MondayMorningMutiny.com

(once again, pics to follow later) 

Negotiating the often huge, bustling Rodoviaria´s  (terminals) can be daunting at first but the process is straightforward enough – scour signs above the many ticket stalls until one matches your destination or vague direction. So as long as you know where you are going, it´s simple.

Local intra-city transport is a different beast. Less tame than it´s inter-city sibling, it is always there and always ready to eat you up and spit you out somewhere obscure.

This is especially true if you aren´t of native tongue. Directions are at their most useful when they are complete and in the right order..

Agreeable conversations are generally better than disagreeable ones. Most people prefer them.

This can lead to discourse where where only a partial understanding occurs, so out of politeness and a reluctance to not understand anymore, heads nod, positive words such as “sim”, “claro” and “obrigado” are thrown around. Then everyone goes back to what they doing before the unintelligible interruption.

This has little to do with anything much other than the past few weeks have seen me on many a local bus in various towns and cities north of Sao Paulo – visiting new friends, and for some reason, their families. One such family fairly inexplicably invited me to stay at their upper middle class home – a huge white stoned (inside and out) building with black marble interior finishings. There was a modest pool and enormous electronic spiked gates, concealing and protecting the house from outside.

I obliged and stayed for a total of 3 days, the majority of which was spent being fed and talked at quickly by the grandmother of the house. She was a lady of Italian descent, now in her 70s or 80s who loved to cook and loved to feed even more. I love to eat, so we got on well.

Fearing accelerating obesity and not wanting to outstay my welcome, I claimed that I had to move on, said my farewells and left.

The following weeks continued in a similar vein, staying with different people in and around Limeira and Campinas mostly – two cities with little to offer the average tourist, except a slice of everyday life.

Thinking about it, I didn´t have any vocal contact with anyone who isn´t a Brasiliero(a) for weeks, with the 10 minute exception of a phone call or two to home.

Mixing it up with families and mostly 20 somethings had been fun but now it was time to move on. I realised this whilst ambling along a road parallel to a main avenida, past the pastel blue, yellow and pale terracotta of the buildings, occasionally kicking at the orange sand stained sidewalk in the way that one does when going nowhere in particular..

I heard a call from over the road – it was the owner of a bar that I had frequented; and only a few days before, sat with until the early hours while he proudly showed off his finer brands of pinga (cachaça). Predictably, the name slips my mind now but there was a particularly tasty, cask aged variety that I remember being my favourite. Cachaça, like a lot of other spirits comes with a wide spectrum of price tags. The lowest observed so far is 1.5R for a bottle. That´s less than 40p at the current exchange rate.

We exchanged pleasantries and he asked if I would be around for some event a few weeks from then. It was at this moment I decided to leave – I was becoming too local.

But first, a blowout!

Conveniently, there was a big party organised for the next day in Republica da Caneca, a shared house of friends in Limeira.

Ladies´ first was the name – women were allowed to the party at 11pm and drinks were free for two hours until 1am, at which point men were then allowed in.

At the time, I couldn´t decide whether this was a good or a bad thing, or for whom, but it turned out to be a great party. Exactly what was needed and full of life well into morning the next day.

It wasn´t great for everyone. One guy, Andreas, went back to the house I had been staying at and was greeted by the house rottweiler, Aloha – an enormous, slightly lazy dog with orange eyebrows.

Andreas and Aloha have had run-ins in the past but a moment of drunken idiocy led Andreas to forget this and try to kiss the dog. Aloha kissed back with a little snarl and tooth – a warning snap, causing his lips to bleed and swell. He was lucky, it could have been much worse. Aloha knew she had been bad, retreated and hid.

Andreas wandered back to the party looking ghoulish and spitting blood, was taken to hospital and came back a few hours later, apparently ok, if still a little incoherent.

After the party, a small group of us walked back to the house in the now baking sun and shouted at Aloha, who was still skulking around with her tail between her legs.

To cool off, we threw buckets of water over each other until the courtyard was flooded, before finally retiring to bed.

This entry was posted on March 29, 2007 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Brazil. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.