Away We Go
2 novembre 2000
Dear Friends and Family,
(Written on my laptop in the hotel room)
I've been suffering from a bad case of bad shrimp but we should be on the move again today.
The guys tell me that the other caravan is very nearby and we hope to see them soon. We are just fine but crave the companionship of our own, an affliction that all expatriates seem to face sooner or later which is probably exacerbated by our total ignorance of Portuguese.
This makes the simplest thing, like ordering a bowl of soup from room service, a frustrating experience. When I'm feeling well, it's quite possible, with a little humor, to manage with Spanish. When I'm sick, it's very difficult. Portuguese is a very interesting and beautiful language. It seems to combine elements of Spanish and French with the special twist of leaving some consonants out (which is common among Spanish speaking people, anyway) and creating whole new ways of pronouncing consonants. For example, Rio is pronounced Heeow. This makes it quite possible, if you read Spanish, to read Portuguese and get the drift of what you've read but turn a simple telephone conversation about a bowl of soup into an indecipherable code which you haven't broken yet.
I haven't seen much but my bed lately but I've seen enough to know that from the minute you reach the coast, Brazil changes drastically. The interior of Brazil may be the harshest place I've ever been. The weather was brutally hot. I believe that it dictates a very low key lifestyle. When we try to superimpose an urban lifestyle on such a place, it becomes necessary to introduce all those things that we take for granted, like cars and air conditioning. But, it's very difficult to keep those things functioning well in the jungle. Not to mention that all roads seem to be a thin layer of asphalt laid over dirt which immediately breaks up into enormous potholes which seem determined to rip apart the very vehicles for which they were intended. This requires one to drive very slowly and cautiously so as not to hit them at 65 mph!
At any rate, the Amazon is a very difficult place to modernize and urbanize. As a result, there are incredible numbers of very poor people, perhaps the poorest I have ever seen. I do believe this was my first upclose and personal experience with open sewers. You don't necessarily get the real impact of that when you fly into such places and taxi to a hotel. I was starting to think that all of Brazil would be the same.
However, on our first day on the coast in Fortaleza, we were looking for a campground that we'd read about in a small beach town to the south. As we were driving through the town we noticed that the houses were far, far better than any we'd seen before in Brazil. Wait! That's a two car garage! A swimming pool! And, my, my, that wonderful ocean breeze! We were so happy that not all Brazilians are poor!
I woke up for the second day in the same hotel room today, but today was the first time I looked out the window and saw the marvelous view of the ocean and felt the breeze on my face and felt glad to be here.
We're off again.
I love you, Family.
More soon.
Jeanne
