I like Latin America a lot, and as you may already have figured out from my first "Latin Experience report", I am getting a good dose on this trip.
Today there was another highlight: driving a car through the rush hour in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Since Fernanda did not feel like driving today, she let me drive her car — the same one in which she took Ken Coar through Sao Paulo.
The Background
We had to go to an industrial park in the North of Porto Alegre to a cooperative that produces clothes and also does printing. Fernanda is having them make the new set of FSF Latin America t-shirts for Recife, and I am experimenting with some Fellowship bermuda shorts.
As this cooperative did not have the capacity to also do sleeveless Fellowship shirts, though, we had to take the printouts of the motives downtown to a place we found yesterday. So it was drive from her aunts place (where the internet is) to the cooperative, to downtown Porto Alegre, and then back to the internet.
The Experience
Today is a hot day in Porto Alegre. Everyone is sweating quite a bit. And Fernandas car does not have air conditioning. But that is okay, because it also has almost no suspension left. In fact: It is a small, white Ford, produced in Spain, that definitely has seen better days. That very much includes the stickshift. The clutch is almost all the way down, and the handling is very wobbly.
Imagine a street crowded with large, loud buses that have obviously seen encounters with other drivers, lots of small motorcycle couriers, and a wide variety of cars, including several models that you haven’t seen in Europe for 20 years.
Movement of all these components is somewhat erratic, and only sometimes accompanies by signalling, unless you count the honking. And street markers are not something that people take very seriously. Who would have thought: Brazilians drive as they live.
So the closest approximation to the experience is probably a gigantic auto-scooter in the desert in which you have buses, motorcycles and pedestrians and the major difference that you try to avoid hitting people.
In short: I loved it.
I think I got the hang of driving in Brazil pretty quickly: You have to be much more attentive and pay a lot of attention to the condition of the road, but as a motorcycle driver, I am used to that.
And it seems that Fernanda agreed with this, because on the way back she told me that I drive like a Brazilian. I hope she meant it as a compliment. 😉
And now I am definitely going into the pool.
