by Becky Wicks
Numerous fake spaceships are erected on driveways and an abundance of boutique stores sell nothing but nuts, crystals and incense. Shops here have names like Doors of Perception and Serendipity and Gems of the Earth. There’s even a restaurant called Astral Sushi, although I haven’t seen it open since we arrived, so perhaps they simply operate on another plane.
Indeed, barely anything is ever open here. It reminds me of Capilla del Monte back in Argentina, where for most of the time it was just me and the stray dogs hanging out on empty streets. I’m not sure why hippy towns don’t open their shops very often, especially when they see a giant orange and white truck sporting fifteen camera-toting tourists rocking up, but perhaps they’re all just too busy clutching their crystals and discussing when the Maestros Ascendidos will arrive, seeing as they never made it in December. It must be a worrying time for them.
Anyway, the hospital. I wasn’t sure if it was a hospital or a Rotary club when I first walked in, as the building had both signs on the front. I managed to find the reception and held up my phone with a Portuguese Google translation on it for ‘ear plug stuck in ear, needs unblocking, please’ to a lady who looked about sixteen. She had braces on her teeth and was dressed in a neon yellow T-shirt so loud my deaf ear almost imploded. I was hoping she’d understand that it was time to get it syringed, and if the members of a Rotary club were the ones to do it, so be it. At this point, I really didn’t care.
After filling in a form, she and her colleague sent me back to my bench seat and, as I sat, I noticed a model of Jesus with his arms wide open standing on a shelf behind them. The woman in the yellow top stood up to shove a thermometer under someone’s arm right there in the waiting room, just as a dreadlocked man holding a tray of handmade earrings sauntered in and stood there looking pained. For a moment I thought he was going to try and sell me something. A bearded man beside me was told to stand on some scales so old they had one of those measuring bars at chest height with weights on it, and I noted a water cooler held together with masking tape was struggling to stand up in the corner. A guy in a purple shirt with acne sat with his head in his hands on a bench behind mine, and a chat show featuring three glossy-haired, pearly-toothed Brazilian ladies blasted from a TV on the wall above a row of dilapidated wheelchairs.
Three windows appeared to have been painted black to stop the sun streaming in and, as I sat there with one eye on Jesus and the other on the earring-seller now motioning to a wound on his leg, I hoped that the money they’d clearly saved by skimping on curtains had been spent on ear-unblocking equipment.
The woman in yellow was looking at me in bewilderment at this point. I tried to see things from her point of view. I was a freak who’d come in with no ID except an outdated driving license, no understanding of the native language, tapping into a strange gadget and miming swirling movements around my head. Of course, I was indicating how I was slowly going deaf and could barely hear the world around me, but for all she and her colleague knew I could have been claiming to have been abducted by aliens.
I realised then that quite possibly I should have had this problem addressed somewhere more touristy, like Cuzco, but back then I was too busy listening in on sobbing, hippy alien worshippers droning on about alternate dimensions in Starbucks. The irony of this does not escape me.
Eventually I was led through to a consultation room, where I spoke in English and the female doctor — a very kindly-looking, but very, very short lady who could have actually been a Hobbit — spoke in Portuguese. We both pretended to understand each other and somehow came to the conclusion that something was indeed stuck in my ear. Then she walked me through to another room and told me to sit on a bed. Before she left, I thought she indicated for me to take my top off, which I thought was a reasonable request, because no one wants to get earwax on their clothing. Luckily I was wearing my bikini top underneath, so I obliged. A few minutes later she came back in with a male doctor and shot me a look of utter disdain. I realised she hadn’t told me to remove any clothing at all — I’d simply chosen to take off my top and arrange myself on her bed. No wonder these people get upset with gringos.
The male doctor unwrapped a series of instruments and arranged them on a tray and then looked at them in confusion, which wasn’t a good sign. Then his mobile rang and they both left the room again, leaving me sitting there on the bed noting how these windows were painted blue to stop the sun coming in. I thought maybe they’d run out of black paint and couldn’t afford any more, which in turn made me wonder what ear-unblocking equipment they’d been meaning to order but hadn’t and whether that was why the guy had looked so confused and left the room.
I continued to sit there for almost forty minutes with the tray of instruments beside me. Various people wandered in and out collecting items from metal drawers and tubs and other containers but no one looked at me. Not knowing how to request a timeframe in which I was likely to be attended to, I busied myself with counting the large brushstrokes on the blue windows (there were twelve on one) and then attempted to translate a sign with a photo of what might have been a poisonous scorpion on it. I was just about to blow up a rubber glove and create a chicken head with a crest of five puffy plumes when both doctors came back in with what I assume was the missing item and proceeded to clear my ear. It took all of five minutes, after which the Hobbit lady took great delight in showing me a clump of silicone, the very one that had, of course, been stuck in there since the salt flats tour in Bolivia.
I could have hugged her as the noises from the street and the waiting room and the fridge in the corner flooded my eardrum once more, but I didn’t because she was only little and she might have fallen over. The joy of hearing is something I will never take for granted again. Oh, and she didn’t charge me a penny, either. She simply sent me off with what I assume was a warning in Portuguese, to never, ever wear ear plugs again, or at least not the teeny tiny ones of the sort she’d just sucked out of my ear with a probe she could well have borrowed from the aliens.
I decided after that to stroll into town and buy myself a rose quartz, as you do. It’s my ‘I’m not deaf anymore, hurrah!’ rose quartz and it’s now hanging around my neck to help open my heart chakra and make me feel more positive and loving. Feeling very much full of love and appreciation for my working ear and for Hobbits, and for sunshine and towns full of aliens, I also bought another açaí berry smoothie (an addiction you will form in Brazil, no matter where you go) from one of the only places that was open, which is when I met Ivan.
Ivan is a Brazilian–German tour guide who also welcomes travellers into his home, on the assumption that they will smoke copious amounts of weed with him and talk about crystals. He has ginger dreadlocks and perfectly even teeth. We got chatting over our smoothies, and Stef and Ladina, two other girls from my Dragoman group, turned up. After a while, he invited us all to his house because he wanted very much to show us the place in his garden where he holds campfires, with room for a hundred people to gather round. Not having anything else to do, seeing as nothing was open, we followed him and spent a good two hours oohing and aahing over everything he told and showed us, which, as well as the camp fire spot, included various gnarled branches he’d picked up from the nearby forest and given names.
‘This one is the whale,’ he said, pointing to a lump of bark he’d strung from the ceiling. It had a vague hump on its back. ‘This one’s the ballerina, and this one’s Jesus.’
Jesus, which looked to me a lot like a stick pinned across another stick, was nailed to the wall above the door and I concluded that Ivan must have a lot of time on his hands to think very deeply about a lot of things. And a lot of weed.
Before we could think about escaping, Ivan’s friend showed up — a man with the biggest dreadlocks I’ve ever seen. These ratted, matted tufts of hair were as wide as tree trunks, and it did cross my mind, as he swept me up into an inescapable hug that lasted at least five minutes and sucked me into a dark, dark vortex of BO, unwashed hair and the va
gue smell of incense, that if I stayed somewhere like this too long, my hair might actually start to dreadlock itself. Perhaps that’s how it happens. Or is that what the aliens are doing as they hover over this spiritual town, emitting some sort of strange frequency that only dogs and hair can hear?
Ivan and his friend decided they were going to show us some videos on YouTube of a dance and theatre group they belong to. These videos were very impressive the first time we watched them, but when they played them again and sang along with their online-selves at high volume, we started to feel a bit trapped. This feeling intensified when the computer was turned off altogether and we were treated to high-speed freestyle versions of tracks by Cypress Hill and House of Pain as we all sat cross-legged on his woven mat. These tracks helped Ivan to learn English before he learned it properly from couch surfers and Quentin Tarantino movies.
Finally we made our exit, but not before we were hugged again and kissed goodbye on the lips. I’m starting to like Alto Paraíso, especially now I can hear again, but alas, we’re going to have to move on soon. We’ve still got a long way to go before we get to Cuzco, and I guess it will be better for our hair if we go, anyway.
28/02
The Pantanal and a public flogging …
‘I’m seriously PMS-ing over here,’ Russ said in frustration as he smeared the window of our bouncing truck with another coating of sunscreen from his forehead.
Russ started taking anti-malarial pills somewhere between Alto Paraíso and Brasilia and has since been struck with sudden emotional bursts that he says are opening his eyes to what it must be like to be a woman. I have to say, dark-mood inducing anti-malarials are dangerous at the best of times, not least on a long-distance truck journey with fifteen people you may or may not exactly get along with.
Travelling in a group after all this time going relatively solo isn’t always easy. There are strict schedules to adhere to, whingers to deal with, muddy tents to erect and a strange rule about ‘flapping’ your dishes after each camp meal, meaning we must all stand in a field like raving scarecrows waving plates and spoons about until they’re dry. Towels are full of germs, you see.
We are also not allowed to call the Dragoman truck a bus. If we do, we must perform five press-ups. This was funny the first time, but after the ninth mistake or so my arms are starting to burn. In fact, all of it is fun, until you’re knackered and sweaty and haven’t showered in four days and the Indian girl is still asking if she can upgrade to a hotel while the rest of you sleep in tents surrounded by crawling, hairy, black tarantulas (this really happened!) — then it’s just a bit of a stupid idea you wish you’d cancelled.
Ah, I don’t mean that. See how knackered I am? It’s just that travelling overland like this is not for everyone and there will be moments when you hate it. There will also be moments you’ll remember forever that make it all worthwhile. I guess because Brazil is so frickin’ huge we’re spending a lot of time trundling along dirt roads and highways in the truck just to reach each point of interest. We’re getting a great insight into what it’s like to be a lorry driver, though, eating only indistinguishable foods that have been deep fried to within an inch of their existence along the way. Brazil offers free coffee, too, in every service station. This excited me greatly until I tried to drink some and discovered it was ninety per cent sugar.
Gearing up for the jungle with the Dragoman crew.
I will say that one seventy-something-year-old guy on the truck, Ken, is fantastic. He was on the hunt for Che Guevara in the sixties, used to own a baby food factory and has all sorts of cool stories, confirming my previous statement that old people are awesome. I call him Khaki Ken because, since we left Rio, he has worn only beige hunting outfits, as though we might deposit him at any moment in the jungle and leave him to fend for himself.
A two-night stop in a colonial gold mining town called Ouro Preto was a welcome break — it’s like a Brazilian Cotswolds, if you can imagine that. Very quaint. Dave, our chirpy British driver, loves it particularly because it has a shop that sells the best hot chocolate in the world.
‘It’s like real melted chocolate!’ he enthused and hurried off quickly along the cobbled streets to buy some while the rest of us went to see two mines. He’s been to Ouro Preto before, of course, so I guess the highlights are different for him now.
A guy called Billy, who sounded American and looked like a weathered George Clooney, took great pleasure in showing us round Brasília the other day. As the capital of Brazil, this city is all but sixty years old and, to me, it feels a bit like England’s Milton Keynes crossed with Canberra — a concrete jungle where nothing seems to make sense, in spite of having been purportedly designed for convenience.
Brasília consists of a montage of concrete blocks and weird, white sculptures deposited at random. The significance of each one was explained and instantly forgotten as Billy gesticulated enthusiastically in all directions, a human beacon in his fluorescent yellow vest, complete with his own name on the front in giant letters. Between spouted facts and figures regarding social demographics, he told us proudly of the time he showed Obama’s people round the city, and how he came to be in the Lonely Planet.
Underneath his vest, Billy wore a Dragoman T-shirt with a Rio to Cuzco map on it, which he’d drawn himself in marker pen. He’d had these T-shirts printed for all of us and charged us $15 each for them. We paid up rather begrudgingly because no one had the heart to tell him they were a bit shit, and Stef (who, incidentally, is twenty-four and a circus performer who climbs silk ropes — how cool is that?) hacked hers up creatively with my nail scissors, so it’s now a bit more wearable. The rest are bunged in the overhead nets in the truck till we can get rid of them. Bless Billy.
We did see a rather nice church with a million blue windows, and a cathedral shaped like a crown, before he took us to an all-you-can-eat pizza restaurant on a strip of fast food outlets that looked like Las Vegas. I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d taken Obama there, too.
Three days of driving and several bush camps later, we arrived in Poconé, the small gateway town to the Pantanal. There, a group of us found ourselves in a pool hall surrounded by local guys who stared at us girls slack-jawed and blinking, like they’d never seen a woman before. It wasn’t long before one particularly amorous man in his sixties started dancing around our pool table. He was swigging Cachaça from a plastic bottle, grinning with teeth so lopsided he looked like he’d been struck in the face with a baseball bat. At one point he spilled some of his Cachaça on the floor in a cross-shape and said a small drunken prayer over it, before lifting his shirt in an effort to make one of us fall in love with his beer gut.
Seeing that he was being annoying, the pool hall manager came over and asked him to leave us alone. This worked for five minutes, until the drunk recommenced his dancing and slurring. The manager asked him to leave again … and again … and again … but each time he’d come back in and wobble around us, singing.
After maybe five or six evictions and re-entries by this drunk, the manager appeared again with a whip. But not just any old whip, mind you. It was one of those whips with numerous tassels on it, creating one long leather weapon of fear. He grabbed the annoying man by his sweaty shirt, hauled him outside and proceeded to whip the living shit out of him. We watched in horror as he struck his face with the same force you’d apply to a growling werewolf about to eat your baby, over and over again, until eventually the poor man burst into tears and ran away to the park over the road, where he sat on a bench and continued to drink his Cachaça. We assumed he’d wake up in the morning wondering why his face was whiplashed, and concurred it was probably better he didn’t remember. We also realised why his teeth were probably so wonky. You wouldn’t want to piss anyone off in Poconé.
So anyway, here we are now in the Pantanal, finally, at an eco-lodge called Pousada Rio Claro. On our first boat trip into the murky river waters this afternoon, we were surrounded by inquisitive otters and circling caiman.
The engine died in the middle of this wildlife display and our drivers were forced to tie our two boats together with what looked like a skipping rope, but we survived and made it back to the lodge triumphant, having learned that caimans are afraid of otters. Did you know that? Apparently otters will always win a fight.
With 100,000 square kilometres in Paraguay and Bolivia and the rest in Brazil, the Pantanal wetlands is by far this country’s number one destination for bird watching and wildlife spotting. It covers an area nearly half the size of France, and in the far north merges into the Amazon, which, surprisingly, is where most tourists will still head first.
Russ and I just watched the most sensational sunset I think I’ve ever seen. The brooding sky was reflected in the wetlands as billowing clouds turned from white, to amber yellow, to pink, red and blue, creating a 360-degree wonderland that stretched to infinity. Giant Jabiru storks, toucans and hummingbirds, kingfishers, parakeets and macaws all fluttered happily around in trees resembling gnarly hands poking up from the water, as we stood there in the changing colours, wondering if we’d died and gone to heaven.
The Pantanal is one huge nature documentary in action, twenty times the size of Florida’s Everglades and home to even more birds than the Galápagos. You won’t find many flowers here, but it boasts the biggest concentration of fauna in the New World and, whereas many animals hide in the dense Amazon forest, here in the open wetlands they’re all on full display. There are also more insects here than I’ve encountered anywhere else, ever. When we first pulled up at the eco-lodge, having driven the 145-kilometre Transpantaneira Highway — a dusty, orange, lizard-infested dirt road from Poconé, so beautiful for its emerald surroundings that, at one point, we all sat on the roof of the truck and counted the birds in awe — I noticed that it, too, appeared to be bordered with flooded grass and stagnant pools.