Porto Alegre
I rode through a few showers after leaving Cassino and thought I had escaped the worst of it before going through a huge storm for an hour or so about 100km from Porto Alegre. Once I was clear of it, I was approaching the edge of the city.
I checked into an apartment in the old centre absolutely soaked. My boots were full of water and my luggage in the metal boxes on the bike was wet. Somehow it seems to get in from the bottom. I unpacked everything to try and let it dry in the apartment and then went out for a little walk around.
After talking to that bloke in the petrol station a couple of days earlier, I had decided to try and get tickets for the match between Gremio and Bragantino while I was in Porto Alegre. The game was on the day after I arrived and I thought about immediately getting back on the bike and going to the stadium, but didn’t know if it would be open or sell tickets so I asked around first and then left it for the next day, when apparently I should be able to get one.
The following morning google maps took me through a slum to get to the stadium. The bike attracted a bit of a attention and I was a bit apprehensive about getting stopped by an 8 year old with a gun, so rode through as fast as I could. I came to a flood in the road and remembered the red alert for cumulative rainfall. There was someone wading through it and the water was up above their knees. They gestured that I should ride on the pavement, if you can call it that — a bank caked in mud next to the water. A woman was making her way across it in the other direction, putting down bits of plank to stand on. I slithered over it and was relieved to get clear of the area and arrive at the stadium.
I found the ticket office easily manage to communicate that I wanted a ticket for the game that day, thanks to the help of two of the ticket selling staff and two or three other crowd managing (or something) staff, none of whom spoke English (or Spanish). It all seemed to be going suspiciously well until none of my cards worked with their payment machine. Paying for stuff in Brazil by rarely goes through the first time and a random combination of machines, cards, and payment methods is normally required. This time, though, no combination worked (I later found out that Nationwide have blocked my credit card, having seen payments on it from Brazil. Apparently they aren’t bothered about payments from any of the other countries) so I had to return to google maps and go and find an ATM. The stadium was surrounded by dodgy looking areas and where possible I didn’t stop at red lights. After a nervous 15 minutes I found a bank and miraculously it not only worked but didn’t seem to charge me for getting cash out.
When I got back to the stadium, the woman pointed at a stand down one side of the pitch and I nodded. I paid just under £30 for the ticket and then went to buy a Gremio shirt from the club shop. This also had its complications and I had to park the bike illegally and leave my helmet with the security staff before going up a ramp to the shop, which was next to the entrances to the stands. I was back in under ten minutes and everything turned out ok. Some boozers asked me for a tip for ‘watching’ the bike for me, but I only had 100 real notes (£16).
I headed back to my airbnb, hoping to find a safer route. Google doesn’t have an option for avoiding slums, so I decided to navigate myself. There was a flyover going over the slum and a ramp next to the stadium so I thought the two must connect with each other somehow and that google was just being an idiot. I went up the ramp and hoped for the best, but rather than bending to the left and towards the old centre, it bent right and over a huge bridge and out of the city entirely. There wasn’t an exit for about ten miles. It took quite a while to get home, but I did manage to avoid the slums.
Back in my airbnb, I washed my wet clothes and then called and Uber to go back to the stadium. Given that I wouldn’t be able to take my helmet into the stands, going on the bike wasn’t an option. As soon as I got in the car, the driver warned me about the areas around the stadium and made gun and robbery gestures. I asked if it was safe inside the stadium and he said it was, but the problem would be after the game (or before, if I didn’t go in as soon as we arrived). In the end I asked him if he wanted to come and collect me afterwards. I’d pay him a slightly higher fee and in cash, so he wouldn’t have to give Uber a cut. We agreed that he’d pick me up at 8:30pm at the exact point where he dropped me off. The game started at 6:30, so that gave me 15 minutes to allow for injury time and to get out of the stadium to our meeting point.
I went straight past security and into the stadium area, but outside the ground there was a mass of activity and blue Gremio shirts, smoke in the air from barbecues, and a huge amount of tooled up rozzers of different types.
The stadium is one of the most modern sports venues in South America. I wandered about on the promenade and took some crap photos and had a Brahma before going in and taking my seat. It was in a corner, rather than in the middle at the side as I had hoped, but the view was still good enough.
There were two goals in the first ten minutes — the first a penalty to Gremio awarded by VAR and the second a Bragantino equaliser a couple of minutes later.
The mood in the stands soured just after half time when Bragantino scored again, but Gremio quickly came back with two goals — including a Luis Suarez volley — and the atmosphere was electric again. The 55,000 capacity stadium was only half full, but the fans there made a lot of noise. Drums were played throughout the game without pause. They might not even have stopped drumming at half time, I didn’t notice. There were no away fans at all (presumably they’d get murdered if they did show up) and no announcements made about the away team, so I wouldn’t have have noticed Bragantino scoring if my eyes weren’t on the game.
Just before half time there was a huge thunderstorm and by the end of the game the pitch was comically waterlogged and plenty of Charlie Chaplin style tackles were flying in. Bragantino equalised in injury time and the game finished 3–3. An excellent game for the neutral.
There was more injury time than there normally is in English matches, six minutes in the first half and seven in the second. I realised this only gave me two minutes to get to my taxi, so got ready to hurry out of the stadium as soon as the whistle was blown. A minute from time, there was a clash of heads that brought about an extra two minutes of injury time, which was announced on the big screen and over the tannoy (something I’ve never seen happen before — injury time in injury time). When the whistle was finally blown, I ran out into the rain and to my meeting point. There was no sign of the taxi. I was only five minutes late though and the driver would surely have realised that the game had overrun as the streets weren’t full of people. I waited.
I did have the chance to take two other taxis, but thought I should wait for my original bloke. We had an agreement and he was probably just stuck in traffic. The first alternative was an unmarked taxi claiming to be an Uber. He offered me a suspiciously low price to get back to the centre — three times less than what I paid earlier to get to the game, when there was far less demand, and ten times less than what the second (marked) taxi offered me once I rejected the first. There was definitely something dodgy going on there.
After waiting half an hour, I gave up on my taxi and went back to the stadium in search of some internet. I never managed to activate my phone sim card and my only internet access in Brazil has been wifi. I asked around and eventually some security guards helped me and one of them shared internet from a mobile blower. I ordered an Uber to pick me up from my original meeting point, which seemed to be the only option when getting a taxi from the stadium. I waited until it was a couple of blocks away before hurrying off back into the rain, losing internet in the process, and waiting for it to arrive. It didn’t. I waited another twenty minutes before going back to the same security guards. This time they called one themselves but there was so little availability it took another 40 minutes to arrive. I finally left the stadium an hour and a half after the game had finished.
Back in the centre, I found a restaurant that was still serving food at 11pm and ate a traditional Brazilian meal of steak, rice, chips, potato salad, normal salad, egg, and black beans.
The next day I took the bike for a service. Royal Enfield say the 20,000km (the bike actually has a bit over 21,000km on the clock now) involves some deep surgery, so it was pretty pricey. There was also a steering bearing that needed to be replaced, which doubled the total price to just over £300. The bike was ready the next day. The mechanics and people working in the shop were very friendly. One of them even hugged me when I collected the bike and wanted to stay in touch.
I stayed for four nights in Porto Alegre. I had been told it was an ugly, industrial city and though there were definitely ugly parts, I really liked it. Although south of the Tropic of Capricorn, it feels pretty tropical and has some amazing trees and a thick humidity in the air.
I took some photos of the trees in a square in the centre. Some of the trunks and branches twist all over the place and are covered with leaves like fur.
There are some pretty cool neighbourhoods as well and plenty of interesting restaurants, pubs, and coffee places. I could happily have stayed a lot longer.
You can see a bit more of the city, including some of the poorer areas, in the gruntfucker that’ll be in the next blog.
