Life is a Beach or how do you say that in Portuguese?

Garota de Ipanema or the Girl from Ipanema.

And oh yeah they speak Portuguese not Spanish in Brazil.

Although Brazil is surrounded by Spanish-speaking countries, the language here is Portuguese. Your Spanish will help a lot, though. Most Cariocas(what the locals call themselves) understand it, if spoken slowly. Anyone dealing directly with tourists will understand, and try hard to speak English. Italian is likely to be understood and I have used it with the hotel staff.

Learning to read the words is a useful skill, like reading menus. It will surely come handy when you have to say the name of a street, or some place you are going to.

The only letter in the Portuguese alphabet you may not be familiar with is the "ç", a consonant that always sounds like an s. The sound of the "r" is also a little tricky. It usually sounds pretty much like the h in loch, or the German Nacht. When surrounded by vowels it sounds like the Italian prego, or Corleone, thus Rio (HEEoo), and Carioca (ca-ree-O-ca). The h has a mute sound, unless combined with a c, l or n, as in chato (SHA-too), alho (A-lyoo),and punho (POO-nyo). The s may sound like an s in sábado (SA-ba-doo), a z in asa (A-za), or an sh before some consonants, or at the end of words so it's gatos (GA-toosh), and afasta (a-FASH-ta).

Vowels may have an open or a closed sound, and sometimes there is an accent to indicate. The one that looks like a little hat means a closed sound, thus você (vou-SAY) and até (a-TE). The "~" lends a nasal sound to the ain maçã (ma-SUN). The ão combination is very common in words like chão (sh-AWn) and pão (PAWn). 

We have found that the Portuguese spoken in Brazil is softer and more melodic than what is spoken in Portugal and when women speak it sounds more Italian.

The official song of Rio de Janeiro is "Cidade Maravilhosa", which means "marvelous city". The song is considered the "civic anthem" of Rio. The lyrics do not use the Portuguese alphabet but you will hear the difference.

h

Here are two examples of Portuguese, English and Spanish look like together.

Rio Travelogue - or how to get a sore back

Sugarloaf

One of the first things you will notice in Rio is that just about everyone wears flip flops and their shirts untucked. Everyone dresses fairly casual. Well it is warm and humid here most of the year. I did see one lady walk by zipping up her puffy jacket and wondered why as I had sweat dripping off me and I was sitting in an airconditioned bus. 

When we arrived in Rio the weather was not the best for touring and seeing the sights so we waited a day and it did get sunnier so off to the beach we went. The surf was a bit rough but still a very nice day with one exception. 

Ipanema Beach on a cloudy day

For those who know who Anderson Cooper here is something he and I have in common with Rio - we both had our backpacks snatched up someone while it was being "watched by a friend". Before we left to go on the RTSW I had listened to an interview with Anderson Cooper who said that he and Andy Cohen went to Rio together. While Anderson went swimming he asked Andy to watch his backpack. When he returned it was gone and Andy had no idea it was missing. Yep, mine was gone. Before I left I had said to Dick that it was behind him and that he should watch it. So when I asked where was my backpack upon my return it was a surprise to Dick that it was missing. Not a big loss as it only had an umbrella (slightly broken), a water bottle, an additional shopping bag, a few Euros, and my camera (used, bought from a pawnshop years ago). So if you go to the beach don't take anything you can't afford to lose.

I did get sunburned and Dick was sent through a tumble cycle in the surf so we decided to take the day off and go on a tour. Nice tour but with the traffic and other tourists it made for a very long day. By the time we were done we both had sore backs - something we call museum backs. When we have visited museums we find standing on the hard floors and shuffling along tends to make our backs and legs sore if done for longer than 2 hrs. Our tour was suppose to be a 5 hour tour but it took us 7 hours to get back to the hotel.

Here are some photos of the Rio area.

Ipanema and really rough surf

Note that there really isn't anyone at the beach

Arpoador Rock

Not a good day for the beach vendors

Even the surfers had a tough day

Maracana stadium

Looking up at Corcovado from Tijuca forest

Corcovado or Christ the Redeemer

Urca first peak to Sugarloaf (on the left)

Rock climber at Urca cable car station

Plaza at foot of Urca

Looking towards Sugarloaf from top of Urca

The yellow cable car is the original design and the white one was built for the James Bond movie Moonraker

Metropolitan Cathedral

Inside the Cathedral

Santos Dummont airport and Guanabara Bay

Botafogo as seen from Sugarloaf

Guanabara Bay

Guanabara Bay and Niteroi (left)

Botafogo and Flamengo

Around the Southern World or RTSW or better yet "The endless summer tour" Part 3

If you haven't noticed there is a lot of ocean below the Equator and by the time we get to Africa we will have crossed the Equator 3 times with another crossing at the end of our travels.

So just like the airport dance to arrive at Puerto Iguazu we need to do something similar to get to the Serengeti. Dick does not want to go to any airport near the Middle East nor Kenya so we will fly from Singapore to Johannesburg then fly to Dar es Salaam before heading to Arusha.   

During this trip there were a number of decisions to be made like do we go to Zanzibar and Madagascar. Unfortunately, we opted to not do either but Madagascar is on a future trip and maybe Zanzibar.  

We get to fly into the Kilimanjaro airport where we will be picked up before going on our safari in the Serengeti.  It appears that most of the safaris go to the same places and one is to include visiting a Masai village.

After the safari we will spend a full day exploring Dar es Salaam. Dar as the locals like to call it is similar to Frankfurt in that  it is the banking center of Tanzania. From there we will again fly to Johannesburg before catching a train to Capetown.   

I really like to travel by train whenever possible and we get a chance in South Africa. The Shosholoza Meyl Tourist Class train is a long distance, city to city, economy sleeper class passenger train travel in South Africa where we will travel to Cape Town. From other reports it is a great way to see the scenery and an excellent way to see Table Mountain when entering Cape Town. 

Unfortunately, there is not a similar train between Cape Town and our next stop in Durban.

Durban is on the Indian Ocean so the beaches in early February should be nice and warm. Remember this is part of the endless summer tour.

I had thought we would take the train back to Johannesburg from Durban but outside of the stop in Pietermaritzburg where Gandhi was removed from a train, this was where he decided to perform his first act of civil disobedience, there is not as much to see. So we will fly to Paris (via Johannesburg)  then onto SFO. We are hoping that the airport will have their new policies in place that will allow us to change planes easily.  I had hoped we would go to Amsterdam as there are number of people I would like to see again and to see the reopened Rijksmuseum. Well there is another trip to Europe in the plans so maybe then.

Around the Southern World or RTSW or better yet "The endless summer tour" Part 2

The second country in our RTSW will be in the Land Down Under - Australia. Why you may ask. Well when you go around the world you need to pick a direction and stick with it. Yes, we did head east first to go to Rio but the cruise has us in Chile at the end, so go west. Besides it takes less time to fly to Oz from South America than it does from SFO.

The name Australia (pronounced [əˈstɹæɪljə, -liə] in Australian English, is derived from the Latin Terra Australis ("southern land") a name used for lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times. We are not really spending that much time in Oz and will only go to Sydney (New South Wales), Cairns (Queensland), the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), and Perth (Western Australia). We will not see Uluru (also known as Ayers Rock), nor Melbourne or Darwin. We should still see lots of marsupials. For the GBR portion we will be out on a boat for 3 nights but it will be jellyfish season so snorkling will require the use of 'Stinger suits". Dick will try a scuba dive and I won't as I can't clear my ears well enough not to get seasick. Yeah it does happen and it ain't pretty.

From Oz we fly to Indonesia to the island of Bali. Below is a map of Indonesia and you really need to look to find the tiny island of Bali.

Okay find Bali and Singapore

It has been a lifelong dream for me to go to Bali. I don't really know why I have this desire but I do like Gamelan music. And besides what is not to like to sit on a sandy warm beach.  As we are a bit more mature now I have chosen to stay in Sanur or as some like to call it Snore for its lad back quality. We may take a trip to Kuta to see the over commercialization and nightclubs but probably won't.

The next stop will have us flying to just above the Equator to Singapore. This is the one stop that will be above the Equator until we head back home through France.

 

I don't know much about Singapore other than what I have seen on the news and I don't chew gum much anymore. Dick has been to Singapore back in his Navy days but he expects the City/Country to have changed a lot. 

Singapore has done much to expand its size by dredging and adding new land. The airport is built on such land.

The next country on our RTSW is Africa. We were in Northern Africa in 2014 so now we will get to see what the southern portion is like. More in Part 3.