Word: sao
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Those who have ever wondered what it's like to live on a remote island paradise could do worse than spend a few days on Sao Tome and Principe, population 193,000. The first hint that these two rocks just above the Equator off the west coast of Africa were going to be a laid-back sort of place came when, following some bad advice from a travel agent, I arrived at immigration without a visa. Elsewhere that might have meant detention, prison, or at least a large bribe. In this former Portuguese colony, a smiling middle-aged immigration officer...
...wasn't sure Danielo was the perfect choice for a guide, but he was the only person I knew in Sao Tome, and I needed help. On the way into town - a perfectly preserved red-roofed Portuguese fishing village with a huge church and a wide open square - I confessed I was not only an illegal alien, but also a sneaky journalist with a desperate, half-baked idea of interviewing the president, who had no idea I was coming, and who could hardly be expected to see me at such short notice - with the weekend looming - but that...
...While we waited, Danielo and I settled into a nearby caf? to watch Sao Tome life go by. There was an endless stream of happy schoolchildren, looking overjoyed to be young and in school. There were smiling couples on motorcycles, apparently delighted to be young, in love and on a motorbike. There was the occasional mildly serious-looking man on a motorbike - later, when I watched the local news (lead national news item: a new footbridge) I realized we'd been buzzed by the Foreign Minister, the Minister of Regional Zones and the director of the Sao Tome-Portugal Business...
...three days on Sao Tome were punctuated by a series of happy, soporific encounters. The man sitting next to me at the only Internet caf? in town turned out to be the son of a famous dissident. At an excellent Portuguese seafood restaurant, I met Alecio Costa, a former mercenary who'd staged a coup in 2003 and held power for a week before, you know, realizing he really couldn't be bothered to exercise it, and giving it back. I roused the head of the National Petroleum Agency from his siesta and interviewed him as he sat bare-chested...
...protests. In 2005, at the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Bush was greeted by violent demonstrations and angry speeches from leftist leaders like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But the five countries Bush has chosen for his six-day Latin America tour that starts today in Sao Paulo, Brazil, are led by either kindred conservatives or more moderate leftists. And the venues he's visiting are often far from metropolis hotbeds of anti-yanqui sentiment - like Merida, on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, a sleepy Maya world away from the Mexico City streets that were paralyzed by leftist...