Friday, July 10, 2009

Day 9 or God Bless Immodium

Notes on Saturday June, 27, 2009

If it is possible to have a full-on beef hangover, I had one this morning. Last night's beef and beer binge has left a large food baby in my stomach which necessitaed a morning long camp out in the bathroom.

Problem. In Brazil you don't flush your toilet paper. You put it in a trash bin right next to the toilet. True, this concept was pretty gross and inexplicable at first, but as long as you have the vacation constipation and you are just peeing all the time, it's really NBD. But then the Amazonian fruits and the indigenous vegetables do their thing, and needless to say the vacation constipation has come to an earth shattering end. And then you are mortified about your horrifically skid marked toilet paper decorating the top of the trash bin and you spend fifteen minutes arranging a layer of clean paper on top so the poor maid who has to empty it doesn't look at the remnants your intestinal discards and say to herself in Portuguese, "Damn girl, what did you eat?"

I don't know what it is. Is my body rejecting the hormone and antibotic free meat? Is it rebelling against the unprocessed carbohydrates and preservative free vitamin laden fruits and veg? Is it protesting the free range chicken? the fresh milk? the organic coffee? the fresh squeezed juices? Are my intestines screaming, "I want my high fructose corn syrup back!"? What gives? How much more of this can I take? And it's even more embarrassing because today everyone was waiting for me downstairs to go on an excursion. When I finally escaped the bathroom I found everyone outside already with the cars out waiting to go. I didn't know how to say, "I was upstairs shitting my intestines out my ass" in Portuguese, so I just shrugged and said "desculpe" (sorry) and got in the car three shades of red.

They say one of the hallmarks of an old person is if you sit around with your other old people friends and discuss the nature and frequency of your bowel movements. I guess Rachel and I qualify. We look at each other, shake our heads in disbelief and say "Jesus girl, what did we eat?" Then we go pop and Immodium. I am not sure what's preferable, the vacation constipation or the vacation constipation liberation. One thing is for sure, my poor butt is endlessly on fire.

When I did finally leave the bathroom we piled into a couple of car's and headed out of town, up into the mountains. Rodrigo's parents are buying a farm. The Godfather, Ze, is an agronomist by trade. He helps farmers get loans from the Brazilian government by signing off on their farm projects. Basically, Ze gets paid to spend the government's money. Pretty good deal. But now Ze wants his own farm, his own little piece of paradise where he can build a farm house with an enormous kitchen and an even better restaurant.

The farm he has his eye on is six or seven km from town. We bounce over unpaved red dirt roads, we kick up a clouds of orange dust, we rumble across more wood plank bridges that don't look strong enough to hold the weight of a cat, let alone a car, and we pass other farms with coffee beans spread out on wide flat pavements drying in the sun. When we arrive and THE farm, my jaw drops in the dirt. This ain't Anutie Em's farm, Dorothy. This is a coffee farm, high and verdent and lush. It looks like what I think Hawaii might look like having never been there.

We spent the day wending through the dense coffee bushes, eating citrus straight from the tree, admiring the papaya, pineapple, apple, banana, orange trees. We found mandioca root (the staple of the diet) peppers, herbs, avocados, raspberries. I ate a ripe coffee bean (it tasted like persimmon). Diego took a machete to a sugar cane stalk. He hacked it down, whittled the outer husk away, and cut a chunk for each of us. You are supposed to wedge the chunk into your back teeth and bite down, letting the sweet juice explode over your tongue. I liked it, even though the cane was fibrous and hard and I had little sugar cane splinters in my mouth I had to keep spitting out. We drank mineral water from a spring. I pointed to a colorful rooster and said "Chupa cabra" to Ze and he chuckled and shook his head.

Then we climbed a hillside to the site where Ze and Mariza want to build the new farm house (a.k.a. the future vacation spot of yours truly if I can manage to get adopted as the long lost white cousin, or I can just wrangle another invitation). The view from the hillside was made by God herself and Rachel and I salivated over the notion of waking up to that outside your window every morning. From that spot on the hillside you could see all of the valley and the mountains beyond, the coffee bushes draping the hillsides like those netted Christmas lights, the mist shrouding the highest peaks.

Rodrigo mentioned that this part of Espirito Santo is so overlooked that scientists discovered three new species of plant and animal here in the last few years. And Rachel and I marveled that we are very likely the first outsiders to set foot on this land since the Portuguese moved through. (Seriously, the majority of the people in Iuna have never seen a foreigner). It makes me feel like an explorer, like a pioneer, like a brave adventuress off scouting unknown, unseen lands and I get giddy with the idea of it.

But thank God I get to climb back into a Fiat and not a conestoga wagon and ride back to town in relative comfort and sit on a real toilet for the rest of the day with my intestinal affliction where I don't have to wipe with banana leaves. This is mercy indeed.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Informational Update

Sunday, June 28, 2009

There is a chance I may not return home, ever. But not because I was mugged in Rio, or because I was eaten by an Anaconda, or my kidneys harvested in Sao Paulo and I was left in a bathtub in some favela. But because the US is up two to zero against Brazil right now in the FIFA Confederation Championship and I cannot help my nationality. Rodrigo's dad keeps threatening not to feed Rachel and I if the US wins. I could starve to death down here.

As it is, I have a bet with Rodrigo's dad that I'll drink a shot of cachaca every time the US scores, so I'm already in trouble.

Day 8 or the Real Churrasco

Notes on Friday, June 26, 2009

Breakfast today was a revelation. A soup (soup?) made with farm fresh cow's milk (they have to boil the milk!), clove, cinnamon, roasted peanuts and hominy. Who in the world thought this up? Is there a special Betty Crocker prize for creating the homeiest, christmas-y tasting, sweet and hearty soup ever? I could eat a vat of it everyday in winter. I realize I am living in a restaurant with a master chef who started cooking at the age of 11. You never know what is going to be put in front of you and so you taste slowly, cautiously with just the tip of your spoon, until the tastebuds explode with pleasure and you think "And I didn't even pay $15 for this!"

It was good we had the super soup too, because today's outing was a trek up to the same spot we were last night, high above town, to visit the shrine of Agua Santa (Holy Waters). It didn't take long climbing the steep cobbled streets of Iuna before Rachel and I start feeling the sweat beads forming on our brows and our breath coming harder. Rodrigo pointed to an old woman walking up the same hill. We look over and this 70 year old woman's mouth isn't even open! She is breathing entirely through her nose and great! Rachel and I have now gotten smoked by a crusty old lady. This is embarrassing. Muito embarrassing.

But once we cleared the edge of town, the dirt road opened to vast hills rolling with coffee and banana trees. The coffee bushes drape the sides of the mountains like those netted christmas lights. During the walk Rodrigo pointed out different plants. "When I was a kid we used to take this berry, see the spikes on it?, and we would use them in sling shots to pelt each other. See this plant? You can make tea with this." It seems like everything green has a use here, culinary, military or any -ary.

At the shrine, there is a molding display of molding pictures of people and pets who have been cured by the waters. There are bits of clothing from the faithful cured dangling from a clothesline, there are statues and prayers and the shrine is enclosed in a locked rusty iron fence that makes the whole thing look more depressing than miraculous. Still, the shrine is interesting, even if the sacred pool is full of stagnant green water. There is a spring of holy water you can drink from, which I did and I wonder if it the holy waters can cure you of an over active appetite as well as breast cancer. A little further on the trail is a fallen boulder that leans against the rock face of the mountain. Local lore says if you pass through the impossibly skinny opening between boulder and rock three times all your sins are forgiven. I figured I already did my penance last year on the pilgrimage, but why not attempt this just for good measure. So I squeeeeeeeze my boobs and booty and all the other junk through the crevice three times. And then it is Rachels turn. She gets about an eighth of the way into the opening, backs out and says, "I like my sins."

Back home in the afternoon, preparations were being made for that evening. Beer is delivered here like milk or soda used to be delivered to my house when I was a little kid. Long before everybody drove to Kroger for everything. I watch as Ze gives the beer delivery guy a shot of cachaca for his trouble before he leaves.

And at long last it is time for what I have come to Brazil for, churrasco (pronounced shur HA sko), brazilian barbeque. This particular cut of beef we are going to feast on tonight is called picanha and it is beef with an outer rim of fat marinated in rock salt, nothing more, and grilled over an open flame until deeply rich in flavor, with a salty crust, and addictive. The beer comes out, The rum (pronounced "hoom") and coke, the cachaca, the olives.

Back home in Atlanta there is a restaurant called Fogo de Chao and it is like $60 a person for sheer carnivorous hedonism. They have good looking gouchos in billowy pants serving the meat on skewers until you are full to bursting. But here everyone passes the cutting board around and takes a slice of beef, passes it on, and then waits for the next piece of picanha to get crusty and charred, when anyone who happens to be near the flame will slice it and pass it on again.

Then the musicians showed up. Not hired musicians though (unless you count payment of beer and beef and cachaca). These musicians are friends from the town. An old guy with a cerveja belly and his son. The old guy sat next to me with a bongo drum and his son strummed a baby guitar and everyone sang the songs of Brazil and drank and ate picanha. And everyone here is a musician or a singer. Rodrigo plays guitar and sings, Diego (Rodrigo's brother) taught himself to play drums. More than half of the people in Rodrigo's circle grew up playing some manner of device that makes a tune. And if someone doesn't have an instrument in their hands they are keeping time with a fork against a plate or knife on a bottle.

They switched to some English songs (the Beatles, Credence Clearwater, Elvis) and now Rachel and I could at least join in on the refrains (embarrassing that we don't even know the verses to Have You Ever Seen the Rain and Brazilians do). No one here knows the actual words though, they all sing phonetically like we sing La Bamba and have no idea what the actual words are. It is pretty amusing to hear the lyrics to Proud Mary sung as "bih wee kee on tornee, prow mary kee on bournee, holih, holih, holih ona reeeva." At some point during all of this merry making I got the notion that I could sing and felt an urgent need to regale them all with my rendidtion of Bridge Over Troubled Waters by Simon and Garfunkle despite the fact that I didn't know all the lyrics and the fact that people wouldn't pay me the gum off their shoe to hear me sing. But noooooooo. I wanted to sing damnit. It was about to get American Idol up in here. So I quickly copied the lyrics from Google on Lolita's computer (that's Rodrigo's sister) and returned for my duet with the old bongo player. I sang in my clunky alto, occaisionally switching to my blood curdling mezzo, only to be marginally kept in tune by bongo man. Between the two of us (he sang the words phonetically but at least he was in tune, I was flat but I had the lyrics in front of me) we made a halfway decent go of it. And when the end came I howled like a dog at myself, which made everyone laugh.

And then out came a curry goat that made me squeal with pleasure. Spicy, smokey, oniony. OMG, this was a carnivores dilemma: the goat, salty and spicy and juicy? or the beef, salty and crusty from the grill. I was already nursing a serious food baby by the time the goat came out. But I couldn't stop myself (apparently the holy waters from Agua Santa do not cure an obscene appetite).

Two more friends showed up with guitars and cowboy hats and now they started singing the haunting, lonely Brazilian country music of the western ranchers. Their harmony was beautiful and aching and my belly was aching too and we all swayed to the acoustic strumming and let it wash over us as we digested the large land animals in our stomachs. I guess Brazilian cowboy music is appropriate for cow digestion. At 12:30 I could not longer keep upright and needed to retreat to my sanctuary to digest in horizontal fashion. But the party continued for a few more hours and I realized that this sort of impromptu gathering is the normal order here in Iuna, in Brazil. This is the real churrasco, and a million times better than Fogo de chao.

Hey come on over! tell so and so to come too. and so and so. we'll throw a cow on the grill. we'll get the beer delivered. we'll sit around, drink, eat, play. sing. laugh. live.

The Godfather Part IV

Notes on Jose Carlos Dias de Carvalho

If Juan Valdez had played the Godfather instead of Marlin Brando, you'd pretty much have the start of Ze. Throw in an impish sense of humor and a penchant for mischief and now you are getting even warmer.

Ze wears a fedora and a mustache. He refused to be photographed without his hat on. His button down short sleeve shirts are left open. He has tiny feet and wears tiny cowboy boots.

When Ze wakes up at 5:00 am, he starts cooking, and he doesn't stop until after dinner (he is semi retired). Feeding large quantities of people large quantities of food seems to be his passion (along with cacti, of which he has over 200). Ze has been cooking since he was 11 (unusual for a man in these parts), and cooking is no joke for Ze. He doesn't let anyone else in the house cook, not even his wife. Once he fired a maid for burning rice in the bottom of a pan.

Ze will put a meat dish on the table at lunch and tell Rachel and I it's cat. Ze will make a shrimp dish and tell Rachel (who doesn't eat seafood) that he made it just for her.

When Ze decides everyone else in the house should be up, usually around 9:30, he goes up to the terrace and cranks the Brazilian Forro music on the sound system. Forro is music from the northeast of Brazil that combines African drums with, oh my god, the accordian. It's not pretty. I feel like I am back in my Opa's house listening to German polka and I wonder how on earth did northeastern Brazil, which was mostly populated by African slaves, get hold of the accordian and why on earth, once they got it, did they keep it? It was funny the first five times.

Ze's neighbor calls to ask him to turn the music down and he hangs up the phone and turns the music up. He thinks the neighbors are uptight and too religious and he likes to antagonize them.

When Ze summons you to play canasta, you will be playing canasta. Canasta is another thing Ze takes seriously besides cooking and cacti. Ze sits across from Mariza and cusses at Rachel and I in Portuguese. When we don't discard a card he can use he pounds his fist on the table and cries "damn you!!!" and then giggles because we don't understand him. When we put a black 3 on the pile preventing him from snatching it he grumbles "punta merde." That's "bitch shit," another popular (if inexplicable) combination of cuss words.

By the way, people cuss alot down here. Cussing is an all occaison pastime. Spill some juice? Stub your toe? Just say "caralho!" (cock!). They say "sperm" alot too. Sperm is a good one. The word is porra and it also means cum. Dog peed on the floor? "porra!" works fine.

Rodrigo comes up and Ze tells him that he's been cussing at us the whole time and we don't even know it, then he chuckles so that his shoulders bounce up and down like he has the hiccoughs really fast. Ze is happy when he wins at canasta. Ze says Barack Obama is fixing the game if Rachel and I have a good round. I get the feeling it's not smart for us to win.

When Brazil beat South Africa in the FIFA Confederation Championship semi final and Brazil was going to play the U.S. in the final that Sunday, Ze started threatening Rachel and I that if the U.S. won, we wouldn' eat.

Ze calls me Kreecheena, because pronouncing Kristin is a pain in the ass. Or sometimes he just calls me "the tall woman."

Ze's last name is Carvalho, which means "oak" in Portuguese. Interestingly, Carvalho is only one easily unenunciated V off from caralho, "cock." There is a saying in Portuguese you use when you're pissed at someone: "I'm gonna send you to the casa des caralhos." I'm gonna send you to the house of cocks. Ze intentionally answers his phone, "Casa de Carvalho" and nearly drops the V.

Ze wants to marry me off. When he asked Rachel about me before I came down, he wanted to know three things: Is she a picky eater? (no), Does she drink? (um. a bit), and is she religious? (about drinking). All right answers. So Ze wants me to marry one of Rodrigo's 1800 cousins because he is tall like me and speaks English. I meet him and immediately decide on e-Harmony. Ze is fired along with Melie.

Before my arrival on the scene, Ze had a conversation with Duck. In Portuguese, the verb "comir" means "to eat." It is also used as a double entendre for "to fuck." Moecco asked if I liked to eat Duck. Ze shook his head and said, "No one likes to eat Duck."

Ze likes to tease me when I get up late in the morning by saying "good afternoon," even if it is clearly still morning, and I insistantly tell him "good morning."

When Ze is finished cooking for the day, he goes to his bedroom, stretches out on the bed and watches his Tele Novellas. These are Brazilian soap operas, which everybody, even the men watch down here. They are more dignified than the Spanish and Mexican one's I've seen, like Fuego en la Sangre." He turns the volume up super loud, like the Forro music, and falls asleep.

Political correctness is not in Ze's vocabulary. When Ze commented about Barack Obama Mariza said "whatever, you had an afro in the 70's." In Portuguese the words for afro literally translate to "black power." The actual hair style is called black power. Ze looked chagrinned and defended himself, "the black power was the style then!"

I like Ze.

Day 7 or the Mysteries of Iuna

Notes on June 25th, 2009

In the U.S. I don't drink orange juice because I don't think it tastes like oranges. Ever. In Spain I drank it when ever I could because it was fresh squeezed by an automatice machine. And this morning I drank tangerine-orange juice fresh squeezed by hand and the oranges were from less than a mile away. I can feel the vitamins and minerals coursing through my body making me healthy and whole and giving me super powers. I want to climb Mt. Everest!

Today I saw Iuna (pronounced Yuna). This is where Rodrigo's family lives and I gotta say, Iuna is not a pretty town. It's not exactly a pit (I've been in a few pits to get gas and whatnot with Mike and Melie), but it's far from a show pony. There has been little attention payed to aesthetics here, except the odd, half-hearted attempt to plant some trees in a town square, or make a nice stone walkway by the riverside. But other than that, nada. A few individual houses here and there have spruced up a tad, added some pretty flowers, a decorative railing, a nice paint color, but there is no "nice neighborhood" per se. At first glance you'd be tempted to think this was a working class town, because it is clear the focus is on utility, not prettiness. It is a place where farmers still come into town sitting in a cart pulled by a donkey or horse. And oddly, unfinished buildings are all over, some of them lived in, some seemingly abandoned. Rodrigo says there is a saying in Brazil, everything under construction is already a ruin. People build their own houses and when the money runs out, they stop for a while. So second stories languish, stucco may cover only the first floor, or the roof over the terrace is still a work in progress. Rachel says the dirt pile on the street in front of the neighbor's house has been there since she started coming to Iuna four years ago.

But the gritty facade of the town belies a great deal of coffee wealth, which is hidden indoors, or in other ways. Rodrigo pointed out the houses of wealthy coffee growers and informed me that alot of people, when they accumulate money, buy more land instead of sprucing up the houses. Probably not a bad idea. After all, who are they trying to impress? Foreigners don't come hear for anything. It would be like going to the U.S. and visiting Hamilton, OH. Why would you? And every middle class family has a maid. The maid does the dishes, the laundry, she cleans everything, she mops, irons, dusts. (I haven't washed a dish or done a lick of my own laundry since I've been here, and I'm kinda getting spoiled). Oh, and your second story might not be finished, but you sure as shit have satellite TV. No doubt.

Lunch today was my first experience of Ze's home cooking. Ze made baccalao. Ironically, baccalao is not Brazilian. It is Norwegian salted cod, and it is very fancy and special down here because it comes all the way from Norway and ain't cheap. I think Ze was putting on the dog for me a bit, but I didn't come here to eat Norwegian food. I want Brazilian beef and weird amazonian fruits and vegetables I've never seen before! The baccalao was still good though, mixed with veggies and enough melted cheese to cause a coronary. But it reminded me of a tuna casserole. A really good tuna casserole, but still, tuna casserole is tuna casserole.

After dark R&R and Whathisname cousin and I went to a local bar and sat on the sidewalk drinking beer, when all the sudden we heard CNN announcing that MJ had bit it. What? Seriously? MJ? Dead? Jacko? It was kind of like hearing that sasquatch had been found, it was not at all what you were expecting.

Duck came by the bar, picked us up and drove us around the city. We were on our way to a high road above the town to get a good view when we passed the one and only motel in Iuna. The Motel Eldourado.

Brazilian motels are iconic. They are exclusively for sex. You rent the rooms by the hour, and they are rumored to have saunas, hot tubs, toys, mirrored ceilings, porn, the works. Only no one says so from experience because no one wants to admit they've been to one. They have names in English (because English is fancy here) like the Love Motel (with both O's as neon hearts), and the Kiss Motel and Motel Las Vegas (because what happens in the Motel Las Vegas stays in the Motel Las Vegas). They are surrounded by high walls and there is concealed parking so your wife or your husband or your mom can't drive by and see your car parked there. It is all designed to make infidelity super easy to commit.

So anyway we drive past the motel, which everyone gawks at hoping to use their x-ray vision to see what's going on inside, and we continue up to the ridge above town. There we get out and it's spooky because supposedly a woman commited suicide from up there (doesn't every town have a spooky spot where some depressed woman threw herself from a cliff?)and we talk about the chupacabra (that mysterious South American vampire wolf creature that drains chickens of their blood and leaves them floppy and lifeless with two fang holes on their necks). Then we look up at the sky and I am amazed at the stars again. I never see stars like this in Atlanta. I spot the Southern Cross, the only constellation I know in the southern hemisphere and vow to find out about more of them.

Day 6 cont. or Bem-Vindo a Iuna

Notes on Day 6, June 24th continued.

I did not have to wait long at the bus station in Ibatiba for Rodrigo and Rachel to come rescue me, which was good because it was hot as dog balls. One of Rodrigo's 1800 cousins drove us. He is known only by the name of Bocao (pronounced Bokown), which means Big Mouth, because, well...he has a really big mouth, not because he talks alot. I feel for him because I think it would be like someone picking my very worst body feature and then nicknaming me that. I imagine someone calling me, "Hey Saddlebags, what up?" or "Let's go pick up Droopyboobs!" You would always be reminded. I secretly pity the guy.

The ride to Iuna was not long, maybe about 20km, but it revealed a glimpse of the promising terrain I was now in. Orderly rows of coffee bushes draped the hillsides, leading up to patches of Mata Atlantica (Atlantic rain forest) on the mountain peaks and troughs. A high green land where you think everything must grow and I couldn't wait to explore it.

I didn't see much of Iuna since we went straight to Rodrigo's family home. Rachel gave me the 10 cent tour: a street level garage, bedroom and extra bath, a second level with three bedrooms, two baths, a formal living room, bar, TV room, kitchen and outdoor courtyard and beautiful balcony over looking the street, and a third floor...restaurant? Seriously, that's what I said when Rachel lead me up the steps: "Oh my gosh, there's a restaurant up here!" It's not a restaurant, of course, it is a terrace, but just about two thirds of the top floor is a covered open air space with several sets of tables and chairs, a large sound system for music (and real musicians), and a terrace kitchen complete with cabinets, sink, oven, grill, and large wood burning stove. You could cook for 50 up here, and entertain them as well, and apparently Rodrigo's dad does.

The remaining third of the third floor is comprised of two more bedrooms and a bath. And this is where I was to be ensconced. After a shower, a critical change of undies, and a generous schmear of deodorant, I came down to meet Rodrigo's parents. Mariza, his mother, is the size of a string bean with olive skin, jet black hair, designer glasses. At 50 she has an effortless chicness about her I didn't have at 20. Jose Carlos is Rodrigo's dad. They call him Ze (pronounced Zeh) for short. Let's just say I am not going to describe Ze now because I have a feeling he needs a blog entry all his own.

I presented them with gifts, whisky for Ze and a pricey body butter and soaps for Mariza. I wanted to get in good with Ze and I heard scotch would do it so I carefully researched good scotch before I left. I dared not go empty handed. Any good girl brought up to hear her mother's voice in her head saying "you are going to bring them something aren't you?" (even though she knows she brought you up to do that but she still feels she has to remind you at 34 of your manners) would not go empty handed. I know other moms do this, not just mine, but I still can't help whining through a clenched jaw "Mooooooom, I'm thirty four, yeesh. I know how to be a guest in someone's house." I can't decide who this reflects on more: me that she doesn't trust my manners? or her that she forgets she taught them? My guess is she knows I am not a complete Philistine, but for some reason there is a gene on the mom chromosome that instructs mom's to say stuff like that, and you can't turn it off without some kind of genetic mutation. So at 54 I still hear, "Don't forget to thank them for taking such good care of you and feeding you and putting up with you when they certainly didn't have to because they did it out of the kindness and generosity of their hearts and they paid for all of your food and your beverages and everything and you didn't have to stay in a hotel and you saved a ton of money that way so actually they saved you a ton of money that way and don't forget to say thank you."

After introductions, I was introduced to dinner, Iuna style. Dinner is not the big meal. Lunch is the big meal. Dinner is usually a simple affair of French bread (out of the oven two hours ago though), some butter (yellow as a school bus and creamy smooth), coffee (dark and hot and sweeter than royal frosting), and cheese. And oh my god the cheese. This is the fabled Minas cheese, so called because Minas Gerais makes some of the best cheese in all of Brazil. There is always, always a wheel of fresh, locally made Minas cheese on the table. It is almost all protein, little fat, salty, firm, and you would be happy as a clam to pay $12 for a small sliver of this on a plate in a froofroo restaurant back home if it was paired with a nice dolop of Ze's homemade star fruit preserves. I am serious people. This cheese, smeared with tart n tangy star fruit jam, can rival and best many of the restaurant cheese plates I have had in any Celebrity Cheese Death Match. So I ate a small municipality's worth of it, not realizing it would appear again at breakfast.

Oh yeah, and the juice. I have to tell you about the juice. So Rodgrigo asks me what I want to drink for dinner: coffee or juice, and I say juice because coffee in the evening makes me jittery like a phsych patient hooked up to electrodes. And get this, his mom starts making the araca-una juice from scratch! As in smashes the berries, strains them in a seive, and mixes the juice with water and sugar. I was mortified! I immediately heard my mom in my head: "Don't make them go to any extra trouble over you," and I started apologizing to Rodrigo asking him to apologize to his mom saying that I didn't mean for her to go to all that trouble. And Rodrigo explained to his mom that I thought the juice would come from a carton and she just started laughing at me like, "What a silly notion, a carton? Who ever heard of such a thing when you can have fresh squeezed juice any time?" But damn the juice was good. I can't really even define the taste of the araca-una berry (too many fruits down here defy description by my palate of limited fruit experience). And in the end I was all, "hey, if you wanna make me juice from scratch because that's how you roll down here, who am I to complain?"

After dinner, and after a little after dinner liquor at the bar, we headed up to the restaurant, oops I mean terrace, to do what Iuna-ites do in the evenings: hang out. But it didn't take long for the cerveja to come out (beer), and the cachaca, salomi, green olives all spread on the table. And then people started arriving from nowhere. Rodrigo's friends and a few of the 1800 cousins. Bocao was there, and a new guy who they called Playmobile because his hair was frozen in place like a Lego or Playmobile person, a cousin whose name I had no shot at pronouncing, and a friend nicknamed Marreco (Duck) becuase of his faint resemblence to a, well...duck. (Again with the nicknames based on unflattering features).

Everybody has nicknames down here, and not just one either. Rachel is right, we need everybody to wear nametags with their given names and all nicknames listed in order of preference or something because I've just ended up calling everyone "Whatshisname." Whatshisname who's a cousin with the thinning hair. Whatshisname who's the duck. Ohhhh...Whathisname who is really hot over there with the 5 o'clock shadow and the... "Kristin, he's married with a daughter." Damn. Are you sure? "I'm sure." Damn.

And the music starts, the Brazilian beats, and the cerveja flows, the crisp light beer, and then comes slices of seared filet mignon and grilled onions and I realize I haven't stopped eating since I arrived 5 hours ago. The party continued on till three a.m., long after I had given up trying to stay awake and went to bed.

If the first night is any indication, I am in for some interesting leisure time here in Iuna. Let the good times roll my friends.

Day 6 or Little Grasshopper Says Chao to Her Senseis

Notes on June 24, 2009

A frosty wet cold settled over the monastery in the night and this morning it was not easy getting out of bed. We all agreed to meet at 8:30 to head to breakfast, where we fried our own eggs and grilled bread on a brick oven. We drank our coffee slowly and lingered over the table, enjoying one last subdued coversation before we would have to part ways.

I decided it would be a good time to interrogate Mike on all the times he'd been thrown in prison during his travels around the world. Indeed, Mike's encounters with foreign police have provided some running jokes this week during our road trip. Just yesterday Mike and Naimon tried to convince Rob and Melie and I that the cops confiscated our rental car when they went to park it for lunch and we couldn't get it back because Mike wouldn't pay a bribe. This yarn, by the way, was completely credible. Mike had alluded to his refusal to pay bribes landing his butt in jail before, so I immediately started to tense up. Was I going to do my first hard time in a Brazilian prison? Would I have a bucket for a toilet? Have to sleep on a rat infested floor? It was a half terrifying, half exhilarating prospect (exciting only because I was with Mike and Melie though; otherwise I would have been peeing myself). But Naimon can't lie, like, at all, and he tried to cover his smile with his hand and the jig was up almost as soon as it began. Of course Melie's reaction was fascinating. I think many women would respond to "Honey, we have no car" with "great! Just great! Now what are we going to do?" and a great deal of arm flapping. Not Melie. Melie just shrugged and sighed like this whole thing was no more than a temporary irritation, like waiting in line at the DMV or something. Completely unflappable, and no arm flapping either.

Mike always introduced his prison stories with, "Yeah, that time was pretty funny, actually." The rest of us would look at him and repeat faintly, "funny?". But, some of them really are funny, like the time in Uraguay when a "cop" pulled him over on his motorcycle saying that Mike had hit him. Mike didn't recall hitting anything and asked for his badge. Mike thought his "police" papers looked suspicious and denied he hit the guy. The guy wanted a bribe and pointed to the police station and threatened to take Mike there if he didn't pay, and Mike was all, "fine, let's go to the police station." So as they approach the police station, the "cop" starts dragging his leg and limping, and inside he rolls up his pant leg to show the real cop a week old bruise (black and blue and clearly healing). The cop looks at Mike and goes, "this guys says you hit him, pay a bribe and you can go." And Mike's all, "I'm not paying a bribe." So the cop puts him in jail, and all night long the cop keeps asking him if he is going to pay and all night long Mike keeps refusing to pay unless he gets to call his embassy. "Gimmie the phone first." Finally he offered to pay with a credit card so he could get a receipt. The cops had no idea what to do with that one, so the next morning they let him out cause they figured there was nothing they could really do to him.

In Argentina he ran into a "radar trap" where a cop jumped out of the bushes saying he was speeding. Mike asks to see the radar gun to see how fast he was going. The "cop" says, "I don't have the radar gun, a guy up on that ridge has the gun and he told me you were speeding." So Mike asks the guy if he can talk to the guy on the ridge and see what the radar gun says, but the "cop" has no radio. Hmmmmm, so how did the cop on the street know to stop Mike???? So Mike landed in jail for a few hours on that one, mostly for poking holes in the cop's lame ass story.

In Venezuala he did an overnighter for driving with a burned out headlight on his motorcycle. In Angola he did a short stint with a photo journalist from Belgium, In Peru (oh wait, this one is funny), Mike and a friend came across a street party and decided to join in the fun before they realized it was actually a rally for the Sendero Luminoso, the Shining Path communist rebel group in Peru. So when the riot police show up, Mike & Co. get thrown in the paddy wagon and hauled off to prison for processing. But at the station, there is such a throng of people who were caught up in the sweep that it was totally disorganized and completely lax. So Mike suggests to his friend that they just keep edging toward the door and once outside they, "run like fuck." Hence, Naimon and I exclaim, "Oh my god you escaped from a South American prison?!?!?!?" "It wasn't really and escape, more like AWOL," came the reply.

"OMG! I would be sooo panicking!" I said. "No," says Mike. "You panic the first time it happens," after that you just realize, "hey, I've got a roof over my head, a place to sleep and they'll feed me, this isn't too bad."

After breakfast and Mike's Tour of South American Prisons, we said goodbye to Rob and Naimon. Mike made completely sure their arrangements for getting back to Ouro Preto were all made, and we hugged and said our goodbyes.

Mike and Melie and I piled in the car and headed east. Today is the day I was to up with my friends Rachel and Rodrigo. It has been tricky figuring out the logistics of the drop. Mike and Melie are headed south to Rio, and the southbound highway turns off before I get to Ibatiba, where my friends were to pick me up. But in the end, Mike and Melie decided they could take me all the way to Ibatiba and they would turn south further east. Didn't I say I couldn't have imagined a better stroke of luck than meeting up with these two? In the car we continued with the gratifying conversations we had been having all week. We talked about travel more. Mike was concerned that telling his tales of mild travel frustrations like being thrown in prisons or getting pistol whipped at bordor crossings or sleeping in road side ditches will discourage people from travel, when in reality the wonderful, the awe inspiring, the intense and rewarding experiences so far outweigh any negative experiences as to render them mild frustrations, truly.

For lunch we stopped at a roadside restaurant where the food was home cooked, cast iron pots bubbling with meat stews, vegetables, rice and beans, sitting on a woodburning stove. In fact, this is standard fare at roadside joints. It ain't your ordinary truck stop. The food tastes like grandma cooked it, because grandma probably did.

At the bus station in Ibatiba they dropped me off. We hugged and kissed goodbye. I told them I would travel with them any way, anytime, anywhere. I called Mike my sensei and told him that this little grasshopper had learned well. They invited me to Quebec and then drove off, Melie hanging out the window shouting, "Next time, Mali!" in farewell. And honest to god, I felt the telltale lump in my throat and a pricking burn behind my eyes. My encounter with M&M was so serendipitous, I almost feel like they were my travel guardian angels, and Virginia too, back in Sao Joao. I needed to meet these people, and there they all were.

Day 5 or The Cachaca Express

Notes on Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Last night, after a lovely dinner with M&M and Rob and Naimon, R&N invited us all to drink cachaca with them. They had been collecting bottles and claimed they had some of "the good stuff," although none of us were really qualified to judge the good stuff from the rotgut. We had to rely on what we were told. So on the way home Mike and Rob haggled for limes and ice from a couple of bars (all the mercados were closed), and we scrounged for glasses and knives and sugar back at the pousada. Naimon and Melie mixed the caiparinhas, which were expertly done, and we all kicked back in the coziness of the antique pousada, the glow of the illuminated church across the street flooding in through the balcony windows.

It didn't take long for us to start telling bidnez. Rob is gay (well, we knew that bidnez already). Poor guy got fired from a job five years ago for it too. OMG. What is wrong with people? Melie and I actually thought Rob and Naimon were a couple, but Naimon is married to an actress in Norfolk. I guess we called that one pretty wrong. "No, we're not together, I just haven't found the right guy yet," was Rob's explanation. "Honey, neither have I," I sympathized. I got all girlie and showed Rob my bling bling from the mines that day, and we decided to drink some cachaca straight up. (If Rob lived in Atlanta, I would sooo make him my gay husband). Then two very nice, but very dignified Germans staying in the pousada joined us, and prevented the whole thing from degenerating any further, so Rob and Melie and I went to bed.

This morning at breakfast, Melie mused, "We should kidnap the gay guy and hees friend and take zem to the park wiz us today." The three of us were leaving Ouro Preto today for the old monastery at the Parque Natural do Caraca. A state park about two hours east of OP. It was time for some nature up in here. But the minute she said it out loud we decided it would be too fun not to, and we began scheming. When Rob came down, we told him we were plotting to take him and Naimon to the park with us, and they didn't really have a say in the matter. Rob was so flattered, gay boy flattered. It was completely cute. Naimon was a little more hesitant, but as we said, they didn't really have a choice.

There were a few logistical concerns. One: how were Naimon and Rob going to get back to OP the next day (M&M and I were heading east). And two: how were we going to fit 5 people, all M&M's luggage, my embarrassing luggage, and Rob and Naimon's overnight bags into the little clunker? Rob and I took off for the tourist info office to inquire about buses back to OP. Once that was figured out, we had to tackle the luggage. But Mike and I decided to head out for one last gander around town while everyone finished packing, and by the time we returned, the car had been stuffed with our stuff. Talk about expert shirker timing! It really was a miracle of spacial arrangement that we got all that junk in that tiny trunk. But they did it, and I took a picture of the trunk for proof.

Question: How many gringos can you pack into a baby car? Poor Naimon squeezed in the middle of the back seat and we set out, the left over cachaca packed safely in a plastic water bottle in the trunk. We had to stop at a garage to get an extra bolt for a rear hub cap. It was a little curious when the mechanic didn't go into the shop to get it, but took off down the street. "Is he getting it off another car?" Mike wondered. Where ever the guy got it, he didn't charge us anything. I just hope some poor other schmoe didn't lose his hub cap hitting a quebra mola. But we were finally on our way. We all exclaimed when we hit a quebra mola, and we teased Melie who was mortified when she asked for directions and the Brazilian woman thought she was speaking French instead of Portuguese, we puzzeled over Brazilian waxes and someone wondered aloud if we should all get matching landing strips, and we told stories about lost fingernails to ook each other out. Naimon told of ripping off a fingernail entirely, Mike told of his father's grotesque parting with a nail, Melie told of losing acrylics at a really bad time, and I grossed everyone out with my lost toenail story from the camino. When it came time for Rob to tell his nail story, he just said, "I get pedicures," with a sheepish shrug.

We had to drive through Mariana again on the way to the monastery and Melie suggested we eat lunch at the same place as yesterday. She had an alterior motive. She wanted to lay in the sun for 20 minutes in front of the igreja again. "Look at us, Mike," she said referring to the both of us. "Wee are soooo pasty, sooo transparent!" And then someone, I don't remember who, broached going back to the mine. Mike wanted to see the garim peiros actually mining, and after seeing my gems last night, Rob wanted to score some for his mom and sisters and nieces, and me? Well I just wanted more bling, period.

We pulled up to the mine again, got out of the car, and descended into it like we'd done this a thousand times, not just once the day before. It didn't take long for the predicted throng to arrive, but several of the garim peiros were hard at work in the mines below, chiseling chunks of mud into wheelbarrows. We looked for our favorite garim peiro from yesterday, a short guy with rain golashes and ball cap that looked like it might have been yellow at one time. Mike told Melie to ask for the "baixanho negro," the "litte black guy," explaining that it would not be seen as offensive here. "I am not going to say dat!" was Melie's reply.

But it didn't take long to find him down in a pit, systematically working the dirt. He waved at us and smiled and we spent a little while with the miners, just observing them work, Mike asking them more questions about the process. Apparently they can't pan the dirt for gold dust in the dry season because they can't pipe in water, so they just have to mine for the chunks and wait for the rainy season to collect enough water to pan.

And then the gems started coming out, but this time I was ready for them. Auga marinho, ametista, topazio, citrino, ametista verde, they were all waved in front of my eyes as they were yesterday. When they began quoting prices, I haggled, I frowned, I furrowed my brow, I put my fingers to my chin, I pursed my lips when I wanted them to lower their prices. I have to say, I have done a kick ass job of mastering numbers in Portuguese, at least up to eighty, so I was a deal making queen. And these guys, dirt poor as they are, are savvy too. They know what their gems are worth in a jewelry store in Minas, and if I went too low they haggled me back up. I mean, if you talk about tourism dollars going to benefit the local economy, you can't get any more direct than this, and I have to say, I am glad my money was going to buy good cachaca for these characters, and not lining the pockets of some Rio based commercial gem broker. In all I bought just three more gems today, gifts for people back home. And Rob got his too: four deep colored, emerald cut amethysts for his ladies. Score!

I have to say it was an even more gratifying experience today. I was advising Rob and Naimon on negotiations, giving them all the expert advice Mike had given me yesterday when I was about to pee my pants. Oh yeah, I was a big time show off now and swollen, perhaps a little too much so, with new found confidence. Naimon documented all of it with his new DSLR. He was the photojournalist on this adventure, and he flitted around us haggling with the miners, taking shots of me with my haggle face on, and of Mike examining raw rocks, and Rob brooding over a gems, and of us marching down the lonely dirt road to the mine to the ghostly, impoverished town beyond.

What amazes me so much is the proximity of the first world to the third world here in Brazil. The two coexist side by side, sometimes a swift thirty minute drive from each other, sometimes in the same town! Take Ouro Preto, a teeming town swelling with mostly Brazilian tourists, expensive restaurants and jewelry stores I can't aford, and not 40 minutes away is this place, a place where miners exist on less money and more cachaca in a year than we can possibly imagine. Mike yearned to spend an evening with these guys drinking cachaca and shooting the shit, finding out more of what their lives were like, and I would have loved to join them too, but alas we had to move on. We had a monastery and a mountain range and a four hour hike to a legendary waterfall waiting for us that afternoon.

Back on the road, Melie offered me this, "Hey Kreesteen, you know our garim perio is single, I asked heem for you." "Melie, I fired you, remember?"

Afternoon crept up on us sooner than we expected though, and we didn't arrive at the monastery until 4:30. The first glimpse of the gothic revival church nestled in a trough with stunning mountains cresting all around elicited a simultaneous "oooowwww" from everyone. But with sunset coming on it was too late to begin a hike to the waterfall. We contented ourselves with wandering around the exquisite formal gardens and watching the sun go down behind a foreground of rolling mountains. Naimon got attacked by a bat hiding in a small grotto in a hillside, Rob screamed like a girl, Mike and Melie hung out in their room, then Rob and Naimon and I raided the pousada kitchen for caiparinha making materials. The kitchen lady looked at us like we were crazy when we asked for the necessary random objects: a faca (knife), prato (plate), cinqo copos (five glasses), and acucar (sugar). But we couldn't explain ourselves in Portuguese, and even if we could have I am not sure how smart it would have been to tell the lady we were trying to get drunk in a monastery.

But drink we did, and toast, and toast, and toast. We toasted Brazil, we toasted cachaca, and we toasted the wolves: "Those mother fuckers better show up."

I guess now I have to explain about the wolves. See, a few years ago one of the padres at the monastery decided it would be super fun to see if he could feed the maned wolves by hand a la St. Francis of Assisi. The maned wolf is one of only three wild dog species in Brazil, and one is a fox and the other a small dog. The maned wolf is large, rare, and extremely endangered. But this priest managed to train the wild wolves in the park to eat from his hand, and every night they place food out on the terrace for the wolves. So about six shots of cachaca in, we took a picture of ourselves holding a statue of St. Francis, just because it seemed like a good idea at the time, and I prayed silently that the wolves would show tonight.

On our way to dinner, drunk and giggling down the dormitory corridor toward the dining room, we heard Melie up ahead on the terrace, "shhhhhh!!!! You guys, der ees a wolf!!!! Be quiet! der ees a wolf!!!!!!" Rob and I looked at each other, eyes bulging, and we all crouched low and crept as stealthily as we could for drunks, emerging from the corridor on to the terrace. Low and behold, there was an aluminum tray full of chicken wings (cause that's what I'd want if I were a wild wolf), and standing at the tray was a tall, long, lanky, copper colored wolf. He looked like a enormous fox with gangly legs and huge ears. I held my breath as he snatched bits of chicken and retreated swiftly to a safe distance at the edge of the terrace to crunch bones and swallow before cautiously attempting more. It was magic, sheer enchantment. Naimon, Mike and I, our cameras clicking away (luckily flash doesn't scare them off), got some amazing shots of this brave wolf, alone on the terrace with only the five of us.

After we sat, crouched, and stood frozen for minutes watching the wolf make several passes at the chicken, Mike finally said, "All right, enough of this, I am going to go save the rest of our dinner." To a bunch of drunks, this was the funniest thing he could have said, and I sputtered through laughter, "you son of a bitch!" But finally, the wolf had had enough chicken (wing sauce not hot enough?), and enough of the camera flashes, and enough of us, and he disappeared back into the black of the forest while the rest of us, awed and breathless, thanked St. Francis.

Side bar: I have found the problem with being a photo hobbyist. You are so focused on getting the shot, on preserving the moment for posterity, you don't live fully in the actual moment as it is happening. One eye is on the wolf, aware that you are now one of a small group of people on the planet who has seen this rare creature, or ever will again. It is a moment you want to be fully present for, completely engaged, just watching, imbibing, honoring. But then the other eye is focused on the camera, the settings, the focus, the zoom, hoping for that amazing shot to share with friends so they believe that you experienced this rare thing. It is a dilemma, to be sure, and sometimes I wish I could just put the camera down and experience life instead of trying to preserve it. Some moments in life are meant to be moments only, and then memories.

Later that night, after dinner and everyone had retired to their rooms, I went out on the terrace alone for one last hopeful glimpse of a wolf. No one showed up, but the tray of chicken, which was still full when our wolf was snacking, was now completely decimated. I sat on the terrace and looked up at the star littered sky, realizing for the first time that I was looking at a whole new hemisphere of stars that I had never seen before. It was a good thing I didn't have my camera.

Day 4 or The Gringo Girl and the Garim Peiros

Notes on June 22, 2009

This morning at breakfast there were two new faces eating with Mike and Melie when I came downstairs, suffling sleepily. When I entered the dining room, Melie introduced me as "our adopted daughter." Awwww, schniff. It was too sweet and I felt all warm and fuzzy. Of the new guys, Rob is a proper, poised sort of character, and his friend, Naimon (awesome name, Naimon), is the soft spoken, shy one. Both are professors, traveling in Minas for a few days after a conference in Rio or Sao Paulo, I forget which. It still felt good to hear some more English, even with the considerable conversational abilities of Mike and Melie.

After breakfast, the adventure began in earnest. Mike and Melie and I decided to drive to the Minas de Passagem, a decommissioned gold mine some twenty mintues outside of Ouro Preto, on the way to Mariana. It has been turned into a tourist attraction (they charge an exhorbitant R24 to go down in). When we pulled in the parking lot a 12 year old boy immediately approached the car, and now I was introduced to hustling, Brazilian style. The kid wanted to give us a tour of the mine (for which some payment would naturally be expected), but seeing as how we had planned to pay the official mine tour guide for all of that, we couldn't justify two tour guides. Then he suggested that we pay another dude (an older guy lingering in the parking lot) to "keep an eye" on our car for us. So what, are we paying you NOT to rob us? But luckily Mike was hip to this stuff, and he was able to decline with our car and our belongings in tact. (I tell you I am just soaking in all his savvy traveler mojo). Then the kid offered to wash our car for a small fee, but Mike told him we like it dirty, which is really super savvy, because a dirty car is much more discreet in these parts. It fits in with everyone eles's dirty cars.

And then we saw the mine. So it's like a whole in the ground that is over 1000m deep. And the way you get down in this thing is to wait at the top while the tour guide fires up this huge old engine with a crank shaft which slowly starts to haul the most rickety, rackety, antique passenger mine car out of the hole on ONE, yes ONE, rope (I don't even think it was a cable). I don't think OSHA would approve this whole rig for employees, let alone tourists. But the car comes up and we all climb in, and then we notice just how steep the hill is going down into the mine, and Melie starts with, "I don like thees, Mike. I am not going to go. Will you hold me." Good job Melie. Way to play the damsel in distress. So she gets on the car (of course she did), and we get ready for Disneyworld Minas Gerais style. We start to get lowered into the mine. OMG. This thing was so slow and tame all the excitement of possibly plummeting out of control down into a mine and careening around dangerous curves a la Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom evaporated as we descended inch by jiggly inch. Still, the ONE rope holding us added a little suspense.

The mine was opened in 1719, and was mined for gold be primarily black slaves, natch. The tour was in Portuguese, and Mike was successful at translating all of it. Turns out there is a shrine to dead miners at the bottom, where people leave little bottles of nail polish or lipstick. I am still trying to figure that one out. Maybe you just leave what you have on hand? Maybe the miners were drag queens? Not sure.

Then it was time to make the slow climb back to the surface, where our tour guide finished the show by panning for gold dust, which he actually did find in the bottom of the pan. And then we headed back to the car, where the kid asked us for a ride to Mariana, where we were headed next. So Mike decided to go ahead and give this kid a ride in lieu of money. As he climbed in the back seat with me, Melie said, "Kreesteen, we 'ave your Brazilian for you." "Melie, you're fired." I officially revoked her match making priviledges out of self defense.

In Mariana, after we ditched the kid, we went to lunch at a "self service" restaurant. In Brazil, self service is the fancy Americanized way of saying buffet, and you buy your food by the kilogram. I like eating this way. The spreads are tremendous: traditional beans and rice (of course), roasted chicken, roast beef, blanched veggies of all shapes and sizes, mystery dishes, and tasty cakes. You basically pile your plate up with whatever catches your stomach's eye and then take it over to a lady with a scale, who weighs it and writes down the price for the plate. They don't even look at you funny when you are a chubby white girl with an enormous plate of food ten times the size of Brazil. I like it. There was only one wierd veggie glop that I had to spit back out on my plate, but the rest was pretty damn yummy.

After lunch we set out for the town square, and Mike and I ducked into a promising furniture shop, where I abandoned Mike and went in search of Melie. After I poked my head into yet another Baroque igreja, I sat with Melie on the steps of the church. We took off our shoes and socks and relaxed in the sun, and told each other more of our stories. It was one of those conversations that went really deep really fast, and I find life more than ironic when that happens. It feels like you've known each other for an age, even though you may only know them for a few days or hours or minutes of your life. Sometimes it seems the people we spend the most time with know us the least, and those fleeting encounters with strangers, where we have nothing to hide or lose or gain, and no history that could color their judgment and no future to smooth the way for, we feel OK to be ourselves. It was one of those conversations.

Mike eventually showed up with a new friend he'd picked up back in the furniture store. The guy was a spindly looking carpenter and had nothing better to do than to show Mike around the town square and tell him some interesting local history, like how the pedestool used to beat the slaves was right there on the square in front of the church. And sure enough, there was an iron ring where slaves were chained in a stone pilar on the green. Nothing like a little human brutality to prove to god how you worship him. "Hey look Jesus! Won't it be great to watch us whip slaves? It's so funny when they scream! And it makes us such good Christians too!" But of course, the Portugese did believe they were being good Christians, just like slave owners in Georgia or the Carribbean or where ever, because slaves were godless heathens, and they needed to be whipped for their own good after all. This kind of thing always makes me wonder: when do we give people a pass? Do we excuse the slave owners (it was the eighteenth century after all, they didn't know better), or do we condemn them (it was the eighteenth century after all, shouldn't they have figured it out by then)? But then, Bush still hadn't figured it out in 2003 so I don't know.

(All this philosopherizing is hurting my head. Where's the cachaca?)

Then the guy told Mike that he could take us to a real mine, a surface mine that is currently being worked for gems and gold. Mike was a bit wary. It was a calculated risk. After all, this could be the hustle to end all hustles. But Mike had a good feeling about this guy, and he really likes rocks, and I really like gems, so we went for it. And as we drove out of town, Melie told me how she always feels safe traveling with Mike. In all the third world, war torn, flood ravaged, western hostile countries, in all the police states and during all the dicey border crossings and logistical wranglings, she has never felt she was in true danger. "'Ee can smell danger. Eef 'ee even senses it, we are out of dat place, you know?"

I don't know the name of this mining town, but it's a place that God and everybody has forgotten about, and we park next to this giant gaping black hole in the earth. Our "guide" leads us down, we cross a makeshift wood plank bridge over a chasm (another OSHA nightmare) into the pits. There are no railings, no gates, no fences to keep small children from wandering in and falling to their deaths. There are no fences to keep adults from doing the same. Are guy starts telling us, as we descend further, how the miners have to work the land by hand (no hydraulics or dynamite) and that they can only work within certain boundaries...and a new guy, his shirt dingy, his face smeared, follows us down and shakes all of our hands. And then another guy comes, and another. And I'm thinking, "Hmmm, that's interesting. Where are all these guys coming from." And then two more show up and I am thinking, "What is this, 'let's all gawk at the gringos'?" And two more show up, and now I am thinking "Uhhhh, exit strategy?" And finally we are in the belly of the mine, almost at the bottom of the pit, and all these guys who followed us down start pulling out little white paper packets from every pocket and satchel and they open them. And inside the white packets, resting on white cotton pads, are the most lovely, clear, sparkling, vibrantly colored cut gems. And now it dawns, "They want to sell them to us."

Brief side bar while I tell the story of "Gold n Gem Grubbin'" way back in Dahlonega, GA. My sister-in-law came to visit with the family last July, and she wanted to go panning for gold and gems. So I found this place online called "Gold n Gem Grubbin." The even have this Stinky Pete looking red neck miner cartoon mascot. If they got that guy, you know it's the real deal, right? So we drove up there and paid $60 for a 5 gallon bucket and sat our asses on a stump at a sluice for three hours and sifted for rubies and emeralds and sapphires and amethysts. We made a perty good haul (all of which is still sitting uncut in forgotten drawers though).

So this mine in Minas, this man made rip in the earth we were standing in with 12 very dirty miners, this was not your leisurely day of gold n gem grubbin. This was intense, strange, disconcerting, exhilarating. These miners don't deal with outsiders often so these gems were straight from the source. I was off balance at first, my mind whirring with the competing hands and faces shoving gems under my nose and jockeying for my attention. But then I began to notice the gems: citrine, amethyst, garnet, green amethyst, blue topaz, emerald, aquamarine. And it didn't take a jeweler to notice they were very, very nicely cut, and huge! Huge like the size of peanut M&Ms or dimes. And then I listened to the prices they were quoting: R20 ($10) for a square cut amethyst the size of Texas, R25 ($13) for an oval citrine like a prenatal vitamin. And my eyes began to bulge with treasure. The problem was calming down enough to think, and add, and negotiate for the bling bling. Finally I limited myself to a few nice stones and then waited till I was safely in the car to count out my money.

Later on the drive back to Mariana, Melie teased Mike, "Wow, Mike. Dat was da biggest toureest trap ever! Dat was almost as bad as dat temple in Indonesia, remember? And I was just telling Kreesteen what a savvy guy you are traveling, and you brought us to a big tourist trap! ha ha ha!"

But I was in my own exhilarated world. This was not a tourist trap, not really. The Minas de Passagem was the tourist trap. I had just had a real Lonely Planet experience. An off-the-beaten-trail, a not-in-the-guide-book, a not-even-in-the-Lonely-Planet-guide-book, moment. This was travel. This wasn't some sanitized for western white people, consumer reports five star rating for safety and comfort, AARP endorsed for oldsters travel moment. You aren't going to find this place listed in Conde Nast or National Geographic Travel magazine. And I loved it. In fact, the more I thought about what I had just done and where I had just been, the more I realized I had caught the remote third world travel bug. And I am not sure if there is a cure.

That night I lay awake thinking of more far off, hard to access, barely traveled places. And I lay awake dreaming of treasure, and bling, and pretty necklaces and sparkly girlie stuff. And I began getting greedy and I wondered why I didn't get that oceanic emerald cut aquamarine or that sunset colored glowing citrine. I drifted to sleep scheming how to go back....no matter how unlikely it would be.

And here is the story of the miners, the garim peiros, as they are actually called: These guys hack and sift dirt from 9:00 until 2:00 every damn day. Then they cut the gems right in their shanty houses, and then they sell the gems to brokers, who then sell them to jewelers, who turn them into $300 amethyst earrings or $600 citrine rings to be sold to tourists in Belo Horizonte and Ouro Preto and Tiradentes. Then, when the day is over, these guys have nothing else to do but sit around and drink cachaca all night, until it is time to get up and start digging in the dirt again.

We'll tonight boys, the good stuff (the R2 cachaca instead of the R1 cachaca) is on us!

Day 3 or The Attack of the Quebra Molas

Notes on Sunday, June 21, 2009

At 9:00 I met Mike and Melie outside their pousada two doors down from mine. Mike deserves an award for wedging my beastly suitcase in the back seat of their little clunker. The drive was pretty uneventful, with the exception of the quebra molas. Mola, in Portugese, is tooth (like molar). The verb Quebra is "to break." So quebra molas are "teeth breakers." I am referring of course, to speed bumps, which are EVERYWHERE in Brazil. I think there must be a law or something that there must be one quebra mola for every Brazilian. And these fuckers are huge. They make for an exciting and occasionally painful ride. Most of the time the speed bumps are painted with ominous yellow stripes, or there is a helpful street sign just before you encounter one. But many times there is no warning at all, and you hit the bastard at 35 miles an hour, and then everyone in the car hears the nasty "clonk" on the underside of the car and a chorus of "ooohhhhhhhh" rings out in unison as faces cringe.

It took us about three hours to reach Ouro Preto. A trip made more interesting because Melie gets motion sick. And when you combine the incessant slowing down and speeding up to survive the quebra molas, the cliff hugging curves of the mountain roads, and the constant up and down over hills and through valleys, Melie was feeling a little puky from time to time. It was kinda funny to hear her, in her Quebec accent, saying, "Oh, Mike, I don like thees. No, I don like thees." But still, you have to admire the sheer good sportingness of a woman who gets motion sick but is still willing to travel the world by plane, boat, car, motorcycle, train, whatever. She's pretty kick ass.

Ouro Preto is a mountain town with insanely steep cobble stone streets and narrow jack knife turns where only baby cars can go. We came into town from a valley road, so we had to climb in the little clunker all the way to our pousada at the top of the town. We had some serious doubts as to whether or not the little car could do it, but in the end, it prevailed bravely and we made it to our ancient pousada, The Chico Rei, in time for Mike and Melie to get the very last open room in the city. There was a film festival going on this week that none of us knew about, and the town was utterly booked up. I already had a reservation there, but it was M&M's turn to be smiled on by the travel gods today. And I am glad. It means I have my friends for another day.

And what a pousada it is! This place was built in 1770, and is one of the oldest in the city. The whole place is stuffed with antiques, including an enormous original painted corner cabinet in the dining room with the most beautiful decorative iron key whole, antique tables and chairs, wide, warped wood floor planks the color of rich dark coffee, weathered old oil paintings and ginormous floor to ceiling windows with worn stone window seats. It oozes comfy charm from floor to ceiling. It's the kind of place you want to spend a weekend with a lover. But since I'm short one lover at the moment I'll just have to pretend.

My room was was a complete gem. On the second story and at the front of the house, this room was one of the fancy rooms. The angular vaulted ceiling was made entirely of carved wood, painted white, and the view from my balcony of the Igreja Nossa Senorha do Carmo right across the street was positively enchanting. Out my other window (an enormous window that I had to hang my entire torso out in order to open and close the giant crusty old painted shutters) overlooked the red tile roofs of the western side of town. I was in pousada heaven, and the best part was that this place was only $45 a night. You can barely stay in a skanky Motel 6 for that back home. When our exhuberant host gave me the key to my room, I about fainted. This mother was huge! It was a clunky, crusty old worn metal key the length and thickness of a large pocket knife, with a worn wooden handle that Mike called an elephant club. I salivated the first time I put my 240 year old key in the 240 year old lock of my 240 year old door to my 240 year old room. (It doesn't take much to make me happy).

Once settled and refreshed, we headed out for a bite of lunch. I am a tad embarrassed to say we ate pizza, but damn, it was really, really good pizza. They don't do tomato sauce on pizza down here so far as I can tell, which means that pizza is basically a dough and cheese bomb with various toppings: pepperoni, yummy whole green olives (I have finally been fully converted to a green olive eater down here - still won't touch the black though), and onions. But since they don't do pizza sauce, they do ketchup instead. Uhh, like gag me with a chainsaw. I didn't partake of this particular travesty of condiment misuse, but we still had a lovely lunch basking in the sun on the terrace of a 250 year old restaurant and dranking our agua minerale com gas. Which reminds me, bottled water here is agua minerale, and you can get it carbonated or not. But the first time a waiter asked me if I wanted agua minerale com gas (with gas), I was like, "huh?" In the US, gas is what you put in your car, or what you have after you eat too much chili, it doesn't come in water. But then I realized that "com gas" meant sparkling water, and I was like, "Sure, I'll have gas."

After almoco (lunch) we split up for a while, and I went off to explore the town. I was of two minds about the precipitously steep streets here. On one hand I knew I was getting stellar exercise, but I began to not want to go on any downhill streets to find this architectural gem or that, because I knew I'd have to come back up. But I forced myself, and the resulting intimacy with the town was well worth the huffing and puffing. The first church I hit, Igreja Sao Francicso de Assis, is one of the most important master works of our hero sculptor Aleijadinho. His real name was Antonio Francisco Lisboa, but the nickname Aleijadinho means "little cripple." See, dude came down with leprosy or syphilis (they don't know which) and he lost his fingers and toes (total bummer). But instead of crying in his cachaca, dude strapped hammers and chisels to his stumps, and kept right on chiseling and carving the gorgeous soapstone of the region into moving and elegant works of Barroco Mineiro art. He sculpted soapstone, carved wood and left behind a huge body of work, including the graceful, cascading church front I was looking at. I paid a small fee to step inside and continued my verboten habit of taking pictures in churches that you are not allowed to take pictures in. I had to be sly about it. They kind of have a picture nazi hanging out in all the churches, so you have to have your camera ready to go for when the camera gestapo steps out of the nave. Back in Tiradentes I heard that the reason they don't let anyone take pictures inside the churches is because they keep getting robbed, and they don't want anyone to use photos of the interior to advertise the churches goods to potential thieves. I kind of thought they just wanted you to buy their post cards, which all sucked monkey fuzz, and so I clandestinely took my own photos in all these lovely igrejas.

I hit a few more lonely, humbler churches, and made an effort to cross town to the last one I wanted to visit that day: Igreja Nossa Senhora do Pilar, apparently the second most ornate church in all of Brazil,* although I am not exactly sure how you quantify such a thing. This place boasts over 400kg of gold and silver decorative work in its interior, and judging by the stunning glow of the nave, that's a lot. In front of the church I had the questionable fortune of meeting Lucia, a kind of geeky, gangly dude from the south of Brazil who spoke English in a wheezy, nasaly high pitched voice that kind of makes you want to stick your head in a toilet so you won't have to hear it. He decided to latch on to me to practice his English. I wasn't entirely keen on his company, but he offered to pay for a private tour of the church for us and then translate the Portugese to English for me. So I was game.

In the end I think Lucia successfully translated about .05% of what the guide told him. He said things like, "The church is gold because there is so much gold," and "The workers were working and there were a lot of workers." But I did find out that the theivery of churces is for real. The guide pointed out all the stuff that had gone missing, so I guess my illicit photos of church interiors might fetch a decent price on the black market. There is no honor among us thieves is there.

After the tour I was ready to shake Lucia. I walked down this street and that, he kept following like he had no where else to be. Finally I stepped into a chocolate shop hoping he might move on, but he came with me. So I decided to order some drinking chocolate for myself, and he did the same and sat with me. BTW, the hot chocolate down here is something to experience. It is dark and thick, halfway between a drink and a pudding. It gets a chocolatey skin on top and goes down thick and creamy, like a lava flow of bitter sweet warmth. But we sat in the little restaurant with wide open windows overlooking the mountains in the background (it's the kind of place you sit with a lover and I am short one lover and long on one Lucia - ugh), and chatted about where Lucia was from (Porto Alegre) and how long he was in Ouro Preto. Then I decided that this completely unromantic interlude needed to end, and I lied about going back to my pousada for a nap.

I did end up back at my pousada eventually, and I met Mike and Melie, and they invited me to go with them to a couple of the film festival movies that evening. They were all free, and even though I knew they would be in Portuguese, I figured I'd better attempt to stretch myself a little if I wanted to appear even remotely sophisitcated. We trekked to the old theater in the center of town, which of course has been converted to a charming movie theater, and I can't say I was disappointed with the selection. It was a collection of 5 short documentary films from the 1970's about social ills in Sao Paulo. One featured homeless migrant workers, another a water polution problem that remained unfixed by a local beaurocracy, another was about the deaths and injuries of always expendable low wage miners, another about people actually living on one of Sao Paulo's landfills. Pretty fascinating stuff. The second movie, which was playing outside on a huge screen erected in the Praca Tiradentes (the town square), was a horrible cheesy drama about a lowly but talented race car driver who worked for a Chevrolet dealership in Sao Paulo and was in love with his boss's hottie Brazilian girlfriend and his hottie souped up race car. It was dumb. It was cold out. We left early to go get dinner.

Dinner was not easy. I had a recommendation from my guide book for good local food joint, but I lead us on an expedition across the entire new world in search of it because the official names of the streets don't match the names the locals use and I got lost, and in the end it was closed for dinner. And the second place I picked was closed altogether. So after an hour of playing New World Explorers we found a place on the Praca that was open, and the food was good, but expensive. I got a little tipsy of one very very strong caipharina. It is a little impossible to stumble home drunk in these towns. Well, given the size of the cobble stones (which are really like cobble boulders), you will stumble, but you won't make it home. Luckily I had Mike and Melie. As we were headed home to our cozy abode, Melie said, "Wee need to find you a nize Brazilian traveler. Eef we find one on de way home, should we encourage you or stop you?"

"Encourage me Melie, definitely encourage me." But we have to do better than Lucia.


* More good stuff from Lonely Planet.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Day 2 or I am a lucky Bastard

Notes of June 20, 2009

Yes my friends, the travel gods have smiled on me, big time. I could not have imagined a better stroke of luck. Last night, the bus ride to Sao Joao de Rei was as uneventful and long as the scenery leaving Rio was breathtaking. And yes, the bus hugged mountain curves with sheer drops on one side that exhilarated and terrified me at the same time. But around 4:30 the sky took on a distinctly dusky look, and I began to wonder if rain was coming. Then I remembered that I was in the southern hemisphere and that if the summer solstice was encroaching up north, the winter solstice must be thinking of doing the same down here. Duh, Keke.

As the bus approached Sao Joao around 8:00, I started to figure out my plan for the night. I didn't have a reservation at a Pousada (none of the ones I had e-mailed before I left responded) and the one I wanted to try first was a kilometer walk from the bus station. But the closer we got to the station, the more I realized this was not a neighborhood I wanted to be walking in at night towing a suitcase big enough to fit a small giraffe with a sign on my head that screams "Tourista!" Plan B: Taxi to the pousada. As I was fetching my luggage from the bus under carriage, a sharply dressed Brazilian woman who had been on the bus with me approached me and asked in broken English if I was a tourista, which I thought was pretty obvious. But soon she was asking me where I was from and she told me she has a neice that lives in Atlanta and that she enjoyed the ATL very much. "Where are you staying?" she asked. And I told her my plans to stay in Sao Joao, even though I was improvising at the moment, and that I planned to travel to Tiradentes (pronounced CHEER-a-dench) tomorrow. "Ahhh, you should come with me to Tiradentes tonight! It is much nicer to stay there than Sao Joao. Tiradentes is beautiful. I have a house there, and I can show you around. My husband is just coming to pick me up and we can take you!" And on cue, her husband appeared on the platform and she gave him the warmest hug, like the hug you give a man returning from overseas, and any niggling reservations I may have had about going with them melted away. So Virgina Wilson (the most Portugese name EVER) and her husband packed my luggage in their trunk, and me in the back seat, and drove me through the heart of Sao Joao to show me the colonial district, and then took the scenic route to Tiradentes (even though I couldn't see much in the dark), and showed me around the town (which took about ten minutes it's so little) and then drove me to the first pousada I picked. Virginia went in with me to inquire about a room. When there were no vacancies there, she drove me to the next pousada, and then next, where finally there was a spare little room on the first floor waiting for me. Her husband brought in all my luggage, she negotiated R20 off the room price for me, told the host to take good care of me because now I was her good friend, kissed me on both cheeks and told me to have a wonderful time in her country (and be careful in Rio) before disappearing out the door into the chill Minas evening. Jeeze. Do we even know the meaning of hospitality in the US? At all?

In the morning, I woke to a charming breakfast (cafe amanha) of fresh papaya, cheese and random mystery buscuits, along with my first taste of Brazilian coffee. Damn. Just Damn. Dark, sweet, and with fresh cows milk, creamy and full of flavor.

So now a little about the town I am in: I took a bus almost due north of Rio into the state of Minas Gerais (General Mines). In the early 18th century, the Portugese began extracting gold and gems in earnest from Minas, and with the growing mineral wealth came population growth. Mining towns like Sao Joao de Rei, Tiradentes and Ouro Preto grew near the mines, and became showcases of the wealth the region generated. Black slaves were brought from Angola in Africa and elsewhere in Brazil to do the dirty work (quite literally) of working in the mines, while the Portugese enjoyed the fruits and luxuries of their labor after the majority of wealth was sent back to Portugal.*

So why did I want to come to Minas? Well, I have this book called 1000 Places to See Before You Die, and the colonial mining towns of Minas are on the list. The Baroque architecture is acclaimed, and one of the towns is a UNESCO World Heritage site, so I was pretty much burning to see it once I read about it and nothing was going to stop me (except swine flu). So my first venture out in the morning took me into a cobble stone clad streetscape in Tiradentes with hills and single story stucco houses culminating in the Igreja Matriz de Santo Antonio. The church was designed by this dude named Aleijadinho (pronounced a-LAY-ja-jeen-yo), the Michaelangleo of Brazil for his Baroque masterpieces. I'll explain more about this guy later, but for now, let me just say the church looks like a gold bomb exploded in there. It is intense and overwhelming, teetering between over adorned and pleasantly ornate. It has this multi colored pipe organ (which still works) that was made in Portugal and brought to the town in pieces by donkey in 1798. This is a trippy detail when you realize how mountainous the region is, and just how much stuff MUST have been brought here by donkey from the coast, AFTER if was shipped for months across the Atlantic. And then there's this other church, called Igreja Nossa Senorha Rosario Dos Petros (Our Lady Rosario of the Rocks). This place was built by and for the black slaves, but because they slaves mined during daylight hours (all of them), they had to build it all at night.

Virginia told me that 20 years ago, Tiradentes was in complete ruins. But the director of a Tele Novela, the Brazilian version of a soap opera, decided to use Tiradentes as a location for his soap, and a resurgence of interest in the town saved it from ruin. Now it is a rich people's getaway, kind of like Santa Fe, NM, and wealthy people from Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte have bought up vacation homes there, causing a bit of tension with the locals who have been pushed to the outskirts. I am always amazed at social dynamics, which seem to be the same no matter where you are.

As I strolled to the town square, I was stopped dead by a row of horse drawn carrigaes. These were clearly for tourists (the vast majority of whom are Brazilian), but they were unlike any horse drawn carriages I had seen before. These were not the period perfect horse and buggies you see in Central Park, or the historic reproductions you see in Charleston, SC and Savannah. Here was a row of carriages with a distinctly, well, Warner Brothers vibe to them. The horses wore harnesses of fuschia pink and bluejay blue and sunshine yellow, with cutesy plumes on the crowns of their bridles, and they pulled chintsy looking carriages bedecked with Hello Kitty and Woody Woodpecker (who is apparently all the rage down here) stickers. This one poor horse, his head down in shame, sported a floof of pink feathers on his head and pulled a Hello Kitty bedecked carriage. Would you be happy if that was you? I don't think so. And in the saddles of others rode the illustrious likes of blow up Spidermans and Sponge Bobs. But the best was when another horse rounded a cornder with a fluffy dog, the real deal, riding the horse of all fours. No joke. Every time I crossed paths with this furry Lone Ranger and his Tonto, I took a picture. The proud dog gallantly astride his completely humiliated horse.

I crossed town to a beautiful 18th century public fountain originally erected for drinking, washing clothes and watering horses, and I offered to take pictures of a Brazililan couple. I was practicing my Portugese numbers with them: "Um, dois, tres," click. And then I spotted a couple sitting nearby with the same guide book I was carrying. I thought they might speak English, but I approached them attempting Portugese. (Thank god Rachel taught me a few useful phrases, like "where is the bathroom?" "how much does this cost?" and all the proper greetings before she left). They responded in English, and now my luck was about to change, for the even better. Mike and Melie are Canadians. Mike, an Anglophone from Vancouver Island, and Melie a Quebecois from, well, Quebec. The two were traveling here for two weeks as a sort of tenth anniversary (they aren't really married though, just "living in sin," according to Mike). Mike speaks fluent Portugese (more on that later), and Melie is pretty good herself with the language. Once more I am cursing my monolingual ass. We fell into talking and found we had similar plans to go to Sao Joao for a while that afternoon, and we made a pact to meet a little later on and drive there together for lunch (M&M have a car). No bus for me!

So we drove the thirty minutes to Sao Joao, yammering the entire way about travel and politics and domestic social concerns. Mike and Melie are each about 4 years older than I am, but it feels as if they have lived generations more of experiences in their world travels. My jaw was dragging behind the car the whole way each time they told me a new and even more incomprehensible story, like the year they spent in the Amazon working for Doctors Without Borders, or Mike's time in Angola doing the same, and in Zimbabwe after the flooding, and in Tanzania, etc. I was in awe, and I couldn't hide it, no matter how uncool I looked with my eyes popping and my "golly jeepers" tone of voice and my tongue wagging.

After our pleasant lunch in Sao Joao, and a jaunt around the town, we returned to Tiradentes and split up for awhile. I thought that might be the last I saw of them, but Tiradentes is not at all big, and we ran into each other (usually I was taking a picture of the dog on the horse when Mike spotted me). We made plans to meet again for dinner. Melie had met a guy in a gallery who recommended a snooty restaurant by the chuch, but when we hoofed up there at 6:30, the sign on the door said it was closed until 7:30. So we headed back down the hill and decided to grab a drink, and I had my first ever caipirinha (KAI-pa-reen-ya). This is a marvelous thing. They take limes, and smash them with sugar, and then pour in a shit-load of cachaca (ca-SHA-sa), the potent liqor made from sugar cane that all of Brazil is enamoured of. The cheapest stuff, the rot gut, is cheaper than water, which explains whey everyone drinks it at the slightest provocation. But this drink, this caipirinha, is a thing of beauty, tart and sweet and limey, you are three sheets before you know what's happened to you. Nice. We returned to the snooty place, which at 7:30 still wasn't open according to the waiter who opened the door. Melie, getting a little miffed, told the guy he should change his sign. "Well you should get a reservation," came the reply, after a thourough looking over of our sloppy attire. Mike dragged Melie away, mouth agape, a scowl forming, before she could say anything else.

At dinner, Restaurant Plan B, I asked them to take me to Ouro Preto with them in the morning since they were headed there too. It was a bit forward of me, being well conditioned not to impose myself on anyone and to be paranoid about being an inconvenience, but it was time for those crappy bits of self depreciation to leave me, and I found some balls and asked. (Yes mom, I offered gas money). And I am so glad I did. The next day, the good fortune and the adventure only got better.



*A lot of the history is taken from the Lonely Planet guide book, which kicks ass. Don't leave home without it. (No, they didn't pay me for that, but I want them to).

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Day 1 or Return of the Savvy Traveler!

Notes on June 19, 2009

Ok, so like the second I step off the plane onto the jetway, every single Rio airport employee is wearing a surgical mask. Everyone. In the airport, more masks, up the ramp to customs, more masks. "Am I on the set of Outbreak II starring Zach Efron and Lindsey Lohann or something?" And we are given this H1N1 symptom form to fill out what symptoms we've had in the last 10 days, because of course, we are all going to tell the truth, right? And I'm starting to get a little nervious and think: "uhhh, maybe Mom was right, maybe I should've brought a surgical mask. Am I going to die?" But later I learned that the Brazilians were wearing them to protect themselves from the Americans getting off the plane and if I'm gonna get it, I've already got it. So I'm going to live it up here in Brazil before I die.

Once you are past customs, you come down this long hallway, at the end of which are a row of booths for different taxi companies, and all 7 ladies sitting behind each of the plexi glass windows start yelling "Senora! Senora! Taxi, taxi!!!" So I pick the green booth, because I like green, and I fork over the money for the cab to the bus station, and my booth lady is kind enough to inform me that I don't have to tip the driver: "No pay more! No teep!" Ah! O'brigada nice taxi booth lady!

The taxi ride in to Rio was a bit like being in one of those gas powered race cars at the Mario Andretti speedway, zipping in and out, with motorcycles squeezing through the teensiest spaces between cars. It would have been cool if there had been a seatbelt. And then I saw my first glimpse of the favelas (slums) on either side of the highway. I am not sure there is anyway for me to write about them without sounding like a sheltered white woman, so I'll just spill my cuturally ignorant impressions. First, they were fascinating. These are not houses, or even shantys, or shacks. They are hollow clay brick ROOMS stacked on each other like duplo blocks, with corrigated metal roofs floating five feet above an open top floor, brightly colored laundry running between the stacks of houses in every crevice, half finished top stories with two walls built and the others waiting languidly and indefinitely to be finished. Kids, dogs, bicycles, futbols (soccer balls) moved around and intersected with each other in the dirt streets. And despite the debate of the cultural ethics of touring favelas, I found myself wanting to go anyway. We'll see.

It was my first opportunity to practice my Portugese, so I asked the cabbie, "Onde e O Cristo Rodentor." Everyone knows the symbol of Rio, the giant statue of Christ high on a hill above Rio, overlooking the city and the harbor and surrounding mountains. The Cabbie pointed straight ahead, but it was lost in a bank of morning fog. I'll have to wait until I get to climb it to really see it.

But now the adventure really begins: So I land at the bus station, and immediatly when I get out with my obnoxiously large luggage (I am already determined to go back to traveling light from now on), the taxi drivers start competing for your business. But I had a mission: to buy a bus ticket to Sao Joao de Rei, my first destination in the colonial mining state of Minas Gerais (General Mines). I approached the first window I saw and inquired, "Passage para Sao Joao por favor," and I caught just enough of what he was saying to know I needed a different bus company, and he pointed amorphously over his head somewhere. I looked up and saw steps, and figured I must head up. The Rio bus station is not a place you want to linger long looking like a lost white tourist. So I put on my best determined looking "I know exactly what I am doing because I am a savvy traveler face" and began hunting through the labrynth that is the Rio Bus station for the right bus company. Finally. I found it. Relief. But alas, the next bus to Sao Jaoa was at 2:30, and it was only 10:00. Anxiety.

So then I'm all, "There is no way I am spending four hours in the Rio bus station, not only because I don't want to become fresh meat for pick pocketers, but also because hey, I have four hours in Rio! I'm going to go see something! So I pay $5 for a Gatorade ($5???) and pull all my crap (did I mention I am going back to traveling light after this?) off to a bench to get my bearings and plan. I pull out my guide book, (BTW, the Lonely Planet guide book is da bomb, and when I get fired from teaching--as I am perpeturally convinced I will for some dumb thing I do, it is just a matter of time--I am going to go beg them to hire me). I scoured the pages for something close by (cheap cab ride) and interesting, and my eyes alight on the Feira Nordestina (The northern market). With a plan in hand, I now had to figure out what to do with my luggage, and I found a little black room, the front of which was covered in black cage wire, and I saw all the luggage just sitting there behind the cage. I asked the guy how much for three hours, and then reluctantly handed over my suitcase. I almost asked him how much more to make sure my suitcase would not have been opened and rummaged through when I got back (dumb ass here forgot her luggage lock), but I restrained myself.

Now I was ready to haggle with the cabbies. I asked the first one how much to the Feira: "Trente Reals" (pronounced "Hey-ice").
Me: (holding my chin and shaking my head) Trente? Hmmm. Nao, brigada.

$15 is too much for two blocks, so I go up to the next guy, and he says R25. Done. I am such the bargainer. I saved $2.50!

Now let me tell you about the Feira Nordestina. It is basically a Brazilian version of a German beer festival. I got there at 10:30, when the 600+ stalls were just opening and the market was rousing from its sleep. They sell everything here, from spices and sides of beef and pork to clothes and hammocks and shoes and CDs. I tripped when I heard a dub of Rihanna's "Umbrella" in Portugese. Apparently on weekends this place is a 24 hour party, with bands and beer and cachasa flowing freely. Feeling a tad peckish, I saw what looked like kabobs with white rectangles of grilled mystery food skewered on them. I asked the woman if it was cheese, and it was, and I can never turn down cheese, especially if it is grilled with a nice char on it and spiced with oregano. It was tangy, like a lively mozzarella, and it just goes to show that you can never go wrong with cheese on a stick no matter where you are on the planet.

After a bit more exploring of the butcher booths and exotic, never seen before fruits and veg, I needed some lunch, so I got roped into a restaurant in the food court area. I could not read a damn thing on the menu, so I just pointed to the cheapest Fruta de Mar (seafood) dish and prayed. It was called camarao ao alho. I figured I could deal with mystery seafood better than mystery meat. Imagine my immense relief when they brought me a plate of nothing more than peel and eat shrimp, heads still on, stringy antenai still flapping, looking up at me with lifeless, stone dead black eyes. But damn were they good. They swam in butter and oil and were topped with toasted garlic and parsley and some tangy flavor I couldn't place. I made a royal mess of myself, getting oil everywhere so that I had to lick my fingers and smack my lips, savoring the flavor. It was only then that I read in my guidebook that Brazilians are not lax about table manners, and the stares I got, which I assumed were because I am white, were probably because I was eating like Animal from the Muppets. Way to represent, Kristin.

And the cab back to the bus station only cost me R6, so even with all my savvy bargaining, I still got taken for a ride, and not the good kind either. But that afternoon my bus left for Sao Joao with me on it, and I had survived a few hours in Rio on my own, and I think I'm in the clear on swine flu, so I wasn't feeling too bad about my skillz.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

T Minus 0 or "Please Don't Go Keke!"

Notes on June 18, 2009

So a few weeks ago I had the following conversation with my brother about my upcoming trip.

Bro: "So when do you leave for Mexico?"
Me: "Uh...Brazil..."
Bro: "Whatever, it's all the same."
Me: (thinking) Uhh, totally different continents, totally different hemispheres, but whatever.
Me: "June 18th."
Bro: "Mom's worried you'll get swine flu."
Me: "Uh...that's in Mexico."
Bro: "Same thing."
Me" (thinking) Uhh, I'm closer to Mexico here in Atlanta than I will be in Brazil, but whatever.
Me: "Uhhh...well, I leave for Mexico June 18th."

Of course, this whole conversation took place with the full knowledge that my brother knows exactly where Brazil is and where it isn't. But he's a Republican and all Republicans think that anything south of the Rio Grand is Mexico and all people living south of the Rio Grande are Mexicans (including Puerto Ricans). Democrats just wish Texas was still part of Mexico. I wonder how Rodrigo and my Ecuadoran friend like it when white people inform them they are actually Mexican.

When it looked like I wasn't going to be going to Brazil (courtesy of the tourist visa SNAFU), my brother did his best to console me:

Bro: Come on, cheer up. Brazil's not that great anyway. They don't even have tacos.
Me: (crickets chirping...)
Bro: Listen, we'll take you to a Mexican restaurant and get you a sombrero. It'll be just as good.
Me: Only if I can get a frozen margharita too. With an umbrella.

And when the trip was back on (courtesy of me changing my flight like Mr. Consulate Bunghole suggested), he tried to bribe me to give it up altogheter and go to the Nati for a month instead.

Bro: (via e-mail) Seriously. Scrap this Rio de Brazilianero crap and just come up to the QC. It will be just as hot up here, I can set you up with a far more comfortable vacation, after all, I've got 212 cable channels, of which like 30 are Mexican. You can plant yourself on the couch for a 468 hour marathon of Univision if you like, -better than being there! I'll even cook you my signature mexican dish -Nachos de Fuentes or even Chipotle Muchos Burritos if you like. DONE!
Me: tempting...but...no.

Yes, tempting as faux Mexico in Cincinnati sounds, even with the added incentives of chillin' with the nieces and the culturally insensitive bro ;) I am goin to stick with plan A (or plan A3c rather), and go to Brazil. My brain has been camping out at the airport waiting for the rest of me to get there for the last four weeks.

My mom is particulary solicitious for my comfort and health while away. Now I must provide a disclaimer here: I love my mama (no doubt she's reading this so I have to get that in), but in the past four weeks I have had the following admonishments from her:

Mom: Do you want me to send you a surgical mask in the mail?
Me: For what? to wear?
Mom: (As though this were obvious) Yeah, they have swine flu down there too. It's everywhere.
Me: (thinking) uhhh...including right here in Atlanta maybe?
Me: Mom, I'm not going to wear a surgical mask in Brazil for pete's sake! You wouldn't!
Mom: Oh yes I would!!!

Mom: (via e-mail) Do you have a whistle for Brazil?
Me: (thinking) Uhhhhh. I'm supposed to carry a whistle around my neck, like I'm a football coach on a tour of South America? Or because me just screaming my lungs out if I get in trouble doesn't work down there? In Switzerland they yodle for help, but in Brazil you have to use a whistle?

Mom: Have you seen the movie "Taken"? (It's about a girl who gets kidnapped while traveling).
Me: (crickets chirping...)

She even cajoled my aunt into calling me two days ago to remind me to get all my vaccinations (which only work if you get them four weeks before you go, and I didn't), and the yellow fever and typhoid and malaria and all that are for the Amazon, which I am not going to get to this time. I guess I'm going to get swine flu after all.

Mom: Be careful when you get into taxis.
Me: Mom, am I putting grey hairs on your head or something???
Mom: Yeah.

But really, I have to say, despite the incessant fussing, I am lucky that my family apparently wants me around, and alive, and in general good health. But my idea of pre-travel illness prevention is grab some Purell (which I forgot) and to pop an Airborne. So I guess I'll try not to get myself jacked up while I am in this clearly 7th world country that is Mexico, oops I mean Brazil, where they aren't even civilized enough to have doctors or bandaids or tacos.

Patrol Night 2 or I Have Turtle Blood on My Hands

June 22, 2010 Tonight I am on the beach writing by the gibbous moonlight. The Atlantic is beating a persistent time, the stars sparkle, the ...