Pronounced, “BAY-leng”. The Amazon greets us as we embark off our plane with a tornado of sqawking electric blue birds flinging themselves into a nearby tree.
The entrance into the city, however, is grim. The streets are deserted with modern, characterless grungy, buildings. The only person I note is suspect; he sits high upon his flat roof in a lawnchair, stares at the empty streets below him. We pass a prostitute, red lips glaring in the cab’s headlights. Our taxi has no seatbelt, and the roads are in sore disrepair. We jostle around the interior of our speeding cab like a pair of dice. Our driver doesn’t speak english, and I despair as my trials at Portuguese fail to make an impact upon him. After many attempts to pronounce the name and address of our hotel, he quickly drops us, and our backpacks, in front of “Le Massillia”. But the door won’t open, and a group of men leer at us from the bar across the street. There is a moment of panic; we are in a city half way across the world, in a hostile-looking street, a group of stange men ogle us, we speak pathetic Portuguese, and we are certain to die. This just before we see the doorbell.
Gratefully inside, we barely take in our room before we plunge into bed and sleep. We wake, still exhausted from our whirlwind tour of Rio, the flight the night before, and continued jet lag from flying from Canada only two nights before. We force ourselves, with much crankiness, to the dining area for “le petit dejeuner” which ends at 10 am. Outside our room, the damp heat slaps us like some wet towel prank. General impressions of the hotel through sleepy eyes are that it’s beautiful. Everything seems a pleasant blur of wood, slate, palm trees, hammocks and blue sky. But the romance of the hotel and the fresh tropical fruit at breakfast does little to sweeten my foul mood. We stumble upstairs for bed once again.
Once (a little) more awake, we head out to see the city. The air is now blisteringly hot and oppressively humid, but we press on, determined not to let tiredness nor heat wilt us. Past hundreds of vendors who sell their wares on crumbling sidewalks, outside charming decaying colonial buildings, we walk to the docks. Here is the Amazon before us; as wide as a lake and chocolate milk brown. The rainforest across from us is just as I had hoped – thick and canopied.
Beside the docks is a remarkable market. Hundreds of small stalls burst with fruits and vegetables, fresh seafood and spices, aromatic food and merchandise. We wander the market, overwhelmed. Who, of the hundreds of people selling fresh, delicious produce, do we buy from? We settle on a merchant selling clusters of tiny bananas and packages of very local Brazil nuts. The bananas are sweeter and more fuller bodied than the versions we get imported to Canada, and the nuts mildly woody – nothing like the bland, stale ones I’ve tried back home.
Past the market, I begin to feel wretched again. A policeman whistles at us for walking on some grass, and exhaustion from heat, humidity and jet lag builds to a general state of wicked grumpiness. I barely see the charming buildings, the upright monuments and statues, the pleasant parks. I am hungry, and afraid that any more bananas will result in a case of urgently running to the washroom. We roam back and forth through nearby streets in search of something edible, but can find nothing but a small ice cream shop. I buy a pastry filled with I don’t know what, as does James. My pastry turns out to be a blend of savoury seafood. I pray my stomach can handle it.
Once again outside in the heat, my irritability increases. I smell rotting seafood and overripe fruit and watch filthy, matted dogs struggle over a piece of gristle as mean vulture-like birds circle overhead. The heat is a torment, a clamp upon me. “I want to go home! I hate this crumbling city with its millions of dingy busses and rusted cars crashing past me, its disgustingly dirty dogs, its smelly harbours and grizzled river birds. I hate this wretched country!”, I think as I motor, on foot, past people I’m sure only want to rob me of my stupid, undeserved North American wealth.
We enter a large pastel blue building in search of a bathroom. There is no bathroom, but we are drawn upstairs anyway, to its airy openness above the market, its windows open to the river and to the rainforest across. I stagger to a heavy wooden table, plunk into a sturdy chair and lay my head on the table. It was crazy, “louco”, I think, of us to come here to Brazil, where we know hardly speak Portuguese. I feel like a greasy exploitive gringo who only spreads frustration. My need to go to the bathroom has dissipated, but my need to talk is urgent. Verbal diarrhea ensues.
Its hard to be in a place we are so obviously different. Our far-awayness is evident to all by the pale colour of our skin, the practical plainness of our clothes, and the fact that our Portuguese is sub-par. Especially frustrating for me is not being able to converse with anyone. Every interaction is a struggle to communicate. I talk my frustrations away. After a trip to the washroom and a bottle of water, I am renewed. We head for some food.
Pirucu de Casaca is a blend of pirucu fish, manioc flours, coconut milk, palm oil and banana. It has a happy, funky (the good kind of funky) flavour. James has Manicoba, a strong, heavily smoked stew made from manioc leaves, with sausages and other unidentifiable meats. It’s the colour of blackened spinach, and its taste is reminiscent of cigarrettes. I am impressed with how much he eats, considering the dish tastes like vegetables and charcoal. After this, we treat ourselves to passionfruit and acai gelato. The passionfruit is startlingly refreshing, vibrant and yet soothing to the palate. The acai (ah-say-ee), a deep aubergine colour, is creamy, wheaty and full bodied. I like it a lot.
In the evening we go on a sunset cruise down the river. There is a mild breeze as an energetic couple shows us traditional Brazilian dancing and costumes. The two person band plays a samba tune, and James and I get up to dance in a circle with strangers. The sun sets magenta over the Amazon canopy, and I think, “What was all the fuss before about?”