Cars are drinking the Brazilian national liquor, would I survive?

Opinion UPDATE

I have to confess something before I go trough my fourth article of the series back to Brazil. I don’t really feel excited writing an article, having 300 views and getting back 1-2 comments. Makes me think if is really interesting what I am doing or I am just wasting my time and pictures. I would like to have some constructive feedback about my way of seeing things, or at least, if nothing interesting was found, some grammar lessons to improve my English skills. I like trade offs, writing to me is a pleasure, but writing to cold people is a quite different; the worst kind of people I know is the indifferent people, I’d rather receive ten e-mails criticizing my article than 300 views and any comment. Well, my thought of the day: “Be careful cold people, global warming is coming".

Brazil is going to be really affected, the Country is partially guilty burning out Amazon Rain Forest on small chunks at the same size of Belgium every single year. The good news is; for the first time ever, satellites recognized an unusual trend, Brazilian Amazon rain forest is bigger this year than last year, looks like the pace of destruction of the forest finally is slowing down and some reversion was found. Brazil has an incredible ethanol and bio combustibles program, some “experts” are trying to boycott it in the international press with false forecasts, talking about a huge Amazon destruction settling sugar cane plantations over the forests. That is ridiculous; sugar cane needs good soil to grow, Amazon doesn’t have appropriated soil for that. Agriculture is a serious business in Brazil; nobody will waste money trying to grow something there. Henry Ford did that on the last century, fail, and we learned the lesson Amazon is destructed by illegal wood extraction, no established business does it, fines are high in Brazil and companies with address and legal paper will not get that risk. The most innocent sentiment someone can have is think about companies as a risk taker, capitalists hate high risks, they are like me, I prefer trade offs. (Remember sending me a feed-back).

Getting back from my trip to Parati (Did you read about Parati on my previous article?) I made a quick stop in a very different kind of ethanol factory. I visited a small cachaça factory. Cachaça is the Brazilian liquor made from the sugar cane responsible for the best drink ever invented in the world, the caipirinha (modest opinion). The base for ethanol and cachaça is the same, they are both sugar cane alcohol, the difference is the hydratation; these we use into the cars are hydrated.

The idea of having cars running with alcohol is not Brazilian, during the second great war, Brazil sent troops to fight against Germany in Italy, Germans where using cars moved by ethanol at that time. Brazil won the war and brought back these cars, because of our tradition on sugar cane plantation, we had no problem on filling up.After the first oil crisis on the 1970’s Brazil started a government subsidized program to develop ethanol as an official combustible, under the military regime, the auto sufficiency of the Country in almost every thing was more than an official program, was an obsession. The fact is, today 95% of the car produced in Brazil are flexible, that means 2 million cars per year,they can run with gasoline, ethanol or both, depending of the price (trade off again), drivers can choose the best for their pockets.

Before I finish my article, let me talk about the Brazilian president, Mr. Lula da Silva, he is getting a lot of spot in the press about the ethanol program in Brazil, but he has nothing to do with that. Lula was working shining shoes in São Paulo when the ethanol program started. Like every populist politician in the world he tries to get profits about a situation what he has not even involved on. Visiting the small cachaça factory right outside Parati I almost have got drunk, they have free samples and I could not resist. The three years aged cachaça was better than any same aged Scotch I ever had, I bought a couple of liters to bring back to US, my Ukrainian neighbor Ross and my best Polish friend Zbigniev will appreciate it, I am pretty sure. My American friends will not drink it until they understand what exactly is that, they will come out with the same ever question about what kind of tequila or rum is that.If they try, they will come with the usual cold people comment what means; no comment about.

Just to catch-up, let’s make a desire: I wish cars never drink all the cachaça we have in Brazil I still need my caipirinha.