SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – I spent the morning exploring São Paulo on foot, and then made a pilgrimage to Vila Medeiros, a working class neighborhood in São Paulo that was about an hour’s drive from our hotel, to visit Mocotó, a restaurant and bar specializing in food from the far north east of Brazil, and Cachaça, the potent Brazilian sugarcane drink. Here’s a review – be sure to read all six pages: Mocotó The only English-speaker is the chef, Rodrigo Oliveira, a charismatic young man who is viewed as one of the most creative rising chefs in the country. He ended up joining me for lunch and providing a large sampling of items on the menu. Rodrigo is doing serious research on indigenous ingredients. Here he is showing me his collection of beans:
Rodrigo
PARATY, BRASIL – This is our last morning in Paraty – in the afternoon we drove back to São Paulo – a five hour trip with Father’s Day traffic. That’s right, Father’s Day traffic. August 8 is Father’s Day in Brazil, and they take it seriously. This is reason enough to immigrate to Brazil. I’ve been trying to convince our children that Father’s Day is the most important calendar of the year, but I don’t think that they believe me.
Anyway, the image for the day. The weather was fine (the first bright clear morning) so I shot Portuguese colonial buildings, including this gem: Paraty
Leica M9 with 24mm Summilux lens. Two frames stitched.
PARATY, BRAZIL – Friday afternoon and evening were packed with FLIP events. We gave ourselves a break on Saturday, spending the day on a friend’s boat out in the Paraty archipelago. A day on a boat
PARATY, BRAZIL – Well here we are in the early AM at the Companhia party – still on our feet dancing. When I woke up much later in the day (needless to say I missed the morning light) I truly regretted the last Caipirinha. Here’s a link the Wikipedia entry on Caipirinha, which includes a recipe :Caipirinha Anyway here’s a shot from the party:
Party
PARATY, BRAZIL – We’re in Paraty to attend the most important annual literary festival in Brazil: FLIP. The real reason we’re here is to catch up with our old friend Luiz and Lili Schwarcz – Luiz heads Companhia das Letras, a prominent Brazilian publishing house. Here’s a link to Companhia’s blog, which has a piece on the first FLIP (in Portuguese, but you can use one of the “translate this page” services if your Portuguese is rusty): Companhia das Letras blog. Luiz launched the first four titles in a Companhia – Penguin joint venture today – here is Salman Rushdie and his son at the launch event.
Salman
PORTO SEGURO, BRAZIL – A travel day from Porto Seguro to Paraty via Sao Paulo. This from the Porto Seguro airport. I’m shooting with the 35mm Summicron pre-Asph. version IV lens, the “bokeh king”, which is noted for the quality of the out of focus portions of the image.
Porto Seguro Airport
Leica M9 with 35mm Summicron pre-Asph. version IV lens.
TRANCOSO, BAHIA – After a day on the beach we spent the evening in town, a colonial village. The colorfully painted small houses around the long central quadrangle remind me of Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard, but they’ve mostly been turned into fully-priced boutiques. The town is nearly empty – vacationing Brazilians left the previous Sunday because it was the end of a school vacation – but we imagine that it would be much less charming when overrun with vacationers.
I had difficulty choosing an image – several were of interest. I chose this rather non-typcial view:
