Death of the Transformador

In our early days in Sao Paulo we discovered to our dismay that our epilator did not work on the paltry 110V brazilian electricity supply. Its normal vigorous action was reduced to a lazy and ineffective buzz. This was of some concern to us, as we foresaw (correctly) lots of time spent on beaches baring our very white flesh alongside the Brazilian women, who are of course world-renowned for their legendary depilatory standards. (Depilation is of course one of the most thankless tasks known to woman. It’s painful and boring and takes ages, and of course, like painting the Severn Bridge, it seems as soon as you’ve finished it has all started growing back and you have to begin again. We have spent much time discussing the miraculous efforts of the Brazilian women, as they all seem to be utterly devoid of any body hair, anywhere, all the time. How do they do it? There are no methods in our female repertoire that could achieve such results. They must be cheating.)

After some investigation, we were told that the solution to our lazy epilator problem was to purchase a “transformador”, and we thus allocated an afternoon in Sao Paulo to achieving this objective (see what glamorous travellers we are?) Luckily, we were able to enlist the assistance of Fabian on this venture, as the procurement of a transformador was no easy feat, involving as it did a trip to the district in Sao Paulo which is home to a myriad of electrical shops, where we eventually located a transformador, after asking many people, through an unmarked door, up a flight of stairs, down a corridor to a little kiosk which just sold transformadors of many kinds. We were relieved to discover that the transformador was not too enormous, as when we’d asked Fabian how big they were he had indicated something the size of a piano and told us we’d also need to buy a trolley to carry it on.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, after a couple of weeks of resultant happy epilation, we are saddened to discover today that the transformador appears to have died, which puts us back at hairy square one.