Telephones
Public telephones are called orelhoes, "big ears", after their distinctive conch-shaped covers. They come in two varieties: red for local calls and blue for inter-urban. These days, phones are operated mostly by phonecards ( carta telefonico) which have replaced tokens ( fichas) and are on sale everywhere - from newspaper stands, street sellers' trays and most cafes. For local calls a 5 reis card will last for several conversations; for long-distance or international calls, higher-value phonecards come in 10, 20, 50 or 100 reis denominations. Calls to the USA or Europe cost about $2.50 per minute. Lift the phone from the hook, insert the phonecard and listen for a dialling tone before dialling direct. Note that long-distance calls are cheaper after 8pm. The dialling tone is a single continuous note, engaged is rapid pips, and the ringing tone is regular peals, as in the USA. The phone system in Brazil is continually overloaded. If you get an engaged tone, keep trying - nine times out of ten, the phone is not actually engaged and you get through after seven or eight attempts. The smaller the place, the more often you need to try: be patient. Long-distance and international calls can also be made from a posto telefonico , which all operate in the same way: you ask at the counter for a chave and are given a numbered key. You go to the booth, insert the key and turn it to the right, and can then make up to three completed calls. You are billed when you return the key - around $2.50 a minute to the USA or Europe. To make an inter-urban call you need to dial the trunk code, the codigo DDD (pronounced "daydayday"), listed at the front of phone directories. For international calls, ask for chamada internacional; a reverse-charge call is a chamada a cobrar. Reversing the charges costs about twice as much as paying locally, and it is much cheaper to use a telephone charge card from home. Except in the most remote parts of Amazonia and the Northeast, everything from a small town upwards has a posto, though note that outside large cities they shut at 10pm.
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