Porto Alegre

 Porto Alegre is the capital of the southernmost state in Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul. We found it to be a rather unpleasant city.

The architecture is a mixture of Stalinist realism and weirdly there is 19th century Belle Epoch facades possibly a reminder of past prosperity. 

All of it looks quite run down. 

Traffic is aggressive and streets intersect and wind completely at random through downtown making driving more exciting than necessary.

Fog gray skies and mizzle I’m sure didn’t help. 

One and a half million people live here in a city founded by Portuguese emigrants from the Azores.

They promise a quality public education, free to all. 

Except when the office and technical staff go on strike. If I got it right they are protesting the loss of job security to advancing technology. 

The city is located on a freshwater lagoon a few miles inland at the junction of five navigable rivers. The lagoon also is navigable and Porto Alegre (“happy port”) has a long history as an major industrial port city. Not exactly the tourist hub you might like if you show up in a camper van. We drove the waterfront looking for a recreation space. It’s there but there isn’t any parking.

There’s a museum in there and a market worth visiting, but nowhere to park. 

We developed a plan to go to the wine country for a couple of days then to come back on our way to the coast. 

There is a campground outside the city we saw on iOverlander  so we could take an uber into town to deal with aggressive traffic and parking issues. A good plan if we decide to stop on the way back. 

Meanwhile we are heading out of town to the wine country for a few days of tasting and other riotous behavior in the hills. 

Perhaps when we come back we will find better weather too and that might induce us to stop. 

And after all this we want to go down the cost to Uruguay. 

And in Uruguay we hope to finally get our electrical shore power charger fixed. Much excitement. I should point out our solar panels  have been excellent and our second alternator has done a fine job except briefly when the app took a dump. I used the usual electronic fix and turned it off and on again and all has been well. 

We get to sleep with air conditioning which keeps us cool and dry and makes sleeping comfortable. 

We stopped in pursuit of culture and bought a bag of weird peanut candies. 

And fruit; Brazil has the best fruit for some reason and we will miss it. 

And then we found our campground, a swimming hole in a river for people to cool off in summer and on weekends. 

I’m not fond of these places  when they are crowded with happy families picnicking with loud boisterous children having a great time. But this is out of season and a weekday.

220 volt shore power if we had a charger…

Winching And Fishing

We spent Wednesday and Thursday driving the coast south from Florianopolis starting on BR 101, the freeway connecting the two cities.

I guess you could say it was a boring drive but it suited me just fine though the truck lane is not the smoothest owing to trucks tearing it up. The scenery was pleasant but there was nothing heroic about the drive.

Florianopolis is the capital of Santa Catarina state while Porto Alegre (“happy port”) is the capital of Rio Grande do Sul state (Big River of the South) and the southernmost state bordering Uruguay. 

We decided we liked Florianopolis, and of course the wildly varied island of Santa Catarina upon which it sits  and we promised we’ll be back next year with plans to spend more time on the coast.

It could be Miami. 

But the freeway called for about 55 miles when we turned east toward the beach.

There is a tiny little fishing village on an inlet that is well known in Brazil as the place where fisherman fish with dolphin. Not “for” but “with” if you can believe it. We watched the fishing in the inlet near the village of Laguna.

The fishermen sit around on shore chatting until a dolphin appears in the water…

… then they suddenly get up, get serious and leg it into position:

Then they stand in the murky water waiting for the bottle nose dolphin to herd the mullet towards them. 

It sounds nuts doesn’t it? 

But scientists have been studying this 140 year old practice and they both humans and dolphins get more fish like this. The actual benefit to the dolphins isn’t clear but they seem to find it worth while showing the fishermen when to cast. 

The fishermen even have a dolphin century to honor their helpers.

The fishing attracts spectators, visitors and locals.

I’m glad to have seen it but we had places to go and this meditation had to end. 

Rusty could have stayed. 

He even made a friend…

They wandered off into the dunes ignoring the dolphin non s ruin in the water.

Around the corner there is a ferry. $4:50 for a ten minute crossing so it was quick and efficient.

You drive on and pay the man as you cross. Cash only so is lovely and  old fashioned and basic.  

Just like the engine. The tug is attached to a pivoting arm and it switches back and forth with the direction of travel. We saw this system on a ferry crossing an arm of the Amazon in the jungle and here it is again. 

The idea after the ferry was to stop for the bay and enjoy a splendid beach just south of the inlet. The road from the ferry was flat and straight and put me in mind of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. 

Straight out across the marshes. 

Of course Team Lost overshot the turn off and it took almost a mile to find a turn around. We zipped back and turned toward the beach. The pavement rose up and on the top, completely without warning we found ourselves in some rugged potholed dirt, just like that. 

That wasn’t half the shock we had when we reached the beach. The road turned right and beaches a sand filled track. We stopped and in unison said no. We knew we couldn’t make it. However a bright yellow Mercado Livre delivery truck appeared behind us. It’s the equivalent of an Amazon delivery and he pulled around us. Well, I thought, we can see some local knowledge in action.

That didn’t last long. He was stuck. I walked up and said I’ll get you out just give me ten minutes.

I got my tools out, the remote control for the front mounted winch, a steel shackle, a soft shackle and my West Marine sailors knife with a marlin spike to open the steel shackle. I was set.

I creaked under his van and got the soft shackle around a thick steel cross member booted to the chassis. I put the steel shackle through the soft shackle and attached that to the end of the winch line. Then we talked. The guy in the hat is the campground owner who had come down the track to collect his delivery.

I revved up the engine to give power to the front mounted winch and slowly the van came out of the sand. Success; and we broke nothing and we had a happy delivery driver. 

The campground owner said the track would be cleared “tomorrow” but we got on our way. After I wound the winch line in. 

Our good deed for the day was great but we had nowhere to sleep so we got back on the freeway and drove toward Porto Alegre three hours away. So we fell back on our usual Brazilian stand by. 

It’s easy. 

It’s safe. 

It’s free.