Issue 015

July 2006

Last month we gave you an idea of what you can expect from a trip to Brazil- hopefully with the information we presented, you’re now considering a trip to the spiritual home of Vale Tudo and the birthplace of modern Jiu-Jitsu. If so, read on to find out the ins and outs of being in Brazil. With our guide as a reference, you’ll be well-armed for all eventualities- just remember to take a copy of this issue along, but be warned- Brazilians are known to be big fans of Fighters Only, so be careful they don’t pinch your copy!  

Living and working in Brazil

By Peter Irving

Getting there

Flights to Brazil are very expensive, so it’s worth shopping around for the best deal. You’re talking £850+ as a ballpark figure for a 6-month ticket. British citizens are visa exempt in Brazil, meaning that you are automatically entitled to a tourist visa. A tourist visa is provisionally granted for 3 months, and can be extended a further 3 at the discretion of the Policia Federal for a nominal administration fee. If you want to stay longer than 6 months you’ll need either a work or student visa. Work visas aren’t too easy to acquire unless you have a trade that’s highly in demand. 

Assuming you want the full 6 months of the tourist visa- you’ll have to buy a six-month ticket and set the return date within 3 months, because there is a 3-month discretionary period. Once you’ve extended your visa you can then extend the return date for a fee of approximately £80. You could chance it, but the airline in the UK might refuse you to board with a 6-month return date, or immigration in Brazil could hold you and deport you straight away. They might not, but I didn’t want to chance it for £80.

Beware Air France

In 2004 I went through Air France, who informed me that I could purchase a 3-month ticket and extend it to 6 months. As I already explained, this information is wrong, but Air France kindly offered to sell me another return ticket. Air France has the worst customer service in the world. I explained that I wished to purchase a one-way ticket, which they then claimed they could not provide because of immigration laws. I pointed out that a one-way ticket would return me to my country of origin, but by redeeming another return I’d find myself in a foreign nation without a homeward flight again. Although unwilling to concede the point they did advise me therefore not to redeem it for the return trip. I insisted that they had misinformed me when I purchased the original ticket, so they then back-peddled over the statement that it was illegal to sell me a one way ticket, and offered to do so for £250 more than the price of a return. I said I would complain to their management, they said “go on then”. 

In 2005 I used TrailFinders travel agents and went through Lufthansa/Varig partnership. The TrailFinders staff where outstanding, spoke perfect English, Portuguese and German and made the whole changeover of tickets really easy. However, Air France had in flight movies on personal mini TV sets and lots of legroom, while the Varig plane was cramped and packed with irate, sunburnt Germans. Your choice. 

The price of freedom

With the exchange rate strongly favouring the pound, you can make your sterling go a long way in South America. If you’ve got money to burn you won’t have any trouble getting rid of it, but if you’re doing your trip on a shoestring you can make your money last without suffering too badly. To live, eat and train the absolute minimum, and I mean the very rock bottom you can get away with, is £250 per month. That means economising, playing your cards right and having a little luck come your way.

If you’re a little short you can find work while you’re there, but manual work pays a pittance and Vale Tudo fights don’t pay well, so unless you have a specialist trade that’s in demand in Brazil then you should probably consider teaching English.

Working in Brazil

If you want to work in Brazil you are legally required to have a work visa, however, the Brazilian cops have bigger worries than people working without the right paperwork. Teaching English is an easy way to generate a little income, a ‘TEFL’ qualification is not hard to acquire but it’s possible to find work without one, even in an established school. Conversational English classes are always in demand for executives who regularly deal with international clients. You might even find a couple of students just by asking around the gym. The flexible hours make teaching English an ideal job to combine with your training, you don’t even necessarily need to be a competent Portuguese speaker. 

The cost of day-to-day living

Sao Paulo is the commercial centre of Brazil and as such higher wages drive the cost of living up. Rio is comparatively cheaper, and Petropolis (where I stayed the majority of my time) is cheaper again. Food is great in Brazil, it’s cheap and there is plenty of it. As an athlete you can get your nutrition just right for much less than in the UK. 

Big corporate chains don’t have the stranglehold on dining establishments that they do in North America and Europe, and all you can eat restaurants, lanchonettes and family owned bakeries are everywhere. For some reason the all you can eat restaurants all close at 4p.m. but it’s a good idea to get your main meal of the day in the early afternoon to fuel up for the late training. 

You’ll be burning a huge amount of calories if you’re trying to make the most of your training trip so ready-prepared unlimited meals of varied salads, fruits, meat, rice and pasta dishes all for between £2 and £3 are a godsend. You can pay a lot more in restaurants but if you look around you can get great, healthy food very cheaply. 

You’ve got to try Acai while you’re there; it’s obligatory for the jiu-jitsu fighter. Although it looks like a big bowl of purple gunk, it’s an awesome anti-oxidant superfood and I’ve never tasted anything as good in my life. When I went back to Brazil in 2005 I got off the plane and took a taxi straight to the nearest place that serves Acai.

If you’re not cutting weight the Chuhascurrias (barbecue restaurants) are not to be missed, and Brazilian pizza is outstanding and different from the Italian style.

Proper planning and preparation prevents piss poor performance… probably.

Learning Portuguese in advance, planning your finances, employment and accommodation are obviously the wise moves when planning a stay in Brazil. The first time I went I did none of these things, preferring to leave everything in the hands of fate. 

I sold, gave away and discarded everything I had that didn’t fit in my kit bag and bought a plane ticket. I didn’t really know where I was going, who I’d meet and had very little idea what it would be like. It’s probably not the right approach for everyone, but to be alone in a foreign land with everything that you own in the world packed in two bags is a pretty liberating feeling. 

Finding a place to stay was a major cause for concern for me when I first arrived, but I had no idea about the extraordinary hospitality I would find. I started off staying at the Praca d’arvore hostel in Sao Paulo. Hostels are great starting points to get to know a city from. I got a crash course in Brazilian survival from the temporary residents that passed through the hostel. Getting to grips with the transport, the insane road system, the language and all the little differences that amount to a entirely different culture can seem overwhelming, veteran backpackers from Europe and North America are an invaluable mine of information for the lone adventurer. Don’t underestimate the value of the single-serving friend. 

At only 25 Reais per night (Roughly £5) including a substantial breakfast, kitchen and shared dormitory and bathroom, I couldn’t complain. If you want to make your trip last longer than a few weeks you’ll have to look elsewhere for more economical accommodation. After two weeks of enduring the snoring and smelly feet of Peruvian backpackers I was ready for a room to myself.

I’d been travelling over to the house of Black Belt Andrei Agostinho to train in his fully matted front room. He invited me to live there after just a few days, I stayed there for a few months, training all day and getting to know the Paulistas. 

I moved on to Petropolis to train with Adalberto ‘Buda’ de Souza – and lived there with the Galvao family. Unbelievably I’d known Pedro Galvao all of five minutes before being invited to stay at his family home. I’d heard that Brazilian hospitality was extraordinary, but I’d never have guessed to what extent. 

One day my friend said to me “Man, there is more to life than just fighting”

Even the most dedicated fighter has to take some down time, and Brazil offers no shortage of diversions away from the academy. In fact, you’ll probably find yourself thinking that one lifetime just isn’t enough. 

Beach culture is big in Brazil; swimming, surfing, posing and chilling out are major pastimes, especially for the Carioca (the word for a native of Rio De Janeiro). The huge metropolis that is Sao Paulo is a fair drive from the sea, and the Paulistas are slightly more conservative. You can’t sit in a café or get service in a shop unless you’re wearing a shirt, by contrast in Rio it’s commonplace to see guys and girls wandering the streets away from the seafront wearing only swimming costumes.

Be careful when you swim, the surfistas make it look easy, diving through the waves with the grace of an aquatic creature. I, on the other hand, got unceremoniously slammed by a wall of water right on the very shore, and nearly drowned in 3 feet of water, pinned by the current like I had Bob Sapp on top of me.

 The famous Rio beaches – like Ipanema and Copacabana, definitely should be taken in, but a trip a little further along to somewhere like Cabo Frio is definitely advisable if you get a whole week or weekend off. The real beauty spots in Brazil though are to be found in the white beaches of the North-East, even the Cariocas take holidays to Florianopolis. It is an extremely long way from Rio or Sao Paulo though, and hence far, far away from any kind of fighting.

 The Nightlife in Rio is wild and you’re seriously spoilt for choice. Clubs like Help and the pubs along Copacabana are popular with tourists, and although it’s considered a ‘must do’ experience by many gringos I never bothered. If you have a Brazilian friend who can stop you from getting lost, ripped off or mugged, I’d definitely recommend steering clear of the ready packaged tourist experience and going deeper, seeing some of the authentic Brazil for yourself. Pedro Galvao took me down to Fundição Progresso, a huge party organised in an abandoned warehouse complex down by the docks. If you can imagine one of those movies where the undercover cop/vampire slayer/secret agent is forced to walk through a nightclub and the whole thing seems contrived because the whole set up is just too ultracool and all the girls look like models, well, such a place does exist and it is in Brazil. 

The band on stage were being filmed for MTV Brasil and the adjoining warehouse had been decorated by seriously talented graffiti artists and had DJ’s playing Brazilian Hip-Hop. Drinks were dirt-cheap, nobody wanted a fight outside and every single girl was superfine. Either Brazilian girls form social groups based exclusively on how hot they are, or there must have been a bouncer on the door turning away all the fat friends. 

Petropolis

I chose to stay in Petropolis, a little over an hours bus ride from the city of Rio de Janeiro. I chose Petropolis over Rio for a few reasons; lower crime rate, lower cost of living and lower temperature. Up in the hills the climate is more temperate than the scorching Rio sun, but a typical winter temperature in Petropolis is often still like a fine English summer. 

On off days I would catch a short bus ride and go up into the hills to run up the mountain paths next to the rivers that roll down them, and dive into the cold water pools that form on the way. It’s hard to beat sunbathing on hot rocks and bathing under the waterfalls, especially as a way of relaxing after a tough weeks training or a hard fight. As my friend Juninho Piranha put it in uncharacteristically poetic fashion –“It cleanses the soul.”

Large community events are commonplace in Petropolis, the municipal park in Itaipava hosting Festivals, Rodeos, and open air Rock and Samba concerts. In Sao Paulo, Sunday was a social day when the jiu-jitsu team would gather at Andrei’s house to train in the front room, then cook barbecue and drink cold beers.

Culture clash and language barrier

As great as the people are in Brazil they are not without fault. They are sometimes infuriatingly laid back, and appointment times can slide hours or days and sometimes things just fail to ever materialise. Crossing roads in Sao Paulo is an extreme sport, in Rio they don’t slow down for you but in Sao Paulo they speed up to get you. If you’ve seen Death Race 2000 then you get the picture. It may seem obvious but they drive on the other side of the road, I nearly killed myself a few times by automatically looking the wrong way. Misunderstandings and miscommunications make for some funny anecdotes after the time, but when you’re actually there it can be quite tough. It’s frustrating and isolating not being able to speak the language, but the enthusiasm with which the people I was surrounded by took to helping me learn Portuguese, learn jiu-jitsu and learning English themselves eased the burden tremendously. 

Mastering the pronunciation of the Portuguese nasal dipthong is critical, without it a word can have an entirely different meaning. For example, the word for bread is the same as the word for cock- only with the nasal pronunciation. It took me some time to even perceive this subtle difference, by which point I had been going to the bakery every day for 10 weeks to ask the assistant for white cock, brown cock and quite often, French cock. The bakers were kind not to laugh while I was still there, though Andrei was merciless when I asked him if he wanted some cock, but sometimes you have to learn the hard way.

Surviving the mean streets

Any tourist to Brazil is filled with warnings about how dangerous it is, and how tourists are targets for thieves. You should heed these warnings seriously, don’t carry too much money on you, don’t display jewellery or electronic items, all of those things. Think about it though, you shouldn’t do these things in any city anywhere in the world. The best thing you can do is get a Brazilian friend to show you around when you want to go somewhere or go to buy something to make sure you don’t stray into dangerous neighbourhoods. Stay clear of the favelas (slums) at all costs, especially if you are white, and in the event you do get held up – don’t do a Steven Seagal. 

Don’t let fear of crime be a negative factor when you’re considering whether to make the trip. If you’re smart then it’s highly unlikely anything bad will happen, the worst thing that ever happened to me was having my mobile phone picked from my pocket.

Lasting impressions

I can’t promise that you’ll have the luck, receive the welcome or have as much fun as I did, but I’d advise that you at least try. Do it your own way, carve out an experience for yourself instead of following the herd and find the real Brazil. It’s not easy, but if you have the courage then the rewards are great; and besides, if you don’t thrive on a challenge and dare to face the unknown, then perhaps the fight game isn’t for you. 

The Tourist Option

By Rob Hackney

Arming yourself with a copy of Lonely Planet and packing your rucksack isn’t quite for everyone. There are those who can only escape from their day jobs or families for a week or two- in this case, a trip to Brazil is still an option. ‘Training tourists’ are common in Rio, and numerous places have sprung up to cater for these visitors. One such place is the Gracie Camp (www.graciecamp.net), where travellers get their accommodation and instruction as all part of the package. Rob Hackney tells us about his experiences there. 

“Do I really want to do this?” That’s what was going through my head as the plane took off for Rio de Janeiro. Never having done Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu before, I had no idea what I would be doing for the next three weeks. All I knew was that I would be doing it at the Gracie Barra Academy - the home of the sport.

Looking back I honestly don’t know what I was so worried about. The academy is, when you get right down to it, a room full of guys who are all there to do one thing: BJJ. The entire Gracie Camp experience is set up so that fighters get a private lesson before the training session starts, and during training total newbies like myself are placed into the capable hands of a purple belt instructor.

The technical lessons were just superb. As long as you can do what you see, the slight language barrier is no obstacle. Collar chokes, guard passes, arm bars, throws- pretty much every essential skill you need to know is covered in immense detail.

In a way I think that being so far from home actually helps you to train. When you leave your life thousands of miles behind you, there’s nothing stopping you from concentrating all of your efforts on training. To put it simply, it’s total immersion and the best way to learn anything fast.

For anyone who is thinking of training abroad but not sure if it’s for them, my advice is to just go for it. Actually doing it is the best way to find out if it’s for you, and if not, well, you’re going to get a holiday out of it too.