First time in Brazil

Nowadays travelling is an widespread obsession which sooner or later affects everyone, who can afford it. Luckily it's becoming more and more available, cheaper, faster and more comfortable. One moment you're boarding on a plane in your hometown, another - getting off in some far and exotic destination. Though transcontinental flights are available since many years (Air France, for example, is celebrating their 80 years anniversary as a commercial airline), it's still amazing how common they've became. If you open some aircraft tracking site, you'll see thousands of planes plowing the skies at the very moment, and many of them are on long-haul flights. 

My very first transcontinental flight was by Boeing 777-300ER, taking off from Amsterdam and landing in Sao Paolo 12 hours later, operated by KLM, a dutch airline, which cooperates with Air France. It went fast thanks to small TV's for each passenger and many snacks and drinks, helping to pass the time. I was pretty excited to see the interior of such a huge plane, after mostly flying by Ryanair's tiny Boeing 737-800. 

When I landed in Sao Paolo and went through the customs, it was already dark. Running like crazy, I barely made it to a bus to Campinas, where my final destination was. 

The first thing I learned about Brazilians was that they are slow (the pass control took much longer than it would, if there were more people working) and can confuse you with their answers sometimes. Until the very last moment I wasn't sure where I should get off and almost picked the wrong station.

I was carrying my autumn coat, which I put on in the bus (air conditioning can get you quite chilly!), I imagine how weird it must have looked when I got off and went to the waiting hall wearing it. I still didn't realize that I was in a warm country. :) 

My boyfriend picked me up in the main bus station of Campinas and my little adventure began. I can't describe how unusual and exotic everything looked to me. The flora, the buildings, some weird systems (people leave their trash on some metal holders and trash picking men quickly jump off the truck to collect it, throw into the truck and jump back on to ride forward). People are friendly and relaxed, everything's a little bit greener, wilder and messier, but it had it's undeniable charm for me, used to seeing clean streets of Stockholm. Things that won my admiration immediately were fresh exotic fruits, tasty food, hot sun and... coconut water! A bit skeptical in the beginning, I totally fell in love with this drink later! Like my boyfriend said: drinking coconut water in summer is equivalently cozy to drinking hot tea during cold winter. :) 

We didn't get to visit much, because of the tight schedule my boyfriend had, but it was very fun to stay in Campinas. We also went to Jundiai, a city nearby and walked in some beautiful parks there. 

Time to share some pictures!

Me, drinking the delicious coconut water, straight from a coconut. There are many places you can buy such a drink, but it's also possible to get a coconut in a local store or... straight from a tree. My boyfriend found a coconut palm and is successfully filling in his supplies without any cost. Except hurting muscles. :)
Coconut water should be drank chilled, so we usually put them into the freezer, before drinking from them. Once we took our frozen coconuts to the shopping mall, intending to drink the water before we enter. It was still too icy, so we decided to leave the coconuts under the tree to defrost. When we came back, they were gone (of course) and we decided to come up a funny story about how we got robbed of our coconuts... :)  

Shells of cicada's. You can find hundreds of them on trees. These bugs get out from the underground all together and leave their old "clothes", to get a new shiny outfit. Then they live high up in the trees, making creepy noises. 

     
                                                                                A regular sight in Campinas, the district close to Unicamp (one of the biggest universities in Brazil), where houses are usually rented to students. What amazed me was that students don't clean their houses at all - instead, they have a cleaner coming to them twice a week. Do I even have to mention how messy it gets in between the cleaning days? And I was complaining about the common kitchen in my dorm in Stockholm :)  

A salad from fresh fruits (passion fruit, strawberries, mango, melon, small bananas etc) and a drink/infusion called Tereré. It's similar to mate and can be found in Paraguay, northeastern Argentina and southern and western Brazil. You mix the herbs with cold water, rather than hot and it has a very interesting refreshing taste. It's drank with a special straw which prevents you from sucking in the herbs.      

Picture from a park in Jundiai, a city nearby. The population of Campinas - 3 mln, Jundiai - only 300 000. It's a beautiful city with many public parks to take a stroll.

A view from a very unstable bridge in Campinas, which many students have to cross everyday, to get to Unicamp. You can see a little Brazilian stork, which name I couldn't find. At first I thought it's Jabiru, but they should have a black head, which this one doesn't have, obviously. :)

An amazingly thick tree, which's name I couldn't find either. It's actually hard to tell, if it's a collection of many trees, or if it's only one. How many people would it take to hug it? :)

A very tasty snackie, common in Brazil. It's called Coxinha and is usually made with chicken and cheese, so the inside of it is quite creamy.

Brazilians are crazy about rice and beans and they eat it everyday for lunch and dinner. At first I couldn't stand this combination, but I have to admit, that I was starting to get addicted to it at the end!










Can't wait to go back to Brazil in December. There is so much to see, taste, experience. This time I will stay there for a month a will travel around more.

That's all for now!
/J