Rain showers don't bring mayflowers, they bring floods

The rainy season has arrived fast and furious. Despite the fact that heavy rains plague us at least 3 months out of the year here, engineers cannot be troubled to deal with adequate drainage when designing roads and city spaces. Sometimes it seems they cannot even be troubled by trying to address traffic flow. Today it began raining heavily around 10 AM. A normal 5 minute drive took more than 2 hours. Some parts of the city were completely under water. Where I work people were out digging canals around the building to try to get the water directed somewhere other than inside the building.



Streets like this one, which are so numerous around the city, become waterfalls of rushing water carrying with it all manner of crap from the surrounding areas above. It all pools at the bottom, some low laying area, sometimes inside a parking area, or worse someone or several people's homes, and more often than not, also a busy street. People try to escape the rising waters, driving the wrong way down one way streets, coming head to head with motorists trying to go the opposite direction trying to do the same thing and bringing everyone to a complete stand still.

---------->@#$Q^@^#%&<-----------

Our mayor, or someone, declared a state of emergency (again) and advised everyone to stay home so as to not float away in their cars. Here I am at home, despite not having a car.

Fusca leads a double life

Fuscas are the car. You can't go anywhere without spotting one and they are frequently the "goal" car for those who were not able to previously afford one. They are also very versatile.

Take the above example. Not only is a cheap an affordable, it can double as an office and a store. Need a snack? Find it here in the Fusca! Transportation by day - hard working restaurant by night.

A valid, sad reason

Granted, this shot is over a month old. I delayed posting it out of respect for who ever was at the end of this long line of cars that we sat in for almost an hour. It is not uncommon to get stuck in long lines of traffic that seem to appear for no reason at all, or because of some political type reason, like a blitz. This was our encounter on Paralella late one night. Often this stretch is plagued with traffic like this because of either the FTC college site or the Wet and Wild concert venue. We figured that was probably the case when we got stuck in this line, but as we finally got to the end we started to smell a horrible stench, and came upon a body in the middle of the stretch of 4-6 lanes of traffic, covered with a sheet. It was rather shocking, even though this is not the first dead body in a road I have seen in my life. And considering it was stinking so badly, I imagine it had been there for some time. Apparently only the morgue can come to remove a body, and there is some paperwork involved, so the long line of cars probably continued to pass it for some time after we did, waiting for the red tape to be cut. For a few nights after we passed it, I couldn't sleep well, and kept seeing the strange position of the legs in my head. Rather awful, and yet so much a part of this reality.

Borracharia

Need tires? Just look for the sign made of a tire, or a large stack of them at the side of the road. Looking for new tires? Probably won't find them here. At least, it doesn't seem like many non-fully automated with lifts and what not stores sell new ones. If it doesn't look like a typical USA style tire store, you will probably have to go for the new used tire, which is much cheaper and more common. These hole in the wall stores are much more common than the fully automated ones. They can patch your tires, replace them, buy your used ones, you name it. Looks like this one does bike tires as well. Shame the bus got in the way of the cool sign made of a tire. Oh well.

Yeah, and old picture, deal with it

Due to the new "shopping" opening up on the other side of Tancredo Neves, Iguatemí is expanding. It has already been stated that there will not be enough parking for this new mall, nor will the traffic flow be lessened or helped by the numerous road renovations and expansions and confusions near by. So to compensate for the future competition for consumers who have little or no money, a new and improved parking ramp is being built to lure them by want to easy car access. Never mind that Iguatemí is still trying to fight the city to allow them to charge R$5 per car per park....