The Final Week

In theory in one week from now we should be departing Brasilia bound somewhere else, most likely Paraguay.

I thought Layne was tempting fate rather badly the other day when she remarked à propos of nothing that she’d miss Brasilia, a remark dropped as an Uber discus down a broad avenue through the middle of the city.

An overlander I have been communicating with occasionally sent me a message describing the trouble with choosing a place to settle down describing the exhaustion of constant change. I wasn’t much use replying that after barely two months I am climbing the walls of our apartment.

I can’t be sure but I get the feeling Rusty is pretty bored too, as he’s always looking to get out of the apartment and spend time outside. When we live in the van he can be outside all day and night if he feels like it but the small patio that comes with the apartment doesn’t do for him. He likes the grass and being outside watching the world go by.

And so we walk in small circles inside the vast complex with occasional forays outside the gates. We all three miss our home and I feel like I am starting to get depressed. 

I don’t much like the news from home, because even though I am a nomad by inclination I’m not an anarchist and I like rules to live by. It’s so odd to be in South America where I haven’t been asked for my identity papers anywhere outside of a border crossing yet were I to go home I’d be required to justify my nationality. This is a world turned upside down, in a country where I have heard the arguing that the right to bear arms is the right to oppose government oppression. Yet now government officials warn citizens to carry proof of nationality under pain of suffering arrest. I of course would carry my passport card because I live by the rules but it seems an odd way to have to behave in the land of the free. 

Here by contrast I have to give the grocery store clerk my CPF, the Brazilian social security number. In other countries I explain I’m a foreigner and the clerk accepts  my passport number but in Brazil that move most often flummoxes the clerk and they call for a supervisor. So we found a website that generates a CPF and we use that. Problem solved and I marvel at the collective weirdness of human communities. I cannot fathom why it is necessary for Brazilians to provide their identity number to go grocery shopping any more than I can understand why proof of citizenship is required at home were input walking Rusty.

On the subject we had an enormous hassle doing laundry in the apartment complex. We have a washer in the apartment but with the possibility of our home being returned to us we (Layne) decided to wash our bedding before we get GANNET2 back so we took a pile of the stuff to the do it yourself laundry on the premises. Their system didn’t accept our home made CPF and the employee had no interest in helping two tongue tied foreigners so we went to the drop off laundry to see if we could that instead.

The second laundry had a wall covered in cheerful aphorisms about life which I could more or less translate but the clerk was helpless. She called someone on the phone who was no help and I was starting to despair. Two people show up with plastic bags of dirty bedding in a laundry. What would you suppose they want to do? They just could not figure it out. The third employee equally baffled and I was ready to give up but Layne was made of sterner stuff. The fourth monolingual employee got the idea and actually read our Google Translate request to wash our bedding.

After we explained there was absolutely no hurry smiles broke out, we paid ($19) and they said it would be ready for pick up on the third useful day of the week (Tuesday). Oh my god what an effort. 

I have to confess this experience of being tongue tied in Brazil has made me a great deal more empathetic when I think of travelers who speak no Spanish and my hat is off to overlanders who plunge into this network of countries where English is rarely spoken. Add that into the mix and you can see why a drive to Paraguay is so appealing in addition to the boredom of being stationary.

We are in the middle of a week of predicted downpours, nothing I know like the monster storm snowing in half the States but irritating nonetheless to sightseers like us old retirees. I do look out the window at the water flooding down out of the skies and intend myself in the words of a Canadian traveler we camped with frequently “rain is the kryptonite of overlanders.” And yet at this point even a rainy day aboard GANNET2 would fill me with delight. 

In a grocery run to Layne’s favorite fruit market, a chain called Oba she spotted a household goods store and we wandered around plotting ways to make our new storage drawers more useful. They had everything including plush rug we think  Rusty will enjoy riding on. Brasilia lacks for nothing. 

Oba has cooked goods, the best selection of yogurts and tons of fruits and vegetables. 

We’ve been in town so long, in a city not used to tourists that some of the clerks recognize us.  And I recognize the best papayas I’ve ever encountered including ones I’ve picked off the tree in the Keys. 

Oh and the bakeries.

We picked up a couple of chocolate brownies for a weekend treat. I’m not sure what they were actually because inside the package we got some chocolate mousse thing that was so rich it was too much. Most confections in Brazil are not too sweet at all so this so called brownie took us by surprise. 

Just when you think you have Brazil figured out this vast country finds a way to surprise you. We will definitely have to come back later this year if we ever manage to escape from

Brasilia.

Mall Walking

I have been under the weather lately, a stress induced ‘flu I suspect as we close out our second month stationary waiting for good things to be completed -soon!- to GANNET2. Thanks to anonymous who pointed out my shortcomings on this page and alerted me to get myself together now I am feeling better. Even Rusty has transformed from caring nursemaid lying at my side on the bed to impatient walker demanding his time outdoors. I get the feeling he too is getting bored in our stationary home, but I could be fooling myself.

Travel fine tunes your appreciation for things you did not necessarily enjoy at home.

It may be obvious to anyone who has visited South America, but it’s worth repeating that there is a middle class here, and at a time when class distinctions at home are being laid bare by failing social systems I find it odd how our US retirement puts us squarely in the upper middle class here. We live in a gated community and we shop at Sam’s Club and Carrefour and the local equivalent to Whole Foods a fruit market called Oba Hortifruti. Below, an ice cream stand offering to mix in liquor. That will keep the little dears quiet I suppose. 

The Boulevard Mall puts us in Miami two decades ago when shopping and mall walking were supposed to act as entertainment and social hubs.

 

There are delivery services in all Latin America for online shopping Mercado Libre and Alibaba are the ones I’ve seen. We’ve used Mercado Libre to get a few things delivered and it with like Amazon. The difference is you need a social security number in addition to a delivery address so what we do is have friendly campground owner order the item so we can pay them back but retail therapy remains an important feature of life across the South America we’ve seen. 

You won’t see these places on Instagram simply because they are familiar to the folks at home so if you are trying to talk up your vacation with pictures of exotica your travels look like this:

But we aren’t on vacation so we vary our shopping, sometimes as tourist posing as cultural anthropologists and sometimes as middle class homeowners (on wheels) seeking a break from the road. 

We recently got our dengue shots at the mall and we passed by the food court which gave us an idea for a rainy day lunch. Why not? And while I’m at it let me show you how it is in a middle class Brazilian mall. 

You read about shootings between police and drug dealers in the sleazy areas of cities and Brazil’s metropolises have a poor reputation for theft but Brasilia is a city apart and doesn’t make for lurid news headlines. A truck crashing on a freeway none Federal District was big news in this sleepy political burg. 

We haven’t been to a movie at the mall in decades I think but we had the possibility here had we wanted to sit through some Portuguese. 

And if you want to catch a movie without your kid there’s a child care facility in the mall. 

It’s called the forest and if you drop your kid off for two hours you can get 30% off your movie theater ticket. Sounds like a deal to me.

Or you can just wander around for some child- free window shopping. 

And hunt down lunch.  

We checked out the food court too, Montana the beef place reminding us that Hollywood’s cowboy myths are worldwide.

They also have a version of the usual Brazilian buffet:

“Serve yourself once with no weighing” for $6:50. As tempting as that might sound we went with Japanese for a change. 

Even the mall can be a cultural experience. Been there and done that. We got the good news the solar panels have arrived so the final piece of the puzzle for GANNET2’s rebuild is in place. We have high hopes next week we may be busy repacking our home on wheels. We can only hope. 

Night Walk

There are mornings Rusty gets it into his head he wants a walk at four in the darkness and he comes and sticks his cold wet nose in my ear. I always grouse when I get up but there is beauty in the peace quiet of the morning hours in the complex. I think I might freak the night guards out but we just walk around and dig a while as Rusty sniffs the night air. I’m reading a book in the Monroe Doctrine seeing as how it’s been invoked as part of the destruction of NATO. I figured I should know as much as I can and it’s very readable and available on Amazon.

Weekend treat. They were pretty mean and pretty much ate the lot leaving nothing for Rusty.