Supercharged

This month is flying by. Where to start? I feel like it's been an express train ride through some very different landscapes. If I don't get some of this down, the next bout of adventure will just sweep it all away.

OK, so the blur goes something like this:

- First of all a chopper ride over São Paulo. Followed by some pistol shooting (I'm better than I thought; nicely grouped in the carboard target -- a good performance, though there was a lingering distaste that the whole experience was an imagined blasting away at a human being). Then I got to see a car shot up by a much more expert gunmen, the type that swagger around. Luckily not a criminal experience, at least not directly: it was a controlled display by an armoured car company, of which I hope to post some video sometime. The bullets smacked into the windshield but didn't go through.

- Then came a dawn flight out to some country town that is home to all these farmer millionaires. The local airport was basically a garage for shiny new little choppers that these agri-rich dudes use to get around. All I got to see was a factory where biofuel is made from sugarcane. I never realised how big that is in Brazil. Almost all the cars on the road can take sugar alcohol, petrol, or both. Hmmm. I remember when the down-and-outs used to sniff petrol from cars. Now I guess they just dunk donuts in them in Brazil.....

- On to the Amazon after that. Not the way I wanted to do it (ie. backpack, weeks to get around, sidle up to the locals). This was a tourist ride up a river, a quick look at a sort of jungle area, back to the five-star hotel





then back to Sao Paulo on a Brazilian air force flight. As I said, a blur.

- Quick trip to a nearby beach -- my first in Brazil. Crooooowded. But kind of fun. People as friendly as I'd been led to believe, apart from the rip-off taxi driver. Got sunburnt, of course. Still can't believe my once-Aussie tan has whitened to European chalk over all these years.



- Back in Sampa and it's been a lot of paperwork and hassle, but also exciting. This week saw Black Consciousness Day... a celebration of Brazil's black roots laid down during its days of African slavery. Gotta love the black Osama bin Laden.



- Finally I moved into an apartment last night. It's clean, spacious and pretty well situated. Best of all, it had a monkey scampering around in the street out front. But apparently that's an illegal act for simians, so the police came today to arrest him. At least it looked like that's what they planned to do. Despite the fleet of motorbikes, the long ladder and the studied air of reflection on the faces of the armed and flak-jacketed officers standing around under the palm trees, I kind of suspect the critter will be around my place for a while.

- Today was my umpteenth trip back to the Federal Police for a bunch of paperwork even Brazilians didn't know existed. A last attack on bureaucracy before I catch a flight to Venezuela, where I'll be back in a hotel for the next two weeks. Actually, make that three weeks -- I just found out I'll be ducking down to Peru straight afterwards.

Time management takes on a new interpretation down here. I'd been expecting a bit of a slower pace. Instead I barely have time to log on and update this thing. Here's hoping I get a bit more leeway soon.