Rio de Janeiro's Bondinho

Here are some snippets on a crazy tram ride in Rio.

Chasing Teixeira in Salavador, Bahia

In preparation for a recent trip to Brazil, I had been reading works by Jorge Amado - one of Brazil's most beloved writers. When I reached the city of Salvador I discovered that the original Portuguese editions of his books, unlike the English versions, included illustrations rendered by artists known well in Brazil, like Carybé, Floriano Teixeira and others.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find a sketch that Teixeira did for Amado's brother's book called Chamado do Mar (roughly translated - calling from the sea) in an art gallery. The sketch had this little girl trying to catch a crab by the beach, all in black and white, about the size of a 8.5 x 11 inch page. It was so cool looking - I just wanted to buy it right there!! Asking price R$2500 (1470 USD at 1.7 exchange rate )... eeehhh... painfully beyond my budget... so a bit disappointed, I left the gallery telling them, I'll come back, next day or something...

I strolled over to the Salvador Tourism office at top of the Lacerda Elevator and mentioned to this guy, who had provided very helpful tips to do fun things in the city, about my experience with Teixeira sketch and he said his friend works at an art gallery in the old part of the town and might know if the price is in the right range or not. After a quick phone conversation with his friend he suggested that I go over to this art gallery run by a French woman. Trudging through tiny cobble stone streets, walking past churches with side-walks full of cafezinho vendors and Bahian women selling acaraje, when I get to this second gallery, the lady tells me she has no Teixeira but she thinks price is right. She has Carybe' for R$ 3000 and more. Thinking there was nowhere else to go with this, I just hang around in her gallery looking at other works and chit chatting until suddenly she recalls that she thinks Teixeira's grand-daughter works as a cashier at a big bookstore "Livraria Saraiva" in one of the shopping malls in the suburbs - Bara Shopping. She also suggests to check with the biggest art dealers in town - Paulo Darze'.

So I hop on to a bus, struggling with language to head in the right direction, get off too early and walk 20 blocks to get to Paulo Darze'. You walk into this gallery and you already know this is way beyond your league... Teixeira paintings start at R$10,000, the sketches start R$ 3000, no room for negotiation - take it or leave it. As you walk around admiring different works and expressing preferences, the lady prepares a personalized folder with colored print outs of all the works that you liked and you walk out with a personal portfolio of works you would like to own one day but most probably will not... she talks about different insurance options, and special FedEx delivery arrangements in New York and LA... I quickly take leave!!

I take another bus and to get to the shopping mall. The first girl behind the cash-register at the bookstore I speak with turns out to be to Teixeira's grand-daughter - Isabella, daughter of Monique - one Teixeira's seven children. Isabella is greatly baffled and in her pequeno English manages to blurt out - "Who are you?" I think she might have also meant - what are you? what is this? After a not-so-lengthy explanation she understands and very kindly agrees to talk to her mother to see if she still might have some of her father's works that she might be interested in selling to this stranger who just walked into her daughter's workplace and that too for a "reasonable price" - a tall order of things to pull off, but my accidental discovery had turned into a quest!! By the time I walk out of the shopping mall with the correct telefone celular, the sun had set and the Salvadorans were out and about in the pracas enjoying their customary chopp. I find another bus to head back to the hotel and grab some food at Acaraje da Dinha in the Rio Vermelho neighborhood along the way.

Next day I call Monique's phone but it is picked by Sylvana the other Teixeira daughter who speaks English very well. She agrees to see me two days later at her father's house - in fact in Floriano Teixeira's studio - woohooooo!!!

When I get to the studio it is absolutely amazing - even though Floriano Teixeira passsed away 9 years ago his studio has been kept by the family in more or less the same condition when he was alive - it seems like he has just stepped out for a smoke or something while a few incomplete sketches on the canvasses await their fate... After going through many of his works, now carefully preserved by Sylvana, she agrees to sell a few pieces to me. Here are pictures of two of them -

Brazil: Salvador Drum Choirs

Here is a video (about 3.5 minutes) of a band playing drums in the streets of Pelourinho, Salvador, that I stumbled on late night on Nov 20th, the day of Consciência Negra. The most famous of the drum choirs from Salvador is Olodum, who have played with Paul Simon, Michael Jackson and others.

Explorations Around Ventura, CA

At the southern most tip of Central Coast of California lies Ventura that I have had a chance to explore - from Channel Islands off the coast to trails around Ojai. Here is a collection of pictures from these explorations set to the music of the daughter-father duo of Sophie & Mike Montano.

P.S. My personal thanks to Mike & Sophie for letting me use their music and voice.

Cacti on the Beach

The trip to Central Baja was a treat - one stunning landscape after the other from jagged high mountains, parched xeriscape with million cacti stretching right up to the beaches. Beaches that ranged from sandy white to none at all right off the high cliffs.

The day to day life in small towns offered its own cornucopia of colorful buildings, dusty streets, old cars blaring promotions from large loudspeakers atop their roofs and street vendors selling weird handicrafts, multi-colored candy, trinkets and lucha libre masks.

Here is a collection of some pictures from the area around Loreto set to this song that played on a loop for hours at end every day on the hotel's TV channel making annoucement about tortilla soup making classes or everybody's favorite - margarita making classes.

Handling a Whale Calf in Baja

On a whale watching excursion in Magdalena Bay along the west coast of Baja California, I had the most exhilarating experience of touching the calf of a Gray Whale.

We headed out into the Bahia Magdalena from Port of San Carlos (about 300 miles north of Cabo) around 12:30pm on a late February Tuesday hoping to get "up close and personal" with the Pacific Gray Whales that breed in the bay and neighboring lagoons from January through March and are supposedly so abundant that you might trip over them. It was billed as a once-in-a-lifetime whale watching experience (2 to 2.5 hr trip for 1500 pesos for a party of 4 people).

We spent and an hour and half on the water and saw about ten Pacific Gray whales from afar. The small dingy boat of ours with no canopy or cover never got closer than 50 feet or so and even then we saw the whales surfacing for less than a minute to spout and then plunge back for a long dive. A pretty decent experience but nothing spectacular. We headed back little bit disappointed. The young Mexican boat skipper skimmed fast over the choppy waters as we were tossed around like bobbing corks - quiet a bone jarring experience. The sun beat down on us hard.

And then suddenly from nowhere on the starboard side a whale showed up about 200 feet away. First we saw the spout, and then a few seconds later it breached - the giant creature heaved itself up into the air and crashed into the water with a giant splash! We were so excited. I had never seen a whale breach. The skipper said, "One more" - and the whale breached again. Just incredible. The skipper turned the boat to get close to the whale. Very soon we were only 30 feet away as the whale, and then we noticed its calf, were playing on the surface of the water. And then they started getting closer to us. 20 feet. 10 feet. Right next to the boat. Under the tiny boat...

The mother and the calf then decided to just hang around and play with us. They turned and twisted around the boat, circled the boat, dove under the boat to surface on the other side. One time the mother went under the boat and the calf dove over her but still under the boat and came so close to the boat that I was able to touch the back of the calf - it was smooth like a baby's bottom, very soft like I was digging my hands through butter but the skin was very tight and shiny black with no barnacles... that was once-in-a-lifetime experience!!!

We got drenched in the spouts from the blowholes of the mother and the calf a few times. They must have swam and played with us for about 15 minutes when the skipper said we had to leave. As he started the engine and maneuvered the boat back towards the land the mother whale started following us. We stopped the boat 50 or so feet away and both the whales came over and continued with their horsing around. Some on the boat worried about capsizing but nothing of the sort happened. And then the whales were joined by sea lions who showed up just like that from nowhere. They jumped out into the air and dove ahead of and around the whales... It was a scene to behold - the joyous wildlife of Baja waters dancing around our boat. We were of course ecstatic. Absolutely Amazing!

P.S. All the pictures above and a short video below (shot with a digital camera) are gifts of friends on the boat. I was too busy jumping up and down to take any pics!

Below is the 25 second video of the bone crunching high speed boat ride where we had to hold on to whatever we could grab on (the sides, under the seat) and make sure we didn't go overboard. This part of the excursion was literally painful, leaving body aches in its wake for days to come.