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.

on the big rock jesus mountain * plus boobs

Rio de Janeiro is a heartbreakingly beautiful city with spectacular beaches, friendly people, tons of fun things to do, and a big rock Jesus perched impossibly high on a mountain.

But more importantly, me.

In Rio I learned that I'm cripplingly afraid of heights.

I started to notice something off on Day One, when we climbed to the top of the Jesus.

(When I say 'climbed,' I of course mean 'took the tram thing'.)

I felt oddly nervous on the tram-thing, and then a little off on the Jesus himself. I remember thinking it was probably just residual nausea from the previous day's road trip, combined with the light sadness that comes when I'm about to be separated from Mark. (I know it's lame, but it's the truth.) Mark was returning to São Paulo the next day and Tickby and I would continue to Manaus.

So I felt woozy and unhappy. I avoided looking over the sides of the thousands-of-feet-high Jesus pedestal on which we stood.

But it was just a little, and the rest of the day was great. Spent laughing a lot, taking pictures of the Jesus, from the Jesus, and about the Jesus. We met young Mr. T on the Jesus (not kidding). At night we went to a plaza where there was live music, cold beer, and funny people.

Cut to the next day. Tickby and I went to the Pão de Acúcar - 'Sugarloaf,' - essentially two giant boob-like mountain peaks busting out of Rio. You take a gondola up to the first extremely-high-up nipple, and from there take another gondola up and across to the even-higher boob.

My hands began to tremble in the first gondola. I started to feel extremely sleepy, and had this weird sensation that the areas beneath my eyes were hollowing out. This, I thought, would cause my eyelids to slam shut and the rest of me to crumple like a bathrobe falling off a hanger.

I turned away from the window- which is funny because gondolas are kind of just a bunch of windows- and concentrated like Tiger Woods on staring at the mid-sections of people in the middle of the gondola. I think my idea was to look for familiar vistas. Just seeing midsections made this look more like the normal subway-like crowd it was, and would further the premise that there was a floor in the gondola which was intact and this wasn't dangerous. It kind of worked.

I felt a little better when we got out onto the first boob. The first boob was big and had a museum on it and a sculpture garden, and looked almost like a normal city block. So you could forget that you were unnaturally high up and could die from sneezing too hard.

Also me and Tickby had a photo-shoot of me doing inappropriate things with the sculptures, which helped.

And lastly, when Tickby did go to the edges to take photos of Rio-from-on-high, it wasn't horrifying because if you looked over the edge you saw that there were other tiers right below. In other words, if you did fall over the edge you'd just land like six feet lower and feel dumb. Not die of fast-fall heart failure.

But then Tickby wanted to go to the other boob.

Mind over matter! said I. To myself. We got into the gondola and i did the stare-at-strangers'-crotches meditation again.

But still was overcome with the same limb-weakening symptoms as before. I also started feeling nauseous, and most interestingly: hysterical. I kept it all hidden inside because i'm a ninja, but I felt like my heart was breaking while a swarm of killer-Al-Qaeda bees were hating me in the face. I felt my pulse banging faster and louder until I was pretty sure I was going to die.

Predictably, I didn't die. Which was good. So I got off at the second boob. Which has no other tiers. And is just a slab of floor roosting atop a million-foot-high blade of grass.

The only thing there that separates you from becoming a blood-pancake is an old, rusty, wide open railing. Tickby ran off the gondola and right over to the edge to start snapping photos. I followed her on the WEIRDEST, most alien, rickety legs that used to be mine.

And here is probably the climax of this journey through irrational-fear-hell. As i wobbled toward Tickby --who had her back to me-- and tried to process the sight of my sister standing inches away from a million-mile drop, she LEANED FORWARD, over the railing, to take a picture. And I almost passed out.

It felt like the midsection of my body had been annihilated and my shoulders would now crash down to my hips. My hands were shaking so impossibly hard they looked like they were in disco lights.

I admitted to Tickby now that I was now learning I didn't like heights. We both laughed for a minute, at the weirdness of it all, and then I went to find a place to sit down. I came across a wonderful little pocket or non-death - an area between two buildings, with a bench! - and sat down to wait.

And CRIED for like five minutes.

Even as it happened, I was weirdly fascinated by all of this. I knew that there was nothing to cry about. I knew in my head that I wasn't sad, that it was a great day. I was in a beautiful place. I knew I wasn't in danger, that people ride these gondolas and visit these boob-mountains all day every day and none of them die from fear-fainting over the sides. I knew all of this, and yet could not stop the woozies, or the super-sads, and this was very interesting. I thought that as soon as I got home I would find and scour tons of reading material on irrational fears and learn all about whatever psychiatrists have discovered and concluded about them.

I of course didn't do this, because, you know, BORING, but I sure thought I would that day on the boob.

thanksgiving aboboros

Last week i made a pumpkin pie that was so delicious my clitoris fell off. For serious, it was like, 'Sorry Cill, I can't compete with this shit. Peace. (Thunk.)'

It was disturbingly delicious. Mark and I tasted it at the same moment and both froze. I didn't know what was happening. Mark started talking in one word sentences: 'This. Is. The. Best. BEST. Pie. I've. Ever. Had.' My eyes felt like they were exiting my head in slow motion.

Context: I'm not a very good baker. I don't do it often, and when I do the results are middling at best. I almost never eat desserts and sweets and stuff, so the art of making them has never been a priority.

But I found myself two days before Thanksgiving with a long list of cooking and baking tasks because my GERMAN fiance said he would love to celebrate the holiday, and I don't have a job so felt obligated to make it happen.

Something I learned about Brazilians: They don't make pies. Something else: They don't seem to want you to make pies either.

Not one of the zillion shops I looked in had the things you buy before Thanksgiving. NOT ONE OF THEM.

So I had to make pumpkin puree, which involved buying a pumpkin, severing it Jeffrey Dahmer style, piling it into the oven Albert Fish style, pulling it out and peeling off the skin Eddie Gein style, blending it in batches Richard Chase style, and then cramming it all into tupperware like Dahmer again.

I also had to make pie crust. Do not read blogs that tell you it is easy. It is not easy. Or maybe the actual assembling of the dough is kind of easy, but the shit makes a huge mess and every second of it is a shrill reminder of how unhealthy pastries are, fistfuls of butter and flour and sugar. The only ingredient I actually include in my diet was the ice water.

Another necessity: 'pumpkin pie spice.' You can of course just buy a jar of this shit in the USA. But not here. Because Brazil tries to thwart pie. This was easy enough, just cinnamon and nutmeg and clove and ground ginger, but this seemed like a lot of things to to buy and then only use tiny amounts of.

So anyway, all this felt like a trail of rabbit holes, but finally culminated in a pie in the oven. And I had to admit that it smelled like nirvana-paradise-heaven. It also looked beautiful, because the puree was a very vivid bright orange. When i buy a can of puree in the states it's a more browny orange. This was like stoner-vision.

Anyway, I was cooking tons of other things and they smelled nice too and I let the pie cool and set in the fridge and forgot about it until we were at the table and it was time for dessert.

And then as you know I tasted it and my clitoris quit its job and left town.

Furthermore, something you should know about Mark: whenever something tastes good he says he wants to put his dick in it. He's said it about cashew cream, butternut squash bisque, and vegetable risotto. And he of course said it about this pie.

And a thought occurred to me.

"Do it," I said. "Put your dick in it. There's nobody else here, it's just us. No one else would ever know."

He hesitated.

I emphasized, "This might never be possible again. Nothing is stopping you right now in this moment from putting your dick in a pie at the Thanksgiving table. Do it. Put your dick in it. Put your penis in the pie."

And he said: "I would actually rather like to eat it."

Not after serious consideration, but he chose eating this pie over a ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY to put his dick in a holiday dessert. THAT'S how delicious it was.

We have been trying since to figure out what is going on here making this pie so special. We made two more pies, thinking they wouldn't be as good. The plan was to make one for our neighbors who are always giving us fresh veggies from their garden. But we made two, because we figured my beginner's luck would run out and it wouldn't be good and our neighbors would choke on its horrible taste and die and it would be our fault and no more free veggies.

But we tasted the control pie and it was every bit as terrifyingly delicious as the Thanksgiving one. Mark had it for breakfast, with lunch and before and after dinner.

And our stoic elderly german neighbor saw me on the sidewalk later and shouted, with a GIGUNDUS GRIN, 'The cake is fantastic good!'

And his wife returned the plate within two days and asked for the recipe. She too is now on the case for what is making it so confounding-ly good. And she's going to make it for her family at christmas.

We think it's a combo of awesome Brazilian produce, the American kinds of spices, and maybe even the condensed soy milk i found somewhere, which was surprisingly not disgusting.

This mystery may never be solved. and Mark will likely never put his ween in a pie. And I, clitless, return to the familiar, quiet peace of no desserts.