Indigenous fruit

Brazil is incredibly rich in native fruit and these were all eaten, drunk or used in decoration by indigenous tribes before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500. Their native names have lived on.

Some have become international (cocoa, cashew, guavas, passion-fruit), others are found in supermarkets and juice bars in Brazil (açaí, cupuaçú, graviola etc), while a few remain localised or wild (ingá, umbu).

Here are some of them:

Açaí: Palm berry from the Amazon, a popular energy sorbet to have on the beach

Making Açaí juice/sorbet at a beach kiosk

Araçá: Crunchy, refreshing and pear-like fruit with a pink skin and white flesh
Cacau: Cocoa from the Amazon, the word originates from Central American tribes; the white flesh has a subtle vanilla flavour and is amazing in milk shakes
Cajá: Bitter round and yellow fruit, good for jams
Cajú: Cashew nut and fruit (the fruit is popular in Brazil as a juice, nuts get exported)

Pear-shaped cashew fruit and its incredibly hard parrot-beak nut shell

Cupuaçú: Related to cocoa from the Amazon, and great in milk-shakes and ice-cream
Goiaba: Guava, popular as Goiabada- a thick Guava jam which is excellent with cheese

Plentiful goiabas/ guavas at a fruit market

Graviola: Spiny, green skin and pale flesh, also excellent for juices and ice-creams
Guaraná: Red berry full of caffeine, used in commercial soft drinks

New: Guaraná Antarctica, now with Açaí for a double-energy kick!

Ingá: Wild fruit found on the coast, with a white pulp and black seeds in a thin pod

Kids collecting Ingá up high

Ingá up close

Jabuticaba: Small round purple skinned shirt-staining fruit growing on the trunk, popular in jams
Jaca: Jack-fruit; enormous and spiny-skinned, growing on tree trunks, with a delicious yellow flesh

Jaca on a tree trunk

Jenipapo: White pulp and black seeds, also used for body painting by the tribes
Maracujá: Passion-fruit, in Brazil they are baseball-sized, fantastic in sorbets
Pitanga: Mildly-flavoured red berry, growing on sand dunes, great as a cranberry-jelly substitute
Sapucaia: Monkey-head seed pod with a nut inside, traditionally used for trading between tribes
Umbu: Rounded green fruit with a white pulp, roots are also edible, found in the Northeast

Time for a juice break and vitamin boost.

Indigenous place names

When the Portuguese arrived in 1500, more than a thousand indigenous languages were spoken in what is now Brazil.

Today, there are only 180 remaining, most of which are also faced with extinction, as part of an ongoing and wider cultural and knowledge loss. Almost sure to go are the 110 langages spoken by less than 400 people. Probable survivors include 11 languages with more than 5000 speakers: Baniwa, Guajajara, Kaingang, Kayapó, Makuxi, Sateré-Mawé, Terena, Ticuna, Xavante, Yanomani and Guaraní.

Against the current, some languages are being revived. One example is Maxacali, spoken by the Pataxós near Porto Seguro in southern Bahia, where the Portuguese first landed. In the last few years, several members of the group have found written records of the language and are now teaching the basics to children in local schools.

The most likely to stay is Guaraní, part of the Tupi family of 22 languages, which has always been the dominant and most wide-spread indigenous language, originally spoken all up the coast and into the interior. Today it has 30,000 speakers in Brazil, and 7 million in South America, stretching into Uruguay and northern Argentina and being an official language of Paraguay.

For the first couple of hundred years after 1500, a creole language called Lingua Geral (mixing Tupi-Guaraní and Portuguese) was used along the coast and into the interior, where there was contact between indigenous tribes and Portuguese Jesuits, traders and bandeirante explorers. Lingua Geral was outlawed in 1758 by Portugal, but a version of it, called Nheengatu, still remains in parts of the Amazon.

Indigenous words, usually with origins in nature, still live on in place names found throughout Brazil:

Brazilian states
Amapá: Medicinal tree
Pará: River
Paraná: Sea
Paraíba: Un-navigable river
Pernambuco: Sea with reefs
Piauí: River of the Piau fish
Sergipe: Path of the river of the crabs
Tocantins: Toucan beak
Roraima: Green plateau
Ceará: Squawking macaws

Brazilian towns and cities
Aracajú: Cashew fruit of the macaws
Cuiabá: Spear-fishing spot
Corumbá: White earth
Guaratinguetá: Flock of white birds
Jurujuba: Yellow thorns
Maceió: Barrier to the swamp
Morumbi: Green hills
Niterói: Hidden waters

Brazilian beaches, rivers and waterfalls
Iguaçú: Big waters
Ipanema: Bad waters ("the girl from the bad waters" suddenly doesn't sound so appealing!).
Ipiranga: Red river
Itacoatiara: Sculpted rocks
Itaipava: Stony river
Itaipú: Rocks and noisy water
Tijuca: Muddy lake

Next post: Açaí, Arara, Jaguar, Pitanga. Indigenous words in Brazil's fauna and flora.

Boxing day on the beach

When I was a kid, growing up in Brazil, we would often spend the day after Christmas on the beach.

This year I did the same, heading out to one of my favourite beaches- Itacoatiara, a half-hour bus-ride up the coast from Niteroi.

The mountain back-drop is stunning, the sea is clean and there's usually good surf (in the winter the waves are massive and there are dangerous currents, but at this time of year its calm enough to swim a lap or two of the beach, beyond the waves).

Here are some photos and a few video-clips:




Beach sports abound- football, volley, foot-volley, surfing, boogie-boarding, skim-boarding, body-boarding, ocean-swimming, jogging, fishing, sky-line tight-rope walking, deck-chair sitting, people-watching.

Here are some guys playing the popular and skillful Altinho football game:

          

 

 

 

             

 

Behind the beach, there are bars serving limonada suiça (frothy Swiss lemonade, made of green limes), açai (palm-berry sorbet) and empadas de camarao (prawn pastries). They serve other things too, but these are my favourite.

   

For €1 per day, you can hire a chair and beach umbrella from any of the beach kiosks, which also serve coconut-water and are handy for safe-guarding things when you go for a swim.

 

The sun is intense, so remember your hat and sun-screen, and the sand at the top of the beach is ember-hot, so take your Havaianas. Sungas and tangas aren't needed, unless you want to look like a true native.

Last of all, if you're a balanced sort of person, try this: 

Christmas eve sunset

I go on a late afternoon walk along the rock-hewn coastal road to Santa Cruz fort at the entrance to Guanabara bay:

Spectacular storm clouds brew up inland, behind Niterói:

And form a cotton-candy back-drop to palms on the Morro do Morcego (Bat Hill):

From the fort, I'm looking out to the Cagarras Islands and watching ships exiting the narrow bay under the imposing Sugar-loaf. Meanwhile, fishing boats struggle in against strong out-flowing currents:

 

 
 
  






The sun begins to set behind the massive bulk of the Sugar-loaf:

Beyond, the distant anvil-shaped Pedra da Gavea mountain forms a primeval scene, silhoutted against the ember sky and shedding its steam-clouds:

As the air cools slightly, mountain-top clouds begin to disperse and the Christ on Corcovado appears:

A short clip of the sunset, to the sound of lapping waves!  

In the rainforest

On several days I walked on paths which link coastal villages. Over headlands, past small beaches and onto fishing communities, it was a great way to see the rainforest up close, with virtually no worry of getting lost. It was also good exercise, walking up steep slopes in hot and humid conditions, and the sweat poured off as if in a sauna! Every so often, I refreshed at cool mountain streams, and timed my dry bread-roll (yum!) breaks with a sit on some rocks and a swim in the sea.  The highlight was seeing so many incredible trees and plants in the forest. Here are some pics:

Flowers dangling three metres down from a vine

Huge buttresses on a massive tree

Parrot Heliconia bordering a village path-way

Aphelandra

   

      

Banana palms planted near villages



Trees and seed pods overhanging the sea

  

Quaresma

Frisbee-sized lily behind a beach

Cabbage palm grove beyond the high-tide mark

Bromeliads

Coin-sized orchids on a granite boulder