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August 1, 2007

“Deus deve ser brasileiro.”

That appears to be a local refrain around here – God must be Brazilian – and judging by the carioca's justification of the claim, I think they might be on to something.

One of my bosses said it to me first, and I laughed accordingly. So many countries would love to claim God as a fellow citizen.

Her justification, however, was both entertaining and enlightening: In Brazil, she said, there are no hurricanes, no earthquakes, no tornadoes – no specific natural example of what a religious traditionalist would call “God's wrath.” Instead, this country is blessed with year-round beautiful weather, stunning beaches, lush rainforests (the best in the world), towering green mountains, and an agricultural diversity that can satisfy any and all comers.

I found this out first hand on my first trip to the local supermarket, where I intended to purchase food for the entire week but left only with bag after bag of fresh fruit. Strawberries, tangerines, nectarines, peaches, mangos, papayas, apples, four or five types of bananas, sweet limes, passion fruit, blackberries, pears, grapes, tangerines, oranges, mandarins – the list goes on, and almost everything there is locally grown. The prices reflect it; a container of strawberries is 2.50 reais, or about 1.25USD. Kilo-sized bags of locally grown apples run about 1.10USD.

Most impressively, local Brazilian supermarkets sell the largest avocados I've ever seen in my life - enormous, quarter-watermelon sized green avocadoes that could feed a family for a week. I bought one, thinking I would use it to make some salads and guacamole, only to find that after three meals with it I still had half of it left.

As a vegetarian who staggered through five months in meat-obsessed Argentina, I find Rio to be welcoming refuge. My first day here, the woman who helps care for my roommate's four year-old son made me what is called doce de abacate (avocado), which is a simple but delicious combination of mashed avocado with honey and sweet lime. It is a common breakfast food, as is doce de banana – warmed, mashed bananas with honey. Rio is brimming with natural foods stores, their existence, my roommate explained, due to a city-wide desire to be healthy and fit. As most cariocas spend about 50 percent of their lives in very revealing bathing suits (this sees no gender divide, either – all male tourists down here will find it quite a shock that their traditional knee-length swim trunks are looked upon with confusion and disdain), their desire for healthy and fresh cuisine has its merits.

Vegetarian restaurants are now cropping up in every neighborhood: three minutes from my house is the appropriately named Vegan Vegan , an entirely vegan restaurant run by a mid-30s female chef who personally attends to every client with a prolonged visit to each table. In my case, I arrived by myself, book (in English) in hand and prepared to try out this incredible find. The waiters all thought I spoke no Portuguese at all, despite my asking one of the waiters what he recommended off the menu…in Portuguese. After I had finished my meal, I overheard one of the waiters telling the others, “Oi, a gringa já terminou.” I, the gringa, laughed loudly, and from then on they spoke to me only in Portuguese. I even got a free dessert out of it!

My neighborhood is brimming with diverse markets, shops, restaurants, and merchants, but nothing beats what I see right outside my window each morning at exactly 7:30 am. I stumbled across this find when I woke up late one morning, rising at 7:30 in shock to find I'd slept 45 minutes past my alarm. I flew through the house and quickly lit the gas to warm up the shower water, only to look out the main apartment window and stop dead in my tracks. I could clearly be late for work, I justified, as there were more than a dozen monkeys running around the roof of the building adjacent to ours. They were merely eating breakfast; they had acquired several pieces of fruit from the trees around our house, most of them brilliantly green and easily opened by the dexterous monkeys. That morning, the monkeys and I had breakfast, me sticking my head out of the window into the early morning sun and sharing my first hour of the day with them.

It has become a ritual – breakfast with the monkeys of Rua Viuva Lacerda (my street). Without fail, we all eat breakfast at 7:30am, Monday through Friday. I've yet to work out their weekend schedule, although it seems they, like most busy professionals, sleep later on Saturday and Sunday. Last week we had a rather seminal breakthrough, as the lead monkey – the one who always comes out earliest to give the group the clear to come scrounge for food – saw me poking my head out of the window in anticipation of our shared meal. He proceeded to stare intently and wave at me. Three times. It was a distinct motion, one of obvious greeting, and one corroborating every theory I'd heard about the intelligence and human-like behavior of monkeys.

So as I go on in Rio, I do so as a member of an exclusive Breakfast Club. With monkeys.