Travel Log Brazil 2012 Part 4

by Tina Erwin

         The slash and burn philosophy was sadly evident as huge areas of rain forest and natural vegetation were destroyed to make way for grazing lands. Erosion has begun. Many areas were smoking as we drove by them. All I could think of was the loss of habitat. There were even pictures on signs warning people not to kill various creatures who must have lived there. I had never seen most of these animals. The Brazilians raise Brahma cattle, not Texas Longhorns. The white beasts require many acres of land to graze and that is what has happened. The land is stripped of every single tree to make way for cattle grazing or even goats, horses and sheep. Entire hillsides have either red or brown grassy dirt or have finally greened up. There is a sharply defined line where the forest ends and barrenness begins.

         But all is not lost. There is an ecological zone that is at least 10 miles long that is restoring this land – it was encouraging. Then we noticed acres of terribly destroyed land covered in Eucalyptus trees perhaps for its oil – we weren’t sure. Then in watching local news, there is a new law requiring land owners to replant rain forest trees on more and more of their land. Apparently the critical issue is actually finding rain forest tree seeds to do the replanting. This is another encouraging sign. They interviewed a farmer who said before he never gave a thought to slashing and burning the forest but now he feels he should return it to its previous condition. You could see as we drove by some property which had been allowed to re-grow itself but it just takes time and rain. The Brazilians are hopefully becoming increasingly eco-conscious.

         Speaking of eco-conscious, I noticed that at each park, in all hotels and on the beachfront, there are separate re-cycling bins for paper, plastic, glass and metal. It is national policy. People were trying. The homeless were dedicated to collecting aluminum cans. Also, all power to your room is turned off every single time you leave. You have to put your room card into a slot to have power to the room. I can only imagine how much electricity is saved with this policy.

         Macae is an industrial town and there is a tremendous amount of big business here. No only is Transocean here but also Halliburton, General Electric and Swiss, German, and Japanese companies as well. All these firms use or make oil-drilling equipment or are in the oil finding business. Emotionally it feels cold here. This isn’t a tourist town even though it is right on another gorgeous beach.

                  The Sheraton we stayed in overlooks the sea. That beach is empty, no brightly colored umbrellas or relaxing tourists. This is a business town. There was no place to explore no shopping to do – so I wrote this travel log to share our Brazilian experience. Tomorrow we leave Macae for the Rio airport and then back to San Diego.

         I will take precious few souvenirs but a great deal of memories. The people who work for Transocean have been wonderful. Men and women and citizens of all countries work in the Brazilian oil fields. The infrastructure required to keep the oil flowing is mind-boggling.         
        Transocean just opened a state of the art school in Macae to provide more local training and Transocean trains their people constantly. This is an extremely dangerous business. You’re sipping oil through a 10,000 foot straw, hence Transocean’s laser focus is on safety. Their new school will continue to ensure that all who work these dangerous platforms are fully trained in how to do their jobs safely. This is critical to maintaining the ecology of the sea and the safety of the crews. It’s also an expensive business. Consider that there are at least 163 platforms each with two complete crews who have to fly from wherever they live to Brazil and then take another helo to the rig and there are returning crews that need airfare, hotels etc. The teams ashore in Rio, Macae an Houston and all over the world that manage all of Transocean’s crews must handle every conceivable situation seven days a week. Truly they do a remarkable job. This is also a company that believes in treating their people well – something rare to see in such a large company.

         Transocean takes very good care of their customer be it Petrobras or Shell and they are also heavily focused on taking outstanding care of their employees.

         Troy learned a lot in his conference. I had a break from email and my own day to day work. For a brief time I got to be a part of Troy’s world in South America. I now have a much better understanding of who he works for, what he does and how dynamic it is being captain of an oil platform 150 miles at sea off the coast of Brazil.

         I hope you have enjoyed this travel log. When someone asked me how my trip was I say that it was great, but I can’t truly begin to express what I saw and felt. This is how my trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil went!

        

        

Travel Log Brazil 2012 Part 3

by Tina Erwin

Prices for food are the same in Brazil as they are here: high. Literally, there are no bargains here in food or shopping. I love to shop, and in any country I find shopping more of a treasure hunt than anything else. Mostly what I am looking for are bargains on folk art or things you can only acquire in that country. However, here I found that shopping in Rio was no different than shopping in any shopping mall anywhere in the States. Finally, after hours of scouring the shops several blocks off the beach, and finding absolutely nothing, I asked the concierge about it. He suggested we go to the ‘hippie fair’ or market on Sunday morning, so we did.

         My husband is so patient, he kind of looks out for me as I flit around all the little shopping booths. This hippie fair is where you can find everything from Brazilian stones to soccer shirts, shells to handbags, flip flops to carved wooden fruit. We had all kinds of fun. However, we left with very little. Stones, jewelry was much less than the big jewelry houses of H. Stern or Amsterdam Saur but still not a bargain. When gold is $1700 an ounce set gems are just pricy even set in sterling silver. So we passed on most things.

         What we did find was that if you can find a neighborhood jeweler, he or she will take you in the ‘back’ and show you some stones. They will be cheaper than the big houses with equivalent quality. I met a jeweler that had stunning quality amethyst. Some of them were so large they’d need their own zip code, easily 25 karats each. I loved them all. Troy shuddered and sighed a lot.

         Jewelers also carry natural rock. There aren’t really any stone stores. The big amethyst and citrine cathedrals and quartz, tourmaline stones in the flea markets were of a wide range of quality. Frankly you can get better prices and stones at Quartzite, Arizona any time of the year or at the Tucson gem show.

         When you are in Rio, the tour everyone takes, the ‘must see’ tour is the one of the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer and Sugar Loaf Mountain. So we did that. The combined tour of both sites cost $275 for two of us and it included lunch. Even if you had a car, you can’t drive up to Christ the Redeemer mountain, Corcovalo. You have to take a bus and our tour guide was amazing. He spoke at least seven languages fluently. The drive up that mountain was great fun. We got to see a great deal of forest foliage up close. It’s so dense! As we got higher and higher we were disappointed to see this thick smoggy haze over the city. The previous four days had been crystal clear and it was at least 90 degrees that day. The Brazilians know that this is a must see tour and they have it efficiently organized. Once you arrive at the base station you change buses and go up in a park service bus. This means they can control the flow of traffic up and the very narrow windy road to the top. Once you are there what a view! You feel as if you are on top of the world. It is a peaceful place. The statue is powerful, imposing and yet compassionate – a lot so say for carved soapstone. We were allowed 40 minutes to appreciate the view of a lifetime. Then down the mountain and on to an ultra modern church, a visit to a stadium and lunch.        

         Lunch was another astonishing buffet. They apparently bring all the tourists here and bless them they have it down to a science of efficiency. This is an expensive tour and I wasn’t sure if they would skimp on lunch but they didn’t. It was another amazing buffet of food. There were all kinds of meats; prime rib, ham, pork chops, fried chicken, baked chicken, stewed chicken and baked sea bass, cod cakes and every kind of vegetable from okra to tomatoes, red cabbage to peas and on and on. So much food and then off we went to the cable cars of Sugar Loaf Mountain.

         The afternoon part of the tour took us through the city on to the mountains. These are companion peaks. You take the cable car up the red mountain first take photos of the view and see the James Bond cable car then watch the growler monkeys climb the trees. These growlers monkeys would fit in the palm of your hand. They’re adorable. At this point there are H Stern Jewelry shops, t-shirt an ice cream shops and a helicopter port. Then it was on to the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain.

         The cable car holds 65 people and it sways slightly. If heights are challenging for you, this cable car ride will take some courage. As the final car inches its way up almost vertically to Sugar Loaf you hold your breath a little as it passes the sheer face of the mountain and then finally gently comes to a stop. There are higher places in South America but probably few with as stunning a view. There was a fabulous breeze up there amid the snack bars and jewelry stores. You could see in all directions the whole sprawl of the city. Off in the distance I could feel the approaching thunderstorms and the lightening. I took photos through the haze and found myself glad to be down both mountains as the lightening began to put on a display in advance of the driving rain.

         After the rain, after supper, we walked hand in hand along Copacabana beach under a brightly lit path. As night approached you could see the oil rigs well lit in the distance, the ships anchored out and the cruise ships ready to enter port. There was a welcoming breeze. It was such a lovely evening. It smelled so good too, with the sea air flavoring the fragrance of the evening. That was our last night in Rio.

         Tuesday the Transocean driver met us and drove us to Macae, which is about 3 hours north of Rio. It was curious what the countryside would look like. The drive leaving the city reminded me that traffic has its own sociology and its own rhythm. People are generally polite, use their horns sparingly and consider traffic lanes a polite suggestion. This city is working hard to prepare for the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. They have a lot to do. So glad that’s not my problem.

         As we left the city we were reminded of the power of US influence. There was a Sam’s Club, a Subway sandwich shop, Burger King and a KFC lining the highway. There were also English, Swiss and German companies represented. This truly is a global market after all. Often supposedly local crafts are made in Indonesia and China.

      

Next week Part 4 ends the travel journal

Travel Log Brazil 2012 Part 1

 by Tina Erwin

         I had never been to Brazil but since my husband is captain of the Cajun Express, an oil rig 150 miles off the coast of Brazil he flies down there literally every month. Google Cajun Express and you get some idea of how complicated oil drilling can be. He works for Transocean and they have oil rigs all over the world. They provide the oil platform for the customer, such as Petrobrass, Chevron, BP, Exxon, Shell Oil etc. His ‘hitch’ is 28 days on and 28 days off the rig. It is a grueling schedule. When you’re ‘off rig’ you are also expected to attend training and conferences. However, this particular time he had to go to a conference a week after his hitch ended, so to my delight, he invited me to join him in Rio for a week while he waited for the conference to begin. Since his company lets him keep his frequent flier miles, my flight was free. The company also paid for all hotel and food bills. Transocean is one of the most generous companies I have ever known. But back to Brazil, I thought I would share my impressions of this huge country.

         Brazil is an enormous country. Fully half of your flight you are crossing the vastness of the rain forest and the plains of the Amazon. You can’t see it because these flights are always at night but you can track it on the plane’s televisions. When you awake, you can see that as you near the coast, there is rugged, sometimes hilly but always green, land that stretches for miles in a westerly direction.

         For a city of 12 million people, the Rio de Janeiro airport is quite small. It’s confusing, very warm and humid because it is not air conditioned, and eternally under some type of construction. The airport is your first clue to the sagging and tired infrastructure that is trying unsuccessfully to support this gigantic city.

         Driving from the airport to the Copacabana Beach where the hotels line the beach, is an eye opener. The traffic is grid locked on narrow lanes that clog the arteries that are the heart of the city.

         However, what immediately strikes you, are the encroaching and sad Favelas that seem to line every road. Like a choking vine that strangles a tree, so are these Favelas literally choking off the life in the city. A tremendous percentage of Brazilians live in these red, cinder block, ramshackle, structures called Favelas.

         You try to get a sense of the city as you drive along the roads in your jet lagged stupor. What wakes you up from that sleepiness, are the eerie flocks of great vultures that glide and swoop overhead. These are ugly birds with shabby black feathers and a ten-foot wingspan. Their scanning territory is the hopeless feeling Favelas. The birds patiently circle overhead waiting and watching. The symbol of their presence is brought up close and personal as these birds perch on the streetlights that line the streets of the city. They sit there with their mottled, saggy, hideous faces and watch and wait. The symbol was so intense it sent shivers down my spine.

         Our hotel was quiet, well run and ideal for its view of Copacabana beach. From the 16^th floor the view out to sea is amazing. All the amenities are here, generous amenities yet it still feels as if I walked onto the set of a 19^th century play. Life is slower here, less hectic, more comfortable offering welcoming smiles and simple courtesies. You feel yourself relaxing, letting go of the unrelenting tension of life in the United States. Here, really, what’s the hurry?

         Everything on an oil rig is flown there by helicopter. When your rig is 150 miles at sea, you have to plan ahead and schedule everything around when those helos fly. They bring in all supplies and they fly all personnel on and off the rig. If the helos don’t fly or are cancelled, you don’t go anywhere. And so on the day I arrived, all helos for my husband’s rig were cancelled. However he made all the arrangements to get me to the hotel and to an amazing party that night in honor of his division’s outstanding safety record. So I went to the party without him.

         I’m always amazed at who I get to meet when I travel. This particular evening I met a company man from Transocean, who gave me his view of Brazilian life and culture. He obviously loved these people, loved the country and appreciated what an amazing opportunity a guy from Omaha, Nebraska was given. He even enjoyed learning Portuguese.

         He pointed out that Brazilians seem to him, for the most part, quite happy. There wasn’t the sense of depression or anxiety you find in large cities like New York or the hectic frustration you feel in Los Angeles. Americans somehow think that to be happy you have to have that uniquely American lifestyle. But that’s not true. Not everyone wants or needs that experience. Each of us ends up where we end up for that particular experience.

         As I watched Americans and Brazilians partying it up that first night I marveled at how productive people can be when they choose to work together. And on a rig not working together is deadly. Oil rigs, when run correctly are fine. The issue is that everything has to work perfectly to stay safe. Sometimes life on an oil rig is profoundly dangerous. Until my husband got this job, I had no idea how much effort went into each gallon of gasoline. Even if we never need gas/diesel for cars again, we will still need oil for the sheer volume of plastics and other oil/lubricant products that we use without a thought.

         Imagine being off the coast of Brazil and drilling in 7,000 feet of ocean to the sea floor and then drilling another mile underground – through what amounts to one pipe – or a string of pipes. It’s like sipping oil up through a 10,000-foot long straw and hoping the platform that enables you to do that stays absolutely stable. ≈≈SHUDDER≈≈

        

Stay tuned for part 2