Chapter Ten

NOT everything in this paradise of a city is either tropical or semi-tropical. Today is what can only be described as a soft damp day, with no cold, of the type we typically get in Ireland in Autumn or Spring. The light rain began falling last night as we made our way home and now, 24 hours later, it is still softly descending.

By the way, this is the only non-Spanish speaking country in South America and the story of how this came about is interesting to recall.

The King and Queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1493 - the year after Christopher Columbus 'discovered' the West Indies.....for there were settled peoples there before him.....they petitioned the then Pope, Alexander VI, to act as a referee and decide who should own and control the territories now being newly discovered.

In his wisdom, Alexander decided that all lands west of an imaginary line would belong exclusively to Spain on condition that the heathen of these lands were converted to Catholicism. All those lands to the east of this line, he declared, should belong to Portugal with a similar proviso.

This division of the New World followed an imaginary line down 300 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands, Portugal's most westerly possession at the time, and roughly corresponding to one from the mouth of the Amazon river to where Sao Paulo is now situated.

Eight years after Columbus reached the West Indies, Spanish and Portuguese discoverers reached the east coast of South American continent in the same year - 1500. So, it was virtually a 'dead heat' for the 'gold medal' to determine possession of South America. Thanks to the Pope, Brazil became a Portuguese-speaking enclave in the vast South American continent where Spanish is otherwise the dominant language.

It may surprise some people to know that Portuguese is the 7th most widely spoken language in the world with 218 million adherents, the great majority of them (191 million in Brazil, of course). Not bad for a language where only 10.6 million speak Portuguese in the 'home' country.

The name 'Brazil', incidentally, does not, as one might think, come from the nut of the same name, but from the word 'pau-brasil', a redwood prized at the time of its discovery for the type of dye which could be extracted from it.

Back to the present. Today the President of this economic giant is a man who rejoices in the name of Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva, popularly known as Lula. He handsomely won a second term as President in 2006 - not bad for someone who left school at 14 to become a metal worker, and later a trade union leader.

OK, so some of you might argue, the name or term,'Lula,' is not uniquely Brazilian and could equally be applied, with even greater justification, to one or more recent politicians, North AND South of the Border. And, you might be
right !

By the time you will be reading this, we will have left Rio and traveled more than 1,200 kms by bus to the border with Argentina, where we plan to see the Iguacu Falls from both sides (Brazil and Argentina). The transport is a plush executive tour bus operated by a company called Pluma, which in turn is a major transport provider in South America, operating services in four different countries.

Our bus was about 60 per cent full as it pulled out of Rio for the 22-hour journey. Rio's bus station has approximately 80 different bus platforms for the various services to every corner of Brazil itself and to other countries such as Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. The journey eventually took 25 hours because of fog and road works en route. Drivers stopped every 4 hours or so for meal and rest breaks. There is a specially-built toilet on board these buses and cold drinking water in sealed plastic containers is available for free from a fridge.

Because the air conditioning is on continuously, even at night, the on-board temperature drops considerably during the evening and early hours of the morning. It is important to wear warm jumpers and or jackets to protect against this coolness. More seasoned travelers than us who know the regime bring blankets and pillows with them. One young woman even wore a woolen hat and gloves!!!

Seats in this bus declined to about 45 degrees of the vertical, so it is possible to get sleep at night. There is also both foot and calf rests to help one relax.

Moving south, Trish noticed the landscape change from hilly jungle-type vegetation to broad open plains of huge hedgeless fields. On several occasions, she pointed out local farmers inspecting their crops and livestock from on top of the saddle of their favourite horse. They looked similar to the gaucho one associates with this country and and the Pampas of Argentina.

Temperatures here in the very south of Brazil, at a place called Foz do Iguacu - our destination - will vary between 22 and 25 degrees over the next four days, according to the local television tonight. But no sooner were the words spoken, than the sky crackled with lightening, the clouds accompanied with thunderous applause, and the heavens unleashed a cascade of non-stop rain. If one was mad enough, one could go out in a t-shirt, and we saw some who did!

Next day we traveled by local bus to the Falls and walked the 504 steps and twelve hundred meters to a specially constructed Brazilian look-out point. Across the Iquacu river and over the Falls we could clearly see the blue-white-blue flag of Argentina. Noise from the series of cataracts is truly deafening and can be heard from some distance away, depending on wind direction. An elevator carries tourists to the highest level possible on the Brazilian side in order to give a panoramic vista. So great was the noise from the thousands of tons of falling water on rock terraces below that it was almost impossible to carry on a conversation with a person standing next to you. Indeed, these waterfalls can be heard long before one catches sight of them. This whole area on both sides of the Falls was once the preserve of native Indians before the white man and others arrived in numbers in the early 1880's and later established a military colony.

Next day, the other side of the Falls beckoned. And so did a new country. Argentina. Join us there.