South of the Equator 2012: Jean Sizes

Impossible Jean Sizes (by Chris Haines)

At Espresso we renewed our acquaintance with our new best bosom-buddies, the waiters. As it was raining most heavily we sat inside this time, and got a somewhat different impression of the place - it was even better. As usual there was plenty of attractive scenery - no zips this time, but a series of spray-on jeans in impossible sizes.....24 waist, 34 legs....... they can only be made in Brazil. I won't bore you with a description of the endless procession of pulchritude that entered the place, but it was major distraction from beer drinking. The band were the same crew who played last Saturday, called Codigo Cinco, and they were again superb.

At one point one of them played a 10 string guitar (five pairs with open tuning), and they had the tambourine miked up. Anyone who thinks a tambourine is girly should have seen this guy play it... anyway they worked through a collection of Brazilian rock and forro music with the odd Bob Marley tune thrown in, with the whole place dancing away to it. We enjoyed it so much it was 3 am before we knew it.

On Sunday we wandered down to the Columbia Burger Bar for a late lunch of 'proper' burgers, chips & onion rings before another siesta...... this could be habit-forming. Then I read the Sunday paper - thanks to my Kindle I could download the Independent. Cool.

Sorocaba

The climate………

It is a little known fact that Sorocaba is 653m above sea level.....this is enough to make the atmospheric pressure (and hence oxygen content) only 93% of normal. We had thought that poor sleep and pathetic endurance walking to and from the hotel up the hills was due to post-Christmas weight gain, together with the temperatures being in the high 80’s during the day and the mid 70’s at night. We were wrong. Its not all ‘brain frying’ sunshine though, some days it rains and we have thunder and lightning although the temperature doesn’t drop much. The rain comes down in gallons and gallons and roads are instantly flooded but almost as quickly as it comes down the great cavonus storm drains along the roads swallow it up. These are the sort of drains you see in scary movies were there is something living down there just waiting to grab your ankles as you walk past.

South of the Equator 2012

Jean Sizes

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