Part I: On the road
Kiri made it. She did arrive to Brazil as planned. And as planned back in Scotland, she was still up for hitch-hiking from Rio de Janeiro to the Amazon.
We had a month before her return flight and we were determined to make it the most enjoyable month possible. And we did! As crazy as it sounded at the beginning, we actually managed to reach the Amazon by hitch-hiking. We travelled with about 35 different drivers, we crossed eight states, covered about 3600 km of land and additional thousands on the boat. We spent 16 days on the road and about 8 days on the boat. We slept in sheds, motels with no doors on the toilet, house for immigrants, hammocks, hospital, boats, we were hosted in family houses by random people and by friends. We visited the always protesting São Paolo, the dangerous and always alive Rio de Janeiro, the most futuristic city of Brasilia, the beautifully preserved historic city of Goias Velho, the wild life of Pantanal, the chaotic city of Manaus with its beautiful European style theatre and the most beautiful river beach of Santarem.
Sometimes we were scared, sometimes we cried and often we starved. Mostly, however, we laughed. We tasted different exotic fruits, and with fascination observed the breath taking beauty of Brazil. The hitch-hiking experience was also the best intensive language course I’ve ever had. Most drivers spoke only Portuguese which provided us with very good opportunity to pick up new words. Sometimes, however, my understanding of the language put us into a very weird situation. Or maybe I understood everything well and we actually did appear in a weird situation, hard to tell…
‘You girls are crazy,’ said the driver when we got into his car as so many had before him.
‘You know that it’s dangerous, right? There are many good people, but Brazil is also full of bad guys. You need to be very careful,’ most drivers would continue their warnings. Not this one though. Kiri and I had been already hitching for 16 days. On day 16 we had only 200 km left to the port in Porto Velho and this was suppose to be our last car.
Our experience had been very good up to that moment. But then for the very first time, we broke our rule of never entering a car with two men. We regretted it immediately.
‘You girls are crazy,’ said the driver with a sly smile. ‘But that’s good. We could enjoy some fun later in Porto Velho, what do you think? We can show you the city and go for a drink later.’
‘I don’t think so. We’re catching a boat tonight,’ I refused the offer.
‘It’s the beginning of the carnival. It’s a great time. Time of … er… orgy. You know, people having fun. Everybody having sex with everybody. There’s lots of foreigners coming for that. The foreigners love our tanned girls as we love the white girls. It’s more exotic, you know. You can have lots of fun there. What do you say?’
This guy was weird, I thought. Anything I asked him, he directed his answer to talking about sex.
‘I don’t like Brazilian guys. Plus I have a boyfriend. And Kiri is getting married next year,’ I lied to make ourselves clear that we were not into them.
‘Did many drivers try to seduce you?’ asked the driver’s companion. He was less obsessed with the sexual topics, but he couldn’t have helped himself either.
‘No. The drivers take us because they want to help and because they may be happy to talk to somebody on their long journey. That’s all.’
They laughed at the fact that I became all red. I don’t know if my colour changed because of my growing impatience with them or because of me starting to understand that the talks will just be worse and worse. It was getting very uncomfortable to be with these two in one car.
‘One of them is strong,’ I overheard the driver saying. Then they turned the music up so I couldn’t hear more. Did they realise I was listening to them?
‘We need to get out, Jana,’ Kiri summarised our situation after I told her what I had heard.
‘You girls have a GPS?’
‘Yes, we do. Always on.’
‘Jana, why the hell are they asking us about the GPS?’ I didn’t know. But I agreed with Kiri that we needed to get out of the car as soon as possible.
‘There’s a petrol station soon. That’s our best bet. I’ll tell them to stop there.’
‘Are you in touch with your families?’
‘Yeah, of course. And I live in Brazil so it’s easy for me to be in touch with my friends. I constantly message somebody about our progress so if anything happens to us, they’ll know soon.’ I lied again and realised that it would be actually a good idea to message somebody about where we are and what jerks we just encountered.
‘See, there’s a forest road over there. And then there’s a river.’
I didn’t need to hear more. I just wanted us to get out of the car immediately.
‘Can you stop at the petrol station, please? I need to pee really badly.’ I asked when we were approaching it. I was already shaking with fear but I tried to sound as light as I could so they didn’t suspect why we wanted them to stop. Then I continued asking them about their family life and other stupid things just to distract their thoughts.
The car eventually stopped. Once there were other people around us, I asked the driver for our bags and announced our decision to stay at the petrol station. He didn’t protest. Just gave me a weird look and gave us our backpacks.
We waited for about an hour for me to stop shaking and then continued to our final destination. Hitch-hiking again.
I’m not sure how much of this story happened just because of my bad translation and how much was real. They were searching for a property to buy in the area and that’s probably why they discussed the forest road. Their comments about the carnival were quite inappropriate but they were not the only ones telling us exactly the same thing. It might be that they were just unpleasant uneducated stupid jerks, but without any bad intentions. Hard to tell… In either case, it was a very strong lesson to remember that we should never ever get into a car with more than one men.
Before you jump into a conclusion that it is stupid to hitch-hike, let me emphasise how many good people we met. Some drivers invited us for lunch, others prayed for us, one lawyer gave us his card if we ever needed a legal help, a hostel owner provided us with free accommodation, a truck driver gave us a kilo of chocolates that he was transporting and a sailor got us on a boat for free. In the other situations I did not feel unsafe. People tried to protect us, to help us. Sometimes they flirted but if there was no response, they left us in peace.
Overall, I loved the experience. It taught us a lot about the country, different places, different people. We learnt what we could never learn if we travelled by any other conventional way.
Part II: On the boat
The first part of our trip was very exhausting. Always talking to somebody, switching between the languages. Never having certainty where we will be the following day or where we will sleep. Reaching the port was like reaching the heaven. We could just relax on the boat, talk to noone, worry about nothing. So I thought…
Unfortunately, while we were on the boat, Kiri went down with the dengue fever or the Zika virus and we needed to go to the hospital since she was getting worse and worse. It was the most interesting medical experience of our lives. Her symptoms developed fully while we were in the middle of nowhere so we ended up in a hospital where you never want to end up.
‘She probably has the dengue fever or the zika virus,’ informed us the doctor and asked us to wait for the blood test results. They took us to a room where Kiri could comfortably lie down with a dip in her veins. In the bed next to her was a pregnant woman and around us were flying a few mosquitoes.
‘Erm… Madam. Do you think we could be taken into another room? My friend might have the zika virus so maybe it’s not good if she stays together with the pregnant woman in the same room,’ I asked the nurse.
‘Ah, don’t worry. She’s just waiting for some results and she’ll be out soon.’
When I came back to the room an hour later, Kiri, the pregnant woman and the mosquitoes were still sharing the same space. I couldn’t ask for a stronger proof that some Brazilians do not believe that the brain deficiency in new borns is caused by the zika. In this hospital, they seemed to be quite convinced that there is no link. Or they were just oblivious.
Fortunately for the baby, Kiri was diagnosed with the dengue. Unfortunately for Kiri, she got the worst type of all and needed to stay in the hospital for three days since she was at risk of bleeding out.
I guess these were the three worst days of the trip for her. She was literally left on the bed and asked to wait to feel better. They didn’t give her not even a blanket nor pillow. Just the bed. They served her food which she couldn’t eat due to her diets and she was not allowed to use their phone to call her family.
This was a truly awful experience, but we survived even that. Back on the boat, we huddled into our hammocks and felt comfortable and happy again. There was one more week left for us to enjoy and we made the best out of it. We tasted the authentic Amazonian acai (exotic berries which taste horrible) and watched the most amazing night sky together on the Amazon river. With that everything, else was forgotten.
…
Thank you, Kiri, for being such a good company. I didn’t believe that I could spend a month just with one person without going crazy. I loved your jokes by which you always kept me happy however grumpy I felt. Thank you for taking great pictures and for always pointing beautiful details to me. I miss you telling me: ‘Jana, look. What a lovely bird.’ I know, my ‘hm’ as a response didn’t seem I appreciated it. But I did and all the details are now part of the great memories I’ll keep in my head forever.
Teach in Brazil 