Winter is coming (?)

It is starting to go towards winter here now, even though winter is a very relative statement. There is, for example, absolutely no chance that we will get any snow. In fact, most people here have never even seen snow in their lives. Instead, it is getting so cold that a few days ago I actually wore trousers and not shorts for the first time this year! I was in Sao Paulo over the weekend and decided to wear trousers on the plane to not get ill again as I did a few weeks ago. It was so cold during the whole weekend that I didn't go back to shorts until I came back to Belo Horizonte. 

We ran another 10 km race in Sao Paulo. This time I was a personal pacemaker for S. We failed to get below 50 min, but it was close and S. finished 12th out of 330 women. Looking at the picture below, I don't think that half of us could do it faster than we did...

Here in Belo Horizonte it is actually still so warm that I don't even consider wearing long trousers. However, since we almost are in May, the shops have started to sell winter clothes and some people wear boots and warm coats. They seem to think that since winter is coming they should wear winter clothes even if the thermometer shows 30 degrees (no, that's not in Fahrenheit). The temperature is, however, decreasing and some days it is actually really nice to go into the sun, whereas normally you want to hide in the shadow as much as possible. So yeah, winter is coming...

Ilha Grande - day 2

A forest covers most of the island, but there are paths through it. Most of these goes to the different beaches and also connects the small villages. I think there was only one path which went in towards the middle of the island. This one went up to Pico do Papagaio - the Parrot Peak - which was the target of our second day on the island. Before coming to the island, we had read that you were strongly recommended to hire a guide when hiking these paths. This was, however, quite expensive and we didn't think a guide would improve the hike much more than potentially pointing out spots where you normally find some animals, so we decided to go on our own. 

The parrot peak up on the right.

The round trip was supposed to be approximately 13 km and take 6-7 h. This might sound like a very long time, especially since we recently ran about the same distance in approximately 1 h. However, this was predominantly on a small path and almost always up - the peak was at 982 m. Either way, we started walking at 9 am, carrying some nuts and the most important thing - the camera. OK, water was also quite important. We brought a bottle of 1.5 litres, which was no where near enough. 

The path was broad and open in the beginning, sometimes with huge bamboo trees, as you can see to the left, but it quickly became much more narrow, as on the left. The worst part of it being that narrow was that it was impossible to see anything but trees. OK, the trees were nice and I did enjoy walking in the forest, but there was no way to tell where we were, how far we had walked or how far we still had left.

Another annoying thing was all the spider web. It turned out that I was the first person to walk this path this day, so I had to clear up all the web the spiders had spun since the previous time somebody walked there. It was really a lot and I only sometimes saw it before I walked into it. It was nicer to see some banana trees:

Some times we heard monkeys and we also heard some of them shouting like crazy. Some birds flew past and I saw a big lizard (about 1m in length) but it quickly ran away.

After having walked quite far and getting close to the top (as we'd later find out) something quite unexpected happened: a dog came running really fast out of nowhere. It was extremely out of breath, he could barely breath. It's not too strange that he was tired, I would also have been really tired if I ran up there, but I have never seen a dog that tired. Immediately when he caught up with us, he sat down and rested, but as soon as we started moving he walked with us. Since he was suffering so much we felt bad walking since we knew that he would follow us instead of catching his breath, so we decided to stop until his breath became somewhat normal again, which took 5-10 minutes!

It was good that we let the dog catch his breath again before reaching the top, because the view was breathtaking (sorry, but I couldn't resist...).

After we had enjoyed the view for some time, a German couple appeared. First we thought that the dog belonged to them, but they told us that that it didn't. The dog found them in the beginning of the day and walked with them for a long time, but then all of a sudden it disappeared. They became a bit worried, so they were happy to see it again. 

After a while the five of us started to walk down again. When we were about halfway down, we met a Lithuanian guy, who was on his way up. We talked a little bit and when we started walking again, the dog left us and walked up the mountain again, keeping the Lithuanian company.

In the end the trip took about 5h (2.5 h to go up, 1 h at the top and 1.5 h to come back down again) including stops for taking pictures. However, as I mentioned we didn't bring enough water, so when we came back we went to the supermarket and bought a lot of water. Then we went straight to the beach, so it was a pretty good day.

Ilha Grande - day 1

A short boat trip outside of Angra is an island called Ilha Grande - Large Island. This island is relatively large with only a few villages and no cars, except for police cars. Instead there are a lot of nice beaches, beautiful nature and forests with cool paths through them. We stayed in a place called Abraao which is a really relaxed village without any cars; people either walk or cycle everywhere. There is a small police station, but it seems that there is almost no crime since people don't lock their bikes and sometimes not even their houses. This is a huge contrast to the big walls with barbed wire surrounding every building in the cities. OK, the villages are so small that you couldn't hide anything if you stole it, but it felt really safe (at least for Brazil). 

You can see the police station in the picture above. The sign in front of it says:

"Educate the children and you will not need to punish men" (Pythagoras (!))

It seems like they have started to understand this in Brazil and most things are improving, but they still have a long way to go .

Most people use their boats if they want to go between the villages. It is not to far to go by bike on the paths, but they are really made for walking. These paths also go to all the beaches, so we decided to try them. We arrived in the middle of the day, so we only went to some places close by.

Some of the trees here were amazing. The ones above and below are quite big with funny looking trunks and grow on top of stones!

A small church in Abraao. 

This beach is called Praia Preta - Black Beach - since the sand on the beach is all black due to some minerals.

 An old aqueduct.

Tofsen

Tofsen is the student union magazine of Chalmers University of technology in Gothenburg. A while ago they contacted me and asked if they could interview me for the magazine. Of course I said yes and you can see the result by either going past the university and picking your copy or by following this link to the pdf-version. The first part of the magazine is in Swedish, but in the end there are some pages in English (including my interview on pages 34-35). I can also recommend page 26 which is about a Swedish astronaut who was in space in 2006 and in 2009 (this is however in Swedish). 

The interview was held by emails in Swedish, so I was quite surprised when I saw that the final version was in English. A few things changed slightly, but nothing major. However, it was the first time I personally experienced how easy it is for journalists to change basically whatever they want in their texts. I have to say that changing language is a smart way of tuning quotes the way they want. But again, they didn't change anything into anything bad, but they easily could have.

More running

We have participated in two races since the last time I wrote about running. Neither of them went really well for me, though. Somehow I managed to catch a cold before the first one and was ill for a week just before the race. It really feels stupid to get a cold when it's around 30 degrees, but it is actually surprisingly common. The reason is that they make planes and long distance buses really cold with the air condition on at maximum. 

Then I managed to get injured one week before the second race. It's not horribly bad, I just can't run very well. I had to stop after two kilometres both times I tried to run during the week before the race, which is not really ideal when you are about to run 10 km. However, I did impress myself during the run (obviously I am so stubborn that I still participated in the race). You could choose between running 5 km or 10 km and I impressed myself by being sensible and only going for the 5 km. My leg still hurts, but I don't think I made it too much worse. 

S. impressed as well, but she did it by running really well. In the first race, which was two laps around a lake (Lagoa Santa) in total 12.8 km, they had prices for the best three in each age group, 25-29 years in our case. S. came second in her age group!!! Here is a picture of the top 3 on the podium:

In the second race (Ecorun), she did even better and finished fourth of all women! She finished 10 km in just over 50 min.

There were some advertising for green energy around this race, since it was an eco(logical) run. There was also some talk about that it is good to turn off your computer screen (when not using it) to save energy. And OK, these things are good, but, there was no recycling or anything like that. This was a perfect opportunity to show that recycling is good and that it is good and easy to for example simply separate the trash. But no, countless plastic bottles were mixed with organic waste such as banana peel. In some places in the university  they do recycle and so on, but they are so incredibly far behind most of Europe. 

Brazil is developing and improving a lot and fast, but in many ways they still have a lot to learn. Sometimes I hear stories of people going to (some parts of) Europe or Australia and they are amazed of how clean it is and how everything works. 

Angra dos Reis - second boat tour

After having been on a big boat tour with a lot of other people, we immediately signed up for a more private tour when our host - the Captain - when he offered it. We were only two couples and the guide, so it was much more personal than the previous boat trip. Whenever we pointed at something, the Captain changed the course and took us closer, whilst telling us stories about everything. 

We were laying on mattresses in the front of the boat the whole trip. It made us feel quite rich, especially since the other couple kept preparing and bringing us food and drinks from the back of the boat.

Plenty of people, who actually are very wealthy, own houses in this region. The boat above and the house in the background belong to one of richest people in Brazil. Some of the islands belong to wealthy Swiss and Germans.

The yellow buoys in the picture above indicate that there is an oyster farm underneath. (No, after my previous experience I was not tempted by more oysters.) However, this is not really a serious farm, it is more used as a way to avoid boats coming to visit the beach, which is a smart way to make the beach more private.

These islands are called Ilhas Botinas. The water here was crystal clear and full of fish - perfect for snorkeling! It was also a perfect opportunity to try my gift - a waterproof bag to put the camera in for underwater pictures. Since these islands were off the normal tourist route, we had the water and fishes for ourselves. 

 Me swimming with the fish.

Everyone who lives here is not rich, the garbage man in his little boat(!) is one example.

 You can see the boat we were traveling with in the corner.

 We saw a sea star in the water close to a beach.

We found several beautiful seashells on one of the beaches. Unfortunately, it is forbidden to bring anything but memories and pictures from these places, so I didn't bring any of these seashells with me.. 

We had a late lunch/early dinner in a small restaurant on a small island. The food and the drink (with a secret ingredient) were delicious.

Angra dos Reis - first boat tour

As I mentioned in the previous post, there was basically nothing to do in the town. Therefore, we went on a nice boat tour. There were several boats going on tours, but unfortunately they seemed to all take the same route. Since the boats all were quite big, taking around 100 people each, this means that there were always a lot of people in every place where we stopped.

But, as you can see in these pictures, it was still really nice.

We stopped in a small island (Ilha de Cataguases), where it was possible to go snorkeling. It was really nice to swim with colourful fishes, after finding a spot without a lot of people that is. Even though it was really nice, it was nothing compared to what we experienced later in the trip (as you will see in later posts).

Later we stopped in a place (Lagoa Azul - the Blue Lagoon) which was supposed to be one of the best places in this region. There was no beach here, but the boat stopped next to the shore so that you could go swimming, but not go up on the island. The highlight here was all the colourful fishes, which were really beautiful. The problem was that there were plenty of boats here, all basically parked right next to each other as cars in a big parking lot. Then you could mainly go swimming in the few metres between the boats. There were a lot of fish, but almost as many people, so it didn't feel natural at all, just crowded. 

Then we stopped in Freguesia de Santana, where there was a small church next to the beach. The church was 150 years old, which is quite old by Brazilian standards.

 This was the boat we were going around with.

One the way back to Angra, we saw a beautiful sunset behind the mountains.