A New Year, A New Brazil

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During the course of my remarkable wholly unexpected transformation from desk job to backpacker to professional traveller, one question gets asked above all others.
“What is your favourite country?”
At first, the answer depended on wherever I had my most recent killer experience, fluxing across various contenders, the medal awarded, then retracted, then re-awarded, but later disqualified because Laos was taking steroids. Eventually, I decided the easiest response to this question would be, drum roll, Brazil.

Brazil, where the sun shines, the sea sparkles, and the beach squeaks. Brazil, where people dance in the streets, and learn to shake their booties before they learn to walk. Brazil, where they will love you, or they will hate you, but politeness can be damned to hell. Brazil, where the poor live on top of the rich, 190 million people with European, Indo-American, and African blood doing the samba through their veins. Brazil, where the gene pool runs deep, and the results, as anyone who has visited the beaches of Rio can testify, are gorgeous. Brazil, Brazil, Brazil. A nation of nuts, wrapped in a green and yellow flag with a blue soccer ball in the middle. Brazil is a country that we visit in our dreams, cresting the peaks of our sexiest, most dangerous travel desires. And yet so few people actually get on a plane and make the visit. We get caught in Mexico, ensnared in Costa Rica, seduced by the panpipes of Peru. The world’s 5th biggest country, the only Portuguese-speaking nation in South America, the mortar in the emerging BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies – it’s too hot NOT to place atop my podium of favourite countries. And the response is always the same: a knowing look, a flicker of recognition in the eyes of the inquisitor: Of course, I should have guessed that!

A few dare to follow up however, with a muted: “Why Brazil?” To which I reply:
“It’s like this. After a long winter, the first day of spring appears. The cold has dragged its heels just a month or two too long, and finally, FINALLY, the air is warm enough for guys to put on shorts for the first time, and girls can break out their thin, floral cotton dresses. You know exactly the day I’m talking about. Everyone is smiling, there’s a tingle on the skin, a twinkle in the eye. Cars drive a little slower, lips crescent into smiles, couples rediscover love, singles rediscover their dormant hormones. Now take that day, that beautiful day, and stretch it over an entire year, across an area 8,5 million square kilometres. That’s why.”

Nearly four years ago, I spent an unexpected month in the country, pattering from the magnificent Iguacu Falls in the south to the endless beaches of the north-east, hanggliding over Rio, tripping on cobblestone on the streets of Salvador. I have always hoped to return sooner than later, and with sufficient funds in my bank account, this New Year’s break I would not be denied. A new car, couch, and iPod can wait. They’re not going anywhere. I, on the other hand, am heading to Brazil.

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