from me and sucking hard through my straw because I wasn't imbibing fast enough. (Ah, the hygiene observed in the shadow of all the H1N1 posters!). But I didn't want to be rude, so I just took it back from her and followed her lead until she was satisfied. Andy even tried some, but since it was strong and unsweetened he almost choked. Then he went off to buy our bus tickets and I chatted with the lady in my broken Spanish. Found out that she had 10 children; she asked why I didn't have any children yet, etc. while I drank my 18 more cups of mate.

Sufficiently caffeinated, I was ready for snacks. We found these at a shop; they were filled with guava jam and dusted with coconut, but mostly tasted like slightly stale butter cookies...not so great.


But we ate'em anyway. We've seen these since in Argentina, too.


Far better was this apple-raisin strudel Andy ordered in a pastry shop called Michael Bock. Not sure what makes this Paraguayan, but it was delicious!


What's this? A BAGEL??


Indeed, there seems to be a bagel-like bread product available in Paraguay and Argentina. It's eggy, chewy, and has caraway seeds in it. Possibly also has cheese in it, I can't really tell. In any case, I was quite happy when Andy bought me a bag of 5 of these at the Paraguay bus station for 50 cents US. (Once again, we were trying to spend the last of our local currency and ended up with some random fun snacks.)

That's all we've got for foods of Paraguay, but not bad for 33 hours, I think. We did buy a couple of cheap but disappointing filled churros on the street. Oh, and you'll never guess what we found at the supermarket in Asuncion...peanut butter! It was more expensive than in America, but far cheaper than the $7 jars of Skippy we saw in Sao Paulo. Plus, it was actually made in Paraguay. We tried it today, and it's very sweet. Maybe because the only two ingredients are peanuts and sugar. Anyway, we'll try to post a pic of the Paraguayan peanut butter with our next set of food pics.

Butterflies, More Butterflies, and Some Waterfalls

This post is all about Iguacu Falls, which is technically spelled with one of those silly curly things on the bottom of the c or in English with a z. They are big. Really big. Not massively tall (though taller than Niagara), but never-ending. The falls and the mist also create a tropical rainforest on steroids for plant and animal life. This is especially true for butterflies. If you have ever been to one of those butterfly gardens where they have butterflies everywhere, imagine that you increase that butterfly density by about 10x and the number of butterfly types by about 100x and you have the top of Iguacu Falls. I have dramatically cut down the pictures here, but Tara was ready to kill me for trying to take pictures of every single type of butterfly.

Now, to the pictures:

You can visit the falls from both Brazil and Argentina (they are right on the border). We did both, but if you ever visit, I don't really see a reason to spend the money on the Brazil side. The Argentina side is much better. Here is a shot from Brazil, though, which does have a couple nice panaromic viewpoints.

A shot of a completely different section of the falls from Brazil. Everytime you think you have seen them all, you walk around a curve in the path and see more.

Regular readers know that I really like lizards. This lizard gets a gold star for sitting perfectly still while I took his picture. He was close to three feet long.

The lighting isn't great in this shot, but I thought Tara would like it if I included a shot of the two of us. This is in front of part of what is known as "the Devil's Throat". I forgot my barrel, or I would have definitely gone over in one.

I took this picture as a joke, but then we realized that squirrels are rare in most of South America and many of the visitors were genuinely amazed at this crazy creature. We were hiking a trail and these South Americans stopped us to point out the squirrel. They seemed surprised when we laughed and kept walking.

And the butterflies begin. They were everywhere. At times it was like a butterfly storm. If Alfred Hitchcock were still alive, he could write a movie called "Butterflies" about them. I won't pretend to know what kind any of them are. Here's the first. I'm naming it Autumn Gold.

This one is going to be called Orangy Spots on Blue-Violet Wings.

What do butterflies attract? Birds. What are harder to photograph than butterflies? Birds. But I got a few shots. These are common at the falls. I suggest that New York try to replace their pigeons with them. People would be much happier.

I really like pictures of fungus. It is colorful, doesn't move, and doesn't get enough respect. Here is the best from the Falls.

Let's call this guy Electric Blue Death Machine. Sounds more ferocious than Electric Blue Butterfly.

This one was tiny. Thus, I have dubbed him Blue Runt. I think the other butterflies were laughing at him.

A lot of butterflies landed on both me and my backpack. Maybe because they are everywhere and explore everything, or maybe because my diet consists mostly of sugar and they like the taste of me. This one sat on my finger for a good 5 minutes. Let's call him Tigger. He can't bounce, but the colors are right.

Calling this one Saran Wrap since you can actually see through its wings. These were also huge. The biggest butterflies we saw in the park.

We shared a taxi to the Argentine side of the park with a British couple on vacation. They were upset that they had not seen a toucan, and we hadn't seen any close. Then, Tara spotted this one in a tree right above us. Unfortunately, the Brits weren't around, but he was a huge toucan. I asked, but he refused to share his Froot Loops.

If you eat enough of those blue butterflies, you turn blue. That is what happened to this bird.

This one looks like it might actually be a moth. Not sure. It liked me as well. I'll call him Big Blue.

A picture of the some of the falls from the Argentina side.Tough to see, but on the left half there is a small, circular drop off before it falls again. This is the heart of the "Devil's Throat" and presumably the most painful part if you accidentally fell into the river.

We hiked to a small falls where we could swim. On the hike back, we spotted this yellow headed woodpecker. He moved fast, and this is probably the best picture I have. Neither of us had ever seen one, so I thought I should share.

This vulture was just sitting on the road waiting for something to die. They are about the size of a hawk and I don't know what this one was doing since I didn't see any dead animals.

Instead of raccoons, they have an animal called the coatimundi. Like raccoons, they can be aggressive for food. They dig through the trash and come to places where people eat. They are good at grabbing chips from people's hands. These were marching towards us as though they would eat us. They just needed to cross, though.

One last comment. I almost called this post "Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink". It is amazing that among this much water, they have no waterfountains. Restrooms every 10 feet, but you have to buy water if you want (not drinkable straight from the tap). We don't take our water filter on day trips like this. So, if you visit the falls, take plenty of water or be prepared to overpay for it.

Foods of Brazil, Part Dois

After our first successful Foods of Brazil post, we are back for more.

Coconuts are loved in Brazil, especially northern Brazil. This is an decent size supermarket, but not massive. Here is the selection of coconut milks. In the US, we're lucky to be able to find any coconut milk when we need it.

While we were on the boat to Belem, Tara got very excited because most of the Acai gets shipped through Belem, making it probably the cheapest Acai in the world. She bought this huge bag of it (liquids in bags are common in this part of the world) for about $1.50.
I wish I had a picture of her face when she first tasted it. She thought it was so gross that she asked how long until the boat left. The guy said 30 minutes and off she ran to find sugar. Here she is, looking somewhat dejected, but with enough sugar to take care of the problem.
It is impossible to underestimate the importance of cookies in the Brazilian diet. They are everywhere, in every imaginable flavor. We go through about a roll of them per day. So, when we reached the big city of Rio and discovered that some stores are solely devoted to selling cheap cookies (biscuits, as they call them), we were very excited.
The first few days we were in Brazil, we ended up eating rather expensive meals on the main streets. We got sick of that quickly, and discovered that much better meals exist for much less money. This is a very typical meal and generally costs about $3 if you look around.
We haven't eaten real food at McDonald's, but we do sometimes have ice cream there. Cones are sometimes 50 cents in Brazil. We try not to buy unless that are 50 cents or less.
Brazil has these food carts that sell "salgados", which are lots and lots of random snacks. This one was some kind of grain fried with ground beef inside. The deal on salgados is one of them and a glass of juice for $0.50. We try not to pay more.
I bought these solely because the bag said they were bacon flavor. I would compare them to the things that come with Chinese restaurant soup, except that they were a decent artificial bacon flavor.
This one isn't food we ate, but is interesting. This comes from the favela (shanty town) of Rio, where apparently the undeveloped eggs inside female chickens are considered somewhat of a delicacy, so they leave them attached.
If you want to get Tara to buy a yogurt, call it limited edition or experimental. This was limited edition cashew nut, which Tara was really happy to find. Unfortunately, it apparently didn't taste like cashews at all.
All over Brazil, they sell these massive blocks of guava jelly. Next to them, there is always the similar looking yellow/brown stuff. We finally bought one and it turned out to be sweet potato flavor. Not really that good.
We are told that Sao Paolo has the highest concentration of Japanese people outside of Japan. As a result, most of the street food is Japanese. We had a big bowl of yakisoba noodles for lunch. Tara is mostly smiling because there were vegetables in the noodles.
We'll have at least one more post on foods in Brazil (or maybe combined with foods of other countries).

A Tale of Two Cities (Rio and Sao Paulo)

I. Boy and Girl in Ipanema

Did you know that Ipanema (of the song, with the girl) is actually a beachy neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro? Neither did we, but we quickly learned our way around it, and many other neighborhoods, during our two days in Rio.

(Note: It seems that almost all of the pictures we took in Rio were of food, so they will show up in our next "Foods of Brazil" post, but we do have a few to share here.)

I really liked Rio, but it was a sometimes-maddening mix of easy and difficult, glamorous and poverty-stricken, great deals and rip-offs. For instance, in Rio we paid the most we have ever for the smallest room ever on this trip, literally a closet with two bunk beds:


But, we were right in the heart of Ipanema, which had a lovely public beach and felt safe to walk around at night. And on our first night in town, we ate at a fairly swanky yet reasonably-priced churrascaria, (about US $17 pp for terrific salad bar and all-you-can-eat meat on swords, including beef ribs--YUM).

We also found doce de leite filled churros, vanilla soft serve cones, and suco + salgado (cup of juice and a savory pastry) for 1 real (50 cents US) apiece, which is as cheap as we´ve seen anywhere in Brazil, in certain neighborhoods of Rio, even rather touristy ones. So we didn´t starve.

And there were lots of cool things to see for free. We poked our heads into countless churches and cathedrals around the old city...


...and even got to tour the beautiful old parliament building (now used for the state legislative meetings, since the capital moved to Brasilia in the 1960s), absolutely free.


And we rode this cable car all around the bohemian neighborhood of Santa Teresa for a whopping 60 centavos (about 30 cents US) each--highly recommended.


Not everything touristic was such a deal, though. For instance, the famous Christ the Redeemer statue that stands over the city would have cost $18 US apiece to visit on the little tourist train. (Do you know how many meat-on-a-sticks that is?) So we opted instead to utilize the super-zoom on Andy´s new camera...


One outing that was definitely worth the money, though, was the three-hour favela tour we took. A favela is a slum, usually built on a hillside in or near a big city (as was explained to us, ironically in Brazil the rich people live at the bottom of the hill and the poor people have the great views). No joke--we took this picture from a rooftop in Rochima, Rio´s largest favela:



Because the favelas are built up on public land with no urban planning or infrastructure, when electricity, internet, etc. come in, the wires tend to look like this:


This is a great picture not because I am in it, but because you can see 1) how narrow the streets usually are in favelas--no room for cars, and often not even wide enough for an umbrella. Sometimes it is so narrow and the homes are built so high you feel more like you are in a hallway in someone´s house than outside. and 2) you can see a beautiful mosaic someone made on their house, probably out of remnants from another construction site.


There´s so much to write about the favelas--how their security is controlled by drug-trading gangs so there´s very little street crime because they don´t want the police nosing around their neighborhood; how the emerging middle class is staying in the favelas and improving their homes there rather than moving out because of ties to the community. I could go on, but I´ll just highly recommend that you take Marcello´s favela tour if you ever come to Rio.

Our last stop in Rio was the botanic gardens, which had a cool house of carnivorous plants. Also, this bush tried to swallow Andy, but I rescued him.


II. Saaaaay-o...Paolo
(Sorry, I couldn´t think of a good title for this part!)

A brief 6 hour overnight bus trip from Rio (good lord, you know you´ve been in Brazil too long when a 6-hour bus trip sounds incredibly short to you), and we were in Sao Paulo!

Sao Paulo is the financial capital of Brazil, and is known for its high culture, so we had to hit a few museums.

The first was the Butantan Institute on the University campus, apparently world-famous for its study of snake and insect venom! Visitors can tour the "serpentarium," which is where we saw this fellow.


We then went to MASP, the first-rate art museum in the Jardins area. They wouldn´t let us bring our camera in, but trust us, we saw some nice Van Goghs.

There was some impressive architecture and sculpture to be seen; the imposing cathedral on the Praca da Se...


...and this incredible monument at the large park where we picnicked the next day. Our limited ability to read Portuguese led us to think it is a monument to immigrants, or to the pioneers who founded modern Brazil? (If there are any Paulistanos reading, feel free to set me straight about this.)


(Speaking of works of art, at said picnic, Andy impressed me by slicing a tomato with a spork.)


And because there is only so much high culture a person can take, we present you with the following two pictures we also took in Sao Paulo.



One last note: Our guidebook said that Paulistanos are incredibly nice, and we found this to be absolutely true!

Our conductor on one city bus made it his personal mission to make sure we got to the venomous snake museum, even though it wasn´t really on the bus route and it was clear we could hardly understand a word he said; he found another passenger to speak English to us, and when we reached our stop he actually got off the bus and walked halfway down the block with us to tell us where to turn.

Other people came up to us on the street and chatted with us, pointed out places of interest, and offered to help if we looked the slightest bit lost. So, a special shout-out to the people of SP.

16 hours on a bus later, and we arrived in our final destination in Brazil, Foz do Iguacu (Iguacu Falls). Seriously amazing, but we haven´t uploaded the pictures yet and tonight are leavin´...leavin´ on the midnight bus to Paraguay...so you´ll have to wait for that story.