Brazil: Good buzz, bad buzz

So here I am, barely one week in Brazil, and already I’ve been mugged in broad daylight, had my credit card skimmed, been charged €42 for a burger and contracted a bad dose of the dreaded Dengue fever.

Not.

According to the more apocalyptic warnings issued to visitors bound for these World Cup finals, any or all of the above could and maybe even should have befallen me by now. The fact that, au contraire, I’ve got nothing so far but glowing things to say about this intoxicating country, is a reminder that wise old Mark Twain was on the money when he observed that he’d been through some terrible things in his life, some of which actually happened.

Of course, I’m acutely conscious that I might be tempting fate here – watch out for next week’s letter on the efficiency or otherwise of Brazil’s accident and emergency services — but the point is that, with the application of a normal amount of common sense and the addition of just a little touch of good fortune — I can discern no reason why I should feel any more at risk here than I would in any other big city in any other country (not excluding Ireland) As it happens, a colleague from the auld sod who has been living in Rio since January assured me that he has encountered no threats of violence to his person or property in all that time, with one notable exception: three times in five months he has had to replace his credit card after it was skimmed in a hole in the wall. So those warnings we all received before leaving home about ATM scams being rampant in Brazil would certainly appear to have a strong basis in truth. The best protection, it seems, is to only use machines inside banks, not on the streets.

Fortunately for us hacks out here for the Mundial, there are also ATM machines installed in all of the media centres adjacent to the stadia. And being that journalists are regarded the world over as paragons of virtue, I reckon I’m on reasonably safe ground conducting my financial business in their august company. (We’ll discreetly pass over reports of a an English journalist who, word has it, had her smart phone lifted from her shoulder bag in the media centre in Sao Paulo).

In truth, the only time I have felt even slightly ill at ease on the street was on my very first night in Rio when I had to rise at 3am to get to the airport for a 6.30 am flight in Manaus. Our apartment is in a residential block facing onto Rua Das Laranjeiras, the main thoroughfare for buses heading towards base camp for an excursion by cable car up to the city’s landmark Christ The Redeemer statue.

Normally, the street throbs with people and traffic but in the wee hours of the morning it was unnervingly dark and deserted, except for random groups of mainly drunk young men still out celebrating Brazil’s opening night victory over Croatia.

Standing on the pavement with a laptop bag on my shoulder while vainly attempting to hail the odd taxi as it whizzed by, it felt like I was not, as they say, in a good place. Then, suddenly, I became aware of someone standing right behind me. Heart in mouth, I turned around to find that our apartment block’s overnight security man – whom I’d had to wake up at his desk to allow me out through the locked front gate – had thoughtfully followed after me to see if I was okay. One Trap-style wolf whistle from him, and the next taxi that came along screeched to a halt.

Rio’s distinctive yellow cabs provide a dependable service, fast, efficient and good value. Perhaps, occasionally too fast, if I may say so. On that wee hours journey to the airport, with the road through the tunnel, past the Sambadrome and the sprawling favela, mainly free of traffic, the driver decided to transform the route into an urban Grand Prix circuit, the g-forces pinning me to my seat in the back. Treating the road as a playground seems to be a Brazilian thing, especially for motorcyclists whose habit is to weave through dense moving traffic at speed, slicing through the tiniest gaps, all the while keeping one hand permanently pressed down on the horn.

Having landed in Manaus, my friendly taxi driver there was so enthused by the sight of a pimped-up monster truck in front of us on the highway into town, that he decided to overtake it at speed to snap a photo, keeping one hand on the wheel and using the other to hold his camera phone out the window, all the while whooping with delight.

Meanwhile, there was I in the back thinking that I’d come all this way to the Amazon and, dammit, now I wasn’t even going to get the chance to die through throttling by a boa constrictor.

If you really want to know the truth, my single biggest gripe with Brazil concerns just about the smallest thing the country has to offer – the infernal mosquito. And it’s not anything as serious as malaria that you have to worry about in the big city – just the fact that you’re a walking, talking, yelping buffet for the insatiable little bastards. I’ve lashed on industrial-strength repellent and I’ve sprayed the room and I’ve done that mad dervish whirl with a towel in the middle of the night — but all to no avail.

This is one of the reasons – the other is work, but I know you don’t believe that – why I have yet to take a stroll on Copacabana or Ipanema where, as the song tells us, the girls are tall and tanned and long and lovely. National pride is at stake here, people, and I simply don’t want to let the country down by exposing milky-white legs which, while knobbly at the best of times, currently give the disturbing impression of being covered in a profusion of over-ripe strawberries. Expose those pins on the sands and you can be sure that, to paraphrase the song again, each one I pass will go, “Aaaah…jaysus, would you look at the state of that.”

No, the beaches will have to be for another day. But the mortal combat with the insect, I fear, is set to continue throughout my stay in Brazil.

Man versus mosquito –it should really be classified as one of the world’s eternal, elemental, uncompromising blood sports.

In fact, I think I might even have the perfect name for it: mossie rules.