Two men carrying resources to work after lunch. Brazil.
Propaganda
Audio based advertising in Brazil.
Moving to Rio
It is a Sunday today, and in a shopping centre in the middle of Belo Horizonte city, I am tapping away on the keyboard, waiting for my bus to Rio. It turns out that there are not a lot of services to Rio on a Sunday and my bus leaves at midnight for the six to seven hour journey. Those heading back to the base in Corrientes will be close to arriving there now, having left two days ago. I am on my own.
Travelling solo can be a lot of fun. The advantage of it is being able to make all the decisions quickly and change plans at the drop of a hat. Not having someone to share the good and bad times is always a drawback. When I travelled the world, my trip followed my friends in each country. It was a lot of fun and filled with great memories. When I travel here, the journey will follow the YWAM bases throughout Brazil. They are friends. Friends that I have just not yet met.
Belo is just like any other city. I checked it all out yesterday with a group of friends. Today, at 30 degrees C, it seemed a better option to remain indoors. So here I sit, scribbling away, and enjoying the airconditioning. In a few hours I will be hurtling down the road towards Rio.
A new destination, and new friends.
The Conference – Day 1
The first day is still going strong, and it has been very interesting to see people from so many different nations here. I have already met people from bases in Norway, Panama, and Brazil, spending time with them all over lunch. There is a person here from almost every country in the world.
Still tired from such little sleep last night, it is a struggle to stay awake during the meetings. Perhaps this is why I decided to break away from my original group of travellers and sort myself out with a place to stay with a real bed.
You see, they have found a great place to stay just across the road from the YWAM base here. In a way I think they have a better deal, although a concrete floor is all that is available to sleep on. These are the ones without money who still wanted to come regardless of their situation. They suffer whatever hardships they need to so that they can remain here. A free concrete floor is certainly a very enticing offer.
So I have left them there, and moved in with my other Corrientes YWAM staff. It is said to be a very nice place, but that is something I will not discover until later tonight. For now, there are many people left to get to know and lots of great Brazilian foods to discover. And for drinks… the Guarana is my favourite of all. It beats Coke by a long shot.
Just being here amongst so many interesting and amazing people has been great. I have met so many people that I know from meeting them from here or there. It is amazing to see the connections that happen in an event like this. For me though, I most enjoy the friendships and developing those that already exist plus adding a few more along the way.
So now it is back to the conference again. Until next time…
Curitiba – The Rain Stopped
It stopped. The rain actually stopped. Not forever though. It is now raining again. But it really did stop.
During the few hours of non-rain, I managed to follow the general tourist route through this town and check out all of the items listed in the good book of travel (which I found in English in one of the bookstores here). They suggested that the walk around town would take about 2 hours and were pretty much on the mark.
Heading down the cobblestoned sidewalks, wet as they were from the recent rain, the going felt slippery. This town was very similar to most other South American towns that I had visited, although there was a definite feeling of being safer. Perhaps this is due to being in a much smaller city than those of Rio, São Paulo and Belo.
This town is acknowledged as being a very green-oriented place, with their recycling, inner-city greenery, and transport systems becoming world renowned and frequently copied in different cities around the world. There are many parks filled with trees and gardens scattered around the city heart and providing a recluse from the busyness of the environment surrounding them.
Visiting 24 street, where every shop is open 24hrs a day, revealed the thoughts of a progressive government who realised that eventually the whole city would probably end up like this, so they started this street as a pioneer point from which the rest of the place could follow. Old churches carved in intricate patterns, paved pedestrian streets lined with old cast-iron street lights, German, Japanese, and many other cultural restaurants, permanent market places for arts and crafts, and dozens of other sights loomed strong as I wandered along through this place.
The old university building with massive Roman-style columns and a huge entry door was fronted by a park even larger than itself, decorated in flowers, trees, sculptured shrubs and shaped grass lawns, providing an impressive final point on the trail. There is always another corner to turn, something else to see, some marked point to reach, but by this time the rain had started again and was growing increasingly heavier. It was time to retreat back to the security of the shopping center and wait.
It is now 6pm and although I had made it to most of the tourist places, I still had not made it to the YWAM base here. With the day over and the rain coming down hard, and being a stranger to the people at this base, I will reserve my visit here for another day.
I am sure that this will not be my last visit to Brazil.
Motorcycle Courier
Motorcycle loaded up with goods. Brazil.
Overloaded Moto
Motorbike overloaded with goods, on the bridge between Argentina and Brazil.
Belo Horizonte at Last
Well we finally arrived in Belo Horizonte, 2 1/2hrs later than our scheduled time, and 5 1/2hrs later than the planned time.
During our journey we travelled through fog so thick we could hardly see the other side of the road, something that proved fatal for a truck and bus which collided in the obscurity. We passed them and some cars that had also hit them while it was still very hard to see. What we did see however, was the bus hanging over the edge of the road pointing down a super steep hill and looking extremely precarious. The authorities had arrived by now and all people were removed from the scene so I am not sure of the severity.
Moving onward, our journey became somewhat monotonous with the occasional stop at a roadhouse dedicated for buses every now and then. There was any supplied videos on the bus, but a man travelling from Ciudad del Este was carrying dozens of DVDs (mostly fakes from what I saw) and we had the privilege of some movie entertainment on the way which helped pass the time. The most interesting however was a Rodeo video with all of the cowboys bouncing around on the back of the bulls and dozens of shots of them falling off. Hmmm, perhaps I am a masochist. 🙂
After stopping in Sao Paulo, we continued north but only for a short time. Suddenly a police vehicle pulled alongside of our bus and indicated for us to stop. Having just overtaken some trucks, I suspected that our driver was in trouble for speeding, but this opinion soon changed when the officers climbed aboard and started inspecting our bags. Before long, we were all out on the roadside, standing by watching as each bag was meticulously inspected, even to the point of cutting through the bag when they could not seen down deep.
Forty minutes later and we are back on our way, finally arriving in Belo at 10.30pm, about an hour after the other YWAM team from Buenos Aires who took another bus which left at the same time as us. It was 1am before we finally climbed aboard the shuttle bus to head to the YWAM base in Contagem and to our beds.
Initially we were expecting our beds to be nice and comfortable, but on climbing into the bus we are told that at this time of night everything is now closed up and there is nowhere for us to stay. So instead, they lead us into the base and provide us with the only section of level space available… the main auditorium stage. Here we sleep the night, finally resting sometime around 2.30am, only to wake at 6am to make way for all of the preparation for the day.
Welcome to the Viva Latina-America conference in Belo Horizonte.
Cataloguing Photos
With a bunch more photos in hand, and hundreds still stuck on my laptop that all need to be sorted, it was time to do something about it. I currently have thousands of photos sorted into folders according to the time and place they were taken. This works pretty good too, but when somebody comes and asks me to see all the photos of “so and so” it becomes an endless work of digging through every folder in search of any photos which may contain “so and so”. This is the same problem that I have when people want photos for “such and such” too.
Now I have been aware of this problem for a while, and have been trialing a number of different software types in search of the perfect solution. Of course there is no such thing as the perfect solution, but it is nice to come close at least. Finally, I suspect that I have found what I need.
IMatch 3 is a photo cataloguing program that, although a little technical to start with, provides all the functionality I need at a price that is affordable. I had previously looked at using the iView program (now part of the Phase One software group) which is very good too, but it had a much higher investment cost that I could not justify. Impulse Adventure provided a great comparison page between all of the different programs that could do this sort of job for me, and through this and other reviews that I read, it was obvious that IMatch was a great program.
So now I am busy in all of my spare time starting to sort out each and every single photo that I have. At last check there were something like 21,000 photos that I need to catalogue, but this keeps growing every time I take more shots. Some of these photos are currently on the web, but it has been a while since I added more there because of the state of disrepair my photos had fallen into.
Now I have new hope that one day they will all be sorted, and if I should ever want to find all of my photos that contain “closeups of Henry and Julie together in Argentina during 2004” then it is a simple click of a button to find them. There is a lot of work to get there, but it is highly feasible. After all, this is a small image collection compared to many photographers out there.
So if you are wondering what I may be doing couped up indoors for days on end, you can be sure that I will be sorting photos. Sorting, sorting, sorting, sorting, sorting…
…til it is done.
Back to Base
These days I am back in the YWAM base in Corrientes. I successfully caught my 10am ride to Corrientes and was back there by 7.30pm that night. My return from Brazil completed, it then took several days to finally sort through all of the emails and other bits and pieces involved in restoring life to normal after time away.
It was great to be welcomed back by so many friendly people. When I got here the welcome was generally in the form of a shout and an energetic hug followed by countless questions about what had happened and how things had gone. In some ways I felt more like an explorer or mountain climber that had returned from a successful expedition than someone who had only been away for almost two weeks. It certainly was very encouraging however, and I love the warmth and concern that this culture fosters in relationships.
Having a home, a base, where you know people and they know you, is really wonderful. I love travel, and I love challenges too, but sometimes the challenge of travel is nicely offset by such a familiarity. To move out, and finally return to a known place, provides a different level of security. I like it. It is good to come back to base.