Campos do Jordão part II- Nice carrinho

Our stay in Campos happened to align with a classic car convention. We decided to walk around and check out the cars and wow!  What a variety of classic and expensive cars!

Bonus blog points to anyone who can tell me what this rooster logo is?  I don't have a clue but it sure looked impressive.

Actually while rolling around Campos we turned quite a few heads ourselves. Some people would whisper and point.  A few people were brave enough to speak up and comment on our nice ride:

The Double Stroller

Since anything that is imported into Brazil faces heavy tariffs this baby would cost a fortune...if you could find one. It must be a pretty novel to people here since we get comments about it constantly. 

With the fancy cars, the boots, and the furs this excursion made us start to realize that there is quite a large population of wealthy people here ... The difference that really affects the economy here is that there isn't a strong middle class. In other words, there are a lot of very wealthy families but a huge impoverished population without much in between.  

More comments on this in the next "A Vida" installment.... "New York is cheap!"

Welcome to Braswitzerland?! Part I

After our beach trip gave us a taste of life outside the city of São Paulo, we were excited for our next trip.  A trip to Campos do Jordão!

 The Welcome Sign

After 4 hours and 120 miles in the car we arrived at Brazil's "Little Switzerland".   If the Swiss/German architecture in Brazil delightfully confused us,  seeing tropical flowers and trees "up in the mountains" made us feel like we had entered "The Twilight Zone".

In addition to the architecture there were plenty of Swiss/German restaurants.....not to mention the chocolate.....

Having just finished 6 months of winter in Chicago (it snowed the day we left - April 14th) it is almost comical for us to hear the Brazilians talk about the "cold".  Since Campos do Jordão is at elevation (move over Denver, it is at 5,378 feet) the cold is one of the first things they talk about.  Being a mile up in the tropics means that it averages highs of 75 degrees and lows of 55 degrees Fahrenheit.  So what do Brazilians do when they go to Campos?  ...they show up in their sweaters, furs, and boots (no joke!).  

............stay tuned for Braswitzerland Part II "Nice Carr...inho!"

The Beach!

The Beach

After being here for about 10 days we felt we had gotten a good dose of the megacity we call São Paulo (city details to follow in future blog posts).  We decided it was time to head to the beach!  São Paulo is less than 90 miles from several beaches so we used Wendy’s co-workers as our travel agents to help determine where to go and where to stay.  We had heard Friday evening traffic can be the worst we tried to head out by about 3pm.  Due to a bit of city traffic and some smaller roads we arrived to our hotel in about 3 hours (which was to be expected).  

Once we got out of the city we were amazed by the beautiful tropical mountains and the coastline. Wendy said several times she felt like she was home in Hawaii....

.... and the girls had a lot of fun playing in the sand.

Since we had heard so much safety I had been concerned for months that  my "shark bait" complexion and non-Brazilian clothing might make stand out as a potential target on a beach.  After coming to Brazil I've seen there is actually a pretty diverse group of ethnicities and skin tones, so appearance wise a lot of it comes down to my attire (as long as I don't open my mouth)!

However, since I feel a bit more modest since my water polo days I was feeling quite shy to try out a brazilian swim suit (or sunga) like this “birds of paradise” print I saw at the nearby mall.

Luckily we went to a beach with several surfers and my surf trunks (or “Bermudas”) fit in with them just fine!  The waves were too rough for the girls, but the water was really warm.

   All in all... Lily and I agree...After a long Chicago winter It's nice to be in Brazil... chillin' together at the beach!

STORAGE. Getting ready to go...

With our temporary move to Brazil we needed to figure out what to do with all of our stuff.  After researching a couple of options we decided to use PODS Containers … this way we load our stuff up once …and unload it once (i.e. we when we get back from Brazil).  The containers even stored in a temperature controlled warehouse (something that is definitely on our minds after the Polar Vortex winter this year).

The PODS representative recommended 3 containers so I ordered 3 for deliver on 3 consecutive days… 

But then I just happened to call James Keller for help.  I didn’t know James too well, but I did think that since he’s single he might have a bit more free time to help,  and he would likely respond well to free food :)  

Little did I know that James is also a Tetris Champion…. or whatever you call the Tetris equivalent for packing!  He just kept going and going with our furniture and our boxes - finding space for way more things than I expected!  By the end of the night that container was packed to the brim, and it looked like I’d be able to get away with a total of 2 pods containers.

The problem was that on Friday when we went to pack the 2nd PODS container, James wasn’t there…. and all the furniture great for stacking to the ceiling of the container was used up! (not to mention we had lots of odds and ends that still needed to be packed).  With the deadline of our tenants moving in the next day  it didn’t seem like we had enough time let alone enough room to deal with the odds and ends we had left.   I had enlisted the help of Ricardo and Craig but we still just had too much to do.  It was a tender mercy that  Dan Oscarson showed up to help and with a lot of effort we did it!  We crammed almost everything else into the second container.  

 ..... 

One month later I headed over to the PODS warehouse to deposit a few last items (I assured Wendy that we did not need to rent a separate storage unit for a vacuum and a few boxes).  After locating my two containers I grabbed my keys to unlock the first padlock and roll open the door… The. door. wouldn’t. budge.   Well that’s ok I’ve got two containers - I’ll just find space in the other one.  NOPE.  That door wouldn’t roll open either.  Hmm.. maybe I just need to put my back into it.  After 20 minutes I finally forced the door open on the 2nd container.  For the first container I decided I needed more people so I went to find two PODS employees.   Three men, a fork lift, and a slightly damaged box spring mattress later - we got it open!  Somehow I added the additional items and forced the doors closed again.

Both employees commented that they seen people pack a lot into PODS containers, but they had NEVER seen containers this full!