As most of my catholic readers know this past weekend was Easter, or in Portuguese Páscoa. My colleagues and were itching to get as far away from our job as humanly possible. In recent weeks the satisfaction and morale of the gringo employees has fallen. We have a friend who recommended buying a package for a trip to Ilha Grande (big island) in Rio de Janeiro State. We booked our spot at the last minute and we managed to get a hotel room and a bus ticket. We told the school we would be taking off that night. We asked if we could leave 10-15 minutes early and that we would make it up to our students the following week. The school did not comply and they were completely inflexible. We had to run to catch our train. We drank many a beer sold out of a garbage bag on the transport. We made it to our bus in São Paulo, no thanks to the school who fiercely pissed us all off. But all that was behind us as we passed out and woke up in Paradise.
Ilha Grande is located on Rio's Costa Azul that has been compared to Route 1 of California. We got out of the bus and embarked on a boat to the Big Island. We navigated through solitary islands and emerald colored water. We got the island and found our hotel. While many of the people decided to camp we were not brave enough for the rustic conditions and we got a room. Our second-floor room overlooked what resembled a Paulista refugee camp with tents taking up every available yard of space. The Island was very expensive even for Brazilian standards. We went swimming, took boat tours, drank beers, drank caçacha and meet lots of lovely people.
A bit about accents. The people from Rio de Janeiro city are called Cariocas, the people from Rio de Janeiro State are called Fluminese and they both have crazy accents. For example if they try to speak English they say Niishhh for Nice. And often they have a guttural Arabic Hebrew sound when they pronounce an R in the middle of a word. The people from São Paulo are known for not really having an accent but they slightly roll their R's when speaking, its quite beautiful and more subdued than the Cariocas.
I was really amused this weekend when I got to meet many Cariocas and Paulistas arguing about the Portuguese language, slang and their irreversible rivalry. Cariocas are a very sexual people who give an actual kiss on both cheeks as an introduction where as the paulistas only give a cheek-to-cheek kiss on one side. The Cariocas are beautiful people with a strong mix of African, Portuguese and Indian descendancy where as Paulistas are a more recent immigrant demographic and consist of many Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Anyways the Cariocas made fun of my Portuguese like I was a playground foreigner.
The weekend passed fast as the amount we spent on fresh fish, beans, rice and meat on a stick. We took the bus back to São Paulo through a beautiful mountain overpass that ascended through tunnels, natural springs and overlooked the ocean, mountains and islands that looked like floating tortoise shells in the setting sun. As we entered into São Paulo a ferocious storm flooded the highway bringing traffic to a dead-halt. The trip took 9 hours in a non air-conditioned humid bus. Movie played: A dubbed version of Moulin Rouge.
We got back to São Paulo and had missed our train back to Jundiaí so we had to wait in the station until 4 am until they started running the again. My friend Roman slamming his shoulder into the chin of an aloof walking woman capped off the trip. I don't THINK it was on purpose.
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