|
 Swimming across the Strait of Gibraltar non-stop for 22 kilometers (13.7 miles) until touching the Moroccan coast. Such was the objective of Brazilian businessman Alain Levy, 57. And so he did last month. Levy, for whom sports is a hobby, crossed the Strait departing from the Port of Tarifa, in Spain, and arriving at Punta Marsa, on the Moroccan territory, after six hours and twelve minutes of strokes.
The choice of the Strait was a suggestion from Levy's coach, Marcelo Lopes. The coach considered it a difficult, though adequate challenge for the swimmer, given the climate conditions and the distance. As his hands touched the rocks in Punta Marsa, the swimmer had his first contact ever with Morocco. After accomplishing the task, however, Levy took to the boat that accompanied him, and went back to Spain.
"From Spain, I took a plane with my wife and we went to Morocco, to get to know the country. It is gorgeous, I had always wanted to go there," said Levy. The businessman spent several days in the Arab country, where he travelled by car and visited a host of different cities, from Marrakech to Fez.
"The Moroccans are good people, really respectful towards tourists," he claims. He did not, however, swim back to Punta Marsa, because of the distance.
Levy believes that he should do another international open-water crossing in the next few years, but has not chosen his destination yet. Swimming is a personal challenge for the businessman, who works with toy imports in the city of São Paulo.
"Swimming has always been a plus for me," he explains. The other international open-water crossing that Levy did was in the Hudson River, in New York, United States, in 2006. Ever since he got started, though, he has already done 80 crossings.
He faces them as a personal challenge. "Whatever you want to do, you can do it," he asserts. "You don't need to be a champion, you don't need to be the best. Fulfilling your dream is all that matters," says Levy.
In order to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, the Brazilian practiced from January to July this year. The crossing was accompanied by a ship - which the swimmer followed - and by the Red Cross. Levy was the 10th oldest man in the world ever to cross the Strait.
Anba
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.