Richard W. Frank

Brazil

   Early in 2003 I saw the annual applications to write for Let’s Go appear in the Dunster House Dining Hall where I was working as a cook. I had seen them the year before but too late to decide to apply. Why would I want to subject myself to what I saw as the antithesis to “real” travel.

 

   I had run across a Let’s Go writer at a bus station in Kunming, China. He seemed a nice kid, but he was 20 at best and looking more than a bit lost when he asked us where the gate for Kunming was. All writers for Let’s Go are required to be students of Harvard University. Their guides reflect this in a good way...they are often thoroughly researched and smartly written, but they are also more useful to traveling in well-established European destinations. It was an American guidebook series after all. During my travels I had relied almost exclusively on Lonely Planet, and I had found Lonely Planet to be authored by hopelessly addicted travelers like myself rather than Haaavad students out for a six week slog.

 

   Nevertheless, I was curious. Maybe I should give a bit back to the travel community that had given me so much. And a paid trip to a country I hadn’t been to didn’t seem like too bad of a deal.

 

   So on the day the applications were due I took an extended lunch break, changed out of my whites and ran over to the LG office on Mt. Auburn Street  and dropped off the application I had spent six hours on the night before...that application was one of the hardest parts of the job. They asked for me to order three countries I would prefer to write about. My top two were Morocco and Brazil. I had not been to either country, and both intrigued me. Eventually, I decided to put Brazil on the top of the list. This would be the first year that they would have a Brazil guidebook, and I would have a chance to actually write a section of it instead of running about updating the costs of buggy hostels and cheap lunch eats.

 

   I managed to make the first cut and was invited to an interview one Sunday morning back on Mt. Auburn St. To my surprise I sat on a metal chair in front of a semicircle of eight undergrad editors. Great. After giving my song and dance I left convinced that I was the most amazing thing since Velcro pants.

 

II. Training

 

III. Week 1

 

Mamiraua

 

IV. ETC.

 

 

Rio Branco

 

 

 

 

 

Parintins

 

 

The Boi Bumba festival in the small Amazonas village of Parantins is one of the most amazing parties in Brazil .

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below is a rough Youtube video of part of the Parintins celebration.

 

© Richard Frank 2007-2008. All rights reserved.

 

Here is the final product.