Tanta Saudade

...counting down to a flight across the world, I sit at a hotel window overlooking the skyline and gather my thoughts about this quick visit to Brazil... This beautiful country presents every visitor with a vast number of offerings and possibilities, an array of experiences to sample and partake of, and your experience depends entirely on the itinerary you put together... I stayed smack in the middle of Sao Paulo this time around, for little more than 6 days, and still I feel the need to scribble down my impressions of this country and its people. If you are a musician, the resonance of this place will haunt you forever once you've set foot on its shores, and you're destined to spend years feebly trying to pin it down with words and perspective in a foolhardy attempt to understand it. But Brasil is beyond my conscious understanding. This place has to be felt to be believed...
When I came here in 2007, I was completely captivated by Salvador do Bahia and it's many charms. Sao Paulo is a much different place, and falling in love with it a different proposition entirely. Part of the romance of Bahia is that it's position at the northeast of Brazil makes it one of the closest points from Portugal across the Atlantic. The Portuguese landed in Bahia and called it "the Bay of All Saints," and as the nexus of much of the slave trade between Africa and the Americas, Bahia is a place like no other. It's a spiritual crossroads, a haven for lost tribes to gather and reassemble themselves into the fragments of something new. There's a foreboding sense of time and age to the hills of the Pelhourinho, where the Portuguese established their religious capital in Brasil.... There's a medieval, very Catholic quality to the cobblestone streets of the Cidade Alta, and Bahia is stockpiled with magic and mystery. Sao Paulo? Comparing the two doesn't even seem feasible. Sao Paulo is its own creature...
Sao Paulo is the financial heart of the country, where the most money changes hands, where fortunes are made and lost, and where the landscape is dominated not by pure natural beauty but by the preponderance of skyscrapers that loom over everything. This place is crowded, and while there is much history here as well, this seems like its much more of a modern city of 20 million people clogged with cars and highways. Business rules the day. The beach is 70 km away, and you get the sense that people are here to pay their dues and stake their claims... But who am I to make these assertions? I barely ventured out of my hotel, and only saw tiny slivers of this city in between stretches of stupefying traffic. Just caught a glimpse of the place, enough to form a raw impression but not enough to ward off the fear I feel about the sheer size of this city. I hope to come back, at some point, to sample more succulent dishes, to venture out onto a dance floor, to stroll through the museums and do some damage to my credit card balances... Because there is much here to treasure and marvel at. To be honest, though, I'm hoping that after Bahia & Sao Paulo, my next trip to Brasil will take me to Rio, and Corcovado... Maybe I'll get insanely rich and can come down for the Olympics in 2016, or maybe in a few decades when the wife and I are retired, we can come spend a month here during Carnavale... Dare to dream. In the meantime I depart Brazil once again, ruminating for the millionth time on saudade, and wishing I had more time to tap into the infinite funk on offer here...