CULTURE AND CUSTOMS


The people of PoA are known as Gaúchos the beef herding pampas cowboys. Of course they're not all like that, the real Gaúcho does exist here however!
Most of the population of PoA are of mixed race, there are a lot of decendents of German, Italian and Polish immigrants so there is a European flavour that has embraced the Gaúcho culture.

Gaúcho stuff:

churrasco: barbecue. Most Gaúcho homes have a brick barbecue pit with a chimney. Even the modern flats have them on the balconies. Churrasco is not the lamb chops, grisly sausage and hamburger stuff we have in UK. Churrasco is delicious chunks of red meat skewered on yard long spits and roasted high over the charcoal for the fat to slowly drip through. Beef is very cheap, a 2.2lb (or 1kg) chunk of prime cut sirloin is about 1.50 pounds sterling and the cuts are varied and each as delicious as the other. The best cut people go for is picanha, the equivalent of rump steak. The sausages are fat and not grisly. Chicken hearts, about 30 to a spit flavoured with garlic and rock salt, are YUMMY!
A churrasco is not just a meal, it's a social and family gathering, with a few beers a good churrasco will go on over a few hours.
The churrasco is the families' normal Sunday lunch at home or a lot of people go to churrascarias, the barbecue restaurants. A lot of these are espeto corrido, literally, "running spit", which means, for one price, you just keep getting served until you shout "help!" or "I SURRENDER!". A lot of these places have a reversible sign at your table place, on one side it says "No Thanks, maybe later" on the other it says, "Yes Please", this way you don't have to keep calling the espeto corrido over or sending him away, he just keeps an eye on your sign. Churrascarias vary in price from about 2 pounds sterling to about 5 pounds sterling not including drinks.

chimarrão, most Gaúchos drink this green herb tea mixture. It's drunk from a hollowed gourd, known as a cuia through a metal straw. The chimarrão is continually topped up with hot water from a vacuum flask and passed around, it's a social drink. The Gaúchos take their chimarrão with them wherever they go. It's quite normal to see people strolling in the parks with the cuia in one hand and the flask in the other. It has a bitter herby taste and is quite pleasant but needs getting used to.

SUNSET

PoA has a very beautiful sunset which can be observed from several points along the river front. One of the best places is the neighbourhood of Ipanema to the south of the city, about 8 miles from the centre. There's a promenade for walking and lots of bars on the riverfront to watch the sunset from.

Alternatively there's the Parque Marinha, take a deck chair and cool box! Or the Gasômetro or floating bar.

Incidently the terrace of my flat has a wonderful sunset view (small photo on main blog page), travellers are welcome for a churrasco and cold beer (for a small fee of course, well it's what Ronnie Biggs used to do! Okay so I'm not an internationally famed train robber, but I need to earn some dosh somehow)

Aside from the parks and bars there's loads to do and see in PoA. I'll start with the city centre. The Public Market, Mercado Público, is well worth a visit. The 19th century building encloses a courtyard, recently roofed, containing several stalls which sell everything from herbs and spices, fish and meat, cheeses and wines to local offerings for umbanda ceremonies. The upstairs area has bars and restaurants, good for a choppe which is cold draught lager. Unfortunately, like all the city centre area, it is dangerous at night and therefore closes early (9pm) and no one hangs around. Even during the day you have to be careful around the city centre, don't leave your bag or camera on a table unattended, don't even turn around for a moment, keep your stuff close. There are street urchins always on the lookout for careless people, and they're very fast on their feet!
Just across the square from the Public Market is the Chalet Bar, there is a good open air patio and an upstairs terrace and they serve good food and choppe.
Rua dos Andradas, popularly known as Rua da Praia (yes, doesn't everything seem to have two names, an official name and a popular name!), is the main shopping street, crowded and hot, right in the centre there's Praça da Alfandega, where the annual book fair is held and further down there is Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana. The remodelled Hotel Majestic, CCMQ has lots of art and cultural events, with a great café on the top floor and an equally good one on the ground floor in the hotel arches alleyway between two streets.
From the docks right in the city centre a boat trip on the Cisne Branco is great, it takes about an hour and goes through the channels between the estuary islands, costs R$10 (Brazilian Reals) per person, that's about 2 pounds sterling. The contrast between the rich and the poor here is incredible to see. Look on one side and you'll see an beautiful mansion with extensive lawns stretching down to the river where there is usually a jet ski and launch tied up at a dock. Look over the other side, just 20 yards or so, and there's a delapitated wooden shack, half a dozen brown naked kids hanging around and piles of garbage where the people have collected and dumped to sort for anything recyclable (they get a meagre earning with that).
A 15 min walk from the city centre will bring you to the Gasômetro, the old power station, now restored and used for cultural events. All along the dock area from the centre to the Gasômetro are the disused quays, there is a plan to convert it all to culture area, but that plan has been on hold for years. Another boat trip goes from the Gasômetro, a little cheaper than the Cisne Branco. There is also a "floating bar" here, a kind of large two-decked platform with a bar but unfortunately it's not very well looked after and of very poor quality. It's not bad for drinking a cold beer and watching the sun-set though.

PARKS

Redenção, officially Parque Farroupilha, is very beautiful for walking, it's shady and large enough to stroll around for a few hours. There are also wide open spaces for sports such as frizby throwing and TACO (street cricket), or you can just laze around on deck chairs (take-yer-own) in the sun or shade. Redenção has a large lake full of turtles and you can rent paddle boats. On the lake there's also a very nice café bar, Café do Lago with a shaded deck and live music. On Saturdays and Sundays there is an open market, feira, on Avenida José Bonefácio the road bordering one side of the park. On Saturdays it's for organic fruits and veggies and on Sundays it's for arts and crafts and antiques, the Sunday market is known as the brique. Both days are very popular with the locals who come out strolling and to drink a chimarrão with friends or family.

Parcão, is less shaded and smaller, lots of people excersise here, good for jogging and walking. There's a large open playground for kids but can be too hot during the Summer due to lack of shade. There's also a turtle lake here with a mini-windmill structure on a small island (it's in Moinhos de Vento neighbourhood, which means "windmills")

Parque Marinha and Maurício Sirotsky (aka Parque Harmonia), very large area extending along the riverfront to almost the city centre, Marinha blends into MS. Marinha has a skate park, long lawns and a great riverside promenade walk with about a 4 mile extension from the Ibere Camargo Museum to the Gasómetro. MS has shaded barbecue pits and a huge traditional barbecue restaurant, Galpão Creolo. Parque MS is the venue for the annual Gaúcho Semana Farroupilha Camp.

Asside from these three main parks, each neighbourhood has its own praçinhas smaller shaded parks for walking or just relaxing.

Mon 9th April: 22c cloudy
Tues 10th April: 27c partially cloudy
Weds 11th April: 29c sunny

Sunny and warm for a few days

PoA is situated in the far south of Brazil (see map) in the state of Rio Grande do Sul the southernmost state. The countryside around is mostly pampas grasslands, hence the Gaúcho culture shared with Uruguay and Argentina. The city itself is on the shores of what is known as the Guaíba River, sometimes known as a lake, there's some debate as to what it exactly is, if you check the map it could be described in fact as an estuary which opens out into a much larger lake known as Lagoa dos Patos. So "Porto" in PoA is not a sea port but it is accessable by sea to large vessels via Lagoa dos Patos which opens to the sea through a narrow channel about 150 miles to the south.
Including Greater PoA the area covered is almost 200 sq miles with a population of a million and a half. The city itself consists of the old part, which is mostly the city centre, and residential neighbourhoods spread around. These neighbourhoods vary a lot in economic stature, from the very poorest of shanty towns to high class blocks each apartment which goes for perhaps quarter million Brit pounds sterling.
One thing with the housing that strikes me as different from Britain is that there are no large areas with all the houses the same, such as the British housing estates or terraced houses. If someone has enough money to buy a new house here, they normally buy the land and build the house according to their own specifications. There are lots of closed, secure, condominiums which have the houses all the same but it tends only to be about 10 - 20 small houses.
In some neighbourhoods (very few and getting less) the council have prohibited building more than 3 floors, so we find here only houses, these neighbourhoods can be found mostly to the south. Other regions have given way to mass high rise development and the houses have for the most part disappeared.
PoA has three large shopping centres, Iguatemi, Bourbon Country (these two being literally right next to each other) and Praia de Belas, and a variety of smaller shopping centres spread around. Under construction right now is Cristal Shopping, which reportedly when complete will be the biggest in Latin America.
There are also three large parks, Redenção, Parcão and Parque Marinha. The first of these has a dense covering of trees making it beautifully shady for walks, there is also a large lake full of turtles and rentable paddle boats. There's a nice bar on the lake to quaff cold beers while feeding the turtles. Parcão is less shady and smaller, it also has a turtle lake but no bar. Parcão is in a rich and fashionable neighbourhood, Moinhos de Vento, and the park is where the rich and fashionable people jog or walk around by the score, excersising or just showing of their imported nikes. The last of these parks follows the river/lake shoreline and extends almost to the city centre. Parque Marinha is wonderful for sunset walks along the river/lakeside promenade.
As I've mentioned, the city centre is the old part, there are a few historic buildings here including the public market, which dates back to 1869, and the Santa Casa Hospital founded in 1803.
The river / lake is extremely polluted due to the industries up river. There is a project to clean up but it will take a long time yet and I still see reports on the news of thousands of fish found dead floating caused by pollution of some factory or another, the factory is fined but then they just continue. Further from the city, about 18 miles the council have declared a beach clean enough to swim, Lami, I've seen the water there, it certainly doesn't look clean!

THE BEST TIME TO COME TO PoA

ANYTIME!
The locals will say don't come in Winter (July - August) because it's too cold, PAH! Nothing that a roaring log fire and a glass or two of good red wine can't cope with.
Others will say don't come in Summer (December - February) because it's too hot, PAH again, nothing that a good swimming pool and a few glasses of chilled lager can't manage.
Seriously though. Winter temps can go as low as 3-4c, but that's not usual. Usually it's around 8 -12c. The Winters here go through cyclic climate. It gets cold, warms up (sometimes, and I've seen 30c in the middle of "Winter") then rains for a few days, cools right down then the cycle begins again. This happens over a period of about 5 - 15 days.
Summers, on the other hand, are HOT. Normally around 28-30c but it's not unusual to see 35 plus. Again it's cyclic, but not regular, when it heats up too much there's a mutha of a thunderstorm for an hour or so then everything gets to steaming and it cools down a bit. The only solution for the Summer as I said is to find a swimming pool with a bar. There are no public swimming pools so your only chances are to get an invite to a club or a club or get friendly with someone with a house and pool. Watch this space, I'm working on contacts!
If no pool's available, find a good bar that has a cool interior and drink cold beer in large quantities.

(VERY BRIEF) HISTORY

The region were PoA now stands was settled in the mid 18th century by imigrants from the Azores Islands, because they came in couples the settlement became known as Porto dos Casais, Port of the Couples. It was officially founded as the city of Porto Alegre in 1772. As an easily accessable port city, PoA soon evolved quickly and became the capital of the region.
In 1835, PoA was at the centre of an internal Brazilian conflict that was to last over the next ten years. The Revolução Farroupilha was an attempt by the discontented southern Gaúcho peoples to break off from Brazil and form their own republic. Unfortunately they didn't succeed and PoA is still part of Brazil.

MAP OF BRAZIL

Click on it and it will enlarge. You'll find PoA way down south, latitude 30.

PORTO ALEGRE for TRAVELLERS

Is for...uhm, travellers. In this blog you'll find lots of useful info about the city of Porto Alegre, or PoA, as we call it. I'm still putting the pages together but pretty soon there'll be a lot more to read and see and plenty of links.

I'm making a distinction here between the traveller and the tourist because PoA's not much of a touristy city but there are plenty of things to see and do and there is a rich unique culture. PoA's well off the normal tourist routes of Brazil but we've been visited a lot fairly recently because of the World Social Forum

Am I qualified to write about PoA for travellers? I think so, I'm a Brit, so I've got an outsider's point of view, and I've been here for over 15 years, so I've got an experienced point of view too! After 15 years though, I'm almost a native.

So welcome, browse around, feel free to comment and ask q's.