Postal Service

It’s easy to identify post offices (correios) by their bright yellow-and-blue marquees. Every main city has a rather grandiose main Correios building as well as dozens of small post offices. Aside from commercial centers, airports and major shopping centers usually have postal kiosks. With the introduction of Internet, the once interminable lines are now gone. When sending a letter or parcel, you can send it simples (regular mail) or registrada (registered). Sedex is the Correios’s version of Fedex and is quite efficient.

The Correios sells cardboard boxes of various sizes as well as postcards and very beautiful aerograms. For envelopes, you’ll often have to go to a papelaria (stationery store). There are no adhesive envelopes in Brazil, but the Correios will always have a pot of glue and a brush and you can proceed to make a big mess. Postage within Brazil is very inexpensive, but sending letters or packages abroad can be expensive depending on weight. On the bright side, intensely colorful Brazilian postage stamps (selos) are quite stunning.

Telephones

Brazilian phone service is quite efficient, if not exactly cheap. Local calls are charged by the minute. Calls within Brazil have become somewhat cheaper in recent years with the privatization of the phone industry; however, international calls are pretty astronomical, and unless it’s essential, you’re better off emailing or Skype-ing with loved ones at home. If you make an international call from a hotel, it will be even more exorbitant (it will be much cheaper if you ask people back home to call you).

Throughout Brazil, you will see dome-shaped phone booths known as orelhões (“big ears”), where you can make local calls and long-distance calls throughout Brazil. There used to be considerable lineups at orelhões, but with the popularity of cell phones, you’ll now find them abandoned (and often not working). To use an orelhão, you’ll need to purchase a phone card, cartão telefônica, sold at any news kiosk or often by vendors in busy streets. They usually come in 40 and 60 units (unidades). A quick local call will use up 1 or 2 units. A short long-distance call will quickly use up an entire card.

Brazil has several telephone companies, or operadoras, and whenever you make a long-distance call outside of your area code (known as a DDD), you’ll have to precede the phone number with a two-digit number belonging to one of them. Embratur (21) is the biggest one, with national and international coverage. Other operadoras are Intelig (23) and Oi (31). When calling a number in Brazil, dial 0 followed by the operadora code, followed by the DDD, followed by the number. An example of a call to Rio (whose area code is 21) would be: 0/21-21-3333-3333. An example of an international call to Canada or the United States (whose country code is 1) would be: 00/21-1-416-921-7777). It is also possible to make a collect call (uma chamada a cobrar) from Brazil via the Embratel operator. To do so, call 0800/703-2111.

Cell phones are immensely popular throughout Brazil. In fact, many poorer Brazilians prefer a cell phone to more expensive home phones that entail hefty monthly rates. Calling to or from a cell phone, however, is more expensive than calling from a fixed phone. If you’re calling long distance, charges are extremely steep. You’ll find cell phone coverage in most places throughout Brazil. Your own cell phone should work in Brazil if it is compatible with international GSM standards. Contact your cell phone provider before your trip to confirm. However, since roaming charges will be really high, you’re much better off buying a Brazilian SIM chip with TIM (www.tim.com.br), the only provider that provides nationwide service. Alternatively, you can rent a cell phone at airports with a company such as PressCell (tel. 21/3322-2692 in Rio, tel. 11/3253-0077 in São Paulo, www.presscell.com.br).

Internet

Internet service is spreading like wildfire through Brazil. Although only around 10 percent of the people have Internet at home, cyber cafés in bookstores, bars, and shopping malls are ubiquitous, as are LAN houses, dark (but air-conditioned) dens where adolescents while away the day playing games and blogging (Brazilians are the second biggest population of bloggers in the world after Americans). It’s hard not to find somewhere to check your email. Even small towns, isolated beach resorts, and the Amazon forest (via satellite) will generally have a computer or two where you can connect. Prices vary R$3–10 an hour, depending on location (tourists areas are usually more expensive), but service (via broadband) is uniformly quite rapid. Headphones and microphones often allow you to Skype.

More and more places (cafés and shopping malls) also have free wireless access in the event you have a laptop or cell phone with Internet. Moreover, most hotels, pousadas, and even youth hostels throughout Brazil have invested in Internet, not only for themselves, but for their guests (although sometimes you’ll have to pay an exorbitant hourly rate). As a result, no matter where you are, you’ll have no trouble checking your emails or downloading digital photos.

Newspapers and Magazines

Brazil’s most reputed newspaper is the São Paulo–based Folha de São Paulo, a mildly left-leaning paper popular with liberals and intellectuals. Sort of a Brazilian equivalent of The New York Times, it has its devotees as well as its detractors, but it is definitely an important journalistic reference. For foreigners, it is a good source of arts and culture listings for São Paulo. Also good is the slightly more conservative, Rio-based Jornal do Brasil. You’ll find both papers sold throughout the country.

In Rio, O Globo, owned by the Globo media giant that also owns radio stations, a record company, and the famous Globo television network, also puts out a popular daily paper that has good arts listings for the city of Rio. Otherwise, major cities throughout the country publish their own newspapers, although they are more provincial in character.

Brazil has magazines galore. The three weekly news magazines along the lines of Time and Newsweek are Istoé, Época (owned by Globo), and Veja. None of them are quite as hard-hitting and high-quality as they used to be in the pre-Internet age. If you buy Veja in Rio and São Paulo, you’ll receive a free Time Out-style city guide with the upcoming week’s cultural and arts listings and events along with shopping news and restaurant reviews. Veja Rio (www.vejario.abril.com.br) and Veja São Paulo (www.vejasaopaulo.abril.com.br) can be found online, as can Veja guides to other cities, such as Brasília, Salvador, and Recife, all with reviews and listings (in Portuguese).

If you’re interested in Brazilian food and restaurants, Gula is a great magazine (similar to Gourmet). Bravo is an intelligent and attractive magazine devoted to the Brazilian and international art world. Trip and TPM are two funky magazines aimed at hipster twenty-something females. Brazilian Vogue is fun for visiting fashionistas. Meanwhile, curious travelers might want to check out Viagem e Turismo, a gorgeously photographed monthly travel mag that always puts out interesting special editions on different Brazilian regions (it is published by Abril, which also publishes the Quatro Rodas maps and guides).

You can get your hands on major English-language papers, particularly The International Herald Tribune, and all sorts of international magazines (sometimes they are a month or two old) at airport bookstores and major bancas de revistas (newsstands) in Rio and São Paulo. Rio and São Paulo’s many bookstores also carry a wide selection of English-language press and books, including guidebooks. These are harder to find in other cities, but the spread of mega bookstores such as Siciliano and Saraíva means you can usually find English-language magazines and books in these livrarias, most of which are located in glitzier shopping malls. Because these items are imported, they will cost a lot more than you would pay for them back home.

Television

Wherever you wander in Brazil, even in the most modest and isolated outpost in the middle of nowhere, there will inevitably be a shack with a lit-up TV and someone watching it. Brazilian TV is a great unifier, and no matter how much the landscape, temperature, or accent changes, you’ll see people watching the same soccer games, novelas, newscasts, reality shows, and live audience shows. For the most part, Brazilian TV is also pretty terrible.

The major networks beamed across the nation are SBT, Record, Bandeirantes, MTV (a Brazilian version of the American music network), Globo, and TV Educadora, a state-owned educational network that has a mix of high-brow round tables, films, and very good cultural programming (including great live music performances).

The all-powerful Globo is the leading network. Its nightly novelas (which air at 7 p.m., 8 p.m., and 9 p.m. Mon.–Sat.) are the most watched of all nightly programs. These soap operas go all out in terms of sets, costumes, lighting, and production and star a roster of gorgeous (and usually pretty talented) actors, actresses, and models, all of whom are part of a permanent stable of stars, known as Globais, that hearkens back to the Hollywood studio system. When these Globais aren’t participating in a novela, miniseries, or other Globo production, they make commercials and give the paparazzi and gossip columnists endless fodder. If you don’t speak Portuguese, you will find novelas cheesy and melodramatic. If you do understand the language, you will still find them cheesy and melodramatic, but you’ll easily get drawn into them, and perhaps become addicted.

You don’t need to understand much Portuguese to watch the broadcast of a live jogo de futebol. The machine-gun fire of words rattled off by Brazilian sports commentators with jacked-up fervor and excitement will have you alternately biting your nails and cheering for joy, even if you’ve never been much of a soccer fan.

In basic Brazilian hotels, you’ll usually receive these basic Brazilian channels (sometimes only Globo, depending on your location). However, in moderate to luxury lodgings, you’ll be treated to cable with BBC, CNN, some superior Brazilian cable channels, and lots of American cable series.

© Michael Sommers from Moon Brazil, 2nd Edition