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| Macaé to Buzios | |||||||||||||||||||
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7th Jun (Fri): Waking to the sound of surf (just like Semaphore) I wished Paul a good day at work (chuckle) then set about checking out Macaé by walking to the centre. Because foreign companies were permitted to operate in Brasil a few years ago, this centre of petroleum has taken another huge step since the national oil company Petrobras changed it´s identity from a small fishing village in the 1970s. It is now far bigger than Buzios. First world boutique manchester shops and big supermarkets which line the main streets take more than one or two houses to degenerate into the ill-kept slummy houses of the 3rd world. As Paul says, everyone in Macaé knows someone clost to them in the petroleum industry. Paul also made the insightful comment that most Brasilians just don´t think of the consequences of their actions, be it driving, spending money or building roads. Rather they live in the present. Macaé has two suburbs basically reseved for housing the expatriots working there and one huge industrial suburb with multitudinous company compounds. They are about to start building another airport and a hospital right next to the compounds. Like in most of the rest of Brasil, even Macaé doesn´t display any sports cars and few sports motorbikes. Must be something to do with the all to prevalent cobblestone roads. Making my way through the thriving population and seeing that ´rural´ Brasilian towns are still a good place to spend some time, I tried to buy a bus ticket at the station for the afternoon bus to Buzios, but for a reason I couldn´t decipher the clerk wouldn´t sell me a ticket until the afternoon.. hmm. After a 2 hour lunch with Paul and Maureen by the beach (reminicent of the lunches I had as a Drilling Engineer) I said goodbye to the most hospitable Paul and Maureen as well as the dogs and took the bus back to Buzios.. unfortunately the bus was a regular ´all stops´ bus so I got to meet even more people while I cuddled up to my soft backpack. I had plenty of time to muse about the two statistics that Maureen pulled out: that there are 14 accidents per day on the BR101 (big highway) and that the equivalent of AUD$5000 per person in Brazil (140m) per year is lost to corruption.. Thats more than the minimum wage. A quiet night followed as I was sucked into playing chess again with the old boys at the al fresco Pizaria.
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| Name: | Craig | ||||||||||||||||||
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