TRAVEL TUESDAY 467 - IGUAZÚ FALLS, BRAZIL, ARGENTINA

“Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.” - Mikhail Lermontov

Welcome to the Travel Tuesday meme! Join me every Tuesday and showcase your creativity in photography, painting and drawing, music, poetry, creative writing or a plain old natter about Travel.

There is only one simple rule: Link your own creative work about some aspect of travel and share it with the rest of us.

Please use this meme for your creative endeavours only. Do not use this meme to advertise your products or services as any links or comments by advertisers will be removed immediately.

Iguazú Falls or Iguaçu Falls (Guarani: Chororõ Yguasu, Spanish: Cataratas del Iguazú; Portuguese: Cataratas do Iguaçu) are waterfalls of the Iguazu River on the border of the Argentine province of Misiones and the Brazilian state of Paraná. Together, they make up the largest waterfall system in the world. The falls divide the river into the upper and lower Iguazu. The Iguazu River rises near the heart of the city of Curitiba. For most of its course, the river flows through Brazil; however, most of the falls are on the Argentine side. Below its confluence with the San Antonio River, the Iguazu River forms the border between Argentina and Brazil.

The name Iguazú comes from the Guarani or Tupi words "y", meaning "water", and “ûasú", meaning “big". Legend has it that a deity planned to marry a beautiful woman named Naipí, who fled with her mortal lover Tarobá in a canoe. In a rage, the deity sliced the river, creating the waterfalls and condemning the lovers to an eternal fall. The first European to record the existence of the falls was the Spanish Conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1541. It was inscribed into the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2013.

Upon seeing Iguazu, the United States First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly exclaimed, "Poor Niagara!” (which falls, at 50 m, are a third shorter). Often, Iguazu also is compared with Victoria Falls in Southern Africa, which separates Zambia and Zimbabwe. Iguazu is wider but is split into roughly 275 distinct falls and large islands, whereas Victoria has the largest curtain of water in the world, at more than 1,600 m wide and over 100 m in height.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY #170 - RIO DE JANEIRO, BRASIL

“The most beautiful thing about Brazil that I always find that is so unlike any other place I've been in the world is the diversity of its people.” - Gisele Bündchen 

Welcome to the Travel Tuesday meme! Join me every Tuesday and showcase your creativity in photography, painting and drawing, music, poetry, creative writing or a plain old natter about Travel.

There is only one simple rule: Link your own creative work about some aspect of travel and share it with the rest of us. Please use this meme for your creative endeavours only.

Do not use this meme to advertise your products or services as any links or comments by advertisers will be removed immediately.

Rio de Janeiro (‘River of January’), or simply Rio, is the second-most populous municipality in Brazil and the sixth-most populous in the Americas. Rio de Janeiro is the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s third-most populous state. Part of the city has been designated as a World Heritage Site, named “Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between the Mountain and the Sea”, by UNESCO on 1 July 2012 as a Cultural Landscape. Founded in 1565 by the Portuguese, the city was initially the seat of the Captaincy of Rio de Janeiro, a domain of the Portuguese Empire. Later, in 1763, it became the capital of the State of Brazil, a state of the Portuguese Empire.

In 1808, when the Portuguese Royal Court transferred itself from Portugal to Brazil, Rio de Janeiro became the chosen seat of the court of Queen Maria I of Portugal, who subsequently, in 1815, under the leadership of her son, the Prince Regent, and future King João VI of Portugal, raised Brazil to the dignity of a kingdom, within the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and Algarves.

Rio stayed the capital of the pluricontinental Lusitanian monarchy until 1822, when the War of Brazilian Independence began. This is one of the few instances in history that the capital of a colonising country officially shifted to a city in one of its colonies. Rio de Janeiro subsequently served as the capital of the independent monarchy, the Empire of Brazil, until 1889, and then the capital of a republican Brazil until 1960 when the capital was transferred to Brasília.

Rio de Janeiro has the second largest municipal GDP in the country, and 30th largest in the world in 2008, estimated at about R$343 billion (nearly US$201 billion). It is headquarters to Brazilian oil, mining, and telecommunications companies, including two of the country’s major corporations – Petrobras and Vale – and Latin America’s largest telemedia conglomerate, Grupo Globo. The home of many universities and institutes, it is the second-largest center of research and development in Brazil, accounting for 17% of national scientific output according to 2005 data. Despite the high perception of crime, the city has a lower incidence of crime than Northeast Brazil, but it is far more criminalised than the south region of Brazil, which is considered the safest in the country.

Rio de Janeiro is one of the most visited cities in the Southern Hemisphere and is known for its natural settings, Carnival, samba, bossa nova, and balneario beaches such as Barra da Tijuca, Copacabana, Ipanema, and Leblon. In addition to the beaches, some of the most famous landmarks include the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer atop Corcovado mountain, named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World; Sugarloaf Mountain with its cable car; the Sambódromo (Sambadrome), a permanent grandstand-lined parade avenue which is used during Carnival; and Maracanã Stadium, one of the world’s largest football stadiums. 

Rio de Janeiro was the host of the 2016 Summer Olympics and the 2016 Summer Paralympics, making the city the first South American and Portuguese-speaking city to ever host the events, and the third time the Olympics were held in a Southern Hemisphere city. The Maracanã Stadium held the finals of the 1950 and 2014 FIFA World Cups, the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, and the XV Pan American Games.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

TRAVEL TUESDAY #168 - PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL

“They have a joy for life in Brazil unlike any country I’ve ever seen.” - Morena Baccarin

Welcome to the Travel Tuesday meme! Join me every Tuesday and showcase your creativity in photography, painting and drawing, music, poetry, creative writing or a plain old natter about Travel.

There is only one simple rule: Link your own creative work about some aspect of travel and share it with the rest of us. Please use this meme for your creative endeavours only.

Do not use this meme to advertise your products or services as any links or comments by advertisers will be removed immediately.

Porto Alegre (“Joyful Harbour”) is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Founded in 1769 by Manuel Sepúlveda, its population of 1,481,019 inhabitants (2016) makes it the tenth most populous city in the country and the centre of Brazil’s fifth largest metropolitan area, with 4,405,760 inhabitants (2010). The city is the southernmost capital city of a Brazilian state.

Porto Alegre was founded in 1769 by Manuel Jorge Gomes de Sepúlveda, who used the pseudonym José Marcelino de Figueiredo to hide his identity; but the official date is 1772 with the act signed by immigrants from the Azores, Portugal. The vast majority of the population is of European descent. The city lies on the eastern bank of the Guaíba River (also referred to as a lake), where five rivers converge to form the Lagoa dos Patos (Lagoon of the Ducks), a giant freshwater lagoon navigable by even the largest of ships. This five-river junction has become an important alluvial port as well as a chief industrial and commercial center of Brazil.

In recent years, Porto Alegre hosted the World Social Forum, an initiative of several non-government organizations. The city became famous for being the first city that implemented participatory budgeting. The 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches was held in Porto Alegre in 2006. Since 2000, Porto Alegre also hosts one of the world’s largest free software events, called FISL. The city was one of the host cities of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, having previously been a venue for the 1950 FIFA World Cup. Previously a safe city by Brazilian standards, Porto Alegre is going through a growing wave of violence in this decade, and it is now ranked 43rd among the world's 50 most violent cities.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme, 
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

ART SUNDAY - SUSAN SEDDON BOULET

“There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.” - George Carlin

This Sunday, I offer you the art of Susan Eleanor Seddon (1941-1997) who was born in Brazil of English parents who had emigrated from South Africa. Two years later her mother died, shortly after the birth of her second child, Patrick. The artist spent her early childhood on a large citrus and cattle farm. She loved the connection to nature offered by farm life and enjoyed a rich fantasy life fed by folk tales told her by her father and by the farm-workers. Encouraged by her father, she began drawing; her first subjects were the cows and horses of the farm. While Boulet took art classes off and on during her life, beginning in her finishing school years in Lausanne, Switzerland, she never studied art formally. She said, in fact, that she never planned on becoming an artist--the vocation came to her as by accident.

Boulet came to the US in 1967 to work for Braniff Airlines. It was also in this year that she met and married Lawrence Boulet, who inspired Susan to invest herself seriously in her art. Boulet credited the birth of her son Eric, in 1969, with freeing her creativity, saying that Eric “somehow freed the child in me; gave me permission to enjoy fantasy… gave me permission to do unicorns and dragons”. Boulet began selling her art in 1970. By 1972, aided by her husband who managed all non-artistic aspects of her career, she was supporting the family. In 1980 her husband died of cancer.

Much of Boulet's work from the 1970s pictures cheerful images from fairytale and fantasy-jesters, knights, mermaids, magicians, and the like-executed in rainbow-bright colors. Around 1980 Boulet produced 'I Heard the Owl Call my Name', the first in a series of paintings that pointed to a new direction in Boulet's work. From this point on, Boulet painted images that she felt tapped into the essence of the collective human unconscious. She visualized images of goddesses from various cultures and Native American shamanic personages that combined the forms of animal and human into a coherent whole. Boulet drew the inspiration for her art from a wide variety of sources: Mythology and poetry, Jungian psychology and worldwide spiritual traditions, as well as deep love of animals and the natural world.

Today Susan Seddon Boulet's paintings are held in collections around the world. Susan Seddon Boulet died in her home in Oakland on April 28, 1997 after a long struggle with cancer.

The paiting above is called “Moon Goddess”. More of her work can be found at:
http://www.tendreams.org/boulet.htm

MARINA LIMA

For Song Saturday today, I am featuring a Brazilian singer. Marina Lima (born 17/9/1955) who is a prominent pioneer of Brazilian rock music. From the age of 5-12 years, she lived in the USA and learned to read first in English and then in Portuguese. She gained attention in 1977 when popular singer Gal Costa recorded her song "Meu Doce Amor". Other songs she wrote were inspired by her brother’s poetry.

Her album, Simples Como Fogo (1979), would be extremely influential in the Brazilian Rock scene of the 1980s. She gained major success with the 1984 album Fullgás, with hit singles "Fullgás", "Me Chama" and "Mesmo que Seja Eu". She sings equally comfortably in English as well as Portuguese and sultry looks coupled with her rich voice have gained her a world-wide following. Here is one of my favourite songs of hers, “Something that we Missed”.