Our First Week in Brazil

Brazil is a beautiful country. We didn’t really see much of it on that first day when we arrived, except from above: by the time we were driving to our hosts' home, where we would be living for the next fortnight, it was already dark.

Over the following week, however, we got to explore all kinds of elements of Brazilian life: mostly in Goiânia itself, but also further afield.

The first major impressions were of a country that is incredibly friendly and open, but which has struggled with a reputation for being unsafe. Goiânia is famous locally for being a very safe city, which leads it to be bustling and growing. It’s a university city, and there are great schools and activities for children and opportunities for young people and adults alike. There are beautiful parks and open places, restaurants around every corner, and a street-bar culture not unlike the cafe culture of France.

Yet security is taken very seriously. The safety of the homes in Goiânia does not mean that precautions are not taken. When travelling to houses or apartments here, as a Brit you feel like you are coming to the back door: you are presented with an imposing high wall (sometimes beautifully painted) topped with an electric fence, razor wire, or both, and set into which is a steel or wrought-iron pedestrian door and garage door. These are electronically-controlled by intercoms or key-fobs, and although there is no sense of urgency, our hosts told us that when you are arriving or leaving home is the time they keep the greatest vigilance, as anyone wanting to break in would do so opportunistically then.

It is only behind these walls that you find the home - not just straight into the building, but the garden and car port, maybe a swimming pool and trees, with the house set back maybe ten or twenty metres. In Brazil, it sometimes really does feel like your home is a castle.

There are a couple of variations on this theme. Very popular among those who can afford it are the condomínio - kind of gated communities that are springing up in the countryside near just about every city. These are not all for the super-rich by any means, and indeed some of the high-rise buildings in the cities themselves are much more luxurious. But for those who want to escape the feeling of security and the busyness of city life, they provide a kind of Brazilian suburbia. There is still security - car registration cameras, entry by appointment or code only, barriers, and armed guards on patrol in some - but once you are inside, the feeling is much more familiar to Brits like us: houses with front gardens and driveways, often without fences or hedges, let alone walls. Lawns and flowerbeds. Then the houses (which come in all shapes and sizes) and gardens (with the ubiquitous barbeque facilities) wrapping around the sides and backs. And usually a swimming pool.

Then there are the traditional towns, like Pirenópolis, about half-way between Brasilia and Goiânia. One of the oldest towns of this region of Brazil, it feels like stepping into a Brazilian take on Portugal. Cobbled streets, smaller, more open-feeling cottage-like homes, with windows as well as doors onto the streets. Sometimes open passageways leading into courtyards from which multiple residences can be accessed. White plastered adobe walls, and bright terracotta roof tiles provide the dominant colours of the buildings, along with some beautiful old churches, which when we were there were crowded to standing-room only, with stalls of food and drink waiting outside for the congregation to use to supplement their spiritual feeding with more temporal fare.

Pirenópolis is primarily a holiday destination these days, either for weekenders who have property here and in the city, or those who come for longer breaks in the hotels and holiday cottages. Accordingly, most of the employment here is hospitality and gift shops, although of course there are support also the services such as education, health, and supermarkets. In that way it is naturally rather like any holiday town you might come across in the UK, and really it’s not the cobbles, the building materials, or even the language that reinforces to me that I’m not in Europe any more. It’s the nature.

One of the first things that struck me on our car-ride to Pirenópolis was seeing different trees whenever I looked out of the window. Palm trees abound, of course, but were used to seeing them on TV. It’s the other trees: the flowering trees, the mango trees, the pequi trees (a curious savoury fruit with a spiky stone that needs to be eaten quite carefully, but goes really well with chicken and rice) any many others I don’t know the names of. Different leaves, different patterns of branches, different shades of green, different barks, and different overall shapes. Even if you don’t know the names of our native trees, your eye is used to seeing what it knows; these trees are a constant reminder that you are in a very different biome.

As well as the different flora, there are different fauna too. When I lived in Richmond there were green parakeets living wild in Richmond park, so we got used to seeing them, but here there are a great variety of birds I don’t know. The song birds and insect eaters are all subtly different, even when of the same broad species: different colours and sizes from what we’re used to. At one point we saw large birds wheeling overhead, and I immediately thought “buzzards” but then took in the larger, boxier wings and spread out end feathers like fingers, and the light patches near the ends of the wings. Our friend looked and said “oh, they’re vultures,” like it was a normal thing to see them - which of course it is, here. I didn't manage a photo of them, but below are some other local nature pics.

We still haven’t seen any monkeys, but here’s hoping!