Brazil

Brazil, by Daniele I enter Brazil from Venezuela on a 4x4 bus with the capacity for about thirty people. The bus is full of people and the road to cover is the Trans-Amazonian; on paper we should reach Manaus, the capital of Amazonia, in about twelve hours, but I soon discover that's not how it is. The reason: the road. Whenever it rains here, it doesn't just rain two drops and that's it, otherwise you couldn't explain such flourishing green; here the water comes down by the truckload, and it wrecks the road, causing mini streams that break it up. Great holes stop the bus from going fast, but these holes weren't a metre deep, no, the whole bus would have fitted inside, that's how big they are. Well, the result is that half the passengers were unwell and we never arrived anywhere, even after hours and hours of travel under the sun with the humidity.

I too was on the verge of throwing up; I found courage by watching the two nuns in front of me who never complained, though maybe they were praying. Only later do I discover they're Italian missionaries. We finally reach Boa Vista, on one of the branches of the Amazon river, the place where the garimpeiros have their base; here the gold prospectors come to sell their nuggets. In fact in the town there's nothing but little shops with I buy gold written outside in Portuguese. A Swiss guy, two Swedes and I abandon the bus and decide to take the plane so as not to die in the Amazon forest, whether from a road accident or a plunge into some channel, from throwing up. Anyway, there were still six hours to go to reach Manaus in the middle of the night. But who needs that.

The small, pretty airport immersed in the forest, quiet, with just one plane, filled me with joy; peace at last, enough of the Trans-Amazonian. On the Varig flight I fell asleep immediately against the window, that's how stressed I'd been; never before had I dropped off so suddenly on a plane. We reach Manaus in the dark and the four of us take a taxi driven by a madman, running four red lights. There you go, I say, we didn't die on the bus, the plane didn't crash, and now we'll end up splattered against a car. At our reproach he says, but everyone does it here. VERY GOOD. Anyway! We sleep in a hostel with cages, but we accept anything just to go to bed. The next day we flee to another place that looks like a guesthouse. I walk around Manaus and discover that, though it has no major roads coming from other cities, it's very big. Here everything is duty-free, with no tax.

Many come by plane from Rio or Sao Paulo to buy radios, TVs, computers etc; everything costs less. But the purpose of my coming here to Amazonia is of course to see nature, so I book a one-day tour with a meal included, first by boat and then by canoe among the flooded jungle. It's all very beautiful, gigantic trees; we also see the cheeky, lazy sloth, as well as a couple of anacondas about ten metres long. The caiman too shows its little snout, which I wouldn't stroke, while the piranhas I see dried in the sun at a stall. I buy one to put in my display case in Italy. They also take us to a kind of swamp where a very large floating house serves as a restaurant for the various tours. On the way back we see the meeting of the yellow waters of the Rio Solimoes with the black waters of the Rio Negro, which flow side by side without mixing for tens of km.

The river is so big that a cruise ship arrived all the way here in three days from the sea, sailing upstream: the Vistafjord of Cunard. I'd already seen it in the past in Miami. Poverty is rampant, there are many shacks, the children dive into the putrid water near the city's outlets, which of course go into the river. In the evening I take, for the first time in my life, the new Boeing 767 of Transbrasil to the capital of Brazil. Where I arrive in the morning at dawn. From above Brasilia looks as if it were drawn on a sheet of paper, the buildings all in order. I immediately take a long-distance bus that takes me, travelling this time on good asphalted roads, all the way to Rio de Janeiro. The next morning. I stay a few days as a guest of a friend, right in one of the buildings facing Copacabana.

I visit the great Christ of Corcovado and, by cable car, Sugarloaf Mountain; the view is spectacular, but as you know the confusion of the city, where on top of everything the buses race each other to see who's in front, doesn't appeal to me. So I watch a day of Formula 1 practice at the Jacarepagua circuit and then, with Varig 747, fly directly to Malpensa, making my usual nightly visit to the cockpit on the way. Bye