Monday January 25th 2010

Yesterday I saw Marcelo's gun for the first. Up until now all I had seen was a bulge hanging over his waistband but today I saw it for real.

Today is a holiday in Sao Paulo and Steve decided that he is having withdrawal symptoms from not playing golf and booked a game at a local course. Trouble is, we still have no visas and so no bank accounts and no local credit cards. Therefore everything has to be done in cash. So today we had to drive to an ATM to get the aforementioned cash.

In normal, ie "safe" places of the world you line up at the ATM, wait your turn and take out what ever cash you need. I have done it here a couple of times and been surprised to see armed guards hovering in the vicinity. Bullet proof vests and machine guns slung not so casually over an arm. Today, being a weekend, there were no guards, so thank you BMS we have Marcelo.

Steve went into the foyer of the bank and Marcelo followed standing outside, eyes everywhere, muscles bulging and shirt lifted over his belt to let everyone know what he was carrying. Quite scary really but this is the way life is going to be and we just have to get on with it. I sat in the bullet proof car and all was well.

We are trying out all the local parks and after the bank drove to a new one. Being a Sunday on a holiday weekend, the world and his wife were out to play. Now this is where Marcelo really comes into his own. There were no parking spaces to be had, so we were dropped of at the entrance to the park. An hour and a half later, as we wandered back to the entrance, Marcelo had found the absolutely optimum place to park, right by the entrance. After about 3 miles of walking in the heat, Tessie was so thrilled to get into the air conditioned car. Needless to say, so were we.

Our last stop of the day was to supermarket. By now it had started to rain. There are two types of rain in Brazil. The drizzle that is reminiscent of the UK and the heavy tropical downpours more associated with this part of the world.

Again Marcelo came into his own, dropping us right by the entrance so as not to get wet. When we came out, he literally backed the car into the supermarket entrance. Even the shoppers turned around in disbelief. Another couple of feet and he would have knocked over the display.

Thank you Marcelo.