Driving - Let's pretend we're in a video game

Imagine driving on bad roads, surrounded by Audi and BMW drivers in 4WDs. They are all drunk. And late. With no driving licence. In a race. At rush hour. On Spaghetti Junction, full of pot holes. In the rain, with no street lights and no road signs. Not knowing where you’re going. With 3 people in the back seat talking at the same time telling you to go in different directions. Welcome to Brazil!

I’ve never been a fan of South American roads. Since spending a year on them in various forms of transport, travelling the length and breadth of the continent, I’ve wanted to avoid them. I’ve always been intrigued by the contrast between the Latin culture and the Latin driving culture. The former is laidback, easy-going, slow moving. The latter is urgent, aggressive and stressful.

People drive in a constant state of road rage, of being late, of needing to drive faster than anyone else on the road (and there is stiff competition). Leaving a roundabout, they’ll try to overtake you before even making an assessment of your speed. They just have to overtake. Approaching a roundabout they have to overtake you with only few metres before the roundabout. So that they can then overtake more cars on the roundabout and one more coming off the roundabout.

Death is so present here every day. The news is graphic, and full of death and accidents. Everyone has people close to them that have died recently. Everyone knows a victim of a violent death. Death is just a part of life, people seem immune to its risk and don’t take the usual steps to avoid it. And when anything does happen, it’s God’s will.

Each month there are 300 admissions in the city hospital resulting from road traffic accidents.

On my travels through South America I got the impression that when people board a long distance bus they accept the risk that they may not survive it. I never adapted to that. I tend to assume I’ll make it to the other end.

I have started driving here. I’m fairly used to driving on the wrong (right) side, and the weird rules they have here. It remains the thing that stresses me, although I am getting used to it. No-one indicates, the lanes are not painted. Turn offs, roundabouts and rights of way are not signposted. Nor are the speed bumps. People drive, and park, how they want, and where they want. And people don’t wear seat belts. But that’s another story.

No-one I know, but maybe one day

What's your name? Mahtcheens?

I’m still getting used to the names here. They have the common international names, with a Brazilian twist – Gabrielle, Danilo, Pedro, Paulo and so on.

They also have some old fashioned names, usually pronounced in an exotic Brazilian way – Igor, Hebert (English Herbert? Pronounced Webbertch), Knet (English Kenneth, pronounced Kenetch), Rubia (English Ruby, pronounced Hubia), Ivete (English Evette, pronounced Ivetch)

And then they have the ones that I struggle with – such as Eder, Arlette, Thaylon, Waudinez, Valmir, Walson, Elia, Heloyane, Iuri, Wanja.

Saudeni, Solange, Saulo, Ludimila, Elissama, Cidiane, Edson, Itala, Deuzina, Wibergson, Sonielson, Celminha, Walkiria.

All lovely names, but names I struggle to pick up when I’m introduced to someone. I rarely remember these names, as there is no previous pathway in my brain to recognise them as names and store them appropriately.

(Tip, Ayrton Senna's first name is pronounced Eye-ear-tun).

Brazilians struggle equally with my name, and leads to ever more inventive attempts. When I am expecting my name to be called, such as at the hospital, I have to pay attention. They make up the order of my full name – Martyn Derek Wright can be Derek Martyn, Wright Derek, or any other combination.

It can be pronounced in many entertaining ways and usually results in me and everyone else having a chuckle. "Matchin Dehecky Heighchy", "Mah-cheens Heaty", "Jeheecky March-n".

As Sonia always calls me "honey", a lot of people do the same, often without realising it’s not my name, nor that it’s a term of romantic affection. I’ve had sophisticated politicians, company directors, and macho builders and truck drivers call me Honey. I’m fine with it. It’s much easier for them to pronounce and at least I know they are talking to me!

A Day in the Hood

A Typical 24 hours in our neighbourhood:

4.30am – Lazy, our cat, wakes us up for food

5am – the cockerels commence, and start the dogs off. The cockerels sing at dawn only. The dogs will go on all day.

6am – neighbours are up, washing dishes, clanking plates, outside before the sun is too hot. TVs are turned on and turned up

7am to 11pm – visitors. Unannounced, unexpected, they open your front door (when it's closed) and wander in (in our case, straight into our bedroom). If the front gate is locked they’ll shout. Our nephew recently hopped over the 2.5m high locked gate at 11pm to say hi. Not receiving visitors is not an option. Subtle hints like a locked gate and lights out are not taken, regardless of the hour.

8am – many people are at work so it’s a bit quieter. But it’s too hot to sleep. And a lot of people are not at work. Now is the time for the unoccupied to sit on the pavement and talk and listen to the radio. Also around 8am the advertising cars start rolling past – car’s kitted out with hewmungous speakers on the top crawl around the neighbourhood advertising various products.

10am – people start to prepare lunch. Cue banging of pans, bashing of garlic. Too hot and noisy to sit outside to read, study, chill. I stay inside hugging the fan. During rare moments of silence I enjoy the rich birdsong.

12pm – people arrive home for lunch. More conversation, radio turned waaaaaaaaay up.

6pm – people arrive home after work. Visitor numbers increase. Car stereos are left on and turned up. There is no scheduled finish time for car stereos.

10pm – the polite visitors tend to drift off home, minutes before further visitors arrive. The police start doing their evening rounds - driving round the neighbourhood turning the sirens on and off.

11pm to 12am – the last of the visitors leave, or are kicked out when they don’t pick up on my subtle hints like showering, brushing teeth and getting into bed.

12am  - the car stereos usually start to decline around midnight, but often go on throughout the night.

1am – some form of sleep is achieved.

Settling In

For the time being we have been staying at the mother-in-laws annexed flat. It’s effectively a small studio flat attached to her house. We are very grateful for the accommodation while we find our feet, and it’s great to be close to the family.

Apart from Sonia’s mum attached, her sister and her family live next door, her brother and his family a few doors down, and another sister and her family round the corner. It’s been a great opportunity to spend time with them and get to know them better. And it’s nice to have a support network, always someone to chat to or borrow a saucepan off.

Brazilian hospitality inexhaustible, humble and sincere. The mother-in-law is adorable and each day brings us some kind of gift, either food she has prepared for me to experiment, or fruit, veg or herbs from her alotment that she attends from 7am every day. She grows the best rocket I've ever tasted!!

It’s also a relatively safe community, as everyone knows each other and Sonia’s family are very well established and well respected.

Lazy is our cute but pathetic, maladjusted street cat that Sonia

Hence the name Lazy

pitied and adopted. We feed him, which makes him the envy of all the cats around, but he doesn’t have it in his locker to defend his territory. 

Cats jump in through the window to steel Lazy’s food. Given the heat, the door is always open, and dogs pop in and out looking for food. As does the local parrot, who aggressively asserts himself on the territory. If only Lazy had the parrot’s balls.

The sink is outside - by 7am it’s baked by the sun, and the dishes are too hot to touch by 8am. The towels are kept outside and the toothbrushes in the fridge. Given the lack of space the oven is a storage area. It can get confusing.

7am

Toothbrush in the fridge

The noise is the main issue for me. There is a fairly reliable 24 hour noise cycle which is the subject of another blog

Oven cupboard

The First Week in Palmas

After a slow recovery from the gastroenteritis, we set about legalising my presence in Brazil. We seemed to spend most of the day driving from office building to office building, standing in queues and dealing with rude, dismissive civil servants.

We bounced from one office to the next, often being told to come back later or another day. Either the necessary person wasn’t there, or we didn’t have the appropriate documents, even though we had with us exactly what we were told to bring the last time.

Eventually we managed to get most things sorted. After 4 visits I was registered at the Federal Police that I will be living in Brazil and I arranged my ID card. I received my CPF (a kind of national insurance number in the UK, compulsory to have about your person). I also opened a bank account, leaning heavily on Sonia’s connections to fast-track what apparently is a longwinded and complex process.

Sonia repeatedly had to remind me that, while it all seemed unnecessarily complicated here, the UK has it’s own bureaucracies to deal with. This is true, and I can speak from experience that every country has their own bureaucratic idiosyncrasies that infuriate the foreigner, but it’s a reciprocal agreement. Visitors to the UK from Brazil claim the UK is complex, and vice versa, repeated across the world.

After 5 trips to the Ministry of Employment I still don’t have my “work card”. The last time we went, we arrived at 7.55am, ready for them to open at 8am. There were around 30 people outside. No queue though, as we are not in England. The doors opened at 8.15. Somehow in the pushing and shoving we got the 2^nd ticket. At this point they advised they only see 15 customers per morning. The other 15 mumbled and wandered home. A board outside advising of this is apparently not in anyone’s job description.

The one member of staff serving customers approached his desk at 8.25am to turn on his PC before making a coffee. He grunted for the first customer at around 8.35am.

When we got to see someone, the agent took one look at me and exclaimed:

“EEK! A foreigner! 

But Bruno is not here!”

We put aside the blatant assumption about my nationality, and her rather unprofessional observation. 

We focussed on her assumption that we should know who Bruno was, and why we need to speak to only him. Apparently he is the only one that can process foreigners, and he should have been there at 

8am. He wasn’t answering his phone. We were told to come back in the afternoon. Sonia complained vocally to the blank, disinterested face of the agent, and we left. 

I still don’t have my work card.

Extreme January Weight Loss Program

Many a January start with plans to drink less, spend less and weigh less. I achieved all three, but not by design. I woke up New Year’s Day with intense stomach cramps and prolific diarrhoea. Convinced it would pass quickly, I stayed in bed, ate nothing and felt terrible.

I received a constant stream of visitors and offers of help, which was of course nice. But I was desperate to be left alone to sleep.

It didn’t pass quickly. It got worse. I’d been keen to avoid the spectacular queues and abundant health risks that a Brazilian public hospital affords its patients. However, by the second day I acceded to Sonia’s persistence. Her pharmacist friend ordered me to hospital, and contacted her doctor friend, to prioritise my case.

At the hospital, after a few words, I was seen promptly by a nurse, ahead of all the other patients. Soon after the doctor called my name (Machin, Mah-teens, Marcheen, Senhor Height, Senor Haichy). There were no available consulting rooms so I was consulted in the corridor, around patients holding their own IV drips, others lying on beds and a mentally displaced gentleman.

The doctor had that familiar arrogance where you get the impression you are the nerd at a great party, and he is stuck with you. Constant leg tapping; constant looking around at everything apart from you; long silences after you finish talking before he realises it’s his turn to talk; desperate searching of the subconscious memory to find whatever it is you just said so he can repeat it back to you to affirm his attention; and the next silence while he thinks of the next question he’s socially (in this case professionally) obliged to ask.

Once he ran out of questions/interest he walked off. Disappeared. For about 20 mins. He returned and took us into a rare available consultation room, and struggled to make notes while trying to recall our earlier conversation. As his conversation with Sonia revealed some mutual political friends his attention and service slowly improved.

The physical examination suggested appendicitis, and he referred me for IV and some tests. That was a challenge as there was no information and all the staff seemed thoroughly trained in arrogance and protection of any helpful information.

I was put on IV and carried the drip in my other hand to the X-Ray department, before moving to a temporary marquee-style structure where I would be staying. 55 beds. 2 toilets. One with a door, one without. A shower which seemed to be more a smoking room. No soap or handwash anywhere. An eclectic mix of patients. Plenty of flies, ants and spiders. I was impressed to have a bed, in a ward, rather than spending days sat in the corridor holding my own IV.

The attending doctors ignored my apparently inappropriate “hello”s and made it clear that there job was not to say hello, explain what they were doing, or explain the drugs they were injecting me with.

One nurse, Rogerio, did introduce himself as he started his nightshift, and it made all the difference. He was to follow his 12 hour night shift at this hospital with a 12 hour day shift at another hospital.

I had constant company from various well wishers, everybody concerned. Sonia’s friend, a physiotherapist at the hospital and who treated me 4 years ago, constantly popped in to check on me and was a delight, chasing the staff for news and to make sure I was treated well. By all accounts I had been, whether because I am white, a foreigner, or due to our contacts, who knows, but it left me grateful that I hadn’t received the standard service.

Officially patients are allowed one visitor. Rather like the speed limit, this is treated as a minimum, as most patients had a few visitors. The result was probably 100 people or more, plus the staff, on the ward. A cacophony of loud conversations, mobile phone video clips, ringtones each more annoying than the last, scraping chairs, coughing, shouting and crying.

Two overnight visitors next to me felt they could rest their feet on my bed. They then leant their chairs against my bed frame so I felt each frequent fidget. They disappeared and returned smelling of smoke. They talked as if they were not surrounded by people wanting to sleep.

On the other side was a motorcycle accident victim and his visiting wife. She was 19 years old and they had been married 5 years. I believe they had 2 children.

Rogerio came in the morning and struggled with an injection, then with swapping the drip, so swapped to my left arm. Gloves were put on and taken off with no apparent order. Coughs were stifled by coughing into the glove. In preparation for securing the drip Rogerio cut off strips and attached them to the IV pole. The pole that everyone carries to the toilet and back. The toilet which has no way of washing your hands. I began to imagine the amount of bacteria and infections lurking on the pole, and asked him to use clean tape, but this should be obvious.

Another nurse, Eldon, introduced himself and was superb, constantly checking on me, cheery, friendly, chatty, informative and helpful. After the ultrasound, around lunchtime another doctor confirmed gastroenteritis, prescription and discharge. No appendicitis, no surgery needed. Result.

At home I researched the condition and it appears antibiotics are not the standard course of treatment for gastroenteritis. I suspect I was prescribed them to deter any infection I may have picked up during my admission.

I soon recovered, and was back to normal within a few days. I was left with a heightened concern for hygiene, and the knowledge that it would be a constant struggle to avoid risky situations. Both arms were very painful from the IV and had to be raised constantly. The left arm was back to normal quickly, but my right arm still concerns me. I just don’t have faith in the public health system to make it worth seeing anyone about it.

New Years Eve

Among the invites on my first day in Palmas was lunch at Dri’s house. I knew Dri relatively well, after her visit to the UK, so it was nice to catch up and drink good red wine (I rarely do in Brazil, it’s expensive, generally not very nice, and generally chilled).

In the neighbourhood of 2 other of Sonia's friends that I knew from their visit to Europe, we spotted them on their driveway. We were immediately invited in for beers, cheeses and snacks which promptly appeared on their patio.

The evening came, new year’s eve, and thoughts turned to our plans for the evening. In the UK I’m used to weeks of thinking and discussing options and ensuring you are with your closest friends or family, in a place or at an event that is perfectly aligned to the group’s tastes and needs. Here, we just chose one option at the last minute that seemed like it would be fun, then whoever we bumped into or happened to speak to had the option of tagging along, regardless that they didn’t know the host or any of the guests. And of course, everyone has a good time in spite of (or perhaps because of?) the lack of planning.

We decided to go to a friend of Sonia’s who I hadn’t met. I liked his house – the VW Beetle in the lounge was extravagant but worked, and I loved the pool that half entered the house. A sertaneja band were hired, and started soon after our arrival.

It was an entertaining evening, passed with some fun people. I was surprised that few people were dressed in white, as I’d always heard this was a huge tradition. The fun was cut short for me when all the beers (including the 15 I had taken) ran out, although I’d only drank 8. This was fairly typical in Brazil, so many people take advantage of others, many provide nothing but brazenly drink what others have taken.

A group turned up with more beers, and a girl who had arrived empty handed but had a beer in her hand all night was the first to grab a beer from the newly stocked cooler box. We chose this moment to leave. 

Meeting the Brazilian family again

30^th December, 2014, we arrived in Palmas, on separate flights (after I’d booked duplicate seats in my name, we had to buy a new ticket for Sonia at the last minute with a different airline).

Sonia’s cousin picked us up, and she managed to drive us home without interrupting her Whatsapp conversations too much. You always have a lift to and from the airport here – regardless of time of day, distance, or inconvenience, there are always people willing to help someone they care about. To avoid the hullaballoo of a welcoming party we’d arrived under the radar but both Sonia’s mum and her sister/brother in law, who live next door, insisted I eat with them. To avoid offending anyone, I had 2 meals within minutes and within meters of each other. Rice and chicken in one house, rice and BBQ in the 2^nd. And I can report it was great to be in amongst the Brazilian barbeques again.

A small representation of the family

The reception was as expected: very warm, open and affectionate. I was made to feel very welcome and a part of the family. I’d only met the family twice, both times several years ago, but that was irrelevant. In their eyes I am family, the same as anyone else. Standing on ceremony would not be tolerated (nor understood). My polite, reserved English instinct had no place here.

We sat on the patio and chatted all evening, late into the night, as people came and went, wanting to meet me again, or for the first time. All offering hugs and a warm welcome. Each one making me feel like I’d never been away.

After a few years without visiting, it was nice to be back amongst my second family and in such a friendly culture. I'm sure they will be a huge help to me as I settle in here.

"4 Islands in 12 hours"

Everything was expensive in Rio. To get out of Rio was expensive. From the information we could gain from the reliably unhelpful and grumpy people we asked (the hotel staff,  tourist information and general public), to get anywhere independently was even more expensive and requires long, uncomfortable, unreliable bus journeys, punctuated by stops in favelas and taxis out of favelas.

We found a tour to Ilha Grande, a place I wanted to visit on my first trip to Rio 10 years ago. 7am pick up, 7pm drop off, 4 islands, lunch and tropical fruits included. I’m not one for tours but in this case it seemed the most practical tactic. We got picked up at 8am, an hour late, and by 9am we regretted joining the tour. By 9.30am we were looking for an escape route, without success.

There was only one stop before reaching the port Angra dos Reis. Only after this stop, and only prompted by Sonia asking, the guide informed us lunch would be served at 3pm. We’d had breakfast at 6am and there was no food available until 'lunch'.

The 2-3 hour bus ride to Angra took 4 hours. Partly due to the bus drivers heavy right foot and slow reactions. He was driving too fast when he ran straight into the back of the car in front. Unplanned 30 minute stop. No apology, no explanation. Just back on the road at full speed.

After a long, wait at Angra dos Reis, the 130 capacity boat eventually left the port. We arrived at the first island to see 2 other similar sized boats in the queue for their 30 mins on the island. We eventually disembarked, onto our first island, at 2.30pm. 

The first island

The island was beautiful, white sand, lush forest, its turquoise waters a delight to swim in. It was also very small, and ruined by the 100s of people embarking and disembarking and the fumes and constant horns of the boats.

The 2^nd “island” was actually an anchor off an island for snorkelling. The snorkels were extra, as was the cost of the photo they took. We waited in the heat of the boat and shared our thoughts with other, equally hungry, passengers. They all took the Brazilian approach of moaning to each other but not raising a complaint (“what’s the point?”)

And an angry Brazilian mob is a passive mob

We expressed our (partly hunger-fueled anger), loudly, to the guide, who rejected any responsibility. The only food on board was crisps, and the only people who enjoyed the trip were the ones drinking the whole time. The boat spent the whole day crawling along, allowing more time to sell more beers and caipirinhas.

6pm, swim after lunch

The 3^rd island was reached at 6pm, which is where we finally had “lunch”, 12 hours after breakfast, followed by about 20 mins on a nice beach, too annoyed to enjoy it.

The tropical fruits were served – one slice of watermelon per passenger.

The 4^th island was optional. Thanks to one, very, very drunk passenger’s insistence that we stop, we stopped for 30 mins, plus disembarking and re-embarking, plus head count. This ‘character’ kept grabbing the microphone to make jokes, sing poorly, and declare his love for his embarrassed and disinterested wife.

We reached at the hotel at 11pm. 4 hours after the agreed return time. 16 hours after the agreed pick up time. A few hours before our flight out of Rio. We’d spent a total of 80 minutes on 3 beaches and spent 220R$ on the day, which was spent mostly with a feeling of being exploited, ripped off, insulted and offended that they can treat people as they had done.

I don’t recommend it.

A few days in Rio

 Sonia arrived on Boxing Day, delayed by the late cancellation of her flight the previous day. We spent the afternoon on Copacabana beach and I enjoyed a Boxing Day swim, wriley thinking of the snow back home. The water was cool and delicious, an inviting escape from the heat of the beach. The sea, and the ice cold beers, were an enjoyable wind down after a busy few weeks. We did the same the next few days, and one day we met up with friends we made in Brighton and exchanged Brazil stories.

One worrying story was from our English friend, Mark, about the Rio public hospital he had trained in as part of his UK based medicine degree. That the doctors spend half their time on their phones, Facebook and Whatsapp and ignore the sick and dying patients was half expected, but still sad. As was the confirmation that, while there are some excellent, dedicated doctors, the majority are concerned more with the prestige associated with the profession, and the career plan to make lots of money.

Mark found one case particularly upsetting. A patient arrived clearly experiencing a heart attack and in need of urgent attention, 10 minutes of which would have been effective. He was left unattended in spite of Mark’s pleas. He died within 35 minutes, and the subsequent 30 minutes of attempted resuscitation had no effect. The doctors were unmoved. Well, moved only to use the still warm body to practice inserting a tube down the oesophagus and encourage Mark to take the chance to do the same, as this is the only practice they have. Even a physiotherapist was having a go.

Death is so present in daily life here and more so in the case of doctors, that there seems to be a cold detached attitude towards even avoidable death. And of course, it’s all ‘God’s will’ anyway.

I hoped never to be dependent on the services of a public hospital in Brazil.

Mark also mentioned his a visit to a bank in Bahia, the famously laidback state in northern Brazil. He walked in and found no obvious queue. The customers were all sat down, but he could not find the ticketing system common in other parts of Brazil. Then he found the queue – a line of flip flops leading up to the counter.

My own experience of a queue was at a supermarket. The queue was barely moving, the attendant was stood with hands on hips chatting to the customers. There were only 2 people in front of me, but by the time we got served (which involved the manager finally pointing out we were in the elderly queue – something the attendant felt no need to indicate to the growing queue), the customer in front had 3 empty beer bottles on the conveyor belt.

We had a nice few days in Rio, around Ipanema and Copacabana. Expensive though. Often London prices for sub-London stadards. We wanted to visit places outside the city, but to get anywhere involved combinations of long and expensive bus rides, connections in favelas, and taxis. We did one day trip, the subject of another entry. The hotel had been nice, but the staff unhelpful and disinterested.

One afternoon we met a local guy called Quieroz over some beachfront beers. In typical Brazilian style he was very warm, open and welcoming. We had a few beers, and exchanged numbers to meet up another day, with his wife. Although open to abuse, I like the transparency with Brazilian people – they make it clear when they like you, and why they like you, and when they don’t like you (and why). Queiroz was certain Sonia and his wife would hit it off. These spontaneous friendships are definitely an attraction of Brazil, and do much to compensate for the other things you may notice me enthusing less over.

They do love their Speedo's

Merry Christmas! What do you mean, it was yesterday?

After a manic and exhausting few weeks in the UK, I said my last goodbye at 7am outside Heathrow to a friend who had given me a lift at 5am on Christmas Eve. The 24 hours between leaving Brighton and arriving in Brazil went perfectly smoothly. Delta Airlines, along with Heathrow, Boston and Atlanta airports had given me a farewell to efficiency and functioning systems.

On arrival at Brasilia airport there was no toilet roll or toilet roll holder in the first cubicle. The second made up for it – so much toilet roll was stuffed into the dispenser that it was impossible to dispense any toilet roll, only torn shreds. Then there was no handwash or soap.

I collected my bags from the disorganised free for all in the baggage hall. My plan to avoid TAM or TAP worked – to my great surprise all my bags arrived and nothing was stolen.

My first beer in Brazil, Xmas morning

 Friends picked me up at 7am on Christmas Day, and quickly reacquainted me with Brazilian hospitality – at their house I slept, showered, ate and drank beer. I’d been in the middle of winter only 24 hours before, in the frenzied build up to Christmas Day, but everywhere here was green and lush, and I pottered about in shorts and flip flops. At 7am the café/supermarket was open and people were beginning their normal day, ordering breakfast and buying their fruit and veg. Brazilians celebrate the 24^th, but even so, there was little to indicate the festive season. Meanwhile friends and family back home would be stuffing the turkey, wrapping the pigs in their blankets, getting the beers, ciders and wines in the fridge and opening the port, champagne and whisky.

Brasilia

Our friends showed me around Brasilia then kindly took me to the airport for my evening connection to Rio. Although I’d checked in, the baggage drop queue was immense and perfectly static. After Heathrow, Boston and Atlanta this inefficency was even more apparent. When I finally reached a counter there was an excess to pay on my checked in baggage, and my carry on suitcase could not weigh more than 5kg (it started out at 16kg), although my 11kg “personal item” was, apparently, not subject to a weight limit.

Mmm,Canadian Ham

I was the last on the plane after running to the gate at last call. On the flight I receieved a "complementary snack to make my journey more pleasant" (a dry sandwich with a single slice of Canadian Ham* and "cheese"). My observation to the attendant was fruitless, I was offered an identical replacement and a casual shrug of the shoulders.

In Rio, after a 30 minute wait for a taxi, I arrived at the hotel at 9pm, 40 hours after leaving Brighton. My wife’s flight from Palmas had been cancelled at the last minute, despite already having checked in. It made me more grateful that I’d flown with Delta rather than a Brazilian airline, but it meant I wouldn’t see her until the next day. 

*as clarified by the air host in his attempt to impress upon me the luxury afforded to the passengers of Gol.

Palmas? Where is that?

To make it harder to explain to people where I would be moving to, I resolved to move a place that no-one knows of, that’s near nowhere that anyone has heard of, and that’s hard enough to explain where it is that I can sense the regret when someone asks me. Oh, and it didn’t even exist 25 years ago.

Besides the above, it’s also the home of my wife, and she misses it after several years in the UK.

The state of Tocantins

Palmas is hot. All the time. Usually oppressively hot - no-one spends any time in the sun if they have any choice. It is the capital of the state of Tocantins, which was created in the late 80s. In the arbitrary middle of the new state, they damned a river, creating a huge lake, and plonked a city on its shores.

The city is way way inland, about 1200km from the sea, north of Brasilia, the national capital, and level in latitude with Salvador, a major tourist pull.

The centre of Palmas and its roundabouts

Palmas was inaugurated in 1990 and it is now home to nearly 300 000 people. I find it a strange place. I have the impression the infrastructure was built for a million people, but the million haven’t moved in yet. As a result, everywhere is far and you need to drive everywhere. It’s full of roundabouts, often with nothing in between them. 

It seems once the road infrastructure and the governmental buildings were finished, the city planners retired. I guess there was an early land grab, since which land has been bought and sold and developed or left to increase in value.

As a result, it’s a very green city as there is so much that remains undeveloped - entire blocks of original forest remain right in the middle of the city. In a typical 3km car journey I feel like I’ve left the city 3-4 times only to return to the city after the next roundabout.

It also means that there is no natural spreading out of the city, with the usual clusters of tall office buildings, industrial estates, commercial areas, suburbs and parks. Palmas is random, its growth determined by who sold what land and what time, who bought it and what they did with it.

You can't escape roundabouts in Palmas

In theory, the layout is simple and navigable. The governmental palace is the centre, surrounded by the state offices and with a wide avenue running to the 8km bridge that crosses the lake. Another major road runs from the palace towards the airport. The city is mostly built in geometric blocks, with logical numbering. All connected by roundabouts of course.

In reality, during my past visits, I’ve found it hard to localise myself. In a city entirely built in the last 25 years, based on such a regular pattern, there are few landmarks or distinct neighbourhoods. There is no 16^th century gothic church, no 18^th century palace, no whitewashed hillside neighbourhood, no architectural wonders, no winding lanes of cute shops. And if such things did exists, they’d be in the wrong place and where you would least expect them.