Pinky After The Weight Gain

Sao Paulo, do not love you!

After Rio, break in Sao Paulo. E 'was for me the worst moment of the trip. We arrived in the middle of the night. Dangerous neighborhood full of homeless people who wandered aimlessly through the sidewalks. I forget my precious part of the favelas in the taxi. In the hotel we were not having booked the room ... and so on until 8 am waiting for you some free room single, for then join the room for four, equipped with sofa, telephone and television.

HATE THE HOTEL.

the evening can not come out: it is too dangerous. The people look at us threateningly, as if we were barrels of gold (and you can not be seen with three Asian in tow!). I can not sleep, and the bus to Sao Paulo we had no time to sleep. They are angry because the man at the reception can not find a solution to his injury, and because it tells us to come out, walk one block, and go see if the other hotel site. But exit equals being robbed or worse! How can you not realize a room?! And why he is not planning to use the phone?! Mah I also pissed with my mates, who are calm and in my opinion too kind to those who are causing problems for his incompetence. At the end give us three single rooms. Two and go to sleep, I awake, help Jason in his absurd claim to dye their hair brown (because then, I never understood!). I never thought it stank so much of the dye lotion! Yuck! The assistance was necessary because the instructions were only in Portuguese and English ...!

E 'right that those without dye reason to suffer! Why dye, modify, destroy the hair, while those who gave us Mother Nature is certainly the best we could want? Bah, no one is ever happy with what he has! In the case of Jason, maybe a little 'desire to have fun with the funny pushed him to this act insudiciante ... But he had really done? Really?!

After a sleepless night, without my friend Silas time to answer my e-mail to meet in his home town, we decide to make a turn. They are very bad mood, and the center of the city, with its skyscrapers, ugly, dull, I feel even more horrible than probaBBolimente is. Sao Paulo is certainly not a place of tourist attractions, but a place where, preferiBBolimente with a local, you spend on eating out and going out at night ... always taking care of everything. But we had to stay only one day. Then Derek and Yvette would come back to NYC, and me and Jason would have continued its journey to Bogota, cool.

Sao Paulo is known for its Japanese community, the largest outside of Japan. There are in fact in Sao Paulo about 1.5 million Japanese who have colonized an area of \u200b\u200btheir own. Here are Japanese shops (with golden lucky cat and money), bar Japanese Japanese people and especially Japanese restaurants. So, we ended up in what our guide called it the best sushi restaurant in the area. And indeed, although I do not like raw fish, you can not deny.

Luckily the ride did not last long. The Italian part of Sao Paulo is very small and unsatisfactory. Rain prompts us to go back, and I fall asleep until 4 in the morning, when I finally go back to the airport to our destinations. Too bad, Sao Paulo, perhaps you will know better another time!

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A tour of the favelas.

Thanks to the hostel, we returned to a project that the outside is allowed to do within a short walking tour of the favelas, and in return the money is donated to projects for the community, such as schools, laboratories, painting, and so on. It 'just that even the less fortunate kids can enjoy decent public services and facilities.

The small streets to prevent public services to retrieve the garbage, which are known in every local area to carry waste on the highway because they are caught and brought away from trucks. The favela we visit is the most Rio larger and perhaps all of South America: it is called Rocinha . Our guide has passed a three-week training which was known by locals, and also moving on the path to do and people to avoid. In fact you can not take pictures, for obvious reasons, in the presence of observers or dealers of the band's dominant drug traffickers.

Thanks to the knowledge of the guide, we take the most modern transport service movement in the slums: the bike! Every day, several riders are paid to bring up and down the hill the locals. The police listlessly stationed here, all corrupt to the core, gets about a real head by motorcyclists, which in this way should not wear a helmet and are allowed to play their role. This organization is highly reminiscent of Naples ....

Our ride up the winding roads of the hill is a beautiful example of a favela is seen from the highway. This is poor houses, concrete in sight, dominated by electrical wires, but in general stores and food shops, enough to serve a vast population, which reached here at least 500,000 people. This is a real city, with all the services and commodities - clearly low cost - of which a large population in need.

What I like most of the favela is the simplicity of the people, people like us, who has a family, own a home (which does not pay taxes ), and has a life more strenuous than a normal person, with his 2-3 jobs in wealthy areas of the city.

95-99% of the population are people whose only "defect" is to be poor. They are not murderers, they are not thieves, not aggressors. A small minority is made up of groups rather than of drug dealers who share the various favelas and damage stability and organization. As in Naples, the boss is aware of everything: who enters and leaves the favela, who violates the order and so on. Are not allowed thieves or troublemakers, so that traffic in drugs, here protected and hidden in narrow streets, is not compromised.

Most people know who is better not to have to do is continue their difficult but honest life in the favela. Here everyone knows it's like a big family. This is why anyone who wants to enter the favela, to be safe, he must know someone who lives in the same. As in any place, know the locals is an advantage. Ernesto has never even been in a favela, he tells me, but friends who could bring it into this labyrinth of narrow streets and crowded houses.

It does not feel any sense of danger, and people even smiles and greets us. The bravest children are asking for their photos, others play for dusty passages from which emerge often small garbage dumps unhealthy air. Every now and then spend a few cockroaches and other animals ... but after living in New York than in Rio seem cute and almost justified even in a place like this!

We head to one of the structures that we are helping to expand the money of the "tour" is a small building in which adults and children test themselves in the painting. It 'a way as any to occupy the leisure time of children and distract from other more dangerous activities. You see it around very young bear automatic weapons ... perhaps a more turbulent to make more money faster. Most of the paintings on canvas depicting the favela, designed but the houses are surprisingly rich in color, although it Staglin black and high on a hill, whose summit is bare. I buy a small painting of a boy named Carlos, who unfortunately will leave in a taxi in the middle of the night in Sao Paulo ...

Continuing the tour, we stop at a bakery by the heady fragrance, and tasted all kinds of homemade desserts: coconut, walnuts, a non-memory-more-like-taste but remember cakes that were delicious! Taste even a bit of a strange fruit, like a huge melon, hanging from the trees in these areas: the Jack-fruit. E 'in yellow and a bit' sticky not so tasty ... as shown below, the cart of a vendor met in Sao Paulo.

We offer it with the nice boys who enjoy playing ... samba! The pace is pressing while the kids beat the drums with a simplicity that only Brazilians can have a naturalness that when they grow up turns into wild dances, such as funk, that our heroes have obviously experienced in another favela.

While we try to spit out the Jack-fruit without being seen, we have with music and beautiful that people with children the favela. There are many mulattos (and hence the population of blacks and poorer than the Brazilian lighter skin ...) Here are some shots:

A girl drummers.

A little boy asked.



A little girl smiles.

say that is just amazing. Let instead reflect their condition, a condition in which they were born by the will of destiny, and where we might be born too. But I am Italian, I have a beautiful family, and I'm lucky to be supported and loved by my parents. How could I know when I was born? I could be a child of the slums, with a life in the hills, many brothers, and friends or armed honest. But this is not, so I say.

the evening we go to another favela funk for an evening at a nightclub. We are immersed in a huge cube with two floors (the floor for the "VIP") is chock full of people of the favela, or outside. The music is deafening, so much to having to protect pieces of paper in his ears. The way to dance funk in Brazil (and perhaps especially in the favelas) is very, very very uninhibited. I have dubbed the dance of "pre-copulation"! It is fitted with girls in short skirts that sculettano in an extreme lowering and rising, with the seat in plain view and in motion. The two guys are placed in turn behind the girls and take a swing sculettanti monotonous Emboss their river back and forth, in perfect synchrony with the female sculettamento! Never seen anything like it.

Some of us commented that perhaps this is one of the reasons for overcrowding in the slums ... and soon after a girl was dazzled by Yvette. With the unmistakable gestures from behind tries to convince her to dance with her, but want to be spoiled, either from exhaustion, so much lesbian Yvette does not accept invitation! Unfortunately I am not a fan of disco, and even the type of hormone that behavior in these places has the upper hand, but this is an "favela" interesting. Basically we are in Rio should try everything! And I think from this point of view we have not spared!

was high time to leave!

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Rio, as you'd steal!

And so to our adventure in Rio! First, we throw in our beautiful hostel, which includes a relaxation area with hammocks, pub overlooking the street, rooms with noisy fans, showers and well-chosen music, icing on the cake .... a group of round jacuzzi on the terrace! In short, we were in the legendary Mellow Yellow!

The hostel is located near one of the most famous beaches of Rio, Copacabana. What is famous for? Of course there are so many pretty boys and pretty girls in bikinis walking. Certainly an example of this type of beauty can be found below, but it is rare to see them all together ... ;)

These beauties had not yet reached absurd levels of tanning ... well ... burn! The long sandy beaches, full of sellers-of-any-thing (caipirinha, guava juice, fresh, delicious skewered shrimp ... etc. etc.!), We drew from the very beginning ... and that was how we went where did not have to go ...

I still remember our footprints on the sands of Copacabana, that our first night. The memories are a bit 'blurred , because we were tired from the trip and a bit' vulneraBBoli, perhaps dumbed down from the trip .... and that false sense of security that gave us the light. The place was lit up, almost. We ate across the street from the beach, populated by many bars teem with people and the Hotel Excelsior. Beyond the street, others stood on the sand bars (even a crappy McDonalds by way 'of tent!). Further on, a group of kids playing soccer near the sea, where light thinned out, but still near the road, some little family sat in the sea breeze to watch the waves.

Certainly this group of travelers from tired limbs (and neurons) could not imagine what would happen. One in particular had with him very tired neurons, a backpack and a camera that was taking too many photos with flash ... The peaceful little family gets up and walks away. I I do not mind. The others continue to play. Nobody feels anything ... apart from Jason and myself some money a camera hidden in his pocket. But Christ on the mountain (el Corcovado) there was witnessing.

Everything happens quickly. Two kids knocked down Derek, the one with the backpack, and a cautious but determined approach to Jason asking the time. Yvette Derek tells me on the floor, I see Jason back .... and so I started running and Yvette why we ran into the street. The sand made the slow steps, and we were afraid of being chased, but when my head has had the courage to lean on the shoulder to look back, everything was calm. As nothing has happened really ...

So were the people to turn to for help in English, calm and indifferent. Someone tells us of the lights. We do not find anything. We return to the bar. Someone pulls out the phone hesitantly but does not call. Trust the police here? Better not have anything to do, maybe he thought. We find an ambulance, no injuries but does not move an ambulance. FOR DINCH, someone who moves! The boys are doing well? What happened?

breath, we finally reach a police car, but it is not set up special police to help "tourists" like us, who are robbed every day, but a normal patrol. No one speaks English. I do understand with the English but it takes at least ten minutes until they move. They make me stupid questions like: what did they steal? How many were there exactly? As if I had stayed there, waiting to find out!

Eventually we move, and find the guys on the roadside with our sandals in hand. We had left on the beach. Indeed, as Jason had been buried by Yvette game, and he had taken the time to find them after the attack! Luckily it did not happen anything: a head injury of Derek when he fell and held out a threat never carried out with a knife in Jason, and a camera and the equivalent of twenty dollars lost. Little stuff, and all safe and sound. Luckily my friends are still with us in this world!

Actually thieves-assailants are often young kids who maybe have not yet entered in the drug trade and that probaBBolimente living in poor areas of the city. These are favelas, ghettos slums , rustic houses built on each other, and particularly in hilly areas of the city, in direct contact with the richest, inhabited by the elite, down to the sea. One of the most interesting contrasts and typical of Rio is precisely this juxtaposition of rich and poor, luxurious and anti-hygienic, high and low. All together, mixed in a web very difficult to dissolve, and is also found in many other parts of South America.

But what are the favelas? Our group went on a reckless way to find out ... In the next post.