Atherton Family Notes

Last weekend, we had a family get-together at the cabin. This is the second year that my dad and his sister have organized something like this, and it looks like the tradition will continue. Last year we met in Paducah, KY, and it looks like we might rotate the location to Nashville next year.

On Saturday, the whole gang went to Holiday world, which is only about 30 minutes from the cabin. We didn’t spent a whole lot of time together as a group, mostly because it’s so difficult to coordinate a group of that size. Everyone had fun, though, and we all got to do the things we wanted.

Cece was pretty excited because now she’s tall enough to ride the big rides, and we spent a fair portion of the day riding roller coasters. Carissa rode the first one, too, but decided she didn’t like them. We were pretty happy that she at least tried, though. Sadie got to spend the morning with Katy, which suited her just fine.

The five of us in spent the afternoon in the water park and then met back up with the larger group so that Sandi, Cece and I could go ride the Voyage (the park’s biggest roller coaster) one more time with Kristen, Cameron, Emily and Anna.

Sandi and I have a history with this roller coaster. Two years ago, we stood in line twice to ride it, but both times they shut it down due to technical difficulties. This time, when we rode it with Cece in the morning, it stopped in the middle and they sent a crew out to check over the cars. We thought they were going to make us get out and walk back — but at least we got to ride it. Other people in our group told us that the ride is much better when it goes from start to finish. So we went back to ride it in the evening. Sure enough, just before we got on the ride, they stopped running it due to technical difficulties again. By the time they got it back into working order, Cece had been in line long enough that she needed to go to the bathroom. And when she’s got to go, she’s got to go! So I got out of line to take her, but at least Sandi finally got to go on one complete, good ride.

When we were standing in line waiting for the last ride, I tried to take a couple of pictures of the kids, but there wasn’t enough light, so they all came out blurry. Except one, which sort of turned into an accidental portrait of Anna.

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I went to summer camp with Nana Cotton, Papaw Cotton, my sisters and lots of other people this year. It was fun! The best part was the campfires, playing with my friends and eating s’mores!

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I had a lot of fun at summer camp.  I took my friend Maddie with me.  I made lots of friends and I got to go swimming every day!  Making crafts was probably my favorite part.

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I’m in Sao Paulo, Brazil on a business trip this week. I haven’t been able to get out and explore much yet, but I did walk over to the nearby mall today (it was expensive) and found a grocery store filled with all manner of things I can’t buy in a typical American store. For me, that was almost worth the trip. Sandi will tell you that this is probably the most annoying thing about traveling with me — I always like to visit the grocery stores. I think it gives an interesting insight into how people live.

I’ve noticed a few oddities in my hotel today. Some strange design choices and some weird legal requirements. For example, my room is on the 13th floor, and the window opens up wide enough to fall out. It’s pretty scary because it’s a long way down. Here’s the picture I took out the window:

The room itself is pretty strange. It’s a suite with a decent size bedroom with a king bed. There’s also a really small room with a desk, TV and couch in it. The couch could probably be used as a bed for a small child, but not much else. But get this: The room has two full bathrooms. Seriously. That seems like overkill.

The strangest thing I’ve seen here, though, is the sign on the outside of the elevator.

I’m pretty sure this is how Dr. Drake Ramoray died. I asked one of the locals about the sign and confirmed that there had been a spate of deaths several years ago from people walking into open elevator shafts in Brazil. The government passed a law to legally require the sign as a result. This seems like a problem that we solved in the the rest of the world in another way (doors that won’t open if the elevator is not behind them), but Brazil settled on this sign as the best choice to prevent future deaths. Wow. At least it was translated into English so I was warned!

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I have a day to look around Sao Paulo tomorrow. I’m not sure what to do yet.

I talked to the people at the hotel’s front desk about taking a trip to a beach in a nearby town called Santos, which has a reputation of being beautiful, as well as a generally interesting place to viist. They looked into it, and the price they quoted me was R$700 (~$411USD!!!!). I don’t believe I’ll be doing that. If I thought there was any chance I could ever find my way back to the hotel, I would consider renting a car and driving there. However, the streets of Sao Paulo seem to even confuse the locals on a regular basis.

At this point, I’m thinking about going into the old downtown area, which has gotten mixed reviews from the people I’ve talked to about it. I’m not clear if it just isn’t that interesting, or if the locals just don’t recognize that it could be interesting for someone who hasn’t lived here for years. I may also try to find the Intercity bus station. I’ve heard you can catch a bus from Sao Paulo to Santos, and I might try that on Saturday if I can figure out how to make it work (and if it isn’t going to cost a ton of money).

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After doing more research last night, I decided that I would try to go to Santos after all. I found that the intercity bus station was nearby, so I took a cab there a few minutes ago.

The good news about buying a ticket at the bus station is that they have a ticket window for each route that is run, and they always assume you want to be on the next bus. This made it much easier to purchase a ticket than I expected, especially given my past experience buying train tickets in France. I got the (one-way) ticket for about $10 and now I’m on my way.

We’ll see how this works out. I don’t have a return ticket yet, but I understand they run these buses both to and from Santos about every half hour all day.

Wish me luck.

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My bus trip so far has been very nice. The bus itself is nearly brand new, and the road itself also seems to have been part of a recent major infrastructure project. It’s been very smooth sailing.

After we got out of the city, the surroundings turned into lush greenery as far as I could see, and then suddenly, we were on the side of a mountain looking out to the coast. Sao Paulo is at a significantly higher altitude than Santos. It’s been a beautiful descent. I tried to take a few pictures, but pictures wouldn’t do the view justice, even if they hadn’t been taken through a dirty bus window.

*UPDATE* I did find a picture on the web that is of the same view I was looking at:

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So I’ve arrived in Santos, and it appears that they never expect anyone to show up who isn’t already familiar with the town.  There is a small information center at the bus station, but they don’t have any maps, and most of what they do have is information about expensive restaurants.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to figure out how to use Google Maps on my phone, so I at least know which direction to start heading.

The bus station seems to be near the west edge of the Centro, and it’s not really the nicest part of town.  It’s odd, though, because nestled amongst the rubbish are some fairly fancy stores selling jewelry, expensive clothes and furniture.

It looks like the beach is a couple of miles away.  I may regret this, but I think I’ll walk.

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Well, I’ve made it to the beach.  It was a fairly long walk, although I did briefly stop at a “gourmet” food shop.  It looked like a grocery store to me, more or less, but they handed me a large plastic card with a barcode when I entered and then scanned it when I left.  I’m not sure what the point was, except I’m guessing that you could use this card inthe restaurant area and then pay for it once you did the rest of your shopping.  The store itself seemed to basically carry the same stuff I’ve seen elsewhere.

It’s a cool day here, at least by Brazilian standards, about 72 degrees.  It’s the end of winter here, and someone told me that they expect the temperature to be in the 80s most of the time already, but there is a cold front coming up from Argentina right now.  It’s also very windy, which is probably limiting the number of people at the beach today.

The Santos beach is on a bay that is somewhat protected from the open ocean, which is why Santos is a major port city in Brazil.  The beach itself sort of reminds me of La Boule, France:  The beach is curved, and the edge of the beach is nothing but high rises.  Many of the buildings have signs advertising vacancies, or purchase prices.

I got some sand for Carissa’s sand collection.  I have been surprised how different the sand is at the various places her collection has come from, and this one is no different.  The sand on this beach has an odd greenish-gray tint.  I think it will be quite recognizable compared to her other samples.

On the way here, I saw a sign for a Carrefour.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been to one of those, so I may have to check that out next.

Obligatory beach photo:

Sorry for the quality of this one. I was trying to hurry and build a panorama, and it shows. The blending is off, and the perspective is weird near the edge. I’ll try to add a better version later.

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I found the Santos Carrefour.  It was further away than I expected from the beach, but the walk wasn’t too bad.  I am starting to feel like I’ve walked a good distance today, though.

It’s closing in on 3 years since the last time I was in a Carrefour.  We used to shop at them all the time when we lived in France, so it was interesting to go to another one after all this time.

The store itself is laid out almost exactly like the ones in France, although the books/CD/DVD section is much smaller overall.  They carry a good size electronics selection, but like everywhere else I’ve been here in Brazil, the prices are insanely high.  I think this is due to high import taxes on electronic goods, a problem that my employer has run into here a time or two.  To make matters worse, the prices on the tag indicate not how much the item is, but how much per month the item costs if you use the Carrefour shopping card.  I saw a 26-inch LCD TV, which would sell in the US for $400, that was marked R$100 (~$70).  But when you read the fine print, that’s how much it costs you per month for 12 months, meaning the real price is R$1200 (~$800!!!).

The grocery section of the store sort of confirmed what I had obeserved in the grocery store near my hotel:  Brazilians must be crazy about cheese and other dairy.  The total amount of dairy in the store easily was the equal of the huge dairy sections in French groceries.  There is lots of cheese and a huge variety of yogurt.  In fact, to judge by the size of the fresh cheese packages on the shelves, Brazilians must be huge fans of cheese.

There is a large variety of meats available as well, with the largest portion being beef products.  Anyone who’s ever eaten in a Brazilian restaurant won’t be a bit surprised by this.  There is no lack for protein, for sure.

The children’s toy section also confirmed another suspicion I had — even cheap toys in Brazil are expensive.  I was amazed at the relative low quality and high prices of the toys on the shelves.  For example, a hard plastic baby doll, poorly painted and cheap, that would be of the type to retail for no more than about $10 in the US cost about $40 here.  higher quality toys are even more outrageously priced.  I imagine that this pricing issue also has something to do with prohibitive import taxes.

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