We have a huge garden. The vegetation is lush. Flowers that are so expensive in shops in the northern hemisphere grow in profusion: 'bird of paradise', and red anthurium (also called 'painted tongue'), and a large variety of lilies.

Our first outing was a two-hour drive to the little town of Crystalina, famous for gemstones. The tiny crowded shops have trays of dazzling emeralds and diamonds; baskets of honey-colored topaz; pink and green tourmalines; agates, aquamarines, citrines, and sparkling amethysts. Driving back to Brasilia the sun had set, and the stars were out. We had to park the car to catch our breath when we saw the glittering gems scattered across the night sky, and the clear outline of the Southern Cross.

We went to visit our Consulate in Sao Paulo, and to explore some of the cities in the South. Arriving in Sao Paulo by air, the high rise buildings looked like endless mountain ranges. Crime, air pollution and traffic jams define the life of this city, the second largest in the world. We stayed at the Makhsoud Plaza which, surprisingly, has a Dubai TV channel. The large Syrio-Lebanese community here is obviously prospering.

The breakfast buffet is piled with mouth-watering fresh fruit, some that I am tasting for the first time: Cherimoya (a kind of custard apple, only bigger), and Jabuticaba (a kind of jamun only bigger), Maracuja (passion fruit) and Graviola (which has medicinal properties, including, as latest research indicates, for the treatment of cancer.)

We are zapped out of our food haze by the arrival of a Beauty Queen. Tall, and gorgeously proportioned, her glowing figure is well displayed in a handkerchief dress. It turns out that she is going to be our Guide and her name is Lara. She is charming and unselfconscious and informs us that her genes are a mix of Italian, Portuguese, German, and Polish.

It all began in 1500…….

Brazil is a well-seasoned melting pot that has produced some of the best looking people in the world. It all began in 1500 when Pedro Alavares Cabral and his men set sail from Portugal headed for India arriving instead on the shores of Brazil, a journey of 45 days. They presented mirrors to the natives regarded as magical objects and married their women. Later, they brought slaves from Africa to work on sugar cane plantations and more gene-mixing took place. Slavery was abolished in 1888 and manpower from around the world had to take its place. The first Japanese immigrants arrived in 1908 and their descendants today number more than a million. At the same time, waves of immigrants came from every country in Europe, their passage facilitated by International Colonization Companies.
One of these companies was based in London, where the blueprint of a town was worked out in detail, while agents scouted out prospective immigrants. The town was to be called 'Londrina' or 'Little London' and in 50 years it grew from a village in a forest to a large modern city.

On our visit to Londrina we visited the Department of Afro-Asian Studies which is headed by a Professor from Goa. We were also introduced to the remarkable El Cid family. Its founder, Celso Garcia Cid, was born in a small village in Spain. In 1928 he sold the two bulls his family owned to buy a passage to Brazil. Starting with one bus for transporting the settlers who were arriving every day, he built up the largest transport company in the south.

When Celso was in his 40's he was a wealthy man, well-respected in the community. Now he turned to his real love cattle. He made up his mind to improve Brazilian cattle by breeding them with cattle from India. He traveled to Bombay by air in 1958 and explored villages in the interior of Gujarat and Andhra to buy bulls and cows which he brought back to Brazil.

We visited the home of his sons and grandsons at Cachoeira Farm. Greeting us at the entrance door was a stuffed bull in a glass case Celso's pride and joy, the animal he bought from the Raja of Bhavnagar who had become his life long friend. A large proportion of Brazil's cattle today have Indian genes.

Another interesting town that we visited was Curitiba, the Ecological Capital of the world. One of its many innovations is a scheme called: Garbage is not Garbage. The garbage collectors are the city's poor and unemployed. They trade different categories of garbage at the Garbage Exchange for food, bus tickets, school books and even Easter eggs and Christmas cake.

When my husband got an appointment to meet the Governor of Amazonas we made a trip to the North, to the town of Manaus which is right in the middle of the Rain Forest. Captain Angelo was our escort. “I am on your order,” he told us politely. We took a ferry to the famous Meeting of the Waters, where two rivers, one black and one clay-coloured, join and become the Amazon River. The Meeting of the Waters is a symbol used in modern Brazilian art and architecture. Captain Angelo takes English classes on weekends and practices on us. He served with the UN Peace keeping Mission in Mozambique and made friends with Indian and Bangladeshi soldiers stationed there.

Walking into the Rain Forest is like entering a place of worship. It takes a thousand years for a forest to achieve this perfect ecological balance. Each living thing complements the other and creates a palpable spirit of harmony, a gentle murmur of contentment in the great silence. There are only three of the same kind of tree per hectare (2½ acres) proving that diversity IS survival.

Of 'voodoo' and other beliefs ……..

In March '98 we visited Salvador, the capital of the north-eastern state of Bahia. Our tour guide, a handsome afro-brasilian, explained that the African slaves brought their own religious beliefs which have the general name of 'voodoo'. Their 'gods and goddesses' are called Orixas. To illustrate, he pointed to a t-shirt hanging in a market stall that had the 8 main orixas printed on it. They look like our Kathakali dancers: female clothing and menacing head-dresses. Salvador (pop.2 million) has 166 catholic churches, 2540 terreiros for voodoo, 1 synagogue and a stadium to seat 80,000 soccer fans. The wonderful novels of Jorge Amado are set in this part of the country.

Back in Brasilia, the garden is always in full bloom. In summer, there are noisy but short thunderstorms every afternoon which often take the phone lines down. We have to wait several days for the repairman to come Thhat's the way it was.

In Rio de Janeiro we took the cable car to the highest hilltop, to Corcovada, the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer and I felt I was in a James Bond movie. The view is fantastic a deep blue bay, and silver beaches.

On New Years Eve in Rio I looked out of my tenth floor hotel window on to Copacabana Beach: a million people, as far as the eye can see, wearing white. They light candles in hollows in the sand. They walk into the water, and offer flowers to Imanja, the goddess of the sea. I get into the spirit, grab the flowers from the hotel room, and wade into the warm water. At midnight, we watch a stunning fireworks display.

The Carnival in Rio was one of the many marvelous sights I saw in Brazil. The participants are the common people. All year round they go to their Club to practice dancing and singing in preparation for the Carnival when the Clubs compete with each other. The top ten winners are announced and there is a Parade of the Winners, which is what we attended from 9 at night to 7 in the morning. Each Club has four to five thousand participants, gigantic floats, and huge sound trucks.

You can't hear anything except the thundering pulsating Samba music outside and inside yourself. The densely massed costumes and plumed headgear in fantastic colours create a haze of lime green, purple and pink. Exquisite dancers celebrate their bodies with intricate sensuous movements. The figures on the floats are larger than life, out of this world. Then suddenly, on one of the floats, I see a girl, suspended in mid-air, circus fashion. She is completely and utterly naked, turning, smiling, waving. I rub the last prudish crusts from my Convent-schooled eyes and begin to understand what the Brazilian believe; that mind, body and spirit are one.

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