Sunday, June 28, 2009

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.

1 comment:

muti said...

Dear Frontera girl, Perhaps you never noticed it but the night stars up at the "michigan lakes" river house are pretty awesome too. And so are the stars in the
florida night sky! Deepest love, Pops,

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