RUA TRIP! part 2: the fog

It was so beautiful, so enchanting and atmospheric that we kind of forgot that it was also 'dangerous' and we maybe could crash and get dead..

We never bothered to find out if the thick mist hovering over the winding mountain roads on the way to Paraty was a weather condition or just part of that area's climate. And know what? I'm not going to. I don't want to know. It was just part of the magic of driving somewhere in Brazil.

Sure, the hairpin curves and sharp climbs and drops were all pretty hard on my balls. (HEHEHEH hard on my balls HEHEHEH) But I'd do it again right now. It was just so lush and green and dewy and Narnia, even with all the SUV's and road signs and Tickby's gangsta rap.

It could have been frustrating, to be slowed down so much after the open highway, but this was easily my favorite part of the rua from São Paulo to Paraty. I felt like we were in Escape From Witch Mountain. I don't know why, because I can't remember anything about that movie other than the names 'Tony' and 'Tia' and 'Grandpa,' but there we were. It was witchy and mountainy and we were on an escape.

This foggy noise did turn into rain-and-fog though, and as we got closer and closer to Paraty it still felt farther away as the rain intensified or the occasional traffic stopped on the country roads.

So it ended up taking like eight hours to get there.

It was late when we arrived. And it was raining. So we were kind of bummed about these things, but it was so wonderful to be out of the car that I just didn't care. Plus, as you'll see if you read on, Paraty is bananas-awesome.

RUA TRIP! part 1: a word on my balls

My balls are all f-ed up, and they have been for like four years now.

I'm not talking about my cojones, which are obviously huge and made of steel; I'm talking about the balls in my ears, which are supposed to be like on human hydraulics that keep your balance and don't let you get motion sickness.

My balls crap out and let me get motion sickness all the time. It sucks. I hate them. Cars I'm not driving, trains-that-aren't-underground, and taxiing planes, all make me greenfaced and moany, and if I could make upset-stomach moany-sounds the whole time I would. But I can't because this is 'socially unacceptable' or whatever. So I tend to just become very quiet and stare straight ahead, in a semi-meditative state, echoing with whispers of the mantra 'Don't puke. Don't puke. Don't puke.'

So the plan was a five hour car ride from São Paulo to Paraty, a night and day there, then a three hour drive to Rio and three nights there. Then Mark would drive the rental car back to São Paulo while Tickby and I flew from Rio to Manaus on our way to the jungle.

I wasn't looking forward to the motion sickness, but could not WAIT to see the sights, even if they were just monotonous freeway-type sights. mark and I have been exclusively in São Paulo for almost six months now, and while this city is expansive and bananas, well, i'm an American. I like my highways, my 70mph rides, I like covering long distances in mere hours and seeing it all fly by.

VIVA VULVA caught tickby's eye

Yeah. So we were stuck in a little over two hours of standstill just trying to get out of our neighborhood. Tickby took some cool pictures of graffiti, and the happy WTF that is Brazilian sex shops. I drained the soda I'd brought as a stomach settler just to combat the oppressive heat, and of course had to pee within forty minutes.

Our spirits weren't f-ed though. We were finally on our rue trip! Just the stop-and-go motion was a little hard on my balls. (Heheheheh hard on.)

you're not the only one with a gay zorro fantasy

Finally the traffic broke and we were out of the city, savoring our freedom, the wind in our hair! So we pulled into a rest stop immediately. To pee. We also needed more sodies and snacks. And to see if my balls couldn't settle down a bit.

The rest stops in Brazil are impressive. This one had the same kind of food-plaza setup as you'll see along I-95, but the restaurants had buffets of fresh food, there were snack options that were natural and delicious, and there was a bakery where local folks were stopping by to get their bread and cakes. So the whole place smelled nice. We loaded up on sweets and some kind of  awesome caramel corn, sodas and sparkling waters, and gum. Then back into the car, ready for the REAL ACTUAL rua trip to commence. And it did.

my sister tickby

i forgot to set all this up with some expositionz: my sister tickby came to visit and stayed for 2.5 weeks. eager to see brazil and not just me and mark, she initiated an adventurous trip from here to paraty, from there to rio, from there to manaus, and from there to the innards of the amazon jungle. all of this noise will be reported on.

but some info on tickby:

Tickby is a nurse anesthetist. 

Tickby likes: giving people intravenous drugs, traveling, cooking, meeting eccentric people, meeting salt-of-the-earth types, mayhap just meeting new people in general, people who are funny, drinking wine, drinking beer, drinking caipirochkas, making fun of me, reading crime novels, Wesley Willis, muito gangster rap, most other kinds of music, taking photographs, and many other coisas.

Tickby dislikes: vegging out, people who aren't in the medical profession spreading misinformation about human physiology, watching movies, most movies, watching television, vapid political banter, people who aren't respectful of waitstaff, people who analyze themselves aloud, and ... she didn't really like the caipirinhas. 

Yeah, so besides me doing and being a lot of the things Tickby doesn't like, we get along very well, Because we have muitas coisas importantes bonding us together. Loving Wesley Willis and hating people who are rude to waiters, for example.

So stay tuned for the adventures of Tickby and Cill.

tickby is like me only smart, employed and with big boobs

and a giant fig tree in the middle

(Ooh how nice, 'fig tree' looks like 'f-ing tree' in the title of this post. Both apply.)

So then we went to Figueira Rabaiyat, a São Paulo restaurant famous for having a gigantic fig tree in the middle of the dining room. the tree is mad beautiful and mad old. They built the restaurant around it so it could live on through the gentrification of its neighborhood. (I think.) So that’s pretty rad. I wish they could also do that with people who are fixtures in neighborhoods. Instead of pricing them out of their homes, build beautiful restaurants around them and make them the themes of these restaurants. Hm, maybe with people it would be degrading. But with trees it’s romantic.

We all admitted to feeling apprehensive that there would be another pirate type vibe. Like that as another famous restaurant they would feel they had to live up to their reputation and go over the top trying to make their service unforgettable. And piratey. (Mayhap by threatening with body language and 100 free refills to rob and pillage and stuff.)

But it was remarkably low key. No swarming service folk, no befuddling bells and whistles. We even discussed how it wasn’t even a bloggable experience, cause like, nothing absurd happened.

Then a busboy came over and restrained my purse to the chair with a plastic zipcuff. 

Aaaand we’re bloggable. 

We laughed quite a bunch at how weird this was. I know chicks spend a lot of money on their purses, but wouldn’t you think that’d make them (purses) more durable than to perish if they fell on the floor? 

Or were they perhaps worried that a thief might grab my purse and make a mega-awkward run for it through the labyrinthine mess of tables, in the middle of which stood a ginormous tree? 

Whether theft or purse-soilage, the concern reminded us that we were once again in classy-people territory with classy-people eccentricities. And that alone was funny.

Full disclosure: much as like like to make fun of rich people, their food is fucking delicious. Go to Figueira Rabaiyat if you ever get a chance. So so delicious. 

And when we paid the check the dude came back over and released my purse by cutting the zip-cuff with a knife. 

the meat pirates

If you don't already know this about me it's time you learned: I like pirates.

I like pirate figurines, movies with pirates, pirate-themed bumper stickers and other paraphernalia, dressing like a pirate, the episodes of the simpsons with the pirate, and skull-and-crossbones-shaped ice cubes.

Tickby likes pirates too, so we were pretty pumped upon entering Fogo de Chão in Santo Amaro and seeing the staff's uniforms. 

They weren't all-out pirates with peglegs and eye-patches - because this restaurant seems to take itself pretty seriously - but they wore knickers, holsters with wine keys and meat knives, and high pirate boots if i've ever seen pirate boots. They were like pirates hiding in plain sight from anyone who doesn't know as much as I do about pirates. They were ninja pirates.

In other evidence, I saw exactly 0 female employees there. 

Furthermore, there were way too many of them. the pirate-waiters outnumbered customers 2 or 3 to 1.

As Tickby and I waited for Mark to meet us there from work, the pirate-waiters surrounded our table -widely at first, but inching closer and closer with every passing minute. They kept a semi-frenzied activity going to keep us from noticing. But they were closing in. 

When I stood up to go to the bathroom, one pirate pulled my chair back and another pirate pushed it in. When I reached for my sweater, I swear three different pirates helped me pull it on. Every time I took a sip of water a pirate or two or six would come over to replenish my glass. 

Some people like being gang-pampered like this but I found it disconcerting at times. For example I dropped my wallet on the floor and almost had my head tramply-crushed by a stampede of pirate boots when I reached down to pick it up. I also found myself keeping my eyes downcast to avoid contact with pirates, who interpreted most movement as a signal to come over and put more cheesebread on the table. 

Tickby and Mark became too blissfully high on the pirates' meats to worry about the coup underway. Fully relaxed, their eyes glazed over, they began to talk about how they couldn't eat any more, but didn't want to stop. As a vegetarian I was immune to this noise, this pirates' 'table-side meat service' spell. I knew that something terrible was afoot, and the power of this knowledge made the room begin to tilt. As if we were on a slowly capsizing pirate ship.

Yeah it might have just been the sight of all that rare steak after the previous night's copious vodka fraudtinis making my stomach flop around. Add to that the effort of hiding the fact that I felt ill at the dinner table and the energy required to thank twenty-seven pirates per minute for their various solids, and you have an overstimulated altered state.

Or it might have been a pirate invasion.

In spite of such dark turns, I need you to know that I still like pirates. I mean, you wouldn't expect a kid who likes dinosaurs to stop liking them just because a stegosaurus ate his backpack. The kid who genuinely likes dinosaurs would understand that that's what stegosauri do.

Accordingly, I understand that invading tables and being mad fiendish is what pirates do. and I have nothing but respect for that.

the meat pirates provide you with a cow-shaped brochure that is a map of the most delicious parts of cows

fraudtinis!!!

ingredients:
vodka
limes
agave nectar
pirate themed ice (skull and bones-cicles)
maybe other stuff

Tickby and I were gearing up to go to the Skye Bar yesterday afternoon - so she could take some São Paulo photos before she heads home on Saturday - when she got an interesting email from her bank. It read something like:

Dear Tickby,

We're sorry we didn't let you buy all those thousands of dollars worth of electrical equipment in São Paulo today and yesterday. We just thought the purchases seemed suspicious. So please like, call us and tell us you're good and you want all that electrical equipment, and we'll let the next purchases go through no problem. Also, mayhap you should put a bunch more money in your checking account, seeing as you've debited like over $7,000 in the last few days, mostly on electrical equipment.

Toodles!
-Chase Manhattan

A bunch of time ended up spent on the phone with those guys, who said we had to stay by a computer for the rest of the day to fill out time-sensitive paperwork as it was sent to us. No skye bar. paperwork.

So-

Me: Yeah, you know it's so hot out anyway it might be nicer to stay in.

Tickby: Yeah, I was thinking that anyway, it's kind of late.

Me: …Want to get shitfaced?

Tickby: Yes.

I don't know how much I drank. There are large chunks of the evening I don't remember at all. But funnily enough I do remember three different moments at which I thought - hot DAMN I've had a lot to drink! I shouldn't have any more to drink.

someone bought mad electrical coisas

Also, as we got more and more thoroughly hammered, we learned stuff. Drunk googling is still googling. Apparently what happened to Tickby is that her debit card information was stolen by way of a tiny hidden camera installed somewhere in an ATM in Rio de Janeiro, which recorded the number and her PIN. Then someone used it somehow to go shopping for electrical equipment in São Paulo.

Now that I'm sober though I'm realizing there are some story-holes here. How would they use her card number in a store if they didn't physically have the card? Wait I think I asked that when I was drunk because an answer just floated into my head from some vague memory: they put that number on a different card, and ... I don't know. I mean they have tons of electrical equipment. They prolly used that.

Chase Manhattan is currently 'doing an investigation' to determine for themselves that the information was actually stolen. tickby is afraid they will conclude that because the PIN number was used in the purchases, it must have been Tickby making them. I doubt this, but it will still be a nice relief when their investigation is over and they have apologized to Tickby and put $7,000 back into her account.

And I wish I could remember how I made the fraudtinis, because they were friggin delicious.

mad cachorros

Brazilians love blond dogs.

For serious, there are enough golden retrievers and yellow labs here to make Travis feel maybe not so bad about having to shoot the rabies out of Old Yeller.

I mentioned this observation to a Brazilian friend, and he told me it's because of the movie Marley and Me.

And I laughed.

And I laughed.

Who better to set trends than Owen Wilson? You? Me? Marley? Me? Dupree?

Any which way, the prevalence of labs and retrievers gives the city an awesome atmosphere, or maybe just accentuates the already existing one: spastic energy, frenzied enthusiasm, nonstop nose-to-crotch joie de vivre. When São Paulo gets excited, it pees a little. If you throw a stick, São Paulo will bound after it, break it, drag it back to you all deformed and whine until you throw it again. I don't know what that means.

But for real, I can't stop thinking of what a WIN this is for Brazil. Think about it: the last time a breed of dog became trendy for a stupid reason in the US it was because Paris Hilton carried a chihuahua around in her purse. Then a couple of years later there appeared a generation of refugee chihuahuas, probably abandoned around the time their owners realized dogs can shit in purses.

Well Marley and Me is a few years old now and the Brazilians have shown themselves to be not as fickle as fans of ... what the hell did Paris Hilton do again? Act? Reality show? I guess just be everyone's favorite anorexic head on a stick.

tickby snapped this noise in Ibirapuera Park

It could be that they're just living out the entire Marley and Me plot, like owning the blond dog from puppyhood to deadhood, but even then, even if the loyalty is to the trend and not the dogs, it is a win, because even if Owen Wilson is kind of a dumb blond, he is not Paris Hilton.

Anyway, as a dog lover, and an (obviously) excellent judge of character, I conclude:

Brazil: 10
USA: 0