Chronicle of the heart

From wherever they came to arrive here - and Oscar de Almeida Santos says there are 49 skin tones in Brasil from white to black - Brasil is the warmest country I have ever been to, with climate matched only by unparalleled hospitality. Whilst I have only seen a few, I have met people from Sao Paulo, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul and Parana and it is as if the open-hearted Brasilian people are the start of a warming cycle which feeds up into the sky like the sea water feeds into rain clouds.

Iguazu Falls is the only place I have ever felt mesmerised by nature. The foreplay of the Argentinian side of the park where the strong sun teases a perpetual rainbow from the torrent of water in the widest watershed in the world builds up to a mind-blowing display of sheer power on the Brasilian side of the falls with water rushing so fast that it sounds like a motorway. Both are amazing but in very different ways and in some ways they are illustrative of the ties that bind the countries of that region. Iguazu is frustratingly divided between two separately administered National Parks in Argentina and Brasil, with their own time zones and separate listings as World Heritage Sites but the interplay of nature brings them together in a way which the Guarani people who stretched out across the Three Countries Frontier before European colonisation had.

Brasil is on the up but ideas on how to get there change often and have left a legacy of half-finished governance, a unitary state which suddenly and inexplicably fractures into state loyalties but at other times national pride can be a strong rallying cause. In the words of the positivist slogan on the flag, order and progress.

Down the road from Iguazu at Itaipu, the governments of Brasil and Paraguay are working together, and have harnessed the massive power of the river basin to drive an astonishingly large hydroelectric barrage across the area. It is the world's largest working electricity generator, although only a few days after my return it spectacularly failed to provide any electricity to 9 Brasilian states and Paraguay for an entire night.

My Portuguese is practically non-existant, despite my expensive and fruitless efforts to the contrary, but I was deeply impressed by the hospitality of the people who I met at every level of society and in every part of Brasil which I visited.

There is a fascinating quality to this massive, sprawling, multi-faceted country which at once gave me memories which will stay with me forever and at the same time told me that there is still so much more to see.

In much the way of the USA, Brasil mirrors its massive size with massive portions so every buffet is open and every barbecue is multitudinous. Nonetheless, the most remarkable meal I had was at the airport in Curitiba where my oversized grill was accompanied by a piano and a pianist who - it turned out - was just a punter who had been invited, as everyone is, to demonstrate his talent.

It took me until I was back in the UK to realise the resonance of feelings, and to acknowledge fully that I love Brasil. My soul may be German and my brain English, but my heart is and will remain Brasilian.

When I think about experiences on this trip which sum up Brasil and where it is right now, my mind keeps returning to the remarkable few hours in which I saw a man wade into the Atlantic Ocean with a fishing net, catch some fish and then wade back out of the sea, across a four lane highway and off down a sidestreet - past a large and solidly middle-class shopping mall, accompanied by a friendly enquiry from a passing shopper (I presume) about the nature of the catch which he now had slung over his shoulder.

The Island of Santa Catarina where I was based for this trip and where the fisherman waded in is an ideosyncratic base for any trip borne of the presence in the city of my two closest Brasilian friends. It is a safe and comparatively affluent city and of a comfortable size.