South America – Page 13

A Great Travel Destination – Rio de Janeiro

Dear Reader, here is an article my wife and I wrote for our weekly newsletter on our trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I thought I would share it with you since I haven’t blogged about the trip yet. Enjoy!

If you are looking for a great great getaway, then consider visiting Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Our family vacationed there for four days in July. We highly recommend it as a great diversion.

Rio is a city with stunning views. Flanked to the north by the Bay of Guanabara and to the south by the Atlantic Ocean, Rio winds its way through valleys surrounded spectacularly jagged granite peaks and gorgeous sandy beaches. We visited two of the city’s “must-sees” attractions, the Christ the Redeemer Statue, one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, and Sugarloaf Mountain. We relaxed in Copacabana and dined in Ipanema, two of the city’s famous beachfront neighborhoods, and squeezed in a city center tour and shopping. Even though we doubted whether Christ the Redeemer Statue should have been included among the new Seven Wonders of the World, we left convinced that it is truly a wonder. The statue, together with unbelievably beautiful and sensuous landscape that it overlooks, is impressive. Sugarloaf Mountain, a granite peak rising dramatically above Guanabara Bay, offers some of the best views of the city, including Christ the Redeemer. The mountain is easily accessible by cable car.

Rio’s city center is dated but worth a half-day tour. The former Imperial Palace of Brazil’s Portuguese monarchy offers a great jumping-off point to explore the cathedrals and colonial-era buildings that dot the city center. The center is also home to the ultra-modern Rio de Janeiro Cathedral and the Arcos da Lapa, a defunct Romanesque aqueduct. Negotiate your day-trip with a hotel-referred taxi driver who can suggest some good sites to see. Although not touristy, the city center offers a window into the everyday lives of Cariocas (Rio’s residents) past and present.

If you visit Rio, consider staying in Copacabana, where your hotel will likely be across the street from the beach. While Copacabana may not conjure images of the New York club of the same name popularized by crooner Barry Manilow – we saw just one nightclub on the strip – it’s still fun. Visitors can entertain themselves for days on end riding the waves, sunbathing, playing beach games, or just people-watching. Or one can chat it up with vendors who buzz around and peddle kitschy knickknacks and fake fashion. Although livelier during Carnival, Rio’s beaches offer an eclectic mix of visitors and locals year round.

While Rio is a world-class tourist destination, security was our top concern during our visit. As a result, we avoided nighttime excursions except for visiting the tourist market on Atlantic Avenue in Copacabana. We only used taxis recommended to us by our travel agency or hotel. Negotiate a price before accepting a taxi ride. Don’t wear jewelry or flash cash. Stay in crowded, touristy areas. With the weak dollar, Brazil is not a cheap place to visit. Plan to spend three times what you would in Asuncion for identical items. Still, unforgettable moments in Rio could make your trip well worth it.

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Ethnic Cuisine in Buenos Aires, Argentina

We returned yesterday from a five-day trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina. We had a good time visiting what some call the “Paris of South America.” We were most impressed by the architecture and generally affordable and excellent quality of life we saw. Perhaps our perspectives have been influenced by living 11 months in nearby Paraguay, but it still struck me as a good place to live. I can see why Porteños (residents of Buenos Aires) are proud of their city.

Buenos Aires is a no doubt world-class city. However, I was struck by its lack of diversity. This city with approximately 12 million residents seemed overwhelmingly of European descent with a dearth of other races, including immigrants from Africa, Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Our difficulty finding ethnic cuisine confirmed this. There are no Greek, Indian, or Thai restaurants in Paraguay, and we searched from throughout Buenos Aires to find these cuisines. I finally found restaurants for each cuisine, but it was a bit of an undertaking. Each offered excellent food at moderately expensive prices (by Argentine standards). Here they are:

Mykonos Greek Restaurant, Olleros 1752, Buenos Aires. For reservations, call (54-11) 4779-9000 or visit http://www.mykonostaso.com.ar/

Kathmandu Indian Restaurant, Av. Cordoba 3547, Buenos Aires. For reservations, call (54-11) 4963-1122.

Empire Thai Restaurant, Tres Sargeantos 427, Retiro, Buenos Aires. For reservations, call (54-11) 4312-5706 or visit http://www.empirethai.net/

If we had had more time, we also would have liked to have eaten Japanese and American food. The good news is that as a large city, Buenos Aires has a wide variety of restaurants. In fact, Empire Thai restaurant owner Kevin Rodriguez — an American from New Jersey — told us that Empire Thai is one of the only Thai restaurants in Latin America. Amidst all of the “Parrilla (grill), pasta, and pizza” — as he put it — you can find a great selection of cuisine in Buenos Aires.

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One Month

Yesterday marked the end of our first month in Paraguay. I am shocked and dismayed when I think of how quickly it passed! I can’t believe how fast the time passed. What’s happened here in the past month? Here’s a snapshot for posterity:

The weather has been schizophrenic, as befits the middle of winter. We weathered a huge lightning and thunderstorm our second weekend here as well as a cold front that brought snow to Buenos Aires for the first time in 80 years. The weather now is cold and wet. I’ve been told that the winter season this year is colder than is typical for Paraguay. Right now the weather is cold and wet. Our house exacerbates the situation, because the floors are tile throughout, keeping it cool in the hot summer–and freezing in winter! We put down some rugs but they don’t cover much floor space. The room-by-room heating system is running full bore in the rooms we occupy. Thank goodness we haven’t been through a power outage yet. I hear that they are quite common in Asuncion.
We haven’t used the swimming pool yet, but we’re enjoying the bananas. We have a small pool — maybe 9′ x 12′. It will be a godsend in the hot summer, we’re told, but right now it’s sitting unused. Pool care and maintenance reminds me of cleaning a large fish tank. We don’t drain it because the weather usually stays warm enough to enjoy it year round, but it still needs to be maintained. Thank goodness we finally hired a gardener to upkeep the yard, the pool, and the banana tree. Ah, the banana tree, my pride and joy. The previous owner, who brought the tree in from Venezuela, planted it about five years ago. It’s large and has/had six stalks with bananas, about 600 bananas in total. I e-mailed him, and he instructed me on banana tree care and harvesting techniques. We’ve started a queue whereby we cut a “hand” of green bananas from the tree (a bunch), wrap it in newspaper, store it in a dark place to let it cure naturally, and eat them when ready. There are so many that some have turned brown, so those become the ingredients for smoothies and banana bread. I plan to bring bunches of bananas to work as well. I think we’ll get really tired of bananas.
Our son is now in school. We visited several schools and decided to put him into the American school here. School started last Monday. He’s having a bit of trouble adjusting, because he’s the only foreign student in his class. The others are Paraguayan. A couple of his peers are Chinese- or Korean-Paraguayan, but they are Paraguayan in all but ethnicity. I think he’ll be fine in the long run; he’s just shy for now. A Paraguayan nanny/maid will soon starting working for us full time and will take care of him after school, so between his fellow Paraguayan students and the nanny, he should adapt to the local culture and language (Spanish and Guarani) in no time.
My wife stays at home, although she may be close to finding a great full-time job. I can’t comment any more than that because I don’t want to jinx her chances, but we’re optimistic that she will find work in the next six months or so. In a place like Paraguay, where jobs are scarce, that is quite a feat indeed. In the meantime, she has been a trooper getting us settled in at home. She’s more than ready for the maid to start so that she doesn’t have to domesticate so much. It doesn’t help that our home is prone to collecting dust (e.g. tile floors) and that we don’t have a dishwasher (not common in Paraguay).
I’m as busy as ever, spending more time at work than I expected. I was surprised to find how busy it is here in Asuncion. Life here is typically described as “sleepy, boring, slow-paced, relaxing.” That has not been our experience thus far. You can see it in the fact that I’ve hardly blogged since I arrived. Right now, I probably should do other things, including some evaluations I need to write for work, but I need a break. Still, I do sense that life has slowed down a bit since we first arrived. We’ve set up all our basic needs–Internet, international calling (Skype), getting our car, finding a church home, getting our son in school, arranging our personal effects in the home. We still have a lot to do, but it’s getting done, slowly but surely. I really do hope that life will be more relaxing here than it’s been so far.
We set aside the next few holidays between now and the end of the year to do some traveling. We made the mistake in Korea of not traveling outside Korea as much as we could. We’re not going to make the same mistake in Paraguay. We’re tentatively planning trips in the next three months to the Amazon (Manaus, Brazil), Macchu Pichu, Peru, and Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. We won’t travel much between next December and May, so we want to do it now. We have the time–we need to save the money. The trips won’t be cheap! Still, it will be nice to travel again, because I haven’t been further than 45 kilometers outside Asuncion along the Trans-Chaco Highway. I’ve barely seen this huge continent (yet).