9000km and back again

4000 by plane; 1500 by boat; 3500 by bus. Brasil's a big bloody place; but a great place for adventure!

I flew into the middle of the amazon, found a group of dudes and a guide named Osmar and headed into the jungle for a few days. This wasn't as crazy or wild as you may expect, but I did start what I hope to be a long-standing tradition of sleeping in a hammock. We did see tons of birds, eagles, and alligators, some monkeys and a sloth. I fished for and caught many (red) piranha (in the same waters I had been swimming in a few minutes earlier) -they were too small to eat, but we did eat some catfish that we caught. Two of the highlights of the jungle experience:
(i) Falling asleep in my hammock, listening to the sounds of the jungle, and the rain. In those moments, the power of this magical place really hit home.
(ii) Listening to the story of our guide Osmar: He is a 38 year old native of the area. Until the age of 15 he had never left the jungle, had never seen a city, a car, never spoken a language other than his native dialect. At the age of 15 his father took him to the city and enrolled him in boarding school. The first 6 months were terrible for him -he'd never felt so alone: didn't speak Portuguese, didn't know anyone, didn't know how to live in the city with all their strange customs. He managed to persevere, completed school, and got a job as a tour guide. His employer encouraged him to learn english, which he did. In the following years he travelled a few times to Europe and lived in various countries there for a total of 3 years learning languages. Now he speaks Portuguese, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and a little Japanese. He can't tell anyone in his tribe (those who still live in the jungle) about his trips to Europe because they simply won't believe him; they'll think he's making it up. The only ones who know are his mother and brother.
Other neat parts of the jungle experience included visiting native families and collecting latex from trees and making rubber.

I returned to the city (Manaus) and bought a ticket down the amazon river -5 days by boat to the coast (city of Belém) with a two-day stop-over in a place called Santarém. 5 days on this boat was one of the highlights of my 4 weeks: truly an experience. The boat from Manaus to Santarém held a little more than 800 passengers (of those, 3 were foreigners, the rest were locals mostly travelling to visit family for the Christmas holidays) although by North American standards it is maybe a 200 passenger boat. Everyone sleeps/lives in hammocks for the duration of the journey. In the Amazon there is a real hammock culture (that, unfortunately, is starting to die with “modernization”) that I really love –there are people (maybe not in the big city) that sleep in hammocks even in their homes.


There was nothing to do on the boat but meet and talk to people. It was a really fantastic time; getting to talk, really talk to the local people –regular, normal Brasilians of the north. I have a super-patriotic Canadian friend, Collette, who had given me a bunch of Canada stickers to hand out on my voyage. On the boat I met a couple of little girls who I made friends with, gave them some stickers and the word spread fast: by the end of the day I knew nearly every child on the boat (Collette had given me a lot of stickers). One of the highlights of the boat experience was one evening on the top deck of the boat: I was playing the count-to-20 game with some children and a few adults. A crowd grew and more and more people wanted the opportunity to try to beat me. The crowd grew to 40 people eagerly awaiting their turn, plus others surrounding just to watch. After playing this game, another friend I had made, a guy from São Paulo had another great game that we played. It was really a great evening: people of ages 6 up to ages 60 all playing together and having a blast.
Nearly everyone hates the boat –locals and foreigners alike. Locals take the boat out of necessity (the cost of air-tickets puts flights way out of reach for a lot of these people), as do travelers that are on tighter budgets; A few foreigners take it for the experience, but the majority feel like they’ve experienced it after one or two days. I know that it’s unlikely that I will because there is too much “new” out there, but I would do it again…

I stopped in Santarém for 2 days with four friends that I had made on the boat. There is a beach on the river called Alter do Chão. It was a nice place to relax for 2 days.

Reaching the coast of Brasil, I hung out in Belém for a day and then began making my way along the coast. I took a few buses to a place called Lençois Maranhenses, allegedly the only desert in Brasil. They are dunes of really white, fine sand that stretch on for miles. Pools of rainwater collect in the valleys forming little lakes. It is a really beautiful area. I spent new-years-eve in the town bordering the desert called Barrerinhas. At the time I was travelling with an Israeli and an Australian. We walked the town in the evening checking to see where the action was. There was nobody to be seen anywhere! Eventually we did hear some commotion and followed the noise…right into a church. This is where everyone was hanging. We walked a little further and found another packed church, and another. We hung out in one of the churches for a bit: everyone there really seemed to be having a good time. (Note that, while there are a ton of churches in Brasil, I don’t think that this is representative of a Brasilian new-years-eve)

One of the cities I stopped in for a day –enroute to Lençois Maranhenses- is called São Luis. My well-travelled Israeli companion remarked that the architecture of São Luis was very similar to that of Lisbon, Portugal.

I moved on to another old Colonial town called Olinda, bordering the big city of Recife. It was a nice little place, dead quiet in the day, but lively at night. Coincidently, I happened to be there for a little mini-carnaval called frevo. The tiny streets were jam-packed with people drinking and beating drums. At around 11:30 in the evening, the party ended in a big riot in the main square. I never really figured out why or how it got started (a rumor was circulating that two rival gangs started it) but it got nasty pretty freakin quickly: people beating on each other, throwing bear bottles at each other, at cars, buildings. The police were on the scene super-fast and started their own beat-down, dragging people off. It was over in probably 20min, but it killed the party. Some Brasilians were so funny: they were apologizing to the foreign tourists in the area for the behavior of their countrymen; so profusely as though they had been the ones to initiate the fight.

Leaving Olinda I headed to a nearby beach called Porto de Galinhas; hung out there for two days, trying to surf, exploring some mangroves, and just relaxing.
Next stop was Salvador. This is a really happening city: Lots of live music in the evening, people playing Capoeira all day long, little food stalls on every corner, and little bars everywhere. I was travelling with an American dude and a Russian girl that I had met and one evening we were waiting at the bus stop to take the bus back from the beach to the town centre. A cabbie pulls up and says he’ll give us a ride for a few cents more than we would pay for the bus. We get in. The cabbie did go directly to the centre of town, but he stopped at other bus stops on the way to see if anyone else wanted a ride –until the cab was full: 7 people. It was hilarious. Some old lady was sitting on my lap talking about if her husband could see her now sitting on the lap of some young guy she didn’t know…

One afternoon, my companions and I left the super-touristed town centre to try to find a place to eat. A 5min walk from all the action, we found a little restaurant and sat down. It was exactly what we were looking for: super-basic, cheap, of course there was a tv in the corner with music videos playing, and we were the only foreigners there. As we were eating, one of the other patrons, I guess, really liked the song that was playing and began to belt it out at full volume. Imagine this in a restaurant in Canada :) Well this is Salvador: another dude from across the restaurant joined in; and then another. They stood up, started dancing, pointing at each other, and singing away. At the end of the song they returned to their seats and continued eating only to get up again a few minutes later to another well-liked song.

While in Salvador I saw a show that included music, dance, and capoeira. It was really something else. I paid money to see what was considered to be one of the better shows, and everything was top-notch.

After Salvador I went to a national park called Chapada Diamantina. This is a spectacular place; really stunning. There are hills and valleys and plateaus, waterfalls, rivers and streams. Despite being a well-touristed area, the people in the area have managed to preserve its tranquility.

Note that while I say simply that after x I did y…in reality all of these were separated by 12hr, 18hr, or 24 hr bus rides.

Having covered a ton of ground in a short 3-and-a-half weeks, I met up with Vanessa and spent the last half-week of my time off in a little colonial town (one of the originals in Brasil) called Diamantina. A quaint place with not much to do, it was just what I needed to unwind. There is a little main market in the centre of town and there was a band playing on Saturday morning. One dude, I think over 80 years old, was dancing up a storm with every girl in the joint. He would walk through the crowd and if he found a girl on her own he would whisk her away; if he found a girl with some other dude, he would ask him permission to take the girl and then would whirl away on the dance floor, return the girl and say thanks.

9000km and 4 weeks later I was back home.