wowmarch

'You'll never guess what's near here.'

'You're right. I won't even try. What?'

'Walmart. It's a five minute walk.'

This was almost a year ago, so I don't remember the actual conversation, but I remember thinking Mark was lying. Not just about the five minutes - Mark is amazingly ungood at 'time' and 'measuring it' - but about the Walmart too. I thought he was setting up a joke.

We had been in Brazil about two months before we moved to this neighborhood, and besides Coca Cola and McDonalds and sometimes Starbucks, very little looked familiar. I figured he was taking me to a junkyard or a coconut stand and calling it Walmart. you know, like how I used to tell people I was taking them to a fancy restaurant and then lead them to the dive bar under my apartment in Brooklyn (that didn't have food). The good old fashioned 'psych.'

Anyway, I felt even more sure of being bulshitted the more we walked - down a tiny one way street that ended at a T, the next street even tinier, small clusters of houses, left onto a street of apartment buildings, up a hill a little, and then on the right...

Indeed. Walmart.

Huge, and identical in logo and fanfare to any back in the US, whether upstate New York or Montana or New Mexico or Florida or ... anywhere, really. I looked up at this virtual portal to home and thought, "gross."

Seriously, why can't the Walmart corporation calm the F down? Why did they follow me to this otherwise cool neighborhood in Brazil?

I don't know why, but there's something gross about being able to go to one store and buy an apple, some sneakers, a quart of milk, a lawnmower, some string cheese, a bicycle, a bra, some cake mix and a shovel. I don't want a shovel that comes from the same place as cake mix.

And all this is gross and creepy even before you find out your total for all that stuff is like $39. All I see when I go into a Walmart is a blurry, foggy hell-cartoon of child factory workers and prison laborors and robots taking over earth. A horror-rolly-ball of how cheap things are made.

But I will say three things in its favor:
1. Hating on Walmart makes me feel at home.
2. It's pretty convenient if you have dogs who love gross meats.
3. The people here pronounce it 'WowMarch,' which is kind of great.

And the WowMarch of Santo Amaro is at least a little different than the Walmarts in the US. It has a weird mini-flea market in its parking garage, where dudes sell used antique furniture, paintings and mu-mus. So that's kind of cool. And inside there are chicks on roller skates zipping around helping people. I don't know if Walmarts in the US have roller-chicks, but this seems like a great idea. And their snack bar is a Casa do Pão de Queijo, instead of like, Arby's.

Oh, and across the street from it is a Shell station.

os PROTESTOS

A few months ago my Portuguese teacher told me about a personal tragedy he'd endured and seemed fascinated when I teared up and became outraged on his behalf.

'How the shit can that happen?' begged Cill. 'How the SHIT does that happen?'

('That' was a proven rapist/murderer walking free because he had good connections. This murderer's victim was my young professor's close friend.)

Up till then he and I had had uber-fun one-upping contests over whose country is more racist, more classist, more sexist, corrupt, unhealthy. (I think he gave me that the US is more racist. I conceded that the Brasileiros seem more classist. The rest we might never settle.)

But this noise about his friend just knocked the wind out of me.

'What about public outrage?' I asked, and BTW all of this was in shitty Portuguese. 'Didn't people fucking FLIP OUT?'

Professor shrugged. 'O publico aqui é passiva.' <--'Bitches here are passive.' There is no public outrage.

I've had several conversations like these with Brasilerios, exchanges that leave me feeling naive and kinda dumb. Like I grew up in a bubble for Stupidamericans. or just Dumbheads. Perhaps because I did.

The cynical ease with which my friends say 'well, the government here is corrupt and that will never, ever change,' would seem sad considering how much you read about Brazil changing every day with its burgeoning economy. You'd think this economic growth would be the exact moment TO change other stuff, or at least try planting seeds.

But a) I don't really know anything about this kind of stuff and b) I plan to stick to my policy of never, ever knowing relevant stuff.

And people would wave my hopeful notions away anyway, all: 'Não, the rich people will benefit from the rising economy. The poor will stay poor.'

O publico aqui é passiva.

Um, PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSYCH.

How goddamn cool are these people? Over a MILLION out in the streets to demand responsibility, ethics, and that their bus fare not go up by like 20 centavos. It seems like elsewhere you need major human rights atrocities to get people out in the streets. Sure, people in the US protest, but not in these numbers, and not with anywhere near the same rage against the 20 centavos.

It's true that tear gas is bad and violence is bad, and it's a tragic bummer that someone was killed in a car accident in the confusion.

But still.

I won't get too excited, esp. since everyone seems intent on warning me against ...

But for serious, here's a fantasy: what if this is exactly what dilma needs to actually change stuff? She can look at all her corrupt, entitled colleagues and say - about stuff she'd had to swallow before as 'never going to change' - and say, 'We have no choice. the people are roaring in the streets.'

I'm just saying.

Brazilians rule.

50 shades of cinza

Sometimes it's fun to see which pop culture trends cross borders.

But most of the time it's not.

Most of the time you wonder if pop culture everywhere is just a big international crap salad. Hot turds from England, dried deuces from Australia, dingleberries from Spain, squirts from Mexico. And embarrassingly, the heaviest slab of mudbunny is usually from my homeland.

This time England wins.

In hindsight I guess it makes sense that 50 Shades of Vag-Wrecking Orgasms hit it so big in the US. The US is kind of weird with sex, all bashful and PC and repressed, yet persistent and porny and rapy about it all at the same time. So it computes that a book that makes a whole lot of confused women masturbate would catch fire.

But here in Brazil, where the air screams SEX! SEX! SEX! FUCKING! SEX! APHRODISIACS! SWEATY DANCING! CATCALLS! WOMEN ARE SO BEAUTIFUL! MEN HAVE BIG MUSCLES! SEX! IS IT HOT ENOUGH FOR YOU? SEX! SEX! (and these are just the names of some of the stores on Avenida Santo Amaro), I don't know, I guess I thought these people would laugh at a lame-ass book about a virgin who gives her shit up to that idiot American female fantasy creature, the mythical Asshole With a Heart of Gold.

But i think every livraria i went into for months on end had what looked like a fort made out of those glinting silver-and-black tomes. (and they are tomes. the shits are loooong. but if you want to laugh, open one. the font  is huge, making it look creepily as though it's for toddlers. )

One shop had a 50 Shades pyramid. Another, what looked like a large family dinner table stacked a foot high with nothing but 50 Tonas de Cinza.

Don't get me wrong, I love reading trash and I'm all about people everywhere having fun. And the books are harmless. It's just… I don't know. They're so lame.

jungle survival

Another Amazon activity we signed up for: Survivor Day.

On Survivor Day some guides take you on a long hike through the jungle and show you how to do stuff like build a palm shelter and a make rotisserie out of sticks and rig an animal trap using just vines and branches and discern which trees will ooze vick's vap-o-rub and milk of magnensium and which twigs you can smoke like stoges. All you need is a machete.

The Ariau Treetop Hotel is very proud of having hosted a season of Survivor. And now i'm uber proud to have a certificate from Ariau that brags about how I, Cill, survived some serious shit too. The Surviver Day.

Our guide was this incredible dude named Gerson, a Manaus native who'd done a whole nightmarish military training in the jungle, in which he had to live off the land for weeks, distinguishing what stuff could be eaten and stepped on without getting the shits or getting killed or getting killed-by-way-of-the-shits.

And a big part of the training is to do all this while your military superiors yell at you. Like right into your face.

I don't like snakes or getting yelled at, so I had tremendous respect for Gerson. Plus I ate jungle stuff he approved of and I didn't get the shits.

But I felt kind of sad wondering what kind of warfare his rigorous training has prepared young Gerson for. I mean, he is without a doubt the most badass and resourceful rainforest magician ever, plus he's jacked and he has a machete. But what if like, a tank suddenly rolled in here? What then?

But then another part of me was just like duh, Gerson would build a foot trap out of some vines that would fucking flip tanks over and catapult them back to explode wherever they came from. He's pretty awesome.

Anyway, there's no story here. Tickby just thinks it's funny that I puked and I got a certificate anyway. The only thing ARGUABLY funny about how I puked is that I thought nobody knew I was puking because I snuck off into some bushes to puke. Tickby told me later that in fact everyone knew I was puking, and one of our co-survivors - an articulate and hilarious surgeon from Idaho - asked Tickby if I needed medical help.

But i didn't. Because I'm a survivor.

os dentes

As usual I don't know if this is a Brazil thing or a São Paulo thing or just a thing of the crowds we run with, but people here fucking LOVE brushing their teeth.

Public bathrooms are often equipped with mouthwash pumps and teeny-cups and sometimes baskets of dental floss. And people actually use them!

People also carry toothbrushes and little tubes of toothpaste in their purses and briefcases. It's unreal.

And i love it.

It creates a wonderful slumber party atmosphere in the public restrooms of Brazil. You walk into a restaurant or an office shizzad and find a gaggle of women chatting and laughing and brushing their dentes and spitting minty foam into the sinks.

It all feels so wholesome and warm. I wish I could stay I've started carrying around a tooth-cleaning kit myself, but it'll be too damn much fun to tell my dentist in the states about all this and watch his hopes soar and then tell him I'm still not into it because I don't like how mouthwash ruins the taste of Diet Coke.

pilates

Here in Brazil it is pronounced 'pee-LOTS', which is apt because I always drink a lot of water before class and pee out lots afterwards.

And it's awesome. My fondest memories of Brazil will be of the ceilings and roof beams at the Kaizen studio, where I've learned more Portuguese than Rosetta Stone and Muito Prazer combined.

Thanks to Pilates I can count to twelve, or at least know when someone else is doing it. I also know all kinds of key vocab like glutes, abs, knees, breathe in, breath out, and 'Let's go!'

It's not just the weird machines with pulleys and springs and rolly-carts that rule. It's also the bouncy balls and bean balls and foam noodles and plastic arc-y things. And also that I love exercise that you do while lying down.

The teachers are also pretty fantastic, not just in their knowledge of anatomy and rolly-carts, but also in their ability to put up with how weak i am. (Machines and rolly-carts often have to be adjusted and sometimes disassembled and reassembled to accommodate my 'arms-of-a-six-year-old.')

I like my Pilates teachers so much that I do odd little things to be considerate of them.

The first time Mark saw me spritzing perfume onto the crotch of my pants he asked - with his eyebrows -  'But why?'

And i explained that often while adjusting springs on the rolly carts a Pilates teacher's head can come awful close to one's chach and that I want mine to like me.

It's not that I think I smell. Or even that they'd care if I did. Or notice.

But like, what if I did, and they did, and then I was kicked out and put in jail and told to never come back to the best Pilates studio in São Paulo? Where then would I learn Portuguese?

rio sem poop

‘Wait, so there’s no poop in it?’ 

I was amazed! Fascinated and excited. How could something smell so much like poop and not be at least partially composed of poop? 

Such is the real-life mystery-science of the river Tiete, which is pronounced Chee-Eh-Tay, or, as it should perhaps be called, Shit Creek. 

There’s also the Pinheiros, pronounced Peen-yay-roos, or Shit Creek 2. 

These are the two rivers running through Sāo Paulo, and they look and smell like oozing poop lava. 

But awe-inspiringly, as my friend was explaining that day in his car, the filth and the stink are actually not poop! 

Credit is rather due to microbial microbes or something. (I missed it, I stopped listening so I could marvel at the magic non-poop.) Some small life forms that like...feed on the opposite of oxygen. Or something. ? Microscopic creatures who, at their flourishing thriving optimal best, smell like rancid farts. 

There are actually tons of scientists and environmental activists working to clean up both rivers, and they've apparently had a whole bunch of triumphs in the last few years, mainly upping the percentage of treated sewage, whatever the F that means. 

The poop-critters were born of environmental degradation, the degradation from pollution, the pollution from rapid city expansion over a small amount of time, and so on. I'm going to write a children's song about this soon, but not now. It's uber complex. 

My friend in the car said that some of the cleanup efforts were silly, like that they paid a bunch of dudes to pull trash out of the river but those people just left the trash on the side of the river and then it rained and the trash slid back in. 

He said 'like FDR's New Deal in the US, how they paid men to build things and then take them apart.'

I was about to retort 'um helLO, FDR's New Deal only got the US economy out of the Great Depression so I don't know where you get off bringing that noise up as like futility context things stuff.' 

But then I realized that I didn't actually know anything about the New Deal and the only reason I thought I did was because I played an orphan in the musical Annie in middle school and in it FDR is a character and sings a song about the New Deal and it's actually the mega-uber-happy ending of the play. So why would he and the New Deal be immortalized in Annie if neither had successfully ended the Great Depression?

Sorry, back to the ghost-poop. 

The most remarkable thing about it I think is that you get used to it. Mark and I wanted to walk some long distance one morning early on in our Brazil days, and this distance involved walking over one of the bridges. The stench was alarming as we got closer to the river, but I think only because your logic brain panics because it can only deduce that a Tyrannosaurus Rex just took a dump nearby and will step on you next. 

But then you realize it's not danger. It's just microbial microbes or something. It's just how the river is. (Though only for now. The eco-friends are scrambling hard to make it clean and great again.) And then you kind of stop noticing. Sort of.

*Also later i found out there is some poop in it.

le french restaurant

I still haven't met any Brazilians I don't like.

OK that's a lie, I've met two, but they don't count because I don't see them as Brazilians, I see them as 'assholes.' And even if they did count, only two! Everyone else here is like the happy crowd at your favorite bar.

But in Rio when we went to Le French Restaurant I thought I had finally met a Brazilian Fail.

Apparently the lone staffer at this restaurant, Le Dude welcomed us with a weird stuffiness I hadn't seen since movies. He was all unsmiling and scowl-y at our self-concious laughing-at-our-shitty-Portuguese. And he kept correcting my Portuguese.

Bow i know it's insanely hypocritical to get annoyed at this since I ask people to please correct my Portuguese, but not when I'm HUNGRY. And also not if I don't know you and you're not even friendly.

Tickby heard him speaking Parisian French to some dudes later, so I chatted with him a little in French, which he corrected.

He also corrected food I tried to order, saying I would prefer something else.

So Le Dude was a giant boo-hiss. I was getting grumpier by the second.

Also he told me that I shouldn't have so much trouble learning Portuguese because he had learned fluent and perfect French in no time at all. I almost stood up and started booing out loud.

Then two things happened.

Second was that our food came, and turns out Le Francophile had been correct about what food I would like. THIS FOOD. It was too delicious to talk about. And the salad it came with was in a BOWL MADE OF CRISPY CHEESE.

But first before that, Le Dude came over and asked if I would like him to turn off the air conditioning. He was concerned that I was sitting with my elbows pinned to my sides and my arms crossed. At first I was annoyed. I thought he was correcting the way I sat. It seemed he didn't like that i wasn't looking blasé and French enough for his fancy restaurant. I explained that I'm one of those losers who's always cold and to please leave the AC on. (It was like 200 degrees celsius outside.) He seemed displeased.

A few seconds later he appeared with a white table cloth he'd folded into a blankety shawl and wrapped it around my shoulders. Still busybody, still all Le French and unsmiling, but I realized that he was in fact a sweetheart who just wanted everyone in his restaurant to have a comfortable, wonderful French time. And thus his grade went from an F-- to an A before the DELICIOUS food even arrived.

The moral of the story: just because someone acts snotty and French and tries to make you be snotty and French too doesn't mean he's not an awesome person. And also probably does mean he makes delicious food.

Fin

in the trees

Arriving at Ariau Towers felt like coming home to some land in my imagination where I knew I belonged. I'm sure the passport of my soul will show that I am a native of this most magical place.

It is a real life fucking hotel in trees.

When I was a kid I saw Disney's Swiss Family Robinson. About six hundred thousand times. Everything in that movie made my five-year-old heart sing and dance, And a lot of it was about to come true, except I probably wouldn't swing on vines and marry eleven-year-old Kevin Corcoran.

All the buildings are on and in trees and bolstered by scaffolds about fifty feet off the ground. There's a a bar-and-restaurant, dining hall, two chapels, bungalows,  dormitories, a small museum, a gift shop, an aquarium and even a night club, and it's all connected by miles and miles of catwalks.

There are entire hikes on catwalks through the jungle, which were by far my favorite part of our stay. Me and Tickby would just wander them looking for animals and laughing at how awesome it sounds when you burp in the wilderness.

Also, as we made the long walk from the docks to the lobby - all on catwalks - monkeys followed us.

(Do you know how badly i have longed for a monkey throughout my lifetime? MONKEYS.)

Plus, because it was off-season and the area had recently endured a destructive flood, it felt often like we had the entire place to ourselves, or were sharing it with a few nice people.

And finally: the whole place swayed. For serious, if you stopped moving or were lying in bed, you could feel the ground rocking gently under you, in what felt like the breeze.

Why none of this killed me - the heights, the ground rocking - I have no idea. Maybe because it wasn't a multi-thousand foot drop. Maybe because the motion wasn't in a car or gross bus. But i was in heaven.

Oh don't get me wrong, I got dehydration sickness and puked a couple times in the jungle, plus often had to take naps in between activities to recover from the relentless sun and humidity, but I didn't care. It was so wondrous I barely even noticed. I will go back there some day. I know it.

Oh, one more thing: our hotel room was in a circular carved-out-tree-like building, and was shaped like a notch, like one of the pie-piece notches in the Trivial Pursuit. It had a tiny balcony with chairs, an irregularly shaped floor, and painted moulds of jungle predators and birds on all the doors and walls. Ours was a jaguar. I was home.

midgies, mozzies, and why it's key to find the ozzies

'Midgie bites.' (But 'bites' sounds like 'baw-ites.')

'Nah, those are mozzies, mate.' (But 'mate' sounds like 'mite.')

'You know what, I think they're midgies and mozzies.'

'You're right mate, some of those are midgies and some of 'em are mozzies.'

***

I can't stress this enough: if ever you find yourself at any kind of establishment hosting an international crowd, FIND THE AUSTRALIANS.

It's not just that their accents provide endless entertainment, or how their amazing terminology for stuff does the same. (MIDGIES? MOZZIES?)

It's that the Australians are the most laid-back motherfuckers on the planet, and they will make you chill the hell out too. I swear that after one caipirinha with Sean I was no longer afraid of heights.

Example:

Scene - Me and the American dude we met arguing semi-ANGRILY about the upcoming presidential election (cause remember this all happened in October.) Australian dude chimes in.

Australian Dude: I'm not very political. I only ever voted in one election, maybe twenty years ago. My girlfriend was pregnant, so I voted for the fella who was gonna legalize abortion. He won, my girlfriend got an abortion, and I haven't voted since. (LAUGHS)

Cill: I thought you guys just said voting in Australia is mandatory.

Australian dude: It is! (ALL LAUGH)

Example 2:

Scene - We're all meeting for the first time.

Aussie 1: I'm Sean. (But 'Sean' sounds like somewhere in between 'Shone' and 'Shoon.'

Aussie 2: I'm Bruce.

Cill: G'DAY BRUCE! I'm sorry. I've just always wanted to meet an ozzie named Bruce so I could do that. You must get that all the time.

Bruce: Not really.

Cill: I'm sorry.

Bruce: No you're not.

Cill: No. I'm not.

(ALL LAUGH)

For the rest of the night, whenever there is a lull in conversation:

Cill (increasingly drunk): G'DAY BRUCE!

Bruce (somehow still cool with it, laughing): You really have been waiting years to do this, haven't you?

Cill: G'DAY BRUCE!

Bruce: I'm glad for you.

Cill: G'DAY BRUCE!

Bruce: I mean it.

Cill: G'DAY BRUCE!

(Bruce laughs every time this happens. Instead of, you know, punching me in the head.)

Example 3:

Scene - The american dude has initiated yet another 'let's go round the table and everyone say your favorite ________ of all time.' He has all his answers at the ready, almost as if he initiates this game wherever he goes. We've done everyone's favorite book, song, movie, and now, slogan.

Sean: Don't give a shit.

American Dude: No, but if you HAD to pick one--

Sean: No, that'd be my slogan: 'Don't give a shit.'

Cill: I like that! that would be mine too.

***

See? the most laid-back motherfuckers on the planet and they chill you on out too.

I realize it's idiotic to make such generalizations about people, especially people from a country so big it's almost its own continent, and it's probably offensive to say they're all the same.

But you know who's probably least likely to be offended?

The ozzies.

Because they are the chillest motherfuckers ever.

amazon dexter

I murdered a baby.

But let me explain.

One of the activities Tickby signed us up for was Piranha Fishing. 

I know! Sounds awesome, right? Piranhas are badass killers and WE were going to go looking for THEM and then (not kidding) make SOUP OUT OF THEM. These shits are like freshwater sharks. We were gonna hunt down a bunch of river sharks, pull them into our boat, and turn them into dinner. AWESOME.

Though i'm a vegetarian, bordering on vegan, and i'm not actually ever going to eat piranha soup. Or kill a piranha really. So um… there's that.

Just so we can remain friends: I don't care if you eat meat, I just don't want to. I'm not a tormented animal rights activist who torments others about morals and stuff. Or like, ethics or whatever. Enjoy your bacon burger. I don't mind.

But um, fish is one dead-animal-food that I do feel slightly sick and sad over. I can't help it, I think it's f-ed, to kill something by putting a hook through its lips and then stomping on its head or air-drowning it. F-ed.

I wasn't about to say any of this in the rowboat on our way up the Ariau river to go piranha fishing. I mean, I'm cool with people like our guides, who hunt and fish for just enough for for dinner and then eat it all. Also i didn't want everyone to make fun of me.

So I said I'd just rather not join in, for now I'd just take a few pictures. 

Our guide was apparently familiar with the likes of me.

Very patiently he said, "Cill, we need to control the piranha population. There are too many piranhas, and they're killing the caimans and all the other fish."

Hmm, thought Cill. I would be killing fish, but only fish-killers of other fish. I would be a killer of killers. I would be Dexter. 

Dexter is my favorite show.

So I decided to give it a whirl, even though it was pretty gross how we were using morsels of red meat as bait and handling them was a boner-fied gag-fest. 

But fine. I dropped my line into the river.

Tug. TUG. TUG. TUG. 

My first tug-job was a CATFISH. I had been Dexter for only like thirty seconds and already killed an innocent. Plus he looked like my 9th grade Earth Science teacher, which made it even sadder. 

'Don't worry Cill, he's okay!' our guide laughed, pulling the barbed hook out of Mr. Nelson's lips and throwing him back into the river (where he would likely be tracked and killed by a piranha in three nano-milli-seconds).

'Again!' shouted our guide. 

Soon came my second tug-job, lighter than the first.

BECAUSE IT WAS A BABY.

True, it was a deadly piranha, a river killer, and it had probably just gone all wood-chipper on Mr. Nelson. But it was only a baby.  

I was done. 

Everyone else had fun laughing at me and catching grown-up piranhas. And later in the dining hall there was fresh piranha soup, which Tickby said was delicious.

(gag.)

rolling on the rio (negro)

Sun blazing, sand burning our feet, we trooped toward the dock, where a boat would take us into the jungle. We kept doing the awkward, apologetic turn-back-and-smile at the muscle-bound dudes carrying our luggage. (For the record though they weren't even sweating and seemed to find it funny that we felt bad.)

Coming into view by the dock was a brightly colored, multi-story yacht with a bar, live music, two sun-decks, a dude-sized cooler-bin of full of beer-and-ice, and an on-board village of festive marquees and cardboard decorations.

And parked immediately next to that noise was the boat we would be taking, which looked a bit like a canoe with an umbrella taped to the back.

Its name: the Pantera Negra, translation: 'Black Panther,' which would have been funny even if its peeling shreds of paint hadn't been baby blue and white.

So I mounted the black panther, crossed that shit off my bucket list, and started getting excited all over again. I'd wanted to see the Amazon since third grade, and here I was.


Plus, the losers on the party-boat next door were doing it all wrong. They might as well have been in a gross college bar or on a Hudson River booze cruise. Here on the black panther I could feel the spray of the rio negro in my face (and did for the next two hours). I could smell the water and gaze out at the wildness we were heading into.

(Or pull my hat over my face and fall asleep, you know, whatever I felt like in the moment.)

And there was a cooler full of sodies too at the front of the Black Panther. So we had our own party.

But for miles and miles we just motored. I think it was a little over two hours. From the sweeping Rio negro, onto some smaller, 'side-streets,' laughing and taking pictures of each other.  I wish I was capable of describing how happy I was and how special that place is, instead of just making fun of stuff.

Like most tourists, my favorite part was that stretch where the Rio Negro and the Rio Solimoes meet and run alongside each other for like six kilometers without mixing and you can see - vividly - the two different colors.

And i guess my second favorite was that first view of our Hotel-in-the-Trees.

:)

heggy

Tickby and I landed in Manaus early in the morning.

Staggering out into the terminal, we saw materializing a distractingly beautiful youth holding a sign with the name of our hotel on it. He looked like male Zoe Saldana in Avatar but you know, not blue.

When we approached him and identified ourselves, he grew very excited, telling us what a great time we would have at the Ariau Towers.

"It is very nice!" he beamed. "Any time, you can call to the front desk from your room and ask for - if you want - a hammock and some cheese. They will bring it to you!"

It was probably three hundred degrees celsius and the idea of swinging in a hammock while eating cheese was a question mark, but this dude's joie de vivre had a way of flooding your mind with sparkles. For example, when he explained that we had to stay there at the sweltering terminal for another two hours because more hotel guests were arriving on a later flight, I felt a surge of euphoria.  He flourished his beautiful, attenuated arm around the dirty room featuring the Brazilian equivalent of Amtrak snack cart food, and said, 'You may sit, relax and enjoy something to eat!' And Tickby and I became downright giddy at the idea.

Also, if memory serves, his name was Stefani. Like gwen.

All morning we rode the waves of Stefani's bliss and bathed in the rays of ecstasy projected from his impossibly large almond-shaped eyes. By this I mean we sat at a filthy table that was nailed to the ground and crusted with old cheesebread and drank Coke Zeros, periodically laughing and waving to our irrepressible new friend.

Stefani's joy eventually carried us to the shores of the Rio Negro, where a a boat was waiting to take us on into the jungle and the Ariau Towers.

We noticed an enormous concert stage being erected on the beach, complete with posters for caffeine energy drinks, Coca Cola, and I think beach balls (?).

'Yes!' Stefani exclaimed as though we had asked aloud, 'Tonight will be a Heggy concert. Do you like Heggy?'

the radiant stefani

Heggy, Heggy, let's see now... nope! Don't know who Heggy is. Feel dumb. Certain she's a very important Brazilian pop singer. Or maybe it's a he? Or a band?

'Who is Heggy?' Tickby asked.

'Heggy! Like Bob Marley, like Ziggy Marley. Heggy music.'

Ahhhhh yes.

Reggae.

Still getting used to these R sounding like H shenanigans.

PS. My Portuguese teacher kept telling me to visit the 'Museum of Hockey' here in São Paulo the other day. He was in fact recommending the Museum of Rock.