Recap

As a regular caipirinha drinker with a small collection of Gilberto Gil tracks in my iTunes library and some colourful t-shirts, I figured I was part-way prepared to move to São Paulo from Paris. Hell, if the job came up, I was clearly qualified to be an advisor on Brazilian stuff to the Bush White House. Overqualified, even, given that I once went out with a Brazilian girl and with her help I could more or less point out her country on a world map without resorting to Google Earth.

OK, so I couldn’t point out São Paulo on that map. And back then, adapting my very limited Thai linguistic experience to Latin America’s biggest country, I thought you said “obrigado” to guys and “obrigada” to girls. And, come to think of it, I knew of no other Brazilian movie other than “City of God”. Oh, and as a gringo hailing from a country that most definitely wasn’t the US, I felt hurt being labeled a “gringo”.

So, all in all, it was with a great deal of excitement and ignorance that I packed my bags and skipped across the ocean to what all the guide books comfortingly referred to one of the great homicide capitals of the planet. (I laugh in the description of danger, of course – especially when it’s in a book featuring prominent pictures of such dire perils as lithesome beauties wearing little more than fake diamonds and dental floss.)

That was two months ago.

Now, while I’m not a hardened Paulistano able to shake my booty in a samba contest, I have been able to sit back and take stock of the large pile of misconceptions that I had foolishly packed along with my Indiana Jones hat and bullwhip.

Here they are:

1. There are no palm trees in Sao Paulo, and the beach is a long way away. I still get calls from friends and colleagues who think they can detect a slight whiff of coconut tanning oil and surf crashing when I speak to them down the line. They are, of course, misconstruing the rain and gridlocked traffic in the background. Understandable, perhaps, given that their poor little ears are frostbitten in the French winter that I am not experiencing.

2. Every Brazilian woman is not a cousin of Gisele Bündchen waiting to ravish passing gringos. My Parisian exes were convinced that matrimony in the form of a seductive siren of unbelievable proportions enhanced by surgery was to fall upon me as quickly and stealthily as an Amazon python, or a scalper at a Corinthians game. It took me a couple of weeks to be introduced to the places where such sublime examples of femininity hang out, but my imaginings that they lurked behind every tree and desk were greatly overstated. Well, a little bit overstated. They still obviously come from a different planet where Barbarella babies are mixed with Jennifer Lopez genes. But they are not everywhere. And they do not jump gringos willy-nilly. For the very good reason that their male counterparts come from the same DNA soup and have better pecs and tans than even Calvin Klein dares to exhibit in his ads. And Brazilian men, having been inured since childhood, don’t drool.

3. Sao Paulo is not cheap. Sure, you can laugh as you knock back four-dollar cocktails and one-dollar beers (not recommended, though, as an open windpipe at this point could require medical attention). But I’ve come to believe the prices of cars have been set by Greenpeace, mobile phone roaming tariffs are intended to double up as telephone numbers in themselves, and apartment rentals must include subscriptions to daily masseuses, cooks, drivers and gardeners who somehow lost their way to my particular address. Some residents take their helicopter to work.

4. Life is not easy. Life is a four-letter word (in Portuguese, too) that requires three trips to the Federal Police office with authenticated copies of the origins of each of the letters co-signed by a translator who looked up their symboligical representations in a special tome held in another office on the other side of town that requires two forms of ID and 250 reais to access before being confirmed that, yes, it actually exists as an entry in the dictionary. Said dictionary may only be consulted once you have found a guarantor and a bank line of credit opened in your mother’s maiden name. Repeat for all other words in the sentence.

5. Sao Paulo is not Brazil. What it is, is Bladerunner-goes-to-Beirut. Times 10. Make that times 100. 1,000? I’ve heard rumours that somewhere, beyond the diesel-filled rainbow at the end of the city’s limits, there is a lush tropical paradise of pristine beaches, verdant jungles and third-world prices. Only it requires driving for several days to get there. OK, so I’ve only just arrived. I will be getting out there. Once I work out which way is south and get a GPS.

So much for the misconceptions. Delightfully, there was something that held up from my long list of expectations. And that’s the gentleness and solicitude of the Brazilians. I swear, this is the first metropolis I’ve ever been in where a hefty proportion of its inhabitants take the time to talk, to get to know you and, if you need it, to help. So far, my attempts to communicate are limited to 20 words in Portuguese and Mr Bean impressions. But the Brazilians are unfailingly ready to step forward. I haven’t been here long, but I know for this alone, I’m going to be loving life here.

Andean dislocation

Now Peru. Getting tired of hotels, and looking forward to getting back to what I'm slowly starting to consider home: São Paulo.

Here, one of the things I notice is the aggressivity of the drivers. Peruvians generally seem a little more passive than their Brazilian and Venezuelan counterparts. There's less eye contact, and their city is lower-rise and seemingly less freewheeling. But they most certainly are Latin when it comes to driving.

Whereas the Brazilians have a sense of kingly entitlement behind the wheel, and the Venezuelans are just intent on sucking up as much of their ultracheap petrol as they can, the Peruvians seem to have a chip on their shoulders that weighs them down all the way to the accelerator. Like anywhere, you just have to calibrate to how much machismo to show when you drive. Here, it's an 8 on the scale. Similar to the way the Syrians careen around, looking to rub bumper bars and creating lanes when they feel like it.

Another similarity between the three countries is the way people walk. On the sidewalks, they're not aggressive as when they drive. But they are supremely unaware of other pedestrians and are quite capable of sauntering along in a zig-zag fashion at whatever pace they've set themselves. And they seem delightfully surprised when they discover someone at their shoulder trying to step past them.

Or maybe I still have lingering Western impatience in my system. When I walk, I tend to zip along in a straight line, stepping around obstacles and crazy people when necessary, but it's motion with a goal. I realise I have to take in the wandering pace of the New World and relax into the oblivion of putting one foot in front of the other. Not there yet though.

Hot air

Caracas. It's been about eight years since I've been here, coincidentally the same amount of time Hugo Chavez has been Venezuela's president. I remembered him on television back then as a charismatic guy babbling on in between the telenovelas. This time, his babble has gotten longer and, dare I say it, a little more desperate. He still breaks out into song, is hugely entertaining with his theatrical gestures and the way he rolls his Rs, but the anti-US tirade is getting a little tired. It's like he's exhausted his bag of tricks and has nothing left.

This time around, I'm spending almost all my time working. But I do manage to get in time some evenings to take in what is probably the city's best bar: the 360 on top of the Altamira Suites hotel. The number refers to the uninterrupted view of Caracas from the rooftop of the hotel, unhindered by anything but a safety rail as you sit around on deck chairs and get (so-so) Mojitos or (OK) whiskey served. A wealthy hang-out, but somehow grungy foreigners like me in cargo pants manage to be accepted.

The society here is odd. Buying anything (nail clippers for instance) at the pharmacy requires them keying in a mobile or passport number into their computer. God knows why. And the insecurity that I felt the first time has worsened. The taxi driver from the airport strongly recommended all bags going into the trunk of the car, away from prying eyes. But after chatting -- or, more accurately, listening -- to Venezuelans of several walks of life, I've come to the conclusion: Chavez is not an exception. They all like to talk. I mean, Brazilians can go on and on and on (especially in planes for some reason), but the Venezuelans have them beat. A Venezuelan girlfriend I had a while back was of the same breed -- when I met her I didn't speak Spanish, but she still managed to fill hours with talk as I sat and daydreamed.

Talk isn't just cheap here. It's patriotic.