The Age of Exploration

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Brazil currently has a population of over 190 million people, making it the fifth most populous country in the world (the U.S. is third). Yet, as it turns out just seven people in this beautiful country speak English fluently. Stranger yet, I have already met three of them, two here in Brasilia.

If you were awake in your World History class back in high school, you might recall the Age of Exploration/Enlightenment, a period during the Renaissance in which explorers from the most powerful western European nations at the time set out to sea in a search of new trading routes and whatever they could find along the way, like maybe another continent or two, aka the New World. Among these explorers, was Pedro Alvares Cabral. Yeah, nobody remembers him because our brains are saturated with Columbus, with maybe a smidgen of Magellan and even Vasco de Gama, but it turns out this Portuguese commander was the first European explorer to “discover” a portion of the enormous area that is now Brazil. Just prior to this in 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the New World between the Spanish and the Portuguese before anyone really had any idea what this actually included. The imperial nations of Europe just wanted ownership and thus drew up whatever maps they could so as to lay claim and get on with capitalist endeavors. They drew the entire world again and again, constantly changing their maps with incoming information. Each time the New World was divided up on the map and then someone would go looking for what they just sketched. Under the treaty, the Portuguese more or less received the territory of Brazil and everything else was Spanish territory. And so Cabral verified the land was actually there and later in 1531, the Portuguese began to colonize the area. Despite battles with the French and Dutch early on, they maintained control over the area until 1822 when Brazil became an independent nation. Thus, the native language of Brazil is in fact Brazilian Portuguese and not Spanish, French, Dutch or English for that matter. Now consider the size of Brazil, both its geography and population. That’s a lot of Brazilian Portuguese spoken, just not by me.


São Paulo, SP, Brazil

I arrived in São Paulo, Brazil Saturday, September 28. The next day I moved on to Ouro Preto (“black gold”) a little colonial town in the state of Minas Gerais. After a week of study I then found a bus to Belo Horizonte. A couple of days later I then took another bus to Brasilia where I am currently sleeping off my first of what I hope to be my last of foreign fevers. No, it is not malaria.


Ouro Preto, MG, Brazil

Later I intend to share some of Ouro Preto, but one day in Belo Horizonte is fresh in my mind. B.H. (pronounced “beh-ah-gah”), as the locals refer to it, is the capital of Minas Gerais state in Brazil. It is the first planned, modern Brazilian city and the touted by some as the biggest party town in Brazil. One of its other notable characteristic I learned from a 45 year old world traveler/sailor from Austin, Texas: according to various sources, including Maxim magazine, B.H. has a woman to man ratio equaling somewhere between 4:1 and 9:1, but I digress.

To the north of central B.H. is the district of Pampulha (pronounced pam-pool-yah). In this suburb for the middle and upper classes, world-renown Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer designed several buildings including the Igreja de São Francisco de Assis, the Museu de Arte de Belo Horizonte and Casa do Baile, all around an artificial lake. Of significance to my studies, the development of the district is sort of a precedent to the impossible democratic ideologies sought through the design and construction Brasilia, the capital of Brazil where I am now. It was my goal to see all of these significant pieces of architecture in Pampulha and return just in time to grab some highly acclaimed Brazilian-Mexican tacos before making my way to Brasilia.


Igreja de São Francisco de Assis
Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil

Early Sunday morning I headed to Praça do Pilar, the plaza from which buses to Pampulha leave regularly. On the way, I walked through a Sunday market to peek at all the cheap clothes, sunglasses and beef amassed in one closed off stretch of road. I would have liked to stick around, but some of the attractions at Pampulha close early, so I grabbed some agua de coco and was on my way. Upon my arrival in the plaza, a kind old man with a bandage around his head helped confirm which bus traveled to Pampulha. I boarded and we arrived about thirty minutes later.


Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil

The Pampulha complex is not grand. The lake was once polluted, but now the banks are lined people fishing, trying their best to catch I don’t know what. The church and other Niemeyer masterpieces were never used for their original purposes and now just function as “attractions” that few people want or can afford to visit. Behind the church was a small carnival and plaza with zebra-stripped donkeys and sloth-speed motorized jeeps for kids to ride around in. It became clear the real reason people come to Pampulha is futebol, which is of course soccer. There are two huge concrete stadiums, Mineirão and Mineirinho immediately adjacent to one another and the lots surrounding them are filled with spectators sipping on Skol and Brahma, the Budweiser and Miller of Brazil. From what I gather, few people want to see another dysfunctional Niemeyer building, but nearly every brasileiro wants to watch futebol.

I spent some time at the church just before it closed and really enjoyed it, particularly the large sliding glass doors that open the inside of the church out onto the waterfront. The paintings within the church, São Francisco and Via Sacra by Candido Portinari, were perhaps the most interesting. It all reeks terribly of Le Corbusier, as it should. Niemeyer collaborated with him, but understanding the assimilation and scale of affect modern architecture had in Brazil is another story (see Rotch website later). It was time to move on, so I stumbled up to the other side of the plaza across from the zebra-donkeys where I had seen some of those jitneys making a stop.



I waited and waited at the stop as multiple buses raced past me. Eventually one stopped and I was able to ask a family getting off how to get to the museum. They in turn asked the bus driver who replied, “Cinqueta e dois”, number 52. Another twenty minutes passed with two 52s turning up a street just before reaching me. Slowly learning from this, I headed up this road into a residential area, stopped confounded by the complete absence of all life on the street, including buses, but foraged on. Eventually I turned left, and then another left which arced back to my original location. Thirty minutes had passed without the site of the 52 and now I was sweating and a little frustrated. I approached an old vendor back down by the church, “Onde esta Onibus numero cinquenta e dois?” He pointed about thirty feet up the street. As it turns out, the same place the first bus dropped me off is where bus 52 also stops.

It was another twenty minute wait for the bus, but I was happy to be on my way. Two teenage boys, acne and all were manning the bus, one driving and the other collecting two reais (Brazilian dollars) from each passenger. The bus was packed, but as we ventured further away from the church it cleared up and I took a seat in the back. I was gazing out the window, recalling the shape of the artificial lake. When looking at a map, the lake resembles a giant amoeba with elongated appendages, so one can imagine using the body of water as an orienting device is somewhat impractical, but I could tell we were headed further and further away. One would assume that if we were rounding the lake at some point you have to hit another appendage, but we never did. After figuring we were traveling to yet another suburb and still further from English, I approached the drivers and asked if this bus was headed to the museum. “Ele pára em Museu de Arte de Belo Horizonte?” Confused because my Portuguese is incomprehensible to anyone who can speak the language, the kids just stared. So I pointed to the museum in my tourist guide and now they looked as if they had never heard of the place, this supposed cultural institution in the capital of Minas Gerais. Then I guess they figured it out. “(something, something, something in Portuguese)”, they replied and nodded. About thirty minutes to the museum.

The bus hit a straight away and the driver floored it. Bus drivers, well all drivers in Brazil are insane. It is my personal belief that the country may in fact be home to the worst, most fearless and confident drivers in the world. The kid was rallying the bus so fast and we hit the bumps so hard that even his bleached, gelled hair-helmet jolted a little. A corner came up fast; we decelerated and eventually came to a complete stop around the bend.

“(something, something)”, said the driver to the cashier.
“(something, something, something)”, he replied.

The engine was turned off and they both hopped out for a look. They reviewed the status of the front left wheel, the rear left wheel and then under the hood. Now, I don’t claim to know anything about cars except for maybe the cooling system in my Subaru, but when they grabbed a small, phillips-head screwdriver from beneath the seat to fix the type of problems they were potentially investigating, I knew something was wrong.

For the next half hour the kids got in and out of the bus, turning it on and off, cranking the steering wheel and debating with a couple of older men on the bus about the problem. At some point the driver appeared stating that another bus was on its way. A relief, but we waited in an intensifying afternoon heat. My back started sticking to the pleather seat covers and a few left the bus seeking water. And then just as people started to break down, miraculously another 52 arrived. Everyone anxiously scurried off and headed toward the doors of the other bus. We started to board when the driver of this bus said, “(something, something in Portuguese)”, which more or less translated to “Get off this bus! This bus is broken. Go back to your bus! It works.”

What? So, our bus broke down, another bus came to pick us up, but broke down too and then by the hand of God (or a screwdriver) our bus was suddenly fixed and now we were picking up these passengers? Fair enough, anything to move on. Everyone boarded and we continued.

Ten minutes down the road we slowed quickly until we were just barely creeping along. Just outside my window was a man with a semi-automatic rifle, standing next to an ambulance, lights still flashing and with the front smashed in, then a car resting on its head, billowing smoke and finally a couple of armed policemen. We traveled three more blocks when blondie looked in his rearview mirror and nodded, “Yep, its time to go”. The cashier escorted me off the bus, pointed in a general direction back toward the chaos we had just passed and sent me on my way. I only understood one thing from his rapid-fire Portuguese. “No retornar.” No return.

Another twenty minutes of walking (away from the chaos) and I managed to find the lake and then the museum, only to find out it was empty and closed until October 17. No buses go to the museum, a reflection of the apparent lack of simplified and integral infrastructure found in many Brazilian cities. I took a taxi back to the church, the bus back to Praça do Pilar and got out of town on the overnight bus to Brasilia. No tacos for me.


And for dessert, a little Ouro Preto:

Praça Tiradentes, Ouro Preto

public fountain, Ouro Preto

Matriz Nossa Senhora da Conceicão

Igreja São Francisco de Paula