I do kinda feel like the 'K' should be backwards*

Okay, so more than once in my life I've been waiting for a taxi, watched one pass with one or two people in the backseat, and thought 'why can't we just SHARE if we're going in the same direction? It'd be more cost-efficient for everyone!' Brazil read my mind.

One of the most idiosyncratic (and the most fun) ways to get around Rio is the kombi, named after the model of Volkswagen van whose form it takes. Kombis, like busses, drive specific routes around the city; unlike busses the vans do not have obligatory stops. Instead, you can hail a kombi – much as you would a cab! it's PERFECT – as it passes and disembark at precisely your desired location. The kombi costs R$2 per person, regardless of the length of your journey, making it the city’s cheapest form of public transportation. (The bus is R$2.35, requiring perhaps the most inconvenient amount of extra change possible, and the metro is an eye-gouging R$2.80.)

At first the ride can be daunting: basically, it involves climbing into a huge van and cramming shoulder-to-shoulder with Brazilian strangers as the driver careens down a cobblestone hill (at times with only one hand on the wheel while the other texts [I say 'at times' because it's happened to me multiple times]). It is not a gentle ride, but it is always an interesting one.

What makes the kombi such an ideal form of transportation is the feeling of community unique to the big white vans. Almost always, someone in the van will start a conversation – the motorista (driver; pronounced motoreeeeeeeeshta usually in the whiniest voice possible) or cobrador (money collector - this guy takes the cash so the driver can focus on driving/texting) if the kombi is empty, another passenger if it’s full. As passengers climb in, they may ask you to hold on to their groceries or small children or offer you a handful of the chips they’re munching. If an important futbol game is occurring, the entire van reacts to the radio’s play-by-play. And if you don't know where you're going, eight individuals will crane their necks seeking the proper street number as the van slows down to a crawl so that it can deliver you right at the door.

I'm particularly interested in taking the mythical party kombi before I leave Rio. According to legend, its driver, Valdesere, has installed not only black lights, but dashboard and drop-down TV screens. His chosen playlist includes the Backstreet Boys and Boys II Men -- at full volume -- and Valdesere's tendency to barrel down the hill at a breakneck pace earns him the affectionate nickname 'speed racer.'

Actually, my boss has his phone number. Maybe I'll just book him for my ride to the airport.

*I actually adapted this post from one I wrote for my pousada's blog. I just like kombis so much! I felt kompelled to share with you as well -- they're just so kool! Guyyyyz!

Welcome to My Nightmares

Blissfully and unassumingly researching islands to visit off the coast of Brazil last week, I stumbled upon Ilha de Queimada Grande, nicknamed Snake Island. The island, off the coast of the São Paolo state, has the world's largest population of venomous Golden Lancehead pit vipers, about one to five per square meter.

ONE TO FIVE SNAKES PER SQUARE METER. Plus, the snakes are two meters long and breed year-round. They feed on migratory birds and have no natural predators (or human ones, because let's be real).

The island even made it on Atlas Obscura (awesome website, by the way, it finds and presents weird stuff from all over the world) which provides readers with this comforting anecdote:
Locals in the coastal towns near Queimada Grande love to recount grisly tales of death on the island. In one, a fisherman unwittingly wanders onto the island to pick bananas. Naturally, he is bitten. He manages to return to his boat, where he promptly succumbs to the snake's venom. He is found some time later on the boat deck in a great pool of blood.

GREAT. Apparently, the island's only permanent human inhabitants were a lighthouse keeper and his family. That is, until a handful of snakes entered through a window and attacked the man, his wife, and their three children. In a desperate attempt to escape, they fled towards their boat, but they were bitten by snakes on branches overhead because, oh yeah, the snakes slither on the ground and in the trees.

Luckily, I can't have too much fear of naively stumbling here on some tropical boat ride: the Brazilian Navy currently bans any entrance to the island without a permit. I will not be applying for one.

Back to Greek, Greek Style

Cantina do Gaucho is about half a block away from my door (the only restaurant within comfortable walking distance, actually; the drawback to living on top of a mountain with sick views is a lack of proximate grocery stores and restaurants) and ridiculously cheap. Like, one dish equals three or four meals all for the equivalent of $5 cheap. It used to be run illegally in this guy's garage until everyone in the community (cops included) frequented it often enough for its owner to earn a license.

The best part about Gaucho's -- apart from the ridiculously inexpensive food -- is the menu's English translation. I have no idea who was assigned the task, but it's clear that it's a human because Googletranslate can't even account for some of these errors. I've scanned it and circled my favorites with Microsoft Paint (you might have to open it in a new tab). Some highlights: the "meat with rice crazy, crazy rice" and the plate that promises two cars along with some 'crackling' and 'bens with flour.' Also if you feel like eating Italian bread crump (___ legs, clown arms -- I can't remember anymore, help me out Erose!), you have several options.

Portuguese is funny

My friend Tim once said that speaking Portuguese is like speaking Spanish drunk with a sock in your mouth. He's actually pretty right, and that's what makes it so fun.

The language is very nasal, so basically if you don't sound like you're whining a little bit while you speak, you're not doing it right. When Brazilians are actually whining, the nasality (and the volume) reach ridiculous levels. Additionally, T is "ch" and S is "juh" and if words end in hard syllables, an "ie" noise is added after them for no apparent reason. For example:

Mackey: the kids' name for my friend Mac
ippie-oppie: hip hop
pikki-nikki: picnic
and my fave, Chee-cha-nee-kee starring Leo and Kate and that old woman who is still alive! (Happy Titanic anniversary, btw. Or sad, I guess.)

Also, "x" in the Portuguese alphabet is pronounced "sheesh" -- Brazilian restaurants or snack stands, in their effort to Americanize, therefore advertise X-Burgers (cheeseburgers). And in perhaps the most confusing pronunciation/translation (aside from "nao" meaning "no" and "no" meaning "on the" and "agora" meaning "now"), the word for "pull" in Portuguese is puxe, pronounced "push." WHAAAAA

On the rains

I had a plan to post on Tuesday morning about my trip to Paraty (a historic lil' town on the Costa Verde south of Rio) -- actually a quite eventful trip, complete with a late-night ER visit and a falling-asleep-in-the-sun half-of-the-face tan. NATURE, HOWEVER, HAD OTHER PLANS.

As I taught an evening lesson on Monday night, it started to rain. Wait, not rain, downpour. Quickly the streets flooded and cross-city transportation became a pipe dream. I made my way home over the course of 3 hours, abandoning a bus stopped for an hour in favor of the metro (not anticipating the winding line and 35-minute wait for tickets with others having the same line of thinking), then standing in the pouring rain to wait for a kombi van up the hill to my home against a strong river of water flowing down the hill. The pouring rain did not stop, and I woke up Tuesday morning to a pounding on the walls and windows. We lost all power, and sometime midway through Tuesday afternoon, all water. My three lessons Tuesday were canceled, and I settled in with the other houseguests to a long evening.

We gained power back late Wednesday morning, internet Wednesday night, and regular bus service Thursday; aside from a small leak in one of the upstairs rooms, our pousada is no worse for wear.

One can't quite say the same about the city. The floods made international news as the worst in over 50 years; the death count from favela landslides is currently at 224. This slideshow is pretty intense, and photos like this resemble what I experienced firsthand Monday night. Basically huge mudslides hit residents of favelas in both Rio and neighboring Niteroi (see previous post), not simply affecting but completely fucking with these communities.

The landslide in Prazeres, the favela right outside my house.

Brazilians are certainly sympathetic, but at the same time resignedly cynical. Igor, our pousada's live-in maintenance man, said something to the effect of "it's what happens when they build their homes stacked on the hills. The residents know that." In fact, even as Rio's mayor insists that he's going to remove the over 10,000 favela residents he considers to be in danger (worried that he "won't be able to sleep all summer" knowing the mudslides could happen again), the favela residents refuse, either insisting that Prazeres is their home or bluntly questioning the government "yeah, but where will we go?" The situation gets more complex when one considers that in actuality most favels are governed not by the city but internally by drug dealers and idiosyncratic moral codes -- even if the police were following an order to remove favela residents, they may find it tricky.

Destruction just down the road.

Anyway, things in Rio are fairly tense now. This is the closest to a natural disaster I've really ever been (and to be honest, I'm a little miffed about the minimal coverage it received, especially seeing how severly it impacted the lives of people here) and this week, combined with the earthquakes in Chile/Mexico/Indonesia, make me slightly less dubious about my Thursday-noon English student's 2012 theories...

Paolo's house

Yesterday I had lunch at my neighbor's house. Let me tell you a bit about Paolo:

- He's in his late 60s, but very youthful. He wore swim trunks to lunch yesterday.
- His home has 54 rooms, including eight bathrooms and a guest wing built into a turret.
- He makes designer handbags for a living and shows them at international fashion weeks.
- He is obsessed with Queen Elizabeth and got to meet her at a dinner in Buckingham palace (on Brasil's 500th anniversary [this confused me too, apparently the event celebrated the arrival of the Portuguese on the continent, not the actual date of independence], the country invited renowned artisans on a diplomatic/cultural tour of the world). Paolo also loves Whitney Houston.
- He was shot twice leaving his warehouse in Zona Norte five years ago, and after recuperating began to do all his designing from home. Three more of the 54 rooms are designated as purse workshops.
- He served us a traditional (and delicious) Brazilian meal with traditional Brazilian portions -- two HUGE scoops of rice with tomatoes, two tong-fuls of salad, and an enormous piece of chicken cooked in a red garlicky sauce. When Anna, who weighs maybe 100 pounds, cleaned her plate, Paolo asked her if she wanted more. When she refused, he asked "you did not like it?"
For sobremesa (dessert), we had a Brazilian pudding made from blended avocado, cream, and sugar. The avocados came from Paolo's backyard. After two cups of coffee to end the meal, I could barely move my stomach was so full. Luckily the great conversation (half in English, half in Portuguese) allowed us plenty of time to digest.

Arts and crafts

Took a ferry to one of Rio's 'burbs, Niteroi, Thursday to see their giant spaceship/contemporary art museum, designed by really cool architect Oscar Niemeyer. I'ma be real, the art inside was less than inspiring, but I spent the better part of an hour photographically exploring the exterior. (Now that I have that huge memory card, I can mindlessly take about 100 photographs of the same thing and not realize until they take 20 minutes to transfer to my computer.)

This piece was four blank pieces of notebook paper, framed and hung on the wall.

Niteroi also had some awesome beaches and this kid who works in a Thai restaurant and invited us back for free dinner next week. More pixx to come.