VAGABOND PICNIC: VAGABOND PICNIC: Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House

VAGABOND PICNIC: VAGABOND PICNIC: Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House

Rio de Janeiro and the Queen of Santa Teresa

• No matter how big the city we always turn it into a village. I arrived in Rio de Janeiro and moved into the Santa Teresa neighbourhood.  I immediately felt at home even though I didn't speak the language.  Santa Teresa sits uphill and north of the beaches.  It is a neighbourhood that is clearly being gentrified but at the moment it still has enough rough edges to keep it interesting.  It's Bohemian and hip but it is still the barrio.  It's a nice mix of old timers, art types and European travellers.  The streets wind up and downhill and provide occasional views letting you know you are indeed still in a big modern city. The city views belie the fact that your immediate surroundings feel decidedly like a much smaller place.

One constant in Santa Teresa became the daily greeting from a girl I saw as the face of the neighbourhood.  She was 7 or 8 years old and I saw her every day.  I noticed that everyone else on the street would greet her with a friendliness that conveyed a great deal of respect.  I never did figure out who her parents were.  She was on the street day and night, always alert, always happy.
Every day on the street you would encounter the usual people who indeed spent more time on the street than in their homes.  The weather and general neighbourliness made the street more living room than stretch of car ready pavement.

There was once a street car servicing Santa Teresa but no longer.  People tell me it is being rebuilt but I see no evidence of this.
I was here as Carnaval was beginning and many nights the local Samba school would practice at my corner.  I'd see them arrive in small gathering waves and watch as the carefully orchestrated chaos unfolded.  Within a short time the whole Barrio was a pounding sea of sweating, gyrating unabashed cheer.

I stayed in a guest house in Santa Teresa called Casalegre.  It was a perfect spot to get to know the Neighbourhood. The people at Casalegre would always invite to events and were generous with their knowledge of the neighbourhood.  

In Cinelandia I met the woman in the picture below. She had a cart that she shared with her dogs. I talked to her a while in my fumbling Portuguese. She was taking care of street dogs. People donated food and local business provided water.

Carnaval seemed to break out spontaneously throughout the city.

Rio de Janeiro is as amazing as it's myth. Barrio Santa teresa was the perfect neighbourhood to base out of.  After a day of Rio beach and metro travel it was a nice place to come home to.

I decided to stop putting photos on this blog for a bit as I am Rio de Janeiro and everyone is photographing every moment I see about me. The people here are obsessed with the capturing of every second. So I quit.  I'm sure someone has an absurd picture of me and things here. But on that subject a young man on the boat trip down the Amazon stayed to himself. On the last day of that trip at sunrise he came over and asked me to take a picture of him. Then he took out a small canister and  dumped the contents into the brown and infinite water. We both knew he had just left the heartfelt remnants of his father in the passing stream. He said nothing I said nothing but I was happy to know that he trusted me with that moment. That might be the best photograph I will never show. Also it was his camera and I don't have it.

VAGABOND PICNIC

VAGABOND PICNIC

Back in the tropics I left the jungle to take a vacation in Rio de Janeiro. I was tried and tested by the jungle and thought ya Rio. First it might be the best city created. Second I am just a tourist here. But the jungle would not leave me. I awoke this morning knowing that I had made a tropical mistake. I ate a mango in the kitchen. As a wise woman once told me the mango is only to be eaten in the shower. You should share it. But no I carved my mango on the sink and devoured it alone like the slurping gready kid I am. So the consequence of this foolish behaviour was that I awoke to an ant crawling up my left nostril.  I have  thing about ants. Cougars and bears might fall to your human power if  you are aided by a knife  and some vitality  but the ant will move in numbers not even mentioned in the bible. When I once lived in another jungle I saw an army of ants devour a swath of forest. So now one of the bastards is moving into my sinus cavity. For all I know it is calling the others from he forest to say here I have found an old and dying carcass that we can feast on. Ants.  So I discovered the bastards swarming in my room. One up my nose.
The ants will win.

VAGABOND PICNIC: 4 days on a boat in the Amazon

VAGABOND PICNIC: 4 days on a boat in the Amazon

VAGABOND PICNIC: 4 days on a boat in the Amazon

VAGABOND PICNIC: 4 days on a boat in the Amazon

4 days on a boat in the Amazon

When I started asking around in Leticia Colombia about getting a boat to Manaus my innocent query was met with concern. Had I somehow run out of funds?  "There is an airplane. The boat is dirty and ugly and is not for you".  Still I was able to find a boat and it was leaving in two days.  Most passengers sling hammocks on the deck and sleep there.  It is a four day trip down the Amazon from Tabatinga Brazil to Manaus.  I heard stories of the hammock decks onboard.  It looked like steerage on a turn of the century cross Atlantic ship.  Indeed as I boarded I saw a rush for spots and found that the hammocks were strung so close that you were indeed touching your neighbour. An hour later the second and third layers developed. Literally hammocks and their varied occupants in three tiers.  Young and old, whole families a few European backpackers all crushed onto the two decks.  I walked by this bedlam and was very glad that I had paid for a cabin.  The cabin was two bunks in a tin box but it had the luxury of a private toilet.  When I saw the toilet I realized all those people, 400 in total, were sharing 5 or 6 toilets.

The boat left on time and soon I was chugging down the Amazon.  On the upper deck there was a small snack shack and about twenty plastic chairs scattered about.  The sun was setting on the passing jungle and it was perfect.

We stopped at every place that imitated a town along the river.  It is a lot of river.  I was amazed to see yet more people boarding at every port.

The first morning we pulled up to a small Amazon town as the sun was rising. The light and mood were brilliant.  I love to watch a small place waking up for the day.  As a bonus a pod of river dolphins were jumping around the bow.  I've always thought of dolphins as the thugs of the sea.  They act like a bike gang swimming through an aquatic version of Rebel Without a Cause.  Added to this infamy is the Amazon belief that women can become impregnated by river dolphins.  Men are pretty gullible and we are able to believe that a wife could become pregnant after being beguiled by a devil dolphin while we are away.

All along the river you pass small villages and single huts set back from the bank.  There are no roads along the route.  The river is the only transportation route.  500 metres into the jungle I would likely perish within hours.  It looks like it will grow in behind your every footstep as you move.  I am thankful for the breeze provided by the boats momentum.



After day two a routine develops on board. Food is served in small room aft.  You line and wait as the room seats about twenty at a time.  While I was prepared for simple fair I was a bit taken aback on the first night.  I sat down and looked to see what the procedure was.  A woman came from the kitchen with a steel pail. She put the sloshing pail  down in the middle of the table.  This was dinner.  It was a kind of greasy soup/stew.  The next day things improved a little.  There was rice and beens with chicken. This would prove to be the daily fair.  By day three I was looking forward to lunchtime.  It was simple but just fine. It was certainly consistent.

Days were spent reading and trying to speed learn some essential Portuguese.  There were a lot of kids on board.  They ran around and seemed able to keep themselves entertained.  One kid had a tarantula in a bottle that he would take out whenever he spotted a potential victim.

On the fourth morning Manaus presented itself on the horizon.  It is not exactly the jewel of the Amazon.

Suggested reading.

River of Doubt

Where the River Runs Black

One River, Wade Davis

Lost City of Z

Amazon

Amazon 2015

  Leticia Colombia is as interesting for being where it is as what it is.  It is the southernmost town in Colombia. If you get in a local canoe and make the short hop across the Amazon River you enter Peru. It is also easy to head out for a walk and find yourself in Brazil. The border exists only as an unnoticed notion in this area.  It has in the past served as a haven for smugglers of all manner of black market material, some of it still squirming and squalking.  It still feels very much like a frontier.

As the Amazon is so much in the international imagination you will find many options to do jungle tours etc.  I skipped things like "monkey island" and did a few trips on local transport. The most common forms of local transportation are the wide variety of boats that line the riverbank.  There are scheduled boats that leave Leticia and stop at every shack on the river. The locals returning to their homes all carry at least their own weight again in goods picked up in town. You will have to crawl through bags and bags of rice, boxes with flat screen TVs and bales of barbed wire to get to your too small for your Gringo ass seat. You also see people who do not get on the boat handing off parcels with scribbled names to the attendant. These packages will be handed off as you make your way upstream. All in all it is a great day on the river.

Two hours upriver from Leticia I got off in Puerto Narino.  I was expecting a typical Colombian dump of a jungle town. Amazingly Puerto Narino looks almost like a Garcia Marquez version of the magical tropical village. They have cement streets and all the houses are painted. In itself the use of paint is unique in that it is paint. Paint is generally something that you buy only after all the real necessities have been taken care of.  Paint in rural Colombia is a luxury, a symbol of apparent affluence.

After walking a few blocks I realized that the streets were devoid of motorized transportation. No river of motorcycle, no stench of diesel.  Then the rain began. It is a rain forest. I found shelter with some locals in a market building. As it was not market day the building was empty except for one guy with a bag of plastic shoes on offer. I struck up a conversation with a young man who decided to tag along. He took me to a school out of town. This is the part I hate.  Missionaries.  After a while the kid told me his friends had all left the school after being sexually abused. I was surprised, not by the allegations of abuse but at the fact that the locals had not razed the school.

We continued into deeper jungle and the kid told me he was studying ecology and Indiginous plants. He was a native and his Spanish was heavily accented but good. He took great pride in describing almost every plant and tree we passed. After I had sweated through my clothes I suggested we head back. Back in the almost too ideal town we stopped at a shack by the football pitch. A refrigerator on the porch indicated that this was a store and bar. As we sat on a bench and drank canned sugar water a giant macaw flew out of the thick brush and landed on a stool beside us. This was almost too much. I thought maybe someone was putting on the stupid Gringo.  But no.  This is Puerto Narino.

Cartagena 2013

Cartagena  Colombia 2013.  I had a hard time starting this.  Many years ago I realized that I was a poor Canadian. Both in terms of money and the Canadian notion that winter is "The real Canada".  I have not spent a whole winter in Canada since I discovered Latitude and longitude.   Much of my youth was spent in Colombia.  I love Colombia so I travel there occasionally and this year I went to see if I might care to return for some extended time.
Colombia today is not the Colombia of the eighties. The whole drug issue has gone legit. People say that the drug trade has moved on but I think the deals are the same, it's just that the deals are now done in office towers and the street scene has been abandoned.  The day I arrived in Cartagena a ship was busted with 400 tonnes of coke in La Bahia de Cartagena.  This headline dispelled the notion of a country renewed by a bustling textile industry.

Cartagena has become very popular with both the wealthy internationalistas and the back packing adventure crowd. What hipster doesn't improve his social standing by means of a Colombian stamped passport. So I was a bit adrift here. I fit neither of these demographics and felt oddly at odds with a city that was once my home. One night at a cafe with a Colombian friend she looked at me and saw my disappointment with the scene around us.  Rude of me to be disappointed to see people living well and enjoying themselves but she saw what I saw and said... "tu requerdas cuando Cartagena era nuestra?".  Do you remember when Cartagena was ours?  I knew there was something missing but she clarified the point. Cartagena grew up and so did I.  What was missing here was my youth.

It was a bit of a weird winter of travel. Cuba was not to my liking and now Cartagena was adding to a growing belief that I enjoy the road more than the place. The destination seems a small part of the more important event of getting there.  The good result of this understanding is that there is always more getting there than being there.

My Colombian experience was further tainted by a very thorough search of my person and personal history as I departed the country.  I was finger printed and then forced to submit to a full body xray with a machine that looked as if it had been purchased from a garage sale in Chernobyl. They then unloaded my luggage from the plane and examined it 3 more times.  I finally boarded the plane after yet another interrogation.  The poor passengers waited for my final questioning.  As I said the drug deals are now done in office towers.  The customs agents were polite enough as they hunted my things and history but It did leave a mark. 

Cuban Confusion

                                                                                                                                                               

• Places in transition are always appealing. You just never know what is going to happen or how your plans will become irrelevant and rearranged.  Impose prejudice at your peril.

I arrived in Cuba a few weeks ago and like so many others I was there to see what all the talk of transition was about.  It is a hard country to get to know.  I read as much as I could,  "Cuba, a New History" by Richard Gott,  "History of Cuba" by Jose Canton Navarro and the ever delightful Dervla Murphy writing "The Island That Dared".  It's good to do your homework.  There is also a great canon of literature on Cuba but I didn't find much of this really helpful on the ground.  

 I wanted to see the eastern states and get off the very well defined Havana,Trinidad, Santiago trail. This proved to be somewhat interesting. The Cuban Government has made it easier to get around as an independent tourist but you are never able to forget that you are a tourist.

Back street in Trinidad

I arrived in Varadero, the very heart of packaged Cuban tourism. A long stretch of white sand devoured  by a long string of all inclusive hotels.  The local Cubans I met called it a tourist ghetto. I arrived here as it is the cheapest point of entry from Canada. I left immediately but found that the tourist ghetto travelled with me.  Via Azul is a very efficient bus line that is exclusively for tourists. So in my attempt to get out of tourist centre Varadero I was on a bus full of camera clicking Europeans.  This was not what I was looking for.  I tried the next day to board a long hall bus from Holguin to Santiago that was not the tourist bus. I was quickly informed that foreigners were not permitted to ride the subsidized Cuban buses. While this makes sense as there is no reason for the Cubans to subsidize tourist travel I really did not want to get back on the bus that carried exclusively my own likeness.  So stubbornly I contracted a driver at hefty expense and continued.  This was a good choice as I got a little more insight into the daily life in Cuba. The driver was overeducated and as I was to discover over and over again as he, like most Cubans I met was very proud of Cuba and while he wished for more opportunity he fully supported Fidel and Raul Castro.  This is the thing.  People feel they have done their bit.  They are very proud of their grand experiment but now they want to see some variety in their lives. I met no one who claimed they would change socialism for a x box and flatscreen TV, but they are yearning for a little more.  This is interesting as unlike many other places Cuba is not confronted by fellow citizens doing much better than they.  They see Fidel Castro and his cohorts living modestly and there is a general sentiment that for better or worse "we are in this together:.

I decided on a night out at a local "Casa de Trova" in Santiago.  It was all it was supposed to be but the night before I was lucky enough to have been a guest at a similar venue in Holguin that was far more interesting. I was the only Gringo in the Holguin music and rum grotto.  The music in both places was as enthusiastically played as it was received. Dance and drink are the main entertainment everywhere in Cuba.  My luck in Holguin was the result of the usual misadventure.  I arrived well after sunset in the pouring rain and was without prearranged accommodation.  A middle aged woman returning from work noticed the dull gaze of the clearly lost and escorted me to a Casa Particular owned by one of her friends.  The small home was all I could have asked for.  Quiet and clean.  I later met the same woman in the town plaza.  At this point I should explain the "jinetera/jinetero issue in Cuba.  Jinatera means jockey as in those who ride the tourists.  It can be a problem but sometimes it is just as simple as a desire to get into a tourist coffee shop or exchange conversation and local knowledge for ice cream or a beer.  If this issue appalls you Cuba will be a challenge.  She informed me that she was a singer. I soon realized that she was somewhat famous as people kept stopping by to chat.  It was she who invited me to the tiny Holguin club. I was introduced to the band and some local writers. This was to be one of the few times in Cuba that I felt I was seeing the way Cubans live.

I travelled around the south eastern part of the island for a couple more weeks and I have to say I never did get close to understanding Cuba. Obviously on a month long trip you are foolish to think you can find the heart of a place.
Outside of the serious tourist areas you become somewhat invisible. Locals in very recent times were not to speak to foreigners. There is a nasty version of neighbourhood watch that still exists in Cuba.

The embargo is rightfully blamed for many of Cubas problems but along with the recent overtures to "market forces" there likely will arrive a corresponding change in attitudes to the big world we all now live in.

I think Cubas brave face will prevail. The new market forces will be governed by Cubans but some element of internationalism is clearly arriving. You see it in the dress of the young and salsa competes with hip hop at many a street corner rum shop.

The one thing I did learn in Cuba is that no island is an island.

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VAGABOND PICNIC: Border crossing

VAGABOND PICNIC: Border crossing

Border crossing

I was reminded of all the border crossings I have known as I made the Peace Arch border from the US to Canada and back on foot.  This is clearly a car centric culture. A pedestrian at this border is a suspect. The circumstance of my ambulatory arrival at this clumsy frontier was simple. I had purchased a car in the US and it had to clear customs. The border says the car stays for three days to clear customs. I have to leave the car in the US for three days to examine criminal history of said conveyance.  So I, shanks mare proceed  to the country of my origin. Passport in hand I cannot be denied entry to my own country.  Entering Canada on foot I  look around at a bleak fog and serious highway and realize I am not going to meet the hoped for horde of Taxi drivers who frequent all the other border crossings I know. I ask a customs agent how I might find public transit. Laughter is followed by a a helpful call to a criminal taxi. My situation seems so unusual that there must be a financial penalty. The taxi fare is the fine for the strange act of arriving at a border on foot.  My crime is not only pedestrian it is that I am a pedestrian.  Three days on I am back at the border and shanks mare again I now have to enter the new USA.
 I have my documents for the vehicle and after a half hour of polite interrogation I am left to find my way through bleak frontier to bleak town.  The scarified stretch you see on pedestrian examination is clear. This is the border.  Ford provides the shelter for the border guards who nap on side streets.
 This crossing complicated by cars made me think of all the border crossings.

Costa Rica to Panama on the east coast was memorable. It was the rainy season and I was wandering. At this border the car did not prevail. In fact it was a border a car could not transit. The Dole company provides an abandoned railway bridge which serves as this border crossing.  The history of this bridge is the history of capitalist empire. The history of the Dole company is a worthy read.  On my rain soaked crossing I met a poor German whose papers were not in order. For him this crossing would be a 3 day ordeal as he ignored my gesture to throw a few pesos into his passport. Perhaps he desired that adventure. I walked the rain soaked trestle into Panama.

Flying into Delhi India with an undocumented film crew was curious. The crew was not at all a love fest. I was trying to figure out who was who and early on discovered our prima dona camera guy would be a problem. He was not fit for the task at hand. We were going into refugee camps on the India Pakistan border.  It was not to be a four seasons trip. We arrived with way too much gear and the customs agent wanted it all documented. After an 18 hour day in the air I wanted us hoteled quickly.  By good fortune the flight behind us was from Sweden and as the Indian officials turned their attention to blonde travel we walked through forgotten.  A crossing unnoticed. The best kind.

Pina Palmera

I am suspicious of all do gooding.  I find that it is often the case the person who rounds up the needy to represent them gains much more than the needy themselves.  I see United Way executives spending more time at conferences in Europe than they do building programs to help others.
 So when I was invited to Pina Palmera to see their operation in the Mexican town of Zipolite (where I was staying) I had some reservations.  Was there a religious component? The answer was no. OK good. Did they have a traveling executive board? No again. Were they familiar with the Paris Four Seasons Hotel?  No. OK good.  Pina Palmera acts as an advocacy and education group for the handicapped in Mexico.  As I have said before, Mexico is in many ways similar to Canada in the 60s.  It is common for families to hide away a handicapped child and keep them outside of the social realm for their entire lives.  The folks at the Pina Palmera centre work to integrate the handicapped into the general population by giving them skills and a sense of genuine worth.

During my visit I saw people performing all of lifes normal tasks, cleaning,cooking, making objects to sell and generally working.  The centre sends people to other communities to teach inclusion and acceptance for the handicapped. They also provide physical rehab and volunteer doctors visit to do what volunteer doctors do.

My visit to the Pina Palmera Centre was short and I don't pretend to know more than one can from a short visit but I was impressed. The thing I liked most was that I have known about this place for years and yet I didn't. That is because they go about their work quietly and patiently and they do not seek any merit points or accolades.  I am impressed.
They as always are broke and here is the bite. You can donate at HSBC, Plaza Potchutla. Oaxaca,Sucursal: 0842.  Account # 4032851404 key 630040328514043.

OK enough of my do gooding.  I will return to my regular musings next week.