Back to civilization

I celebrated my last night in La Paz and my return to warmer climates with a very good Mexican dinner. It was one of the posh places of La Paz, expensive by local standards and frequented by wealthy locals and tourists. I couple of days ago I had written about how everyone gives up on learning even a few words of Hungarian after finding out how to say "cheers" - well, one of these wealthy locals, a middle-aged man who sent over drinks to our table actually knew how to say it! I was pretty impressed, because "egeszsegedre" is not an easy one to remember. He had been to Hungary some 20 years ago and loved it, naturally. I never found out what this man did for a living for example, but from  reading through a local "VIP" magazine and hanging out at these posher places it seems that a. the upper classes are almost exclusively non-Indian (or if they are, then they have plastic surgery to not look it), and b. they mostly are executives of oil, gas and other companies dealing in natural resources, so they are probably the friends and relatives of the current powers that be. I also chatted to a very bitter, London-educated public finance expert, who evidently was sacked by the current government, because every government change entails a total rehaul of public officials. This man had nothing good to say about his government (or his country for that matter), and was very curious to find out about job opportunities in London.

Anyway, now I am back in Rio, and everyone says that it is cold (about 22 degreed celsius), but for me it is almost boiling! I am staying at a very friendly little hostel in Ipanema. The owners are a cool, attractive couple, who like to travel around and they rent out a couple of rooms to tourists. The only downside is that I have to share my room with a fiftysomething American guy, who looks like a lame version of Jack Nicholson, is short and pudgy and snores so loud that I have been on the hunt for earplugs all day today.

Otherwise the city is still beautiful, the restaurants are still great and I have not forgotten all of my Portuguese yet, so I am pretty happy. Leaving on Tuesday though.