I put up a few new mixed photos of Brazil and Colombia. Come and see for yourself at:

http://s200.photobucket.com/albums/aa10/gusinchile/

Pirenopolis was fun. the crazy guys i was staying with took me all around in their 1970 volkswagon beetle, whose only mode of ignition was pushing, as its key had been lost of broken years before and its hot-wire cables relied on a battery that really didn't have the umph. nonetheless, once started, the car went anywhere. they took me to a swimming spot that required driving on roads through hills in the wilderness that didn't look fit for anything but a horse; yet that car only required our getting out and pushing once. I had the honor of driving it around at night on the colonial-era stone roads while its owner laughed and yelled 'é um tank de guerra, velho! te falei!'
today Mare and i met up with her friend who took us through a favela. she works as a nurse in a small hospital there and knows people inside, so we were ok to go in. i guess it was about what i expected of a brazilian favela. i got my hair cut there. afterwords they took me to meet Mare's great-grandmother who will complete 100 years in June. she was one of the coolest people i've met. she was much more awake and sharp than a lot of young people i know, telling stories, asking after members of her family, and telling me about her past. she came over from italy when she was 16 to work on a farm, got married at 17 and had her first baby when she was 18. On this trip I've gotten to meet a lot of interesting people inhabiting very different realities.
I went with Mare to her church last night... not catholic, however. I guess there's a large evangelical population here, despite brazil being the largest catholic country in the world. it was a new experience for me. the women and men enter at different doors and sit on different sides of the church, and the women must wear white veils on their heads. in the front, some men bring in instruments to play along with the hymns... i hate to be a music snob, but it was pretty out of hand. sometimes you cold pick up a melody. the service had a pretty tight program to stick to, but the parts were very interesting to see. one part, in which everyone was to pray aloud for about 15 minutes, was dominated by this guy sitting infront of me who started shouting praise to the lord and kept going for a much longer time than i thought possible, considering that it seemed like improv. finally old ladies started to stand up to see who it was. when he finally made a pause everyone shouted amen at once and the minister quickly continued to the next part of the program which was a finger-wagging/waving/pointing preacher. and the end the orchestra, comprised of a few saxophones, violins, valve trombone, and euphonium got another chance to play through all their rests.
são paulo is the largest of any city i've ever been to. one drives for miles and is still in the middle of skyscrapers as far as the eye can see. if i'm not mistaken, it's the third largest city in the americas behind mexico's federal district and new york city. I'm glad that I came back here, because there's a lot of culture to see, and Mare's family and friends are super nice.

I left Brasilia and arrived here in Pirenópolis after a 3 hour bus ride. I sort of wished the ride was longer because i was enjoying the landscape. It's a pretty little town built in the 1700's (by lots of poorly-treated slaves) during a gold rush here in the state of Goiás. Despite having spent a month in Brazil, I've only been in large cities, so it's nice to have a few rural days before going back to São Paulo. At my hostel the lady tried to get me to take a private room instead of the comunal one. I was looking forward to meeting some other people (and saving some $) so i turned her down... only to realize that I was the only one at the hostel, so it really made no difference. Fortunately she has two crazy sons who i've been hanging out with. There's hardly any tourists here right now because of a yellow fever outbreak in the area that's been all over the news in recent weeks. Not too many people have died, but it's enough to scare away lots of people. I've had my vaccination, so I'm not at risk... and malaria is only up north in the amazon region.
Brazilians love waterfalls... well, who doesn't like waterfalls, really? but no, they're all about waterfalls here. Any place you go to, they want you to see waterfalls. all the turist places all filthy with posters of waterfalls. the first thing they tell you about is their abundancy of waterfalls (after asking you if you've been vaccinated for yellow fever). i guess i'll take a hike later and see a few.

Said goodbye to chelsea yesterday at the bus terminal in são paulo. shes going to the northeast, so it wasn't really worth my while to go back to rio for two days. the bus took a full three hours to finally get onto the highway out of sao paulo. i guess that's to be expected in the third largest metropolitan region in the americas at rush hour. all told it took about 16 hours to get the the terminal in brasilia. despite the crying baby, foul bathroom an lack of air conditioning, the trip really wasn't that bad. i had a good book and even slept some. luiza said that the family car was occupied, so i' have to take a taxi to her house. i tried asking the smelly, but seemingly friendly old man next to me how much a taxi should cost to luiza's neighborhood, but we could barely understand eachother and gave up. i'm always wary of taxi drivers, so when i finally got to brasilia i asked a guy in the terminal if there was a bus that woul take me where i needed to go. it turned out he was a classical guitarist picking up a peruvian pianist an they were going to the same part of the city as i, so they offered to take me. his car had taken a beating- according to him it was the result of some sort of jealous girlfriend sitatuation. i was thankful for the ride, so i didn't mind brushing some broken glass off the seat. on the way we stopped at his work to pick something up, and he took me inside to meet his co workers. i guess he does autopsies for the police or something because there were a couple pretty grisley looking corpses laying around on operating beds inside that showed signs of untimely death... kind of startling early in the morning, but, once again, i was thankful for the ride.
luiza and her distractlingly beautiful friend showed me around brasilia today. it's one of the wildest looking cities i've seen. i guess back in the 50's they planned the whole thing out an just constructed it in the center of the country where there was nothing but wilderness. i'd seen pictures of some of the architecture before, but seeing it in person is really impressive. it's like a 50's idealised futuristic city in marble... but outside of the center it's just apartment buildings on roads with letters and numbers instead of names.
in a few days we'll go to ouro preto to celebrate carnaval. supposedly it's one of the best carnivals in brazil. the city looks pretty cool in photos... colonial and everything.
são paulo was really fun. chelsea's friends are complete badasses. the dialect down there was really clear. i had no problem conversing. here, however, it's back to not being able to unerstand a damn thing anyone's saying. it's frusterating, but i guess this is how one learns languages...
florianopolis was incredible as well. we met up with some locals and had wild times.
hope all is well in the US. i've barely gotten homesick my whole time away, but there's times when it sinks in... like last night the bus stopped at a rest area and while i was walking around i had a lonley moment when i considered that i was alone at 4 in the morning somewhere in the interior of brazil... but generally my time on the roa in south america has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. i've found myself in countless amazing situations... lamentably, they don't en up on the blog, but rest assured that they're happening.