Best and Worst of Brazil

(Bob:) Of all the countries we visited on this trip and those I have visited in 60-plus years, Brazil is the hardest to categorize. It is a place of extreme dichotomies. It is the size of the continental U.S., but only has about 190 million people.

It is a land of vast natural resources -- lands, minerals, fresh water -- and a geography as varied as that of the U.S., although in general much warmer; shoveling snow is not a Brazilian activity.

It is a land of beautiful natural surroundings and has the world‘s most naturally beautiful city, Rio, with no close second. (Paris, in another sense, could be considered the most beautiful city, when you rate on charm, history, beautiful buildings and gardens, etc., but that is a different category.) But imagine a major U.S. city with beautiful beaches everywhere, where holidays and other civic celebrations are frequent; where going down to the beach is a part of the lifestyle 12 months of the year; where family is a very important part of life, as is generally enjoying life -- long lunches and dinners, beach volleyball and soccer and surfing and walking along the beach and going to soccer games -- and where everything including schools shuts down to watch Brazil play in the World Cup. Only Miami is in the ballpark in lifestyle, but still far behind in beauty.

Per capita GNP is about $10,000 and 18 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day -- bad but still better than Africa. Brazil’s economy has a high growth rate, so it might join the “developed countries” within a decade or so.

Brazil produces all the energy it needs -- thanks to ethanol and abundant hydropower -- and even exports energy to other countries. And when and if its immense offshore oil reserves are developed, it may become another Saudi Arabia in 10 to 20 years. It could export cheap ethanol -- made from sugar cane -- to the U.S. if we hadn’t erected high tariff barriers to protect our corn farmers and big agribusiness companies. Brazil has figured out the energy situation.

(If a young person said they wanted to live overseas for a while, I would advise them, if they were doing it for the lifestyle, to learn Spanish or Portuguese and move to Buenos Aires or Rio. If they were doing it to earn big bucks, I would advise them to learn Mandarin and move to Hong Kong or Shanghai.)

Brazilians, like Americans in general, are a bit arrogant about their country. They feel they have a lot to teach America when it comes to appreciation of history, art, lifestyle and the “finer things” of life, and perhaps they do.

But Brazil, like Mexico, also has its dark side. Our ship docked in Salvador, the country’s oldest city near the hump. The city has about 3 million people, and is the capital of the state of Bahia. This place is a pit in terms of crime -- the worst of any port we visited by far. People were getting mugged and robbed in broad daylight -- women having purse straps cut by thieves running by, crew members having their pants torn off so they had to run for the ship in underpants, students being beat up. It is appalling that the ship even comes to this port. We were told it’s only because the dockage fees are so low. The city has a beautiful old town and some nice museums, restaurants and beaches, but they are unsafe. We ourselves didn’t have any problems, but we were very cautious and consider ourselves just lucky to not be among the victimized.

Rio, too, has major crime problems, although it seemed nowhere near as bad as Salvador. We had one free day in Rio after two full days of touring, and walked along and ate along Copacabana beach for that entire day with no problems. But our guide in Rio said he had been carjacked twice, and, at night, Rio law allows drivers to not stop at red lights on deserted streets to help prevent carjacking.

The causes of all this crime apparently are income disparity and drugs. Drug gangs control many of the favelas (poor neighborhoods) and a lot of very well off people live behind their big walls topped by broken glass and concertina wire with guards at the gates. I think another element may be that the entire society takes sort of a lax attitude toward stealing. I’ll deal more on that in my entry on favelas. I think people in Rio may also have the attitude of “Well, I was robbed and I can go to the police station and spend the day filling out police reports, or I can go to the beach. Screw it, surf’s up.”

Highlights of our days in Rio included taking the cable car up to the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain, which is between downtown and Copacabana. Ipanema Beach is the next one beyond Copacabana, and there is another beyond that and another beyond that and ….. Beaches tend to be divided up into areas, with one section for gays, one for young people, one for families, etc. Thong bathing suits appear to be very popular among the women, although I didn’t really notice that, of course. “I’m just staring at the surfers out there in the ocean, dear, with my binoculars. Whoa, look at that pair … of surfers.”

We did a walking tour of downtown (without large cameras so they wouldn’t be the target of thieves), took a driving and hiking tour in the giant rain forest park up above the city and made several other stops, including one at the giant Catholic Cathedral built in 1980. It seats 20,000 and is shaped like a beehive (See photo) -- the result of an architectural competition. It’s quite an amazing building. Brazil takes great pride in its architecture and has many noteworthy buildings. Since the federal government agencies moved to Brasilia in the 1960s and 1970s, many of the previous government agency buildings have been converted into museums and cultural centers. The city has a very European feel in its appreciation for the arts.

We stayed at a nice hotel across the street from Copacabana beach. The hotel’s buffet breakfast was fantastic, with an enormous supply of tropical fruit.

Sugar Loaf is about 1,000 meters high, while the other big monument is on the other side of town on a 2,000-meter mountain. That’s the Christ the Redeemer statue built in the 1920s. It was closed when we were in Rio because torrential rains the week before caused slides that closed access roads to it, and the statue itself had scaffolding around it for renovation. So we didn’t get to go there.

Brazil hosts the World Cup soccer competition in 2014 and the Summer Olympics two years later, so a lot of new construction and renovation is planned. One hopes that preparation work also includes a major beefing up of police forces, but we would love to return to Rio regardless.