Brazil with Michael Palin

I've been travelling the world

for the past 25 years.

I've met so many people in so many countries

that everyone thinks of me

as the man who's been everywhere.

But in all these years,

there's been one big gap in my passport.

Nothing less than the fifth largest country on Earth.

A country blessed with a melting pot of peoples

and an abundance of resources.

A country that's risen almost out of nowhere

to become a 21st century superpower.

It's the host of the next World Cup

and the next Olympic Games.

It's a country whose time has come.

How can I say I've seen the world

when I haven't seen Brazil?

OK, waterfall, we defy you!

We defy you!

Pedro AÁlvares Cabral, the Portuguese sea captain,

reputed to be the first European

ever to set foot in Brazil

did so completely by accident,

when he was blown off course in April 1500

while trying to round Africa.

The Portuguese who followed him

found indigenous people here,

some of them cannibals, but not enough of them to work

the vast plantations of sugar,

cotton and tobacco that they set up,

so they imported slaves,

by the million, from Africa.

It is this improbable mix of African slaves,

indigenous people

and relatively few Europeans that created

some of the essential characteristics

of Brazilian life.

Food, dance, music, a multiplicity of religions,

and I will be sampling all of them

as I travel through the north-east,

where Brazil was born.

Where Brazil juts out towards Africa

lie the cities that grew rich on slave lab our.

I'm starting in Sao Luis, capital of Maranhaão State.

It's the time of Festas Juninas,

when the religious rituals

of Europe and Africa come together

in a typically Brazilian celebration.

In Sao Luis, there is a particular festival

that takes its name

from a slave-inspired celebration

called Bumba-meu-boi, Jump My Bull.

It's in the back-streets of this once-rich city

that I find out more.

Bumba-meu-boi is part-Pantomime, part-pageant,

and here in Floresta,

one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Sao Luis,

they take it very seriously.

Augusto Mendes, an English teacher in the city,

thinks the people here

are closest of all

to the real spirit of Bumba-meu-boi.

How long would they prepare, Augusto, the dance,

the music and all that?

How long would they spend preparing?

- Some groups, in particular the Floresta Group,

began in April or May.

- So that's about two months, nearly.

This house in Tome de Souza street

is the home of the two people

whose drive and energy keeps everyone going.

'A 92-year-old called, rather wonderfully,

Apolonio Melonio,

and his wife, Nadir, who's somewhat younger.

Tell me about this ceremony tonight.

Translation voice over: Tonight is the Bumba-meu-boi baptism.

We'll baptise the bull you see here.

The baptism is part of our Bumba-meu-boi ritual.

It's part of the devotion we have for our saints,

particularly St John.

According to tradition,

the bull can only leave here

for the main show after being baptised.

This is Mestre Apolonio

who got this whole thing together

here in Floresta.

How old were you

when you saw your first Bumba-meu-boi?

Translation voice over: The first time I took part

in a Bumba-meu-boi group

I was only eight years old

and that was way back in 1926.

I knew then and there it was

going to be my mission in life.

It has been an hon our to meet you.

I look forward to seeing

your footwork on the dance floor later.

Translation voice over: Ah, I can't dance like this any more.

I don't have the stamina.

Starting already!

My legs aren't up to it.

If they were, I'd be out there dancing with the rest.

- The ceremony, in which some play animals,

some play humans,

is based on a 200 year old tale.

It involves a slave stealing and killing a cow,

to remove the tongue,

for which his pregnant wife is desperate.

The slave is threatened with death,

but at the last minute,

the bull is miraculously resurrected

and everyone is happy.

As St John's Day draws closer, more and more people

crowd round the altar to witness

the baptism of the bull.

And firecrackers announce it's midnight.

And this is just the beginning of the celebration.

We will be back here.

When slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888,

the cotton and sugar-based economy of Sao Luis,

deprived of cheap lab our, nose-dived.

Now, thanks to nearby mineral resources,

confidence is growing again.

But just across the bay is Alcantara,

a once fabulously rich town which never recovered.

I'm taking this rather long trip across the sands

to get the ferry boat to take me to Alcantara.

Normally, it would leave from Sao Luis itself,

which is over there,

but it's low tide, so they have to leave

from right out here on the sand banks.

More charming, I think.

Alcantara has the lazy, laid-back appeal

of somewhere whose best days are over.

But what days they must have been.

It was once the state capital

and the ghostly remains

of its great mansions give some impression of the riches

accumulated by the plantation owners

over nearly 300 years.

This is the "Pelourinho" or pillory -

whipping post, as it was called,

where slaves were punished,

and they were also bought and sold here.

It has recently been estimated

that of the 11 million slaves

brought from Africa to the Americas,

over 40% came to Brazil,

six times as many as went to the United States.

They worked here in tobacco and sugar plantations

and created the wealth

that enabled their masters to build this,

a little bit of Europe

on the other side of the Atlantic.

Alcantara must once have been a fine place to live,

a ruler's town.

Now the best they can do is to gather

the old stones and leave them

for the tourists to wonder at what went right,

and what went wrong.

The beaches of Brazil

are the country's great public playgrounds

and the north-east has some of the biggest of them all.

Big enough for people to drive up and down them,

which is what myself and my friend Augusto,

and hundreds of other locals,

like to do on a weekend.

By mid-morning, the cars are parked up,

the chairs and tables set out,

and the beach soon resembles

a sort of semi-naked suburbia,

a family backyard that's open to everybody.

Today is a Sunday.

But religion and pleasure

seem to mix quite comfortably.

Do people go to the church first

and then go to the beach?

They go to the church, pray,

and come here, and forget their problems,

and forget their job.

Yeah, yeah.

Girl-watching, I learn from Augusto,

is, rather like train-spotting,

largely practiced by adolescent boys.

I'd seen some of them at a cafe by the roadside,

passing round a pair of binoculars,

scanning the beach like naval officers

looking for U-boats.

And, he tells me bashfully,

there's a glossary of girl-watching,

full of fruity metaphors.

If the girl has a big bum, we call her Melon Woman.

OK. big bum, Melon Woman.

And watermelon, if she has big, big...

Big, big, big hips, or...

Yes.

Buttocks. OK, yeah, hips.

Watermelon, big hips.

And pear woman, because of the shape,

like a guitar.