EXPAT TALES: New Australia Paraguay

Only recently did I learn about the New Australia Colony of Paraguay.  One of the great benefits of the Internet is long, lost stories of years ago are being made available to people around the world.
In September 1893, a group left Australia to form a socialist paradise at the New Australia Colony in Paraguay. Like [...]

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EXPAT TALES: Clarence Johnson – Paraguay

Time Magazine – Paraguay Frontier 1955
On the fringe of nowhere in the heart of South America, the Paraguayan town of Pedro Juan Caballero and the Brazilian town of Ponta Porã doze in the green, rolling forests of the Amambay plateau. A broad, straight strip of grass between the red-roofed towns marks the international border. [...]

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EXPAT TALES: Pan Am Airlines

I first flew Pan Am in Dec 1964 when I came to Brazil as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  The flight left JFK.   It was a Boeing 707.  It was the Starship Enterprise for me.  We landed in Trinidad..flights then could not fly non-stop from NYC to Rio.  It was better then!
This was only [...]

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Expat Tales: Hollywood Comes to Goiás, Brazil

top left – bottom right:
Janet Gaynor – Mary Martin – Robert Cummings – Robert Mitchum
I would presume that most readers will not recognize these ’stars’.   However, during their time, they were all very famous – household names.  The importance of the posting is that they came to Brazil at a time when Brazil was much [...]

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Expat Tales: Elizabeth Bishop, American Poet

Lived in Brazil from 1956 to 1971
Died: Oct. 1979 – Worcester, MA, USA
Elizabeth Bishop is considered among the most significant American authors of the twentieth century, and lived and wrote in Brazil for nearly twenty years. For several years she was the Poet Laureate of the United States, and she received the Pulitzer Prize, National [...]

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Expat Tales: The Californian

A page for people who plan to visit Brasilia and for those who want to know more about this singular city.

It was 1965 in a bookstore in São Paulo.   A guy in his mid-thirties comes up to me and asks if I speak English.  I said yes.  He said he needed help to buy [...]

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Expat Tales: The Texan

He looked like an extra from an old John Wayne movie; in his early fifties, tall, and slim.  When he called he only mentioned that he was an American and would like to drop by for a chat.    The chat turned out to be an interesting 30 minutes.
I don’t recall his name. He was [...]

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Expat Tales: The Scotsman II

Until I transferred out of Mato Grosso do Sul to the State of Espírito Santo in November 1965, I enjoyed many evenings listening to Mr. Cameron while sipping away on our Batidas. Over those months I, a 22 year old gringo kid, learned about:
- the horrors of WWI from someone who lived it; not from [...]

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Expat Tales: The Scotsman

My Peace Corps partner and I arrived in Amambaí, near the Paraguayan border, in what is now Mato Grosso do Sul in February 1964. There were two pensões; the Alaska which was a ‘two star” and the other, which was “no star” and “no name”.  I am sure it had a name, I don’t remember [...]

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