Almost 50 years after my father visited Brazil, I made my first trip there in early 1979, when I attended a meeting of the Latin American Potato Association, ALAP. Its meeting that year was held in Poços de Caldas, in southwest Minas Gerais State, about 280 km north of São Paulo.
I was living in Costa Rica, and to fly to South America it was necessary to transit via Panama City. The itinerary took us from Panama to Bogotá in Colombia, then a Varig flight to Rio de Janeiro with an intermediate stop in Manaus on the Amazon in central northern Brazil. From Manaus, we flew south for hours to land in Rio in the early hours. It was that flight that made me appreciate just what a huge country Brazil is.
In Panama I’d joined up with other delegates to the same meeting, from Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Panama. Our flight to Rio didn’t leave until the late evening so we had almost a whole day for some sight-seeing around Bogotá. One of the places we visited was an emerald dealer, where I couldn’t resist the temptation and bought a nice stone for my wife¹.
Colombian emeralds in Bogota
A Varig 727 on the tarmac at Rio de Janeiro. Varig ceased operations in 2006.
We arrived in Rio in the early morning, in time for the first air shuttle (Ponte Aérea or air bridge) flight from Rio de Janeiro’s Santos Dumont airport to São Paulo’s Congonhas airport, a journey of a little over an hour, affording some spectacular views of the coastline south of Rio. Then it was a four or five hour road trip from São Paulo to Poços de Caldas.
Poços de Caldas nestles in a valley in the surrounding rolling landscape. Very agricultural, and obviously an important potato growing area.
Heading back to Rio de Janeiro a week later, several of us decided to stop over there for about three nights, and explore this vibrant city.
The Sugar Loaf from Corcovado
Whether it was such a violent city then (or even when my father visited) as it is today, I have no recollection. We moved around the city seemingly oblivious to any such threats, spent an afternoon and evening on Copacabana beach, taking in all the ‘sights’: tangas to the left, tangas to the right!
But we also made the mandatory excursion to the top of the Sugarloaf, from where there were magnificent views north and south over the city and its beaches.
Also we made the climb by taxis to Corcovado, where the statue of Christ the Redeemer stands, on a 2328 ft granite peak, looking out to sea.
These next photos were taken by my father (who was a professional photographer) in Rio all those decades ago. How that city has grown in the intervening years, and even how much more since I first visited in 1979 as we saw during all the TV broadcasts from the 2016 Olympic Games.
There’s no doubt about it, Rio de Janeiro is one of the world’s iconic cities.
I’ve been back to Brazil just one other time. In 1997 I attended a CGIAR workshop on Ethics and Equity in Plant Genetic Resources², held in Foz do Iguaçu, close by the magnificent Iguaçu Falls. I then flew on to Brasilia, to negotiate participation of Brazilian institutes in a major rice biodiversity project there and in Goiânia, transiting through Rio de Janeiro on leaving the country.
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¹ It wasn’t until about 2005 or 2006 that this stone was finally made into a ring, flanked by a couple of diamonds that I’d picked up in Israel in 1982.
² (CGIAR) Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. 1997. Ethics and Equity in Plant Genetic Resources. Proceedings of a workshop to develop guidelines for the CGIAR, 21–25 April, Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. IPGRI, Rome.
A balanced diet . . . 