As I am driven from the airport by my friends family and her bestfriend, I regulary see 2 things on the roadside as we hurtle by:
Churches and Love Motels.
I am on the coast of Brazil to see the beaches and stay with my mates fiance's family, she is moving to England to be with him, and then her family and friends get me for 3 weeks. Sort of like a really bad wife swap. I also have this ambition to go to the furthest North, South, East, and West of South America. So when I look at a map in a few years I can say I travelled to every corner.
Anyway, religion is the order of the day here, it's everywhere: on the back of cars, on the walls, in the billboards, you cannot move for the power of religion. But at the same time you can't move for the hint of clandestine sex. Love motels are everywhere, basically offering you privacy by the hour to do what you want. And from what I witness over the next week or so it's shagging.
At the same time you can't move for the fear of danger. Everyone is scared, and I am told repeatedly that I am in a lot of danger, and that I can't leave the house, that people rob and kill for nothing, but my explanations that I live in Hackney fall on deaf ears.
So on the one hand you've got everyone following the word of the lord, but on the other everyone's killing, robbing, and shagging each others partners. All of which is covered quite clearly in the 10 commandments.
I am welcomed by my friends family, and her best friends family with open arms. It's truly a incredible experience, you're fed, looked after, and basically told that their house is yours now, and that whatever you want to so is cool with them. I can't recall hospitality like this anywhere else in the world other than South America.
However, things begin to take a turn for the worse one week in. It would appear that my commited, monogamous, 'I wanted to meet western men because Brazilian guys are all cheats and liars', trustworthy pal is in England feeling a little unwell. My patient mate puts it down to jet lag and the food, but a week of being sick it's off to the doctors.
Except it isn't, turns out the little lady is 3 weeks gone with her ex fellas kid. It would appear that she's not any of the things that she was meant to be.
Now I'm not going to discuss this but let's just say that what followed was 2 weeks of lying, backbiting, point winning, manipulation, emotional blackmail, and ugliness that I can't be bothered to repeat. But everything that did happen was in no way cool in a religious sense. I saw near enough every nasty characteristic you could think of. And I had to sit amongst and try to be nice.
I go away to a tiny beach resort called playa pipa, the Frenchies are there and I'm eager to get out of the city.
Now I met these guys on the boat trip, and they are the nicest set of surrender monkeys you could ever meet. However, they are both painfully good looking, in that annoying effortless French way. They slouch about looking perfect, and I feel like Rooney's hideous grown up baby next to these pair.
I decide to cope in the only way a ugly Welshmans knows how, get them drunk and hope they disgrace themselves. We drink a crate of lager and we are in merry spirits. Then from nowhere the Frenchies pull out the Cachaça. And in true backpacker style it's a massive bottle of paint thinner for about 2 quid. We drink it with a soya based fruit drink and bang through the bottle. I remember nothing from about 1am and wake up with the news that I have vomited all over the walk in shower, and then passed out.
Wales - 0
French - 2
I get back to Joaoa Passoa and am in a lift when I guy gets in and starts talking to my friend, about 20 seconds in he turns, looks at me, then says to my friend,
"He's not from round here is he?"
I explain that I'm from England and he immiediately invites me to go and play 5 a side football with him the next day. I go and am treated to classic Brazilian football. Sort of.
The fellas are all aged between 35 - 45 and are not at the peak of physical condition, especially the one with one arm. Except for 2 young lads who casually look very tasty. I introduce myself to everyone but the name doesn't stick, so it's agreed that they'll call me G.
15 minutes in and the G idea is out of the window, I am just called 'Ingleis' now and shouted at when I don't even have the ball. But all the classics are there, players cross themselves when the game starts, and again if they score. The tempers flare quicker and faster than a Bay City Rollers convention. The level of arguing is so big that I really think someones going to chop another arm off, and the standard of football is very very good.
I hold my own by not actually doing anything good or bad. the 'proffesor' kicks the ball in my face, and my team lose all their games. This has nothing to do with me, other than the fact that I'm put on the team with the worst players cos I'm English. And I'm sticking to that.
One cultural thing that I notice is manners. In every country it's different but it still manages to shock me. For example, in Brazil you can whistle at your waiter to call him over. whistle at him like he was a dog. It's incredible, and I consider the amount of shit that would be put into my food if I tried that in London.
Tuesday 24 August 2010
Leticia, a ferry through the jungle, and beyond
I awake from an awkward sex dream that always ends with the woman I'm having sex with morphing into somebody I know. Not anybody that I want to have sex with though, usually it's someone I don´t like, or they don't like me. I look out of the window and take a moment to acknowledge that I am flying over hundreds of miles of trees, bunched together tightly like the queue for the opening day Selfridges sale. It's a real life rainforest. bloody hell!
It´s a wonderous site and as we land I know that the next few days are going to be very different to my normal life.
Leticia sits on a triangle of borders that combine Brazil, Peru and Colombia. You can basically walk from Colombia to Brazil and back again. It's a lot of fun.
I am officially on the booze again and sink a few beers with Phillipe, a really nice French dude who was on my flight. Lager has rarely tasted better than when you've been forced off it by a little shit of a parasite. and I learn quickly that here they like their lager ice cold. We sink a few and retire to bed. We'd arrived on the last night of a 3 day bender that they have here to celebrate the independance days of Colombia and Brazil. Everyone around looks hammered and the party was dwindling rapidly.
The next day I prepare a shopping list for my ferry through the amazon:
A hammock
5 litres of water
crisps
biscuits
I panic buy the hammock, settling on a nylon diamond stiched one in multicolours. I don't actually take time to consider the size of it, or the fact that I'll be lying in it for about 13 hours a day. I will eventually find out that not only is it not very comfortable, cuts into my back, making it look like I´m wearing a skin coloured Pringle sweater, that I paid well over the odds for it.
"you got properly stung" is said to me by the 5 other travellers bunked next to me on the boat.
I spend a lot more time choosing the crisps. Crisps are a very difficult choice on a daily basis for me anyway, I will stand in the corner shop paralysed for a good while weighing up the various brand options first, not even getting into the minefield of flavours until much later. But now I am face with a Everest sized challange,
"What crisp flavour will I eat for 4 days in a row?"
And the selection is poor, after about 20 minutes I settle on what I think are bbq flavoured walkers style crisps, thinking that they spicy ish flavour will keep me happy for the week.
Turns out they were just bacon flavour, and by day 2 I was giving packets away to the kid with the scary eyes, but saying that, even if I liked them I´d have given them to him, his eyes were see through sky blue, and he freaked me out. And he stared at me all the time, but I did conseed that this could have been because he'd never seen ginger hair before!
Now I get on the boat, set up the hammock, and settled in to watch the rest of the passengers put up their bigger, nicer, more comfortable hammocks.
The boat has the look of a 3 leveled freight ferry, and that will be because it is one. The bottom tier is full of brand new motorbikes, while the top 2 decks are filled with us.
Towards the end of day 1 the sound of bongos starts to reverberate around the deck. There's no pattern or rhythm to it from what I can hear, and upon looking for the source I understand why................
Picture if you will a topless traveller in linen trousers banging these bongos with his eyes closed, nodding his head from side to side. He´s got about 6 nitted bracelets on each arm, and one on his ankle.
"this" I think to myself,
"is not going to get any better"
And of course it doesn't, pretty quickly one of his mates takes over the bongos and out comes the mouth organ, a fucking mouth organ! They don't even sound good when a professional plays one, and this clown sounds like he's bought his the day before. They then proceed to 'jam' for the next 20 minutes. And when I say 'jam', I mean 'practice being shit'
I have always hated people who play music in public, without any regard to the people around them, I consider it the ultimate act of selfishness, to force upon everyone else what you want to do.
Music should only be played in public when you are:
Invited to do so by the vast majority of people present
Being paid to do so
Very fucking good at it.
And this chief was none of these things, and if you're not any of these things then you're practicing an instrument that you can't play, in front of people who don't want to hear you, not your proud parents, who sit and watch 'little Timothy' learn the piano.
I may as well have turned over a couple of bins and start smashing them with sticks. Inconsiderate Wanker.
This debarcle went on every day, and put me right off my lying down a lot and reading. But I have always been very positive and upbeat person, who tries selflessly to let every humanbeing express themselves, so I didn't throw him overboard. Or his stupid fucking bongos.
After 4 days of very little aside from sleeping on other peoples hammocks while they played cards, watching dolphins, bird spotting, and staring at the amazon, we pull into Manaus.
Manaus is a tough seaport town surrounded by rainforest. The men are all tough looking and drunk looking. These are hard men, who work very hard, and in turn drink and fight hard too. The women don't look much better, and you can imagine them giving as good as they get.
There's a smell of booze, violence, and sex in the air. And in that order.
I'm pleased that I am flying straight out, but still manage to get drunk with Ben from the boat, and make plans with the French boys to meet up on the coast.
Onward to Joao Passoa, the coast, and me star in a real life soap opera for 2 weeks.
It´s a wonderous site and as we land I know that the next few days are going to be very different to my normal life.
Leticia sits on a triangle of borders that combine Brazil, Peru and Colombia. You can basically walk from Colombia to Brazil and back again. It's a lot of fun.
I am officially on the booze again and sink a few beers with Phillipe, a really nice French dude who was on my flight. Lager has rarely tasted better than when you've been forced off it by a little shit of a parasite. and I learn quickly that here they like their lager ice cold. We sink a few and retire to bed. We'd arrived on the last night of a 3 day bender that they have here to celebrate the independance days of Colombia and Brazil. Everyone around looks hammered and the party was dwindling rapidly.
The next day I prepare a shopping list for my ferry through the amazon:
A hammock
5 litres of water
crisps
biscuits
I panic buy the hammock, settling on a nylon diamond stiched one in multicolours. I don't actually take time to consider the size of it, or the fact that I'll be lying in it for about 13 hours a day. I will eventually find out that not only is it not very comfortable, cuts into my back, making it look like I´m wearing a skin coloured Pringle sweater, that I paid well over the odds for it.
"you got properly stung" is said to me by the 5 other travellers bunked next to me on the boat.
I spend a lot more time choosing the crisps. Crisps are a very difficult choice on a daily basis for me anyway, I will stand in the corner shop paralysed for a good while weighing up the various brand options first, not even getting into the minefield of flavours until much later. But now I am face with a Everest sized challange,
"What crisp flavour will I eat for 4 days in a row?"
And the selection is poor, after about 20 minutes I settle on what I think are bbq flavoured walkers style crisps, thinking that they spicy ish flavour will keep me happy for the week.
Turns out they were just bacon flavour, and by day 2 I was giving packets away to the kid with the scary eyes, but saying that, even if I liked them I´d have given them to him, his eyes were see through sky blue, and he freaked me out. And he stared at me all the time, but I did conseed that this could have been because he'd never seen ginger hair before!
Now I get on the boat, set up the hammock, and settled in to watch the rest of the passengers put up their bigger, nicer, more comfortable hammocks.
The boat has the look of a 3 leveled freight ferry, and that will be because it is one. The bottom tier is full of brand new motorbikes, while the top 2 decks are filled with us.
Towards the end of day 1 the sound of bongos starts to reverberate around the deck. There's no pattern or rhythm to it from what I can hear, and upon looking for the source I understand why................
Picture if you will a topless traveller in linen trousers banging these bongos with his eyes closed, nodding his head from side to side. He´s got about 6 nitted bracelets on each arm, and one on his ankle.
"this" I think to myself,
"is not going to get any better"
And of course it doesn't, pretty quickly one of his mates takes over the bongos and out comes the mouth organ, a fucking mouth organ! They don't even sound good when a professional plays one, and this clown sounds like he's bought his the day before. They then proceed to 'jam' for the next 20 minutes. And when I say 'jam', I mean 'practice being shit'
I have always hated people who play music in public, without any regard to the people around them, I consider it the ultimate act of selfishness, to force upon everyone else what you want to do.
Music should only be played in public when you are:
Invited to do so by the vast majority of people present
Being paid to do so
Very fucking good at it.
And this chief was none of these things, and if you're not any of these things then you're practicing an instrument that you can't play, in front of people who don't want to hear you, not your proud parents, who sit and watch 'little Timothy' learn the piano.
I may as well have turned over a couple of bins and start smashing them with sticks. Inconsiderate Wanker.
This debarcle went on every day, and put me right off my lying down a lot and reading. But I have always been very positive and upbeat person, who tries selflessly to let every humanbeing express themselves, so I didn't throw him overboard. Or his stupid fucking bongos.
After 4 days of very little aside from sleeping on other peoples hammocks while they played cards, watching dolphins, bird spotting, and staring at the amazon, we pull into Manaus.
Manaus is a tough seaport town surrounded by rainforest. The men are all tough looking and drunk looking. These are hard men, who work very hard, and in turn drink and fight hard too. The women don't look much better, and you can imagine them giving as good as they get.
There's a smell of booze, violence, and sex in the air. And in that order.
I'm pleased that I am flying straight out, but still manage to get drunk with Ben from the boat, and make plans with the French boys to meet up on the coast.
Onward to Joao Passoa, the coast, and me star in a real life soap opera for 2 weeks.
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