Florianopolis City Tour

Today was mostly spent on a city tour of Florianopolis, Brazil. We had the opportunity to try some sugarcane juice from a little stand in the city center. It was pretty good, it wasn't super sweet or anything. 

While on our tour we got to see a lot of the beaches around the island of Florianopolis. I got some good photos, but here is one that I took with my iPod. 

We ended up staying at the last stop on the tour to have dinner and to try to catch the sunset. For dinner, I ended up ordering french fries because that was the only thing I recognized on the menu!  

We were in an old historic area, and apparently they have the first ever paved road there. I guess there was a portugal princess, Isabel, coming to visit and they also built a place for her to stay in and when she came, she ended up sleeping in a boat on the water anyways!

We were on our own to get back to the hotel from that historic area and decided that we would catch a bus back. If it wasn't for the Brazilian guy that spoke English we would probably not have made it back to the hotel. One thing that is different about their public transport is that you get on the bus and walk past the driver where another employee is sitting next to a turn style thing and they would take your money and give you change back for the bus fare. In Pittsburgh you have to have exact change because you won't be getting any money back. 

Once we got off the bus and were back in Florianopolis, we decided to stop at the mall cause I few of us needed a few things before we left for the next city tomorrow morning.  I needed to get some shaving gel and holy cow was that difficult. I went to a department store that had all kinds of stuff and I searched the whole store but I couldn't find shaving stuff anywhere. When I had given up hope, I started going for the exit and I noticed a counter that had stuff that looked like it could maybe be what I needed, but I would have to ask an employee to get it for me.  Luckily there was a girl and guy working so I def went to the girl and tried to do some charades to explain what I was looking for. It turns out that pretty much everything behind the counter was aerosol deodorant, which is def not shaving gel. So I proceeded to make motions in the air of what I thought was shaving, so the girl took me to a nearby aisle and showed me wax strips.  When she realized I didn't want that she went to a computer and opened up a translating site and then I was able to get what I needed (well sort of, they only had 1 type of shaving cream). 

After that mission was completed I wanted to get a sundae because I noticed that there was a McDonald's at the mall.  Well, I broke McDonald's...  I ordered something called a top sundae which is basically a hot fudge sundae with some chocolate straw things in it. I paid with a card and the receipt jammed up whenever the employee was printing my receipt to sign. Apparently they didn't know how to replace the receipt paper so that it would stop jamming and she kept making worse. I had to basically just stand there and watch it happen since I wouldn't  be able to communicate well enough to tell her what was going wrong. Meanwhile during this 15 minutes, a long line was growing when someone finally showed up to help the lady with the receipt paper. At least I still got some delicious ice cream. 

Free morning and university presentation

Brazilians leave their windows open all the time, all day and all night, (even at the hotels) but there are no screens in any of the windows.  Luckily they don't seem to have an issue with bugs here.  

Today we had a lot of free time in the morning and we decided to go as a group to Lagoa. We went to a havaianas store and bought some of their flip flops which are very popular in Brazil. After walking around for a while we ended up grabbing lunch at a buffet place called Margues da Lagoa. I must say that I am pretty glad that we can find buffets all over because it is much easier to just pick out the food that I think I will like rather than trying to decipher a menu and hoping that I can eat whatever is brought out to me.  We have also been pretty lucky in finding an employee at each place that speaks English. 

After lunch we went to a shop called Easy SUP (stand up paddle) and decided to try our luck at paddle boarding.I was pretty afraid at the beginning since I have terrible balance and can not swim.  Overall I think I did pretty well, I didn't even fall off the board!

During the evening we attended a lecture on renewable energy which was presented by Dr. Baltazar Guera. I enjoyed meeting him because he was a very personable guy and a good presenter. During his talk he spoke about the need to diversify the country's energy matrix. Currently, Brazil relies mainly on hydropower and they are having problems because some areas have been facing droughts.  He also pointed out that sustainable development depends on social progress, environmental protection, and economic development. All three are needed for it to be successful. 

As we all should know, global warming is a reality. I don't understand how people can sit there and say that there is no such thing as global warming. During our lecture, Dr. Guera stated that some evidence of global warming in South America is the occurrence of hurricanes. I believe they had their first one in 2005 or 2006 (catarina). This was evidence of climate change because science had previously said that hurricanes were impossible in South America.  

Dr. Guera also stated that our biggest concerns in terms of countries emitting the most CO2 emissions are China and India. These two countries have large populations and their energy demand is only expected to keep growing. One concern is that China did not sign the Kyoto protocol so they have no obligation to decrease their emissions. 

Something that was mentioned during the presentation was 7th generation biofuels. I will have to look up more information about the topic because it seemed pretty interesting. I guess Germany is already doing it which has something to do with using biomass (leaves) other than food (corn, sugarcane) for fuel. 

Wind Farm Visit

Today we stayed in Osório and visited a wind farm called Ventos do Sul. It is part of a larger organization called Elecnor. Ventos do Sul has 148 turbines on their farm.  

Today was another hard hat wearing day!

The land that they built their wind turbines on is rented out to local farmers who grow crops or let their cattle and horses graze there. 

The facility also has a lot of birds that live on the land. There is one species of bird in particular (sorry i dont recall the name nor can I spell it) that is a good ecological indicator that lives on the property and this is good news for the company because it means that the birds feel safe there even though there are spinning turbine blades. 

 

 

Ventos do Sul is conducting a 10 year environmental study on the impact that the wind farm is having on the bird populations. One of the negatives to wind power is that it causes mortality in bird and bat species.  This particular wind farm states that they have found that less than 0.5 birds per turbine are killed a year (so that is less than 74 birds a year). Our guide explained that their bird collision rates are very low because the birds native to the area naturally fly at levels well below the height of the turbine blades. He also said that another reason contributing to their low bird collision rates are that the turbine blades have a slower revolution speed than the ones that we would see in the United States for example.  

This company sounds like they are very concerned about the environment and the impact that their wind farms have on it. It was really interesting to me to hear about their environmental and sustainable practices. We saw a few of their buildings and they all were very pretty. To me it looked like they were built with a passive design scheme to allow the building to require less energy for heating/cooling. Brazil doesn't actually have much in terms of heating technology in buildings because it doesn't get super cold here. Even though we are visiting Brazil during their winter, the temperature has been about 75 degrees so far. 

Here is a little taste of home that we found at dinner today:

And here are some more puppies:

Tractebel

Today we visited an energy company called Tractebel Energia. During our travel there we saw a lot of dogs. I guess it is very common to see stray dogs all over Brazil. I got a few pictures of some of the doggies that we saw. They are very friendly and come up to you wagging their tails. 

I might have to stop at a store and buy some doggy treats to carry around with me! There were even dogs on the grounds of the company that we visited just hanging out where the employees can eat their lunches outside.

Tractebel provides 7% of Brazil's energy. They have a wide variety of power generation methods. About 80% of the energy they produce comes from renewable resources, the other 20% is from fossil fuels like coal. Tractebel is the biggest private electricity producer. 

 We started our tour at their environmental park. Tractebel built the park to give back to the community and to do something good for the environment. There are about 35,000 trees and 3.5 kilometers of walking trails on the 50 acre parcel of land. Everything at the park is completely free and open to the public. They have a children's playground and a conservation center that has educational programs. 

We then drove to a newer facility (I believe it was built 2 years ago) that Tractebel has built involving solar and wind power. Tractebel has the largest solar power plant in Brazil. This solar and wind facility was developed to gain more knowledge about how these plants operate and how to maintain them. The purpose behind this facility is to figure out what the best technology would be for power in Brazil. 

We then traveled to one of Tractebel's older coal facilities, 1979 being their first year. One of the employees, Vilmar, was able to speak English. He was super excited to be able to communicate with us about what he does for the company. He said that we made his dream come true because he always wanted to be able to tell a tour group of Americans about his work. He said he came to the U.S. and tried to visit an energy company and that they wouldn't let him in. He was so cute and excited that we were there. At the end, he gave us a magazine that he writes on his days off.

We have come to learn that dinner food portions are pretty large here. You should have seen the size of our meals tonight!! We may have to start splitting our meals between two people. 

Traveling and Orientation

Today was spent traveling the rest of the way to Florianopolis, Brazil. We were pretty concerned when our very first flight from Pittsburgh was delayed by 2 hours because of a flat tire. If we would have missed our connecting flight in Chicago then we would have had some serious problems.

Our longest flight was 10 hours long. We ended up sitting next to a very nice Brazilian guy that talked with us in English. Once we arrived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, we realized how difficult it was going to be in a country where we don't speak the language. Our first hurdle was trying to get something for lunch. We ended up going to Pizza Hut and had to point to pictures of what we wanted off the menu, they got our order correct for the most part. 

Then we boarded our last flight to Florianopolis, Brazil where we were met by Dina, an employee of ISA, the travel organization we are using. She was able to help us out at the airport and our drive to our hotel was pretty easy going.

 We spent the evening doing some orientation stuff and then had a welcome dinner at an Italian place nearby. We tried something called polenta and it was pretty good. I must say that Brazilians definitely do not skimp on the cheese on their pizzas or pastas!!

A weird cultural thing that all of us will have to get used to, is that you can't flush toilet paper down the toilet. Your suppose to throw your used toilet tissues into the garbage can next to the toilet!