I flew back into Santiago on a Sunday evening, emaciated and exhausted. My white tshirt was damp with five days of sweat and imbued with grime and ash along the front, having saturated the excrements of Rio de Janeiro´s polluted air like a sponge. I sat in a corner of the bus that took recent arrivals into the city center, privately munching cashews and huddling closely to myself in an effort to cage my stench so as not to ruin the tranquility of the polished and chic Santigunos that surrounded me—people with neither the time nor patience for such public nuisances.

It was strange to return here after a mobile month in Brazil, a trip for which I was ill prepared for culturally and monetarily. What I knew when I decided to go was that for a week in February, every urban center of the country is transformed into a huge party known as Carnaval, one of the wildest booze-soaked celebrations in the world where sin and excess reign and vices are exhausted before the Catholic season of Lent, and that I had a list of my own vices to fulfill…but that was as far as my knowledge went. I had not considered going even as late as December, while most people booked their hostels and excursions many months in advance.

When my friend Laura said she would spend Carnaval in Salvador, a city on the Eastern coast, and planning to get their via the Amazon River, I ditched my plans for a predictable excursion to Macchu Pichu and set out to get a Brazilian visa. Something about picturing myself with a goofy smile, hiking boots and sunglasses standing in front of grand Inca ruins—a carbon-copy photo I´d seen dozens of times already—gave my stomach a dull turn. Not that I would pass up such an opportunity if given no other choice, but in my mind it was in the realm of the Known, colored with grays and navy blues. The proposed trip to Brazil had some FIRE associated with it, reds and yellows and oranges, some mystery; God knows that in the Google era one must willingly leap toward the evaporating patches of unknown, lest one wishes to drown in a swamp of itineraries, slideshows, and mundane chatter. On top of that, Tufts would pay the airfare for wherever I wanted to go. Therefore Brazil was the only rational choice.

Iquitos, Peru

My flight was booked for January 24 for Iquitos, Peru, an isolated jungle city at the Western mouth of the Amazon inaccessible by road. Before getting there I had a layover in Lima´s gleaming, spotless international airport, a poor place for one to get a taste of Peru´s reality. While waiting to check-in I watched a red-faced man screaming and pumping his fists at a pizza-faced airline employee for poor service. A rush of familiarity overwhelmed me and my fingers twitched in gruesome anticipation; I had missed the unpredictability of Latin American street justice. The employee was eventually spared a beating however and I moved through all the procedure of air travel until I woke up to wet jungle air of Iquitos.

Walking into the tiny two-terminaled airport I realized I was the tallest one there, all 5’9 of me. I gazed downward at dark Peruvians, most of them older, each marked with deep leathery wrinkles that crossed from the corners of their mouths to high cheekbones that sat just below small brown eyes, anchored by large, indigenous noses. People were running frantically through suffocatingly hot and moist air, the smell of rain mixed with fuel and rubber enveloping everything; a true Peruvian airport.

I grabbed my bags, fumbled for the map to my hotel and stepped outside, upon which I was immediately mauled by a pack of taxidrivers and tourist agents clamoring for business like piranhas fighting over a chunk of meat. I arbitrarily seized one by the shoulder and asked his price, ready to hustle. It was dirt-cheap however and I rode with him and his tourist agent buddy for twenty minutes in what was essentially a cart slapped onto the ass of a motorcycle.

We rattled down potholed streets through a grey fog, passed impoverished buildings and other cyclists, wet gloom pressing in from all sides. The agent was chattering feverishly about a jungle tour package the whole time, though I couldn´t hear what he was saying and nodded moronically to keep him satisfied as he pointed to pictures of crocodiles and birds. When we reached the hotel, I did a complete 180 and rejected his offer in its entirety, telling him I would be in town less than a day while spinelessly avoiding eye contact and groping for my keys. Well aware of the finality of a turned back, I retreated quickly.

 I took one more glance at him while ascending the stairs to see him staring after me with complete stoicness that must have masked the swirls of bad tidings he was wishing upon me internally; dark wishes that would manifest days later in Brazil.

There wasn´t much to do in Iquitos except drink cheap beer, walk around and observe. On all sides of the city was pure green; thick, healthy vegetation, leaving the urban core as a grimy oasis of faulted streets, tin-roofed, dilapidated buildings, and piles of garbage strewn in alleys and sidewalk corners. Half naked children played soccer in small, wet alleys while the city above them sagged with moisture and melancholy. Puddles of oil and putrid water collected in gutters lending their fragrance to the slow air, splashed onto sidewalks by small motorcycles that filled the streets.

Laura arrived late that night, and the next morning we took a mototaxi to a central market to get supplies for the coming boat trip to Tabatinga, a Brazilian city on the border with Peru. Hammocks, rope, food, and water all cost us about thirty dollars—this could have been bargained, but I didn’t have the stomach to hoard money in this place. 

We made it to the dock in the afternoon. It was like a scene out of a Chinese port in 1879: a small sandy beach filled with shirtless young men running back and forth carrying crates of fish, rusted pieces of steel, metal pipes, chickens, more crates, crates of all sizes to two triple decked ships that touched the shore. Farther up on the beach, abused livestock bled from their legs and grunted in pain, cursing their inferior notch on the food chain as small men hauled them onto truck beds. People running, shouting; yellow teeth, brown leathery skin, calloused barefeet moving in all directions. Dirt flying and clinging to every pore. Smells of unwashed humanity, animal waste, and fresh fish all beaten together in a sunny bowl of extreme heat and humidity and splattered in every direction; the den of the Amazonian mosquito.

Just like at the airport, Laura and I were immediately surrounded by men even before we could get out of the taxi, though they possessed an aggressiveness unique to sailors and were doubly motivated by my pretty Asian companion. Hesitant because we could see no other civilian passengers we asked to speak to the captain of their ship, upon which a fat, seemingly half-drunk man staggered forth from the darkness of the cargo cabin, smiling warmly and shouting.

¨Hey! I am the captain, pay me and you can board immediately. ¨

…

¨You´re the captain?¨ I asked.

¨Yes!¨ He lost and quickly regained his footing, and another man put his arm around his back. ¨We leave tonight in La Camilia; it is the only boat to Tabatinga tonight. The only one! It will be a two day journey.¨

¨No, you´re not the captain.¨

We eventually persuaded him to let us hold onto our money and store our baggage onboard until we came across a more respectably dressed man. We soon confirmed that he indeed was not the captain.

We boarded at dusk, and by that time the small three deck boat (passengers on the second two only) was crammed with at least three hundred people, all shuntering and breathing over one another. The boat itself was little more than floating chunk of rusted floating metal. The second and third floor were about 30 x 8 feet and stuffed with hammocks that overlapped each other, and even still there were people who laid blankets on the deck to sleep beneath the madness…and absorb the collective farts of all the hammock dwellers. The walls sweated with people and jungle moisture. For only about five dollars more Laura and I had decided to rent a cabin, though this proved to be little more than a wooden tomb with two cots stacked on top of one another. Only minutes into the trip we discovered leeches and cockroaches in the mattresses, and later a large rat was seen crawling on the wall. Determined to not wake up with bubonic plague and a nutsack full of blood-sucking vermin, I decided to take some adderall and sit on the unoccupied roof of boat all night, for there would be no room to string up our hammocks until some people were dropped off.

The top of the boat. Isolation, sweet isolation. I was completely overwhelmed with circumstance the entire night. I sat surrounded by river everywhere, water on all sides, total, incomprehensible darkness except for a soft white descending from the ship´s shanty beacon, a pathetic illumination, dissolving quickly to black Amazonian night in some unheard capitulation to its vastness. The jungles howled with life even as people slept; unsettling screams and bellows burst from the trees; unknown creatures leapt from the water tearing through the washing noise of the river´s steady current. I sat there for hours, thinking, euphoric, feeling the wind, taking in the buzz and company of giant dragonflies and worms, my skin growing sticky with humidity and dead insects—a filthy, natural assimilation of the purest form, irreversibly plastered to the night. 

Morning came and we reached a small village on the outskirts of the jungle where some people were let off, so room was made for Laura and me to string up our hammocks. I was still not very sleepy, however, and sleep would have been impossible with people moving all around the deck, so I resigned myself to a corner with a 16-year-old Peruvian and his 47-year-old cousin and got drunk. 

 

I liked talking to them. They were genuine, and in a way reminded me of Mexicans from the Valley.

Meals were basically rice and a few strips of pepper served with a chunk of bone, and the rat shit in the cabin deterred me from eating the food we had stored there overnight, so I had an appetite for little else than beer.

There really wasn´t much to do on the ship except read, sleep, and drink. Laura and I were the only gringos, and most of the people our age were too preoccupied openly breast-feeding their children to socialize. Time moved slowly but pleasantly; we eventually landed in Santa Rosa, Peru, on the border with Brazil and Columbia.

Santa Rosa-Leticia-Tabatinga

The town we landed in was part of three different countries: Santa Rosa is Peruvian, Leticia is Columbian, and Tabatinga Brazilian. We landed in Santa Rosa, a city of mud with a few cottages and tikki-hut bars, from which we immediately rushed out of toward Leticia, the nicest of the three. We spent two days there waiting for the next boat that would take us to Manaus, another isolated jungle city but much bigger and smack in the middle of Brazil’s huge Amazonas state.

Leticia is a drug smuggling capital in South America, but having grown up in the Valley, this wasn't too exciting for me. I didn´t do very much because there wasn’t very much to do. It was still the beginning of the trip and I overestimated the amount of money I had, so I blew a lot of it on hearty meals and internet cafes. I would eventually pay for these excesses. 

Boat to Manaus

We took mototaxis to the dock in Tabatinga the morning we were to leave, crossing into the unknown world of Portuguese where pan is pão.  The port was a completely different scene from Iquitos; the place looked like a bus terminal, with walls, a ticket booth, and fares written on the wall. In the place of a drunk pseudo-sailor was a well-kempt woman sitting at a table, checking documents…

I sat down and heard English accents, and turned to see the first pale, blonde haired Europeans I had seen yet on the trip. I later met a number of people from England and Australia (no Americans) and others from all different Latin countries, in addition to Brazilians, who were much less poor than the jungle Peruvians on the last boat.

We boarded, and the layout was the same as La Camila but bigger and much cleaner; there were showers, and flushable toilets that weren´t overflowing with shit at all times of day. There was a bar upstairs and a large deck outside with chairs and tables. There were even two kitchens, and food was abundant, delicious and hot.

By now the euphoria of the Amazon had abated a bit, and because I didnt know Portuguese, all I could do was stumble with the other foreigners in linguistic isolation and enjoy the three day trip. Sleep was plentiful, cards were played, stories relayed, laughs, drinks, songs. By the time we landed we had formed a nucleus that would eventually break off in different directions all over the country.

Manaus

This is where the fun began.

Most of the foreigners stayed in the same hostel near downtown. For eight days I moved back and forth between there and a nearby hotel in a shantier part of the town, depending on which offered the cheapest rate each night.

Manaus was similar to Iquitos but much bigger; another jungle city home to 2 million people, crammed and decrepit with the same sagging quality. A few locals told me that its heyday was in the 60s and 70s, when the government pumped cash into it in an effort to form a tourist mecca for jungle-seekers. Sometime in the past forty years capital became scarce and its flow redirected, leaving the city nearly forgotten and left to rot in the tropical sun like a toy tossed aside by a bored child.

The part of the city I was in was particularly bad, with old dirt-caked buildings stuffed against one another spilling forward onto faulted sidewalks. There didn´t seem to be enough room for all the people that filled the streets everyday; coupled with the heat, it felt like everything was suffocating and competing for air. These people were the crudest and harshest thus far, seemingly ready to bash each other´s heads in for a few fleeting seconds of shade.

It was hard to stay hydrated and I found myself spending more money on liquids than on food. I realized the wisdom of prolonging hunger as long as possible and loitering around hostel kitchens so as to receive unwanted leftovers instead of paying for meals. The reality of my tight budget soon set in, and as my wallet became strapped, so did my stomach. Omnipresent hunger and heat made the days in Manaus slow and sluggish.

It was here I decided to go off by myself to Recife, Brazil to spend Carnaval instead of Salvador. A Brazilian friend told me the party in Recife was more ¨democratic¨ and that everyone, rich and poor, piled into the streets at all times of day to celebrate and enjoy each other. I also had an inexplicable desire to set out by myself and feel some self-reliance…so I booked a flight to Fortaleza, Brazil, in the Northeastern coast, where I´d then take a 12-hour bus to Recife.

Many things happened in Manaus, but three events in particular are worth mentioning:

While walking one night down an empty sidewalk to get my laundry at around 9 p.m, I was randomly stopped by two huge police officers on motorcycles. I didn´t even realize they were there until they were already off their bikes and upon me, grunting in Portuguese. I stood there dumb and mute, wanting to communicate but only stammering broken convictions in Spanish.

“Sir…err, I didn’t do anything. Only walking.”

I raised my hands in the international gesture of innocence, but the larger only loomed closer with a wild look in his eye and barked a nasally barrage of Portuguese threats as if I’d just admitted to fucking his wife. Suddenly he unholestered his pistol and pushed it to my chest; my breathing became unrhythmic, fear and rage thrilling my blood as he shoved me against a nearby wall and searched my entire person. He took my wallet and continued mumbling Portuguese, and I was positive he was going to take my cards and all my money. To my surprise however, after reviewing my identification, he handed me my wallet back and they both left, leaving me with nothing to show for the incident except a boobish look of bewilderment. In retrospect, the whole thing felt confused, stupid, and unnecessary.

***

I went to a village about three hours out town to pet some dolphins. It was tiny place and its only attraction seemed to be this gang of Amazonian dolphins that hung around a dock waiting for food. They were beautiful creatures, but menacing, rising out of the water with their huge mouths wide-open exposing rows of teeth and mounds of pink flesh.

 

I got too playful with one when I pinched its snout together and it retaliated with a vicious bite to my forefinger, drawing blood, and justly so. But only minutes later we watched in terror as another dolphin mauled the hell out of a young girl´s forearm, her screams swelling with greater fear and desperation as the animal savagely thrashed the limb for a solid fifteen seconds. When it finally let go her arm was dripping blood and yellow lumps of fatty tissue were bubbling up from the bite marks.

At that moment I realized how much I disliked animals, incomprehensibly stupid beasts that pass their days rubbing their noses in each other’s shit, oblivious to everything except pangs of hunger and physical pain and having no qualms about ripping off a person’s face if given the slightest incentive to do so. All wild animal trainers around the world are fools, and if they don’t die horribly gruesome deaths at the hands of their beasts it will have been a matter of luck, because you can’t teach out the indifference of nature. I have no spine when dealing with these things and enthusiastically resign myself to neutered chihuahuas for life.

***

Manaus had a few pre-Carnaval festivals in the streets near my hostel during my last weekend there. These were uninhibited, sloppy shows of excess and sexuality; too many people crowded in narrow streets and courtyards in the center of the city, obscenely drunk, with three stages scattered throughout the area blasting the wild, racing beats of Afro-Brazilian music as people danced below and women moved their asses faster than I thought possible by human hips. By that weekend most of my boat friends had moved on to other parts of the country, so only myself and an Argentinean guy went out to the party. Naturally we didn’t intend to be each other’s sole company for the entire night so we decided on a meeting spot and set off to explore independently.

I threaded through the crowds, collecting the sweat of a hundred Brazilians on my shirt. Dense humanity occasionally opened up to wet pits of beer cans, debris, piss and spit, and my sandaled feet were immediately blackened with filth. I was a mute senselessly stumbling through noise and flesh, buzzed, looking for something to do, and suddenly I saw my opportunity: I locked eyes with a cute Brazilian girl and a small flash of smile moved over her face. It was love. I walked over with nothing to say except:

“Voce fala ingles e español?”

“English.”

“Ah, what’s your name…”

Suddenly my entire world was whipped into a falling blur and a hot shot of pain darted up my nose from the right, followed by another from the left. COCKSUCKER! A guy who I assume was her boyfriend caught me with a one-two-KO combo. I hadn’t been knocked off my feet but my nose was cracked, and by the time my vision steadied enough to see again they’d already fled, leaving only a strange ghostly impression. I felt warmth down my mouth and chin and soon down my chest and stomach and pants; I was covered in blood and looked like I’d just been slashed. The police showed up once again, this time to help, but there was nothing to say or be done.

This Brazilian wench had gotten the best of me. For a few seconds of ego padding I had intercepted a broken nose and ruined a nice pair of khaki pants. I abandoned the Argentinean and walked back to the hostel to nurse my wounds, where luckily a friend of mine had left out a large bowl of left over pasta that I sucked up greedily. The next day I loitered around the hostel with a bag of ice pressed against my face, got sick, and waited for my plane to Fortaleza.

Fortaleza

Things started off strangely. On the plane I had frightened the old Brazilian women sitting next to me with my ghastly swollen face, sickened mannerisms and incoherent muttering, and they’d urged the flight attendants to keep a close watch on me the whole time. After landing I spent twenty minutes in a shouting match with a cabbie over his rate, eventually pulling through.

 

I spent the first couple of days just recovering on the beach. Fortaleza is beautiful; a smaller and humbler version of Miami, the air salty, lazy and beachey, known for its huge waves and a booming sexual tourism industry. I befriended all kinds of people, from wealthy vacationers to alcoholic drifters, and basically roamed around with different people, saving money until Recife.

On the last night I was there the swelling on my face had nearly disappeared and I was anxious for some excitement. I had befriended a middle aged Chilean man at the hostel, recently separated from his wife and nearly as eager as I was to feel some of Fortaleza’s nightlife. After cluelessly walking along the beach one Tuesday night we finally came upon a nightclub that promised “No cover, but a minimum tab of 15 reais.” We went inside and got beers.

An hour elapsed and the club filled with gorgeous women, some more beautiful than I’d ever seen. What was even stranger was that they weren’t standoffish at all; they were approaching groups of men openly, and the Chilean and I attracted a fair amount of attention just sitting and sucking down beer. Something felt off, however; I appeared to be the youngest man there, the majority possessing heads of white hair and potbellies. Yet the girls threw themselves at them. I was constantly asked if I was Italian.

My Chilean friend then explained to me that Fortaleza was a mecca for sexual tourism, primarily attracting wealthy old businessmen from Italy, Portugal and England. Suddenly it all made sense. I began to nod enthusiastically when asked if I was Italian and delighted at how little effort it took to charm these beautiful women. It felt too easy.

And indeed, it was. By the end of the night the Chilean and I had two beauties with us; I don’t recall buying mine more than two drinks, but when it came time to pay the bill the cashier handed me a tab of 120 reais—the equivalent of 70 USD—at a time when I was spending only $10 a day on food. I didn’t even have the money with me and in my drunken mind hastily evaluated the risks of jumping from an isolated balcony onto the street and sprinting back to the hostel. It seemed like a rational thing to do, considering it was only a 1 ½ story drop and if I could just barrel roll upon impact I would make it out unscathed…but if I was to be caught by one of the roided-out bouncers my face would assuredly be tenderized into hamburger meat.  I ditched my poorly disguised whore, sheepishly explained everything to the cashier and eventually took a cab with one of the bouncers back to my hostel to get money for the huge tab. I threw the bills at him and the emaciated cabbie screeched at me to pay him as well for the fare, 50 reais. I told him I didn’t have the money at the moment and to meet me in front of the hostel at 9 am, only a few hours later, which he agreed to begrudgingly.

I didn’t sleep at all. The morning was a mad dash to run errands and get to the bus terminal before the cabbie showed up. I made it, and commenced to wait there for a full 14 hours, completely strapped for cash after the previous night with only a bag of Corn Flakes and some poetry to keep me company. For most of the day I sat in an empty daze, thinking of nothing, exhausted and anxious to finally get to Carnaval…indeed, I’d been doing so much already that I often forgot that was the main reason I was in Brazil in the first place.

While sitting there a closeted homosexual man of about 55 years tried to pick me up. I was dozing on a seat when I felt a pestering jab to my ribs and opened my eyes to the unfortunate visage of a man who looked like a classic pederast: thick rimmed glasses and an overly eager, gapped toothed smile, sitting atop a thin, potbellied body draped by a sleeveless shirt and high cut shorts. In my sleepless, hung-over delirium I wasn’t sure if he was just being hospitable, but his constant touching and foolishly benign questions in Spanish soon revealed his true intent.

“Is this your book?”

“Yes.”

…

“Is this your bottle of water?”

“Yes.”

“It´s a lot of water. Are you a student? I remember when I was a student, but now I am a tour guide in Argentina. Is this your backpack? It´s nice. The showers at this terminal are so expensive, if you want, you can come use the showers in my home.”

I quickly made up an excuse to leave and roamed around the city for a few hours, avoiding the terminal. Midnight finally rolled around and I caught my bus to Recife.

Recife/Olinda

This was a complete jump into the unknown. I was planning to stay at the apartment of a guy named Rafael I had contacted on couchsurfing with a few other travelers. I hadn’t used couchsurfing yet and the idea seemed too overly-utopian to be real, but I was soon proven wrong.

I found my way to my Rafael’s apartment and walked into a kitchen of three black women working feverishly in the kitchen, all draped in the same maidsclothing one could find on a southern American plantation in 1858. One of them led me to a seat in a lavishly decorated living room, and minutes later a huge woman squeezed through the doorway of an adjacent hallway and lumbered torward me. This was Rafael’s mother, an extremely hospitable and welcoming woman who spoke a little Spanish.  She resembled Jabba the Hut in every way imaginable: a huge trunk tapered by small, tail-like legs, cheeks and brows so fat they swelled over her eyes, and a husky voice that slurred Portuguese with an innotation reminiscent of slug-like gibberish.

It was already late in the day and by the time I met up with Rafa and the rest, they were ready to crash for the night. I had no qualms with this and the next morning we headed out for Olinda, a nearby city where most of the huge Caranval parties took place. I was there for four days and they each followed the same pattern: wake up, be served a hearty three-course lunch by Rafa’s maids, get drunk, bus over to Olinda for the party, stagger around eating, drinking, kissing, and dancing, return to the apartment for dinner, get drunk, go out to the streets of Recife and do it all again until the early morning.

Olinda was an older town that resembeled colonial Spanish neighborhoods with cobblestone streets and Catholic churches lining sidewalks of sin; thousands of people snaked through the streets over one another at all hours of the day. Recife was a huge city of two million, a modern version of Olinda with high rise apartments flanked by favelas—Brazilian slums—all over the metropolitan area.

To go into the detail of each day and night would be repetitive and unwise, and besides, most of the noteworthy adventures had already passed. What stands out most about my Carnaval experience was the unconditional hospitality shown to me by Rafa and his family. He and I became instant good friends, sharing a lot of similar interests, conventional and otherwise. I stuffed myself fat on the delicious cooking of his maids before the four day stay was over and then boarded a 42 hour bus to Rio de Janeiro.

Rio de Janeiro

I was only there for three days, one of which was spent camped out in a bus terminal, and I don’t feel the need to write about it. Plus, it is always best to leave some things unsaid, so the narrative ends here.

Reflections

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. This whole piece does not cover even half of everything that happened over the month; it is only a quick summary with a few interesting events cherry-picked here and there.

I found it strange to have spontaneously wandered around unknown Brazil, a country nearly the size of the United States, before having done so in my own country or even Mexico. Even while traveling I already began making plans for the Great North-American Southwest Tour, to take place in the latter half of 2011, primarily by bike and other non-four wheeled means. All buoyant people are invited to join.

I also found myself often wondering, what am I doing here? What’s the reason for this excursion? Get laid? Get lost? Bragging rights? Just that it was the most exciting thing at which to throw myself? Whatever it was, I can’t say it was accomplished, but I felt fulfilled regardless. I confirmed within myself an all-encompassing and inexplicable desire to explore the limits of laws, societal norms, and others’ patience; things crucial for mass order but absolutely necessary to bend and be toyed with. What is to be discovered, indeed all that is worth knowing, exists only at the frontier, and this is where I want to exist.

This whole trip wouldn’t have even been possible ten years ago—I planned nearly the entire thing over the internet. Is there still romance in this information-based adventurism, where one seeks to pre-empt mystery of the unknown with message boards and Lonely Planet collections? Maybe there is, and I believe it requires a certain degree of recklessness and naivety on one’s part. I tried to embrace both to an extent without getting killed, though at times I worry this will eventually lead to a very foolish and avoidable pre-mature death.  After all, it happens regularly to people who are much safer and more cautious than me. Living a life full of answers is not for me, however, and if I tried to do this I know I’d end up unhappy; a comfortably fat, miserable freak. I have to try things for myself, get burned, feel some pain, exorcise the weakness that privileged life cultivates in one’s consciousness. Safety and stability are creeds of the average working man; I know where they lead. I’m looking to hold onto some mystery and, when necessary, create it.