Brazil

Long, long ago when the MV Explorer arrived in Manaus, we were greeted by people dancing and drumming at the bottom of the gangway. I went on a city tour the first day (my only day in Manaus). First we walked to the fish market. The fish market was huge and crowded and smelled like…fish. Quite a sight. The trip itself was an FDP, or faculty directed practicum, for my English professor. The group was way too big – about 75 people I think. Part of the group got separated for a while we were making our way through the maze of the market. Eventually everyone met back up and we got on two big buses and drove around the city. We saw the rich area and a poorer area. That part of the trip ended up being really controversial, for good reason. I felt horribly intrusive and weird because they just stopped the busses and said “you can get out here to take pictures.” At first I thought it was an optional thing but it turned out to be everyone getting off the bus and walking THROUGH the neighborhood for about ten or fifteen minutes. So embarrassing. The buses didn’t even stay in the same spot. They drove up the road to meet us further away. After that, we visited the famous opera house Teatro Amazonas. I think that’s how it was spelled. The city tour wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for.

After dinner I went to a mall with three of my friends because one of them had to buy a new camera. After the mall we went back into the city area for samba. It was like a practice run for Festival I think. It was really fun but realllly crowded. The musicians and dancers had some amazing endurance. They either didn’t stop between songs or the songs all lasted about 15 minutes. Hard to tell because everything was so loud it blended together and the words were all Portugese. It was nice too because they presented the dean of SAS with a gift and made a big announcement about how happy they were to have us in their city and whatnot.

I started the next morning bright and early for my four day service project trip. Instead of trying to remember the details of that trip a month later (my fault, I know), I’m going to copy the piece I submitted for my travel writing. It’s not great but it shows what happened at least a bit.

“This is the jungle, guys. Welcome. It shows no mercy.” These words came from the same guide who led my city tour of Manaus yesterday. His bright yellow Brazil Nuts Guide t-shirt stretched tightly across his middle in the fashion of an overweight American and I couldn’t help but cringe at being addressed as “guys.” If he has to sound like an American, why can’t he sound like a southerner? His tourist phrases and the wildness of the Brazilian jungle confused my feelings on my situation. I was also wondering exactly how far into the jungle we were going if we had only just finished the first leg of our journey by riverboat, bus, barge, and canoe.

The journey started early in the morning when our group of twenty-two volunteers assembled in the ship’s Union. Twenty students and two adults, we were prepared for anything or for nothing. No one was quite sure what our four day service project was to entail so we had all packed rather haphazardly, except for the potent DEET bug repellant that is essential to any Amazonian adventure. As we began to head toward the gangway after groggy introductions and greetings and numerous roll-calls, the last person of our group breathlessly caught up to us on the stairs. We filed out of the ship and down shaky stairs made more precarious by the heavy packs we all carried on our backs. Instead of walking up the long, rickety, and uncertainly welded together passageway to the tourist hub of the market and city around the port, we stepped to the side and boarded a riverboat to begin our expedition to the Rio Tupana Village. Our group of twenty-two was joined by another group of the same size headed to the same destination, except they were going to the Tupana Jungle Lodge, while we were going—well, we didn’t really know where we were going.

We climbed single file up the steep ladder to the second deck of a faded red and blue boat. I hesitated to leave my backpack on the first deck in fears of it being washed over the side so I kept it securely over my shoulders. Unfortunately, this was like having an exceptionally large rear end and caused me to get momentarily stuck in the square opening to the upper level. Once we all squeezed through, we found a covered deck bordered by built-in wooden benches. The center of the floor was crowded by the kind of cheap plastic chairs you could probably find at Wal-Mart. People made their way through the neatly formed rows of chairs and flopped down to listen to their iPods or write in their journals. I wasn’t quite alert, but I’d had too much coffee to bother with trying to sleep so I just watched as the rows of chairs disappeared into a maze of hiking packs and people congregating to talk about their adventures at last night’s street samba.

As we passed floating gas stations, tanker ships with the warning “Safety First, No Smoking” painted on their hulls, and a multitude of colorful containers stacked up like Lego castles, I realized this would be our last glimpse of industry and urban life for quite a while. The guide’s announcements were garbled by the crackling of wind into the microphone, but we managed to hear enough to see the meeting of the waters where the Rio Negro and the Manaus branch of the Amazon come together and flow side by side without mixing, like oil and vinegar. The black water has a higher acidity level and different sedimentation than the muddy brown water that is home to more species, including the dreaded mosquitoes.

About half an hour after we crossed into the browner water, we arrived at a bustling port where people venture between Manaus and their remote villages. “If you have bug spray, I suggest you use it now,” said our guide. The port seemed to be a combination of a shopping center and parking lot. We stepped off our riverboat onto precariously perched wooden planks down to the dusty path. A boy of about ten years old took my hand to help me down and I thought “Oh, great, if I fall, we’re both going down.” Luckily I made it without any severe missteps and followed my comrades across the mud on the boardwalk of broken planks to the bus that would carry us on the next part of our trip.

I sat in an aisle seat a couple rows from the back, next to a girl I had met the first day we were in Dominica. We quickly bonded over our apprehension at the adventure we were already having and the mystery of what was going to happen next. The guys behind us blasted music from their portable iPod speakers until their batteries died. I thought the music was getting on my nerves, but when the bus felt empty and more daunting when the music disappeared. I stared out the window at the giant lily pads and floating houses until my neck began to ache and I got dizzy from the multitude of green trees whizzing past. I wanted to take a picture of the blue water tanks on top of every home but we were going too fast. I tried to close my eyes but kept getting drawn back by livestock and ponds and the endless vegetation outside. The road seemed barely wide enough just for our bus and it was terrifying whenever another vehicle sped past in the opposite direction.

We stopped at a gas station just a few miles into our bus ride. Though I was one of about two people who admitted the need of a rest stop, about half the bus piled out when we stopped so I had to wait in line to use the dark bathroom stall. We finally boarded the bus again and continued on our way. I had retired my watch to my luggage shortly after we first got on the bus when I realized the leather band had been melted by my 100% DEET bug spray. Though I had little sense of time, we stopped after about an hour at a river crossing. There was a fully constructed bridge to our right. The only catch is that it didn’t connect to the road on either bank. “Everyone get off the bus; it’s too slippery,” one of the guides said. “You can leave your things.” Good to know our lives weren’t as expendable as our possessions. We trooped off the bus onto the muddy, tire-rutted “road” that had to be at least a forty-five degree slope down to the river. A barge was sitting on the edge of the water with a huge truck already loaded onto it. We watched warily as the bus tilted forward and headed toward the water and, amazingly, onto the barge. We followed by foot onto the ferry with anticipation. Of what, I’m not sure.

The surprises continued when we looked in the river boat that was attached to the barge. There was a boy who couldn’t be more than nine years old grinning calmly as he maneuvered the boat away from the first dock and smoothly toward the other side. When we reached the bank, we followed the revving motorbikes down the ramp and up another muddy hill to watch the reversed process of getting the bus back off of the ferry. This is where the guide so kindly welcomed us to the jungle and my appreciation of the distance of 100 miles really grew. We weren’t even halfway to our destination but already we’d spent at least three hours crossing rivers and jungle. A two hour drive between college and home is nothing for 100 miles. We boarded the bus yet again, just a little muddier and not sure whether to be more confident in our driver or more terrified at the way we were being transported. This leg of the trip included another gas station stop, only more people got off to buy snacks. I realized this time that we weren’t even refueling the bus. These stops must have been planned as part of boosting the tourism economy.

The potholes got worse. Every time we gained a lot of speed, we would slow down abruptly and veer to one shoulder of the road, the bus tipping precariously as we dodged mud traps and busted up pavement. After what seemed like hours and hours more, we finally stopped at a faded blue and white school and the members of our team of volunteers were shepherded off the bus with the promise of a lunch provided by the villagers. The lodge group continued forth to who knew what.

Sorry if that was boring. Anyway. We ate lunch at the school. It was beans and rice and meat and I don’t remember what else. They had bottled water for us too, thankfully. Our project was to paint the inside and outside of the school. This was a disaster though because we had no way to clean it first and it was nasty. We were also supposed to rebuild the bridge from the road to the school. That first afternoon we took everything off the walls and started painting and went around the village to invite kids to come the next couple days for English lessons (AKA give us something to do/people to play with). After four or so hours of working, it was time to head to the lodge. We walked to the end of the road where there was a bridge over the river. The bridge was fully constructed except for being connected to the road on either bank. Apparently government officials and candidates will fund improvement projects but then after the elections they just stop funding. So anyway, we got on another riverboat but this one didn’t have benches or chairs so we all just sat on the top level for the half-hour or so trip down the river.

The lodge where we stayed was pretty cool. Completely in the jungle. The other group that we’d shared the bus ride with was staying in rooms inside but our group got a hut type thing that they didn’t finish the roof of until after we arrived and it didn’t have walls and was really high off the ground. We slept in hammocks, which is not nearly as glamorous and exciting as it sounds. We ate our dinners and breakfasts at the lodge buffet style, except the food was a lot more limited compared to the buffets we’re used to on the ship. At more than one meal they actually ran out of food. The food was delicious though. Brazilians sure do like their meat. I’m glad I gave up vegetarianism sort of. I might have conveniently reverted back occasionally though when I was too skeptical of whatever we were being served. Politely and discreetly of course. One of the lunches we had at the school included rice and beans as usual but there were cubes of meat in the beans. I only got one in mine and decided not to try it because it looked really fatty and just not that appealing to me. After we’d all eaten we found out it was horse.

In the evenings between dinner and sleeping in our lovely hammocks, we played games and hung out in the dining room type thing. The last night we were there I stayed up really late with a group of people who have turned out to be some of my best friends on the ship. I’m glad I did the service trip in Brazil because it was early in the voyage and everyone there had a common interest at least to some extent and it was a great way to make friends. Not sure how many people know this but I’m painfully shy in most situations so it takes me a little while to get to know people.

Sorry if the rest of this is disjointed. Just don’t want to write so much that no one wants to read it all. Anyway. I helped carry the wooden planks for the bridge on the last day we worked at the school. They were HEAVY. We got a lot of painting done and from far away the school looked better after we finished. The people there were great. One of the teachers named Ricardo was there every day and he helped us and talked to us and taught us Portuguese and we taught him English and the other adults who worked at the school and were just there to help were all really nice. The women who cooked lunch for us also made coffee every afternoon that was sooo good. The last day one of the guys asked them how they did it and we found out that for one liter of coffee they used 4 scoops of sugar and 3 scoops of coffee. That explains it pretty well. Oh, at nighttime too we got to do jungle-y things like go caiman hunting (I opted out) and the younger guide for our group, Simon was like magic; he’d go outside and come back a few minutes later with some crazy creature. There was a giant grasshopper, a bird, huge spiders, and I don’t remember all the other things. We went for a sunset canoe ride and swam in the river after our workdays. There was a monkey that lived at the lodge. We’d been warned about its habits of stealing things like cameras and hats. One morning we woke up to one of the girls in our group yelling “the monkey stole my ambient!” That was exciting. I was sure it was going to die but somehow it survived to keep taking all our stuff and being a general nuisance. The last morning we were there she climbed into my hammock while I was sitting there and just curled up in my lap. Finally won me over. The trip home was just as adventurous as the first trip, except it rained then too so everything was even muddier. I was really sad to leave the people we’d spent the week with in Brazil. Until I met them, I didn’t think I would really care to come back to Manaus. I still don’t really want to go back to the city – it was just dirty and crowded. But if I could go back to that village someday I would be really happy. That week was my first extended encounter with people in another country and it was great to finally see for myself that people are just people in any country or language. That hasn’t been proven wrong yet and tomorrow we get to country number 7.