Peru: The other side of Lake Titicaca and climbing around Arequipa!

We were waiting around in Puno, near the Bolivian-Peru border for Roman to arrive. Roman was meant to show up around 1pm but he didn’t. And then he didn’t show up at 3pm, or 4pm or even 5pm. My imagination was doing what is does best and coming up with all the worst reason for him not arriving and Juanita was telling me, of course, that he wasn’t dead on the side of some dodgy Peruvian highway. Finally at about 7 we arrived back at the hostel and there he was, very undead yet exhausted from buses breaking down and thus 27 hours of travel. 

Roman and Juanita and I then explored Puno for all it’s worth (which was not much). Puno’s claim to fame is that it is the gateway to Lake Titicaca which is all very well but Juanita and I had spent a great time on the Lake on the Bolivian side and thus the cheap side. Yet Roman’s American passport required him to pay a nice $135 to enter Bolivia so we figured we would make do with the Peruvian side. So we went to the dock and found a day trip on a boat, first to the floating islands of Uros and then the non-floating island of Taquile. The floating islands of Uros were basically man made piles of reeds upon reeds that people lived on and went to school on and interested tourists on. About five to ten families live on each island and there’s many of them, and every few months they need to put more reeds on top of their island (and raise their reed houses I presume) because the reeds on the bottom of the island rot in the water. The Totora reeds that these islands are made on are also used for all sorts of things in their culture, for sicknesses, as well as cooling agents, for bartering, for making touristy crafts, and to make their boats. 

Anyway it was a short but cool little visit and walking on these islands is like walking on a trampoline, every step is a bounce. We said no to the millions of touristy things and upset the people and got back on the boat to go to the real island. Well it was a long boat ride through very pretty blue water and we got to the island which was also very pretty but after spending a little while on Isla de sol in Bolivia I was kind of spoiled for pretty islands. Then we had a little swim and our avocado banana sandwiches and it was time for our LONG boat ride back. Well, Juanita was not feeling very well and Roman was struggling with altitude sickness and the boat ride was just soooo long and the sun was going down (in a spectacular way) and then, we got stuck in the reeds. Not any reeds of course, the living breathing Totora reeds. And the men on the boat had long sticks and spent about an hour pushing and heaving and and pulling and panting and in all of this some of the local people and just grabbed the reeds and started eating them. This old woman with wrinkles upon her face, and I mean wrinkles upon wrinkles looked up at Juanita and I from her tiny height and then grabbed a reed and chomped on it. We declined the dare I imagined she had in her beady eyes and watched the men heave and roman got manly and helped them heave while I take more sunset photographs. Well we were finally free and it was exciting as I had never been shipwrecked before and we returned to our hostel and the next day on to Arequipa! 

Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru and we had heard it was cool and it WAS cool with a beautiful plaza and glacial mountains in the distance. Turns out, as usual, hiking those mountains requires a guide and horrible amount of money so after searching the world for nice things to do I read a blog of a guy who said “I went to the climbing gym and the guys there invited me to go climbing the next day…” and I said “ok guys, get your climbing shoes out, we are going to the climbing gym” and so we headed across town at about dusk to this very closed looking big wooden door and after knocking and then finding a little bell a guy came out and showed us to his climbing wall which he had literally set up with a slackline In his garden. And yes he said he’ll ask his guys if they will take us climbing the next day and they said yes as it was Saturday.

So we woke up early the next day and found the dudes with the didgeridoo and we took some local transport high up on the sides of the city and walked across some arid land full of cactuses and dust and down into a little canyon with a dry river at the bottom and some wonderful big rocks. Well the climbing was weird yet awesome and they shared their gear and their music. Otherwise there was Lithuanian girl there who claimed to not be a climber yet climbed a route that I found incredibly difficult and couldn’t do very well and told me when I was having difficulty that I shouldn’t find it difficult as I was taller and thus it was easier for me. Not great encouragement but I comforted myself by insulting her clothing style in my head (which was incredibly terrible, even I could not fathom putting all those dumpy colours together). Nonetheless, it was a great day in a strange canyon, the guys were fun and we were so excited to get some dirt on our climbing shoes. 

They invited us the next day for a little braai, climbing and slacklining fun which sounded cool and kind of was cool as it was next to a pretty river. Yet it was bouldering and for those of you who don’t know, bouldering is when you climb short climbs without ropes and just use a crash pad. It wasn’t fun as the routes were too hard for me and the rest of the day was kind of weird for all of us as everyone just spoke Spanish to each other and we really felt like outsiders. We went for a quick silly skinny dip in the river though which cheered up our spirits (and maybe excited some Peruvians down the river that I think caught a glimpse of something.) 

Anyway it was officially time to go as we had a bus to catch that evening for Cusco as we had decided it was time to do that thing that everyone is supposed to do in Peru, that is Machu Pichu, and thus, with a few hugs and kisses for our nice climbing friends, we followed a goatman and his goats back to the little town, found a taxi in the sunset and continued upon our way.

Bolivia Part 2: La Paz, Livin' la vida loca in Cocacabana and the Island of the Sun

The journey from Santa Cruz to La Paz was LONG and painful. My sickness was growing in the heat and the 3 hour bus journey immediately followed by a 20 hour bus journey to La Paz did not help in the slightest and it was one of the longest and most uncomfortable journeys. After we fell asleep on the Santa Cruz side of Bolivia watching all the tropical trees we woke up in desert. Strange half-finished buildings lined the road for the last few hours it took to enter La Paz, just millions of arid land and broken bits and traditional woman and men wrapped in colourful cloth lay to the sides of us, the woman nine times out of ten with a baby wrapped around her back. 

And then the bus started to descend into the weirdest looking city I’ve ever seen. It reminded me of what I thought Tashban would look like in the Narnia books, dusty buildings built upon dusty buildings in this humongous valley, terraces and terraces and more half-finished buildings and people and many colour of brown. The clothes of the people had changed from tropical wear to winter clothes and the sky was overcast. 

So La Paz is the centre for tourists to buy stuff because it is colourful, plentiful and very economical! I had no previous intention of buying anything yet I walked away with some colourful shoes, a wallet, a lama jersey, a moonbag and pants for roman. After sleeping most of the day away, I felt well enough to walk around and Juanita and I ate some Mexican food and found some Amazonian Peruvians playing traditional music with a pan flute and the Charango which is a ukulele-mandolin like instrument and we smiled and enjoyed their music and they tried to feed us incredibley strong white alcohol which we declined. And when one of them decided they wanted to take Juanita away with them (perhaps to the amazon) we decided it was time to leave our music playing quartet. 

We bought our bus tickets the following day for Cocacabana (The Bolivan one, not the Brazilian one, on the shores of Lake Titicaca) and on Roman’s recommendation we decided to see if we could check out the La Paz prison. Apparently this prison is unique in that it is self-governed in that people are allowed to have their families in there and it’s almost like a small village within itself. Well, I looked it up online and read someone’s blog who went there and at the end of the post he wrote “A few months after we went, a few tourists tried to go in and were caught by the police and deported from the country and fined heavily.” Apparently some guy wrote a book about it and now everyone wants to see it and thus they are not too happy about letting tourists in for an illegal tour. Well regardless we figured we should check it out so check it out we did. We looked inside the courtyard to see tons of people milling around and a strict looking policemen outside and when we went to the entrance we were told to go away. So we got the hint and decided not to be deported and thus we took a few sneaky pictures of not much and went away. Exciting nonetheless. 

Our next bus took us 4 hours to Cocacabana and there it was- Lake Titicaca! The highest navigable lake in the world which I think means people need boats to get across.  It was big and blue and beautiful and Cocacabana was doing a very good job of acting like a small beach resort with no actual beach to lie on yet we took a little duck peddle boat on the water, reaffirmed that peddle boats are the WORST (regardless of how cool they look in 10 things I Hate About You, yet if there’s no Heath Ledger to have romantic paintball with then it’s just not the same) and we settled down on the shore for a juice. I was wearing my shirt that says “I (picture of moustache) you a question and a man called out “I must ask you a question. Haha very good” and that was the beginning of a relationship that went well into our journey. We were introduced to Magnus and Anna from England and, believe it or not, Tucker Cashdoller from Tennessee. They liked to drink a lot of beer and say a lot of ridiculous things and laugh a lot and we joined in on the laughter and later went to dinner all together and we got convinced to drink wine (although still sick from extreme altitude) and although my body told me half a bottle of wine was not going to help me, amazingly Juanita and I both woke up feeling like heroes the next day and so climbed a mountain with our ukuleles and diaries, taking headstand pictures and burning what we wrote because it was that kind of day and we were on top of the world. 

We woke up early the following day ready for our walk to Isla de Sol which is the pretty Island of the Sun with Inca ruins. The supposed 23 km walk only took us about 4 hours and near the end we met a man who tried to offer us a ride in his boat to look at some other Inca ruins on the way and then to Isla de Sol. He then showed us his name in 3 different travel books (including the Lonely Planet) and he showed us a million postcards he had received from tourists over the years. It was a bit of a sad story really because he used to be the guy who took everyone to Isla de sol until they built the ferry at Cocacabana so people didn’t have to walk or taxi to this guy. He used to build his boat out of humongous reeds and I think we would have accepted his offer if this was the case but all he had was a motorboat and we were loving the walk. He was getting upset as we were not going to say yes and a dog stole an egg and he stopped smiling and jumped up in a rage and threw a giant log at the dog barely missing my face by a few centimeters. We decided then that this was our time to make a getaway and we said a quick "Gracias!" and walked rapidly away. But, I think when I go home I will send him a postcard just because out of all 150 postcards we looked at there was not a single one from Africa.

We reached the dock, got on the boat and 10 minutes later we arrived in Isla de sol, hiked our way around and up the mountain until we found a heavenly view for our tent and read and wrote in our diaries as the sun went down. The next day was a slow walk… the Isla de Sol is high and I mean HIGH and even if you are not altitude sick every incline feels like your chest is going to close in on you. On the way we crashed into dear Magnus and Anna again and shared a laugh and some information and continued on our way to the Inca ruins. At the Inca Ruins we got on our hands and knees and drank some special Inca healing water and Juanita made some environmental art while I knitted and we looked at the water down below, kind of wanting to swim yet also aware that every long descent is a long ascent and that is a painful proposition. Some boys came by discussing swimming and thus I was inspired and followed them down the mountain to the clean and COLD waters of the lake.  We followed the boys back to the North town where we were sleeping that night and pitched our tent on a beach full of Argentinian hippies (apparently they had been camping there, singing, juggling and drinking for a week so far) and found an awesome place for omelette and chips. We bought a bottle of wine and drank it and chatted about everything and finally went to sleep.

We woke up early, keen to hike to the other side of the island to ferry back to Cocacabana. At the ferry on the other side of the mountain we met up with our friends from the day before and Magnus and Anna who we told to come stay at our hostel as it was cheap and had wifi. And then, well, we messed around Cococabana for a few days and did, well, not much as we were waiting for Roman to meet us in Puno which was a few hours away and would officially be not Bolivia but then Peru. It was time to go and find him and we woke up early and took some local buses, the Peruvian border control stamped our passports with no hassle and we made our way to the other side of lake Titicaca in Puno, followed Magnus and Anna to their hostel, went for breakfast and waited for Roman.

Bolivia part 1- Santa Cruz & "Playing" with Hippies in the mountains of Samaipata

An expensive overnight bus ride and an overpriced taxi brought Juanita and I to the Bolivian border. After waiting an hour and a half for the border to open at 8am, we exited Brazil and walked to Bolivia. The man looked at Juanita’s pretty New Zealandish passport and smiled and handed it back to her and then he looked at mine, tutted a bit, and then brought me a slip in Spanish which told me the things I needed: A yellow fever vaccination, an exit ticket out of the country and a bunch of money I had to give to them. 

Trying to hold back my rage at the unfairness of it all (I knew Bolivia was a tad visa unfree for me but the internet told me I had to give them a bunch of money and then it was smooth sailing. Money I had (although always ill-parted with) but the other two were harder to find. We took the expensive taxi back into Brazil and the vaccination place and were told vaccinations were only at 1pm. So after some internetting and food, with nothing better to do we waited at the vaccination place for 3 hours until it opened. Luckily this got me number 1 in the queue of about 100 people (SCORE!). The vaccine lady shouted a bit at people in Portuguese and then made me fill out a form, jabbed my arm, didn’t give me any kind of sweet for my pains, didn’t ask me to pay anything and the whole process took about a minute and a half! YAY. Luckily my bus ticket I found online to get me out of Bolivia was accepted and Juanita and I were soon waiting for the Death Train which was to take us 15 hours to Santa Cruz. 

It arrived happily on time and soon we realized that it was aptly named as it rocked on the tracks, side to side all night, and at times I was sure at some point it would just tip over. Apparently it was named the Death Train as it used to carry yellow fever victims, though Juanita was sure it was because of stowaways who couldn’t hold on to the top of the train and would tip off because of all the mad rocking.

Death train or no, we arrived in Santa Cruz tired but not dead and made our way to our Couchsurfing hosts house. He was no English speaker and somehow I had organized everything online in Spanish and after some serious phone confusion we found his street but not his house. His house number was 256 and we found 254 and 258 but 256 was missing from the earth. A run back into the town and a phone call later we found out that in South America, numbers are not logical and if you cannot find it in its order, it will be later down the street. Of course. We entered his house to find a family, our host Ronnie, his sister, his sister’s baby one year old twins, his mother with a hole in her throat (presumably from throat cancer), his brother and his friend from Spain. Luckily friend from Spain could speak English and we got through the day with Juanita’s funny Portuguese and my failing Span-talian. After a nap that took us to an Irish pub (why eat Bolivian food in Bolivia?) we met our couchsurfer we were going to stay with the following night and ended up at a live Reggae show where we met some incredibly pushy Amazonian Peruvians and our couchsurfing host bought us an unnecessary amount of wine.

Our new Couchsurfing host was a very short and beautiful girl named Liz with long dark hair and a gorgeous face and for some reason Ronnie (who was a very big guy) decided to warn us against her and say we shouldn’t stay with her because apparently she wasn’t really from Samaipata (the place we were going) and he had some other problems with her which we didn’t really understand. Luckily we are not ones to be deterred and we supposed Ronnie’s real problem was that he didn’t like Liz’s hippie pants or the fact that she would rather spend her night at a reggae concert with dirty hippies than buy an expensive amount of beer in an Irish pub. 

Anyway the next day we met up with Liz and her German friend and headed forth into the wondrous mountains of Samaipata. The ground rose and the beauty continued as we wound around cliff and huge mountain, passing beautiful waterfalls and wondrous green trees. We arrived in Samaipata, went to pick up some supplies and began a pretty long and tiring ascent up a crazy dirt rode to her little house in the woods. We made supper and tried for some conversation but it seemed like the hippies of Samaipata had got too far into another dimension that it was hard to get many answers from them. When asked what she does, Liz replied “I breathe” and Kai (the German hippie) was even worse. They seemed to think all our normal questions were irrelevant and after trying to ask some “getting to know you” stuff Juanita and I fell into silence and soon made our way to bed. 

We woke up early the next morning and, wanting to go and do things and ask each other questions which would be answered we went for a walk to the village to discover what to do in this pretty mountainous town. After some not very friendly Spanish conversations we found someone who spoke English but could and would only offer us tours for the amazing price of $120 minimum. No one seemed to want to tell us what direction to walk in to simply go for a walk and we frustratedly ate breakfast and then picked a road and walked up the mountain because no one could tell us what we can or cannot do. Deciding that the next day we would rent motorbikes and go for waterfall adventures we felt better and returned to the house where we met up with Kai and Liz on the way who, when asked what they did for the day replied “we played” which was very informative. 

Later we found out they had gone for this wondrous waterfall adventure about 30 minutes away and I was more than a bit jealous and rather frustrated that they could have given us the tourist information that everyone else seemed to want to withhold from us. Oh well, we passed the rest of the day “playing” and after a nap well into the night I went downstairs to find OTHER PEOPLE! Liz’s brother and friend from Santa Cruz (who seemed a lot more able to answer questions) and an Austrian and later arrived a beautiful Colombian girl. Everyone who came seemed to smoke a lot less and was able to hold conversations and seemed to want to tell stories and such so we joked around and played Jenga and the energy of everything turned on its head.

The next day we suggested a big group waterfalling and so about 8 of us got together, took a taxi down the road to this park FULL of waterfalls! We ran around and played all day, we showed them some poi and Capoeira tricks and played hackysack and gloried in the beauty of the day. We arrived back and got a million pieces of food ready for her brother’s going away party as he was going to Germany for an internship and millions of more Bolivians showed up and played drinking games well into the night as we mad our way to bed as we were tired and I was starting to feel a bit sick. I woke up a few hours later to be moved into another bed and in the other room people were smoking and there was so much smoke, combined with my sickness I thought I was going to choke to death in my sleep. After freaking out a little I calmed myself down enough to find some sleep and luckily I woke up, coughing, but alive.  

We left the next day, maybe we would have stayed, I am unsure, yet we had only enough money which would get us back to Santa Cruz which we needed as there were no ATMs in Samaipata. Or maybe we would not have stayed. Samaipata was a very beautiful place where a lot of hippie travelers roamed the streets, people who had got stuck and there and begun to make and sell bracelets to get by. This has become a bit of a theme in certain places along the tourist track, in Peru and Bolivia and I don’t really mind what these people do if they weren’t so freaking high. Or not even that, I feel like if these people have got so far as to save money and leave their countries they could come up with something a touch more creative than selling bracelets (always the same kind of bracelets) and hair wraps. Regardless, it was beautiful and in another world I would go back there and spend more time and find all those waterfalls and wonderful hikes and maybe buy a bracelet off a hippie or two. Maybe. Though probably not.

Singing, dancing, Capoeira-ing, samba, slacklining and chillin' in Brazil!

The week in Campo Grande brought its own interesting experiences and wonderful personalities. The group Juanita and Paulie had been working with had recently moved into a house where they were allotted a bedroom which I promptly moved into. The house was named Casa Viva and housed an interesting hodge podge of people. Besides us, there was Marcus who was the most proficient English speaker in the house (though not always the best translator) Wagner of course, Elder and Maycon (we only found out Maycon’s name later, we called him Michael for the whole time we were there. Elder is a tall 46 year old of Indian decent. He has children that are almost our age and he makes boxes. Literally boxes. All day long he would sit in his studio, or dance in his studio, or sing in his studio and attempt to make boxes which he would sell to people for their weddings. He spoke English like Juanita spoke Portuguese (in a flurry of words that grammatically don’t connect but somehow create the best of stories). The music from his studio ranged from traditional Brazilian to the soundtrack of The Sound of Music and we constantly would sing “Little boxes on the Hillside” to him as we passed. 

Maycon or Michael as we called him was my age and an architect -Though I mostly just saw him sanding long wooden poles for lamps he was making. He must have been some sort of genius because I taught him ukulele one day and the next day after some focused practice he was basically better than me. Similarly when I arrived he didn’t seem to know a word of English but seemed to have a passion for it and by the end of the week we were having a 3 hour Portuguese-English conversation (with a little help from google translate). 

Every day seemed to be full of surprises at this Casa Viva. It seemed to be the only place that had some sort of WIFI and waifs and strays came in daily to use it. They all seemed to be able to play an instrument, one way or another and I spent a lot of time with my ukulele, learning songs, teaching songs and playing together with others. Ah how I wished I knew more Portuguese so I could sing their songs with them, their folk songs were just so beautiful. At Paulie and Juanita’s going away party all their friends they had met in Campo Grande, singers, musicians, artists all gathered and played music together and sang and ate delicious food. Heavenly.

Flavio continued to give us entertainment and he arrived daily to take us on some adventure or other. We went to a wonderful waterfall at sunrise (though we were so far away from the sunrise I didn’t understand that part of the mission) and he took us to an animal rehabilitation centre where we saw the CRAZIEST of animals. From Tapiers (which looked like a cross between a pig and an elephant) to giant macaws and all sorts of cats- quasimodos were running all over the place and ridiculous anteaters with the smallest frowns in the world. The best thing about Flavio is he always knows someone and he knows how to talk his way into and out of everything. Everywhere we went, I suppose, we were not REALLY supposed to be there and we jumped over fences, through secret roads because of some friend or family member he knows somewhere. Brazil is an expensive country so we were eternally grateful for the cheap entertainment and adventure he brought. 

And then finally, Capoeira.  Ever since I began Capoeira in 2006 I have dreamed of doing Capoeira in Brazil. Everyone I knew who did Capoeira was mad about Brazil, the flag was in our dreams, we drank Capirinha at parties (Cane, lime, ice and sugar- a Brazilian specialty) and sang in Portuguese. And finally it was to be a reality- that is, Capoeira in Brazil! We cycled there to the university across town that had the class. We only had two bicycles and resident WIFI-user/ musician Marcello decided to join us so I sat on his bag carrier while he meandered through the mad streets of Campo Grande. IN fact traffic is kind of chilled but bicyclists are not. I started off the journey with my bum super sore and thinking that we were to capsize any minute, into car, into curb, as he was driving up down and around and cars were chasing us left right and centre. After some very loud mental freaking out I remembered that regardless of whether we crash or not, there is no point in worrying about it as I didn’t think I was about to change Marcello’s Brazilian bicycling style. Through bumps and heart attacks we came upon the university, 30 minutes later and I heard the delicious sounds of capoeira. Ah finally! I was so excited and I had to stop myself from excitement as I was so scared it was going to end in disappointment. Disappointment I think is my worst emotion and I do everything in my power to quell it. Nonetheless, the excitement had started and there they were. Real Brazilian Capoeiristas! And after a wile of feeling shy I realized that honestly, they weren’t really much better than us in little South Africa. I played capoeira, got mad sweaty, impressed them I think considering I was a girl who could, well, at least stand on her hands for a long time and then Juanita told me to look behind me and MY WORD! The scariest animals sauntered across the courtyard unnoticed by any of our Brazilian friends. They were huge rats the size of pigs, wet from hanging out in the swamp and my first Capybarras! Juanita laughed at my complete amazement as no else seemed to care that these terrifying beasts walking nonchalantly past. 

And then the samba circle started. My worst and most self-conscious part of Capoeira. In Fact, back at home we barely do it coz no-one knows how to samba or feels comfortable trying to pretend to. But it’s a tradition and we are foreigners so they forced us to dance with a male partner in the middle, me trying to copy some sort of kicky samba-y style and some bum shakes while failing profusely and when Juanita got pulled in she just jumped around like a funny hippie which they liked just as much, if not more than real Samba. Ah brilliant. My heart  was filled, my excitement did not fall into disappointment, we cycled home (this time on my own bike) exhausted with soo much exercise and high with the wondrous of times and ridiculous amount of endorphins.   

I carried my slackline with me to Brazil and if you don’t know a slackline is kind of like a tightrope yet of course, a slack line. It’s a great thing to play with in a park between some trees and a bunch of friends. Or no friends. I love it regardless and as Juanita says, if only we didn’t have so many hobbies our rucksacks would be so much lighter. Anyway, the residents of Casa Viva were MUCHO interested in my slackline and needed it to become part of their life. Yet of course, because they are of the farmy sort who do everything themselves (maybe by next year but it happens eventually) it was not for them to simply find some trees to slackline across but to make their own tree or pole to use as a salckline tree. I missioned across the town with Flavio for a strong stick and by the time we arrived back they had dug a strong hole, ready for the line. They lived right next to the towns evening exercise strip (bicycle path, skateboarding parks and exercise machines) and so everyone came along to try our toy. The next night however we got overzealous and decided to try 2 slacklines from the same pole in different directions. It was all very well until two people tried to slackline and CRACK! the pole was broken, and both slacklines were useless on the ground. But no fear, another mission was had for a bigger stronger looking tree stick thing and it was found and we began to dig a bigger hole when the police showed up to ask us what we were doing on public land. Flavio talked himself out of the first bicycle police and then another group of police came by. Again another long conversation ensued in which Elder brought out deep fried cheese pasties (deliciously bad for you) and gave them around. Then another police group appeared and they were talking about signing forms then finally it was ok again (I suspect because of Flavio’s talking engineered with Elder’s cheese pasties). What had happened though it seems is that the neighbours saw it and didn’t like us doing what we were doing because of some vendetta they had as apparently Casa Vivo was encouraging ants to eat their roses. People and their issues!

 This was our last night in Campo Grande and Paulie said, “I don’t mind going to jail but JUST not tonight” as he had his flight back to England that night and couldn’t afford to miss it. I agreed, Juanita and I had bought bus tickets to take us to Bolivia and (my word) they were expensive enough to really not want to miss that bus. Luckily the police didn’t think that a neighbours vendetta was enough of a reason to chuck us into jail and the fun continued. 

Flavio and Wagner took us to the bus terminal and we were all rather emotional, Paulie and Juanita had been there some time but even though I can hardly boast more than 10 days with these people I was really sad after meeting such good friends in such a short while I promised to return, to play more music, to learn more capoeira, Portugeuse and with the Brazilian attitude towards time, maybe a little more patience.