Another Day

It’s lucky I’m not writing this page to make money because if I were I’d need to go back to Key West and beg for my job back. I need better click bait titles. Living in an apartment even in an exotic (to us) location, Brasilia to be precise, is not that exciting. So here’s a picture of Rusty on yesterday’s morning walk. 

By the time you read this I am expecting we shall have taken the long awaited city tour starting at 9am Atlantic time on Thursday. And I am also hoping it will be good. Have you ever seen a police station that looked like this? 

Layne glimpsed it from our Uber as went into town to look for a vet. Rusty’s fine but we need to give him his monthly Nexguard anti parasite pill. In these countries it’s critical so we carry several in the van but GANNET2 is in the shop getting a new alternator.  The first vet we went to gets 5 stars on Google Maps but doesn’t sell medicines. She directed us to another place. Layne called an Uber and we sat in the waiting room.

Across eighteen countries and that’s including the US I’ve never seen a dog bed in the vet waiting room…

Five minutes in the second Uber and we were in something that looks like a Pet Smart with a 24 hour veterinary surgery attached.  

I trust it is apparent that medicine for humans and services for pets are as modern here as you might find at home. 

It had a self service shopping area for birds, fish, cats, reptiles and dogs. We chose our pill, took the card to the cashier and walked out with three Nexguard for the low, low price of $80 (400 Reals) but fortunately Rusty is worth it. 

Now we have a new Fiat Ducato windshield installed on our Promaster we need to seal the lower edge to prevent raining dripping on the engine. Castelo Forte to the rescue.

They sell sealant and I bought a large tube of silicone, not the adhesive but sealant, and an applicator. I last did this in Ecuador 18 months ago and it works quite well.  We’ve been living with cracked windshield since Manaus but decided to replace it in Brasil after we had finished with dirt roads in the Amazon region. Then we took an Uber to go food shopping. 

Layne wanted to check out Bellavia supermarket as an alternative to our usual Carrefour (the French chain prominent t in Brazil. I liked their dog holding station while you shop:

We are invited to our RV mechanic’s Christmas family lunch but NewYears Eve we have a special event thanks to Layne. 

But we did want to try some Brazilian wine. I’ll let you know if Chile or Argentina should be anxious but I doubt it. 

The Garibaldi white is 81 Reals, or US$15 which I figured should give us a decent chance of enjoying the stuff. I also came across the fire water they use to make Caipirinha, the national cocktail. It’s sugar cane alcohol…

And in a corner of the store they had everything you need for Churrasco which is grilling, the national pastime in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil. We are going to collect our Scotti gas grill from GANNET2 so as an experiment Layne bought some Brazilian dry rub. 

And in case you were wondering, Hershey has a factory in Brazil. That surprised me: 

And that was our morning down the drain.

I snagged some pictures from the Uber on the twenty minute ride home loaded with groceries. It’s not all bad being a passenger.

A cathedral, Our Lady of Health, below. Not exactly soaring Spanish colonial architecture. 

Chinese JAC compact: 

I’d like to think the tricycle below is Hollywood inspired.  At least in the movies we will I hope continue to reign supreme…

And then the rain set in for the afternoon. Predictable Brasilia. 

Cars

 It looks like a Mini, one of the most famous little cars in the world. Look closely, it’s a Chinese Lifan. 

Rusty doesn’t care about cars and in the ordinary course of things neither do I but this is Brazil and the automotive world is unlike anything in the US. 

Brazil has the tenth largest economy in the world, in a country the size of the Lower 48 with a population around 170 million people. 

There is plenty of poverty to go around and we live in a bubble of middle class wealth in our apartment complex.

We have a swimming pool, a marina with covered storage  for power boats with lake access. There is a pizza parlor, a barber, two well stocked mini markets with fresh produce, a pharmacy and all of it contained inside fencing with face recognition access. For a thousand bucks a month, which for anyone not in the middle class bubble is unimaginably expensive.

GANNET2 has a brand new windshield for $400 already installed. We got a crack in it driving the roads of Amazonia but I knew it would be easy to replace with a Fiat Ducato windshield. I even had the part number from the same problem we fixed in Ecuador last year. 

You can tell this is a middle class complex, as there are expensive German cars by BMW and Audi…

…as well as  Range Rovers and so forth in the parking lot alongside the run of the mill compact cars from Korea Japan and China. 

But electric cars are all over the place in their assigned spots with outlets laid on for them. I’ve not seen a single Tesla and apparently they are not very popular in Brazil.

Build Your Dreams electric car company 

But BYD is and the Chinese company is all over the place. I first noticed them in Ecuador last year, unremarkable looking vehicles except for the advertising.

 We’ve ridden in a few Ubers by Build Your Dreams the largest electric car company in the world apparently  and they are quite comfortable. 

In Brazil energy independence has long been a goal not just a slogan. Gasoline has a minimum 30 % ethanol and we had to adapt the Promaster to burn high ethanol content in the fuel. Brazil has mandated the ethanol because they have abundant home grown sugar cane to supplement their modest oil production in the Atlantic. 

There is a weird Ford F250 parked here as well. It’s called a Tropical and was built in Brazil to get around a ban imposed on diesel powered sedans.

Apparently they took a bunch of sedan parts and stuck them on the back of the F250 pick up.  The company went out of business in 2015. 

But here is a survivor not moved from this spot as long as we’ve been here: 

Brazil has home grown industries including motorcycle assembly plants building Hondas and Yamahas for the local market but in the summer months you’ll see Brazilian adventurers all over Patagonia riding big cylinder adventure bikes looking every bit like European motorcyclists. 

It’s easy to write Latin America nations off as backward and third world, or as “shithole countries” in the words of the US president, but the reality as usual is more nuanced and interesting to a traveler like me. 

Royal Enfield Guerilla 450 made in India 

One thing I have noticed is that locals make terrible travelers. Fear is pervasive among Latin Americans and they are the first to warn travelers of perceived dangers down the road. 

We have driven through parts of Brazil unknown to Brazilians, places viewed as remote and undeveloped in the far north near Venezuela. Amazonia is as exotic here as it is anywhere, a mysterious impenetrable jungle. Except we drove through it in a delivery van.  

Across Central America residents of each country would solemnly warn us about the dangers facing us across the next border. Clearly our own travels have I hope shown that people are people everywhere. 

Don’t be afraid to stand out in a luxury sedan, they have them too.

There are lots of less glamorous and older vehicles too  including air cooled Volkswagens now prized as classics even though many vans are driven daily and even used as taxis in small towns. 

Indeed among the several VW buses in the parking lot is a rare “Final Edition” of the van built in Brazil until 2013.  

One and a half million built over 56 years and this one has to be 12 years old. 

“The Type 2 Microbus, as it's now officially known, has been produced in Brazil since September 2, 1957, making it the longest continually produced model in automotive history.

In those 56 years - and despite the more than 1.5 million Kombis produced

- it has managed to avoid the growing

'nanny laws' that have seemingly gripped the rest of the western world.

But now, perhaps inevitably, the loveable Camper's time has run out, due to new safety regulations in Brazil itself.”

Yesterday we took a couple of Ubers to and from the dentist, a modern practice like any you might see in the United States. 

Tooth cleaning, cavity filling, whatever is needed with an English speaking dentist at a fraction of the cost of care in the US.  And we rode there in a Fiat Strada and came back in a Renault Sandero, cars never imagined at home. 

Another day in Brazil.