Funchal, Madeira

We had flown to Amsterdam from LAX and boarded the boat Splendour of the Seas in Lisbon.  We slowly made our way down the African coast to the island of Madeira, which is considered part of Portugal.  The volcanic soil in Funchal is obviously a sign of the rich agriculture and wine making of Madeira.  The scenic views are stunning, what with the glass like sheen of the Atlantic seen from the hills of Madeira. There are dwarf banana trees growing everywhere, clearly imported from northern Africa a few hundred miles across. The island is famous for its Madeira wine, sugarcane honey cakes (called bolo de mel), an ugly but tasty fish called espada, embroidery, wickerwork and a sledge ride down the paved streets. 

Madeira at dawn, viewed from the balcony of our cabin:

This island, then a stopping place between the Indies and the new world, now has a population of just a hundred thousand, and is considered a tax-free haven where resorts have sprung.  The British clearly love to escape their bitter winters and stay in the sunshine and balmy air of Madeira. Why else would Winston Churchill spend months painting Madeira landscapes?

Such beautiful flowers!

Tenerife, Spain

The Canary Islands (Las Canarias) have been a center of legends throughout history. They are often called the bridge between the Old and the New Worlds. Portuguese and Spanish explorers replenished their supply of food and fresh water in the Canary Islands. History books whisper of a beautiful lady – the Italian inamorata or the Spanish amor? – besieged by captains of such explorations and who later married a duke. 

The people are supposedly descended from the Guanches, related to Cro-Magnon man, and later on colonized and victimized by pirates and privateers, the Genoese, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Italians, and finally, the Spaniards.   The Berbers and the Scandinavians came over too. No wonder the women are blonde and beautiful.

The wines are heady:  moscatel, vino rojo, honey rum, malmsey.  The soil is volcanic and rich, the air so clean, the Atlantic so calm.  There are 1400 species of plants:  dwarf bananas from Africa, vines, fruit trees. 

The market place is piled with cod (bacalao), serrano ham, cheeses, wines and spices, saffron included.  Sidewalk vendors displayed a variety of tropical fruits, including tamarinds, mangoes, calamansi (calamundin, as the Mexicans call it) and bananas.

In one World Heritage town that we visited, San Cristobal de la Laguna, pageants take place in the streets.  A tower stands in the middle of town, a memorial to the colonization of Brazil by Europeans.

Young Spaniards dress up in colonial costumes and recreate the old Spanish community they knew.  The young women were just gorgeous!

We continued cruising down the coast of Africa, passing Mozambique, Morocco and Angola.  Smaller islands appeared on the side, as did oil rigs. Pretty soon, were crossing the equator and marveling at how hot and humid the air felt.

Brazil:  Recife, Salvador de Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo

Recife means “reef” in Portuguese. Called the Brazilian Venice, Recife has modern hospitals, universities and a population of 1.5 million.  Between the islands are the two rivers Beberibe and Caparibe.

The language spoken is Portuguese.  Obrigado is thank you spoken by a man, obrigada spoken by a woman.  To my untrained ear, the Portuguese spoken in Brazil sounded like Fran Drescher (“The Nanny”) speaking Portuguese.  In short, it was nasal!

The cuisine is a mixture of Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, African and Indian influences. Olinda is a World Heritage town, and is as Portuguese as can be.  One notices the cobblestone roads and the undulating stonework of sidewalks. So like Lisbon! The churches dominate the communities, the sweeping views of the coastline and the cobblestone roads, even the azulejos in the churches and the wavy stone designs of the sidewalks speak of Catholic Portugal’s influence. 

At Bonfim Square, a rococo 18th-century church, we were greeted by young and old alike, pressing multicolored ribbons (candomble prayer beads called fitas) to be tied around the wrist for good luck. This is part of the primary faith in Bahia, Candomble, a legacy of the millions of Africans brought over from West Africa to work in the plantations of Brazil. Although primarily Catholic, the people in northern Brazil practiced elaborate ceremonies and offerings reminiscent of their own culture across the Atlantic. 

The heat and humidity reminded us of Manila.  So did the traffic.  One fire truck at the back of our bus was able to inch its way to about 200 feet from us – in 30 minutes!  The poor house that the truck was going to must have burned down to cinders before the truck got there. 

Salvador de Bahia

As we went down Brazil’s coast, we noticed the diversity of the people and cultures.  More Africans are in the northern part of the country, the European and Japanese immigrants are in the southern part.

Salvador de Bahia boasts a beautiful, deep port.  It is the third most populous city after Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, with a population of 2.8 million.  The food has distinct African influences – seafood dishes with coconut juice, a fish dish called escabeche, and a dessert called cocada branca.  

The dance is called capoeira, literally chicken coop.  The African drumbeats tempered with bossa nova and the haunting note of a Portuguese fado, best describe the music in Brazil.  Children even dance in a special elevated stage in the market, where everything imaginable is sold.  Music is in their blood, Carnaval their reason for fiesta time.

The ice cream is heavenly – clumps of mango, tasty vanilla, sweet pineapple, coconut, kiwi – more flavorful than Magnolia and Selecta. The seafood dishes are done with coconut cream – Ensopados, Moquecas and Escabeche.  The best known dish is moqueca, a spicy seafood stew cooked in coconut cream and red dende oil, which Franz called the local artery-clogger. Only the more adventurous people in the group tried this!

Rio de Janeiro

The beaches – Leblon, Ipanema and Copacobana – are Rio’s pride.  The sweep of the coastline is beautiful indeed. 

Remember the song of the ‘60s – tall and tanned and young and lovely, the Girl from Ipanema goes walking?  Tom Jobim and Vinicus de Moraes used to frequent a bar in the upscale beach community of Ipanema – about 4 blocks from the beach. A young girl named Heloisa Pinheiro used to go to the bar everyday to buy a pack of cigarettes for her mother.  Jobim sighed and sighed – and produced the music that clearly defined the bossa nova rhythm of the 60s.  There is a bar in Ipanema owned by Heloise Pinheiro, called Garota de Ipanema, so both the girl and the bar exist!

There is no sight more beautiful than the 360-degree view of the city from atop the Cristo Redentor. Franz took a different tour, getting sand on his feet in the beaches of Brazil. Liesl and I went on a cogwheel train ride to top of the Corcovado Mountain, passing the Tujuca Forest  (the jackfruit trees were laden with fruit!) and riding the elevator (built for the Pope’s visit a few years back) and escalator to skip the 220 steps to the base of the 38-meter-high Christ the Redeemer.  Jesus’ arms are spread wide and welcoming, and the structure is made of steel and a coat of soapstone, soapstone being a surefire way of preventing it from being a lightning conductor! 

One sees the city spread widely, bound by islets and the deep port. Both the soccer stadium – Brazilians are futbol fanatics – and the cemetery are to the south.

Both Liesl and I considered the Redentor a special place. We looked and looked – up and around – at Jesus and the universality of his embrace. Then we silently prayed in the tiny chapel at the foot of the Redentor and left a few euro coins in the collection box.  It was a special moment for us.

In the past, my daughter and I shared similar moments when we prayed at the Temppeliaukio, the church carved from a rock in Norway, when we laughed and ate soft ice cream in Copenhagen and licked a glace in the shade of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, drooled over Belgian chocolates in Bruges, nearly drowned in Acapulco, nearly collapsed with exhaustion in Peterhof at the edge of the Gulf of Finland, and prayed twice as hard crossing the Pyrenees to get to Lourdes and Compostela.  Those times made us forget the horror of long plane rides and waiting at the airports.

Farther south, too, is the famous Sugar Loaf Mountain, where two cable cars take tourists to the top of the mountain. At the mouth of the Guanabara Bay, a monolithic structure of granite and quartz rises straight from the water’s edge.  A question arises: did the Phoenicians reach Rio de Janeiro before the other explorers?  Because there is an inscription at the base of the stylized human face, in Phoenician.  Is this the grave of a king?

We saw beyond the cosmopolitan face of Rio de Janeiro. High up on hillsides are the favelas, shantytowns of slapped-up houses of tin and brick and graffiti. They number by the hundreds. Rocinha, the most populous favela in Rio, is stacked up against a mountain. Somehow, the social problems that exist in the favelas are highlighted in this large town.  It called to my mind the story of Carolina de Jesus’ Child of Darkness, where she says that the main character of her diary is poverty.  Life is distilled down to ways of trying to earn a few cruzeiros to be able to buy beans and a piece of pork fat to feed her five children, all born of different fathers. Water is bought in cans, beans are measured by the cups, pisspots are thrown on to the street. Hence the smell of raw sewage and litter-strewn garbage. 

Someone had mentioned that no taxation is applied to those who live in the favelas.  One ruling in Brazil is nonpayment of taxes until the house is built.  That is one reason why the shantytowns showed homes without doors and windows, with steel wires spouting from posts. However, the favelas had their own banks, stores and even post office.  They are communities of poverty and hunger and oftentimes, violence.

Sao Paolo

Considered the most cosmopolitan city in Brazil, Sao Paolo has the most gorgeous mantle of lush forest on their hills. Cogonhas, the domestic airport, is in the middle of the city, while the international airport is 30 minutes farther away.  The port of Santos is deep and wide and protected by islets – one more thing to admire in Sao Paolo.

We missed the connecting flight at Atlanta – terrible airport! – and sighed with relief when we got back to LAX.  Not even a ton of laundry to do made me feel less jubilant to be home.  We all had hot soup and did a dash for the computer and the phone.  I wanted to call Angela and I was worried about my mother; I needed to know if she had been confined to the hospital.  The internet and phone connections in Brazil were sketchy to say the least.