2008 Brazil – Vinhedo
19th January 2008
We left Paraty for the six-hour coach journey to Sao Paolo. Again, it was a luxury coach driving along a beautiful coastline, but there were hundreds of speed bumps, so by the time we arrived at our destination, my neck was quite sore. Sao Paolo coach station was enormous, with hundreds of platforms which was not surprising considering that Brazil had very little in the way of a rail network. We changed coaches for the two-hour journey to a small town called Vinhedo where Federika´s friend Wata lives. The journey should have taken 40 minutes but it took an hour just to get out of the terrible Sao Paolo traffic.
Wata and her husband Thomas were waiting for us at the coach station and there was great excitement when they saw us get off the bus. Federika and Wata went to school together and had known each other since they were seven years old. They lost touch for decades but found each other again through the internet. We were taken to their house which was large and weirdly built with so many rooms in odd corners that I frequently got lost. There was a large garden with lots of wild monkeys and a swimming pool. Thomas put some bread out for the monkeys for my benefit but they weren’t interested as there was a lot of food around for them at that time of year. One of them did eventually deign to investigate but when it saw that it was nothing more than a small crust of bread, it looked up in disgust and ran off.
In the afternoon we had a barbecue with lots of their friends but as always with barbecues, I ate too much. With a set meal on your plate, there is less potential for overindulgence as you can see how much food you have to get through. With barbecues, there is a never-ending supply so you have no idea how much you have eaten. When we are young, we get a message sent from our stomachs to our brains telling us when we have eaten enough. As we get older, it takes longer for that message to get through, so we continue to eat until long after the message is sent. The older we get, the longer the message takes to reach our stomach, so the more we eat. I don’t know if that is a scientific fact but if it isn’t, it should be and it should be called “Nemo’s Law of Eating.”
Next morning, Federika & Wata went to a shopping mall whilst Thomas and I went for a pleasant walk in the country in what looked like a cowboy ranch without horses. It started to rain heavily, so by the time we got back to the ranch bar, we were drenched. I was quite cold and as we still had an hour to kill before meeting up with Federika and Wata, I had to borrow a top that Federika had left in the car. It was several sizes too small and would have made Arnold Schwarzenegger look effeminate, but it did the trick even if I did have to endure sniggering from the waiters. 
2008 South America
