Rainy Days

It's been raining here the last two days so there hasn't been much to do.   With not much to do yesterday, I drove to Centro (downtown area) to look at cars.  It was a little ambitious.  I thought that maybe there would be someone who spoke English at each dealership but that definitely was not the case.  You would think that at Chevrolet there would be someone who spoke English but apparently not.  I went back later in the afternoon with my friend who speaks Portuguese and English.  I had been warned ahead of time that cars are very expensive here.  The import tax is somewhere around 100% if you can believe that.  I'm just trying to buy a very basic small four door car with a few things (air conditioning and power steering).  Everyone here has very similar cars.  Nobody really cares what kind of car you drive here, which is very refreshing.  The status symbol thing doesn't exist at all.  If you have a nice car, it really stands out.  Anyway, to give you an idea, a Hyundai SUV (which we were looking at just for fun) costs around $70K (a Hyundai!).  We looked at the Volkswagen dealership, the Chevrolet dealership, and a random auto dealership.  I didn't find anything I liked within a reasonable price.  The basic low-end 4-door Volkswagen (which is the car I want) costs 35K reais, which is around $20K.  It's totally crazy.  At the end of the day, I found the exact car that I wanted (it only has 7 kilometers on it so it was a little cheaper) but of course it doesn't have power steering so I had to pass.  People here drive like maniacs so the last thing I want is to struggle turning the steering wheel.  Needless to say, it's been an interesting experience.  I will go back tomorrow with a different Brazilian friend.  I want to stop thinking about it (and stop paying for a rental car) so I can keep focusing on the stuff that I want to be doing around here.  

There was a small break in the rain this morning so we went sand surfing at Joaquina Beach, which is just around the corner from my house.  It's a world famous surf break and the area has some very large sand dunes behind it.  It was a lot of fun except for walking up the hill each time.  Here are some pics of the day.....

I couldn't help but notice that that market was up 400 points yesterday and Eliot Spitzer likes prostitutes.  What an ass....