Around Brazil – Journey to the Jungle

What a time, what a place, what an experience. With no ayahuasca hangover at all, we stopped for supplies and headed for the dock. The twice weekly big boat to Manaus took an age to load. Uncle Mad had to follow us with his own little rib boat to fool the river police, big boats towing little boats being illegal in Crazy Town. He roared out of the darkness, circled Big Boat like a sheepdog with its flock, threw his rope to the crew, ran up Little Boat and climbed up Big Boat like a monkey to join us at the back. What an entrance.

Not finished with climbing, he decided we should go up to the roof. What a move. A crate of beer, the roof of the boat, a clear night, the jungle going darkly past, what more do you need? How about a full moon? One was rising over the trees, huge and round and yellow. We drank, we talked, we laughed, with journeys down to the toilet becoming more and more precarious. One slip, one stumble meant disappearing with a splash to alert the caimans and piranhas. We´d wanted to bring one of the 5 litre jugs of ayahuasca from the ceremony. Probably a good job we didn´t. Well...

As the moon died, we stopped at the Village of Mud and unloaded, loaded up Little Boat, climbed in, and headed down Wood River spotting caimans on the muddy banks with the spotlight. Turning up a tributary, we headed through the half-submerged trees into areas where the river widened into a lake or narrowed so we had to thread our way between the trunks.

All this as the sky brightened softly in front. The dawn chorus was starting, with huge groups of macaws screeching, flocks of parakeets panicking, and toucans gliding effortlessly into the tree-tops, wings closed. A million more birds, unidentified or unseen, added to the racket, and they do this every dawn of every day in the Amazon. Huge fishing birds fly down the tunnel of trees ahead of the boat, swallows dart, dive and skim the surface as they catch the morning insects. Neon-blue butterflies bigger than your hand dazzle in the first rays of dawn, others crackle like electricity as they dance together, spiralling like smoke towards the sky, and still more covered the floor and our skin, licking salt off the morning sweat. We could enjoy all this in silence.

The silence had started when the engine of Little Boat was turned off as we turned on to the sand of a tiny river beach four hours from Wood River and the Village of Mud, six hours further to Crazy Town but possibly four days, we were a long way from civilisation as we strung our hammocks up between the trees.

This was it. We´d made it. We were deep in the Amazon Jungle.

Around Brazil – Crazy Town Ceremonies

It was only a week or two but the area left on impression on four of us that will last a lifetime. We went to school, we went to church, we went driving, we went camping, and we went out on a boat. If it all sounds like a Surrey Sunday School outing, it was about as far removed from that as possible. We met the family of Uncle Mad, who bizarrely all seemed sane. He´d downsized from living with three women as his wives to just one, but children from these and other women kept appearing at the house. (“Meu filho” Another?)

After the oldest student by decades had taken us to his school to embarrass his English teacher, and for a night of heavy drinking, he drove us around Crazy Town in a friend´s Beetle – to the train station and Wood River, and on to a deserted mansion on the banks where Uncle Mad said a friend of his lived. Nobody answered the gate. We did some off-roading along the historic tracks and stopped to look at some of the rapids that made them necessary. We were joined by three women of various ages who lit candles, chanted a little in some strange language and threw offerings at the water. We stood quietly by and watched candomblé with interest, wondering which orixas were receiving the offers and which were listening. They left food and drink behind, possibly for Iemenjá, the goddess of the sea. Crazy Town is a whole long way from her home, but I guess people have to make do as best they can. Other foods, candles, gifts and incense marked it out as a spiritual spot but not for us. We left the booze behind though, which did show a certain level of respect I thought.

The ceremony had seemed like a lament for some lost loved one. Our first of the day. On the way home we stopped off at the local branch of the Santo Daime Church. They too were holding a ceremony that night to honour their ex-chief who´d died ten years before. We were invited to attend. How could travel-happy gringos refuse an offer to witness such a cultural event?

Especially when it involved ayahuasca. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca)

The ceremony takes place in an open church, all white except for the chessboard floor. The participants all wore white except for the green sash of the ladies and girls. We sat around the edges of the church while hours of hymns were chanted to the accompaniment of shaking maracas made from latas full of dried peas. This may sound more tedious than any other religious ceremony, but not with the help of ayahuasca. Used by Amazonian Indians in their own shamanic ceremonies, the drink is made from fermented vines and barks which together give it hallucinogenic properties. This and the rhythm of the chants and the beats of the beads help to transform the experience into a riot of colours, geometric shapes and contacts with the spirit world, if that´s your kind of thing.

After a glass of the bitter elixir, I never made it as far as the next dimension. It was too fascinating in my own to leave it, with generations of both sexes from twelve to twelvety taking a full part in the ceremony. They were going through until dawn, including a man who had known Blondie´s father many moons and many miles away. He´d ended up in Crazy Town because of the ceremonies. Or maybe because of ayahuasca. I couldn´t blame him. It nearly convinced me to stay too. We had to be sensible and duck out at half time though. We were heading into the jungle the next day.

Around Brazil – Crazy Town

Uncle Mad lives in Crazy Town. When you have somebody who lives on the edge of the Amazon Jungle and thinks he owns it all, it would be stupid not to pay him a visit. It sounded like it could be an adventure. The journey there from Manaus was either a six-day boat trip sleeping with the goats, or a flight for about R80 more. Covardes that we are, we flew.

Money well spent. Flying over the Amazon Rainforest is special. It ain´t called the rainforest for nothing though, but when all those clouds clear, the view of nothing but green trees all the way to the horizon, very occasionally slashed by a winding silver river, can´t be described in any lesser terms.

Coming in to land at Crazy Town, it seemed like we were dropping onto the tree-top. Like the rest of Crazy Town, the runway has been cut from the trees that used to cover the area. The furthest navigable point on a major tributary of the Amazon, the town used to be on the part of the South American map that had the giant word ´Jungle´ across the middle and no more details. It grew around the train station that was supposed to bring rubber from deep in the interior, avoiding rapids and waterfalls, to send it all the way to Europe. Henry Wickham put paid to that idea.

Like thousands of the people who worked on the line, the train died a slow death. The road that connected the Mato Grosso plantations to the wood river in the 1980´s has had more success, if success is the correct word. A wave of loggers, ranchers, chancers, gangsters and traffickers flooded the area, arriving on the newly paved road, while hardwood trees, cattle, soya and cocaine flooded out. Many people believe that cocaine comes from Bolivia, but they´re mostly wrong. Coca leaves come from Bolivia, form an important part of the cultural fabric of the High Andes (especially with regards to altitude sickness) and are generally farmed by poor Bolivians such as President Evo Morales once was. With US DEA officials burning and bombing the farms, it makes no sense to produce cocaine in the same place. The leaves are taken away and formed into a paste which is then shipped secretly down empty Amazonian rivers and across unmarked borders to end up in factories hidden around Crazy Town and such places. Only here is it processed in the powder, which in turn heads along that paved road to favelas in cities around Brazil, and from there - the world!

There are risks to be run, fortunes to be made and lives to be lost in trafficking as well as the other legal and illegal trades of the area. Crazy Town and its airport might not be on the edge of the shrinking Amazon Jungle for much longer, but it will likely remain at the front edge of a few of Brazil´s internal battles in the coming years.

One of the battles involves the Movimento Sem Terra group, which fights for land and rights for those who have neither (http://www.mstbrazil.org/). A part of the group won land concessions on the outskirts of the expanding town back in the 1980´s. He wasn´t connected to the group in any way but, chancer that he is, Uncle Mad joined the scramble and he´s been there ever since. He doesn´t have a crocodile in his swimming pool any more though.

Around Brazil – Manaus

Most Brazilian Amazon journeys start or end in Manaus.

Manaus happens to be 1500km upriver from the sea but it is still a port and has all the attributes that a port should have – water, land, goods that come in from all over the world, and that crazy air of edginess. The air of edginess had been present since some of our group had their bags slashed on the boat up from Santarem. Some couldn´t handle the idea of another boat ride and flew instead, but the rest of us were pleased that the boat was quite plush compared to our first one. We even got to steer the big wheel for a bit. The cameras and wallets had been stolen by someone small enough to crawl around in the small space under the hammocks, but the crew still searched the only black man on the boat as he´d been closest.

The river police searched the boat too, just as we arrived in Manaus, but not for our gear.

The British-made dock in Manaus floats to cope with the fluctuating river levels. Things are hectic, with bags, boxes and boats, people, gangplanks, sellers, touts, taxi-drivers and tourists to negotiate, with smells and sounds that belong to every port in the world. Rotting fish and fruit, diesel and petrol fumes – the kind of place to get away from as soon as possible.

Manaus has been a tourist centre for may years and this brings surprising consequences. As well as the dodgy tour operators, there are guides that have lived in Manaus all their lives and speak five languages fluently including Japanese. The jungle excursions can be mixed, with a lot of the vegetation around the city having been cleared to feed 1.5 million people. The river also feeds them and the market has fish of every size for sale, from 2m monsters to tiny piranha. There are piranha for sale in the streets too, preserved and mounted on wood with teeth bared. The sharp triangular teeth are an Amazon classic, also for sale in sets still attached to jawbones that can be used to cut hair. Many strange objects are sold in Manaus and many strange fruits, herbs and potions including Amazon Viagra.

One animal that wouldn´t need Viagra is the sloth. I saw my first one in a Manaus tree. Their reactions dimmed by lack of predators, they are built for comedy. Tap them on the shoulder and they turn around ten minutes later. I don´t know how sloths mate, apart from slowly, but I´m sure the herbal potion would wear off long before our hero realised what was happening. Spiking a sloth with Viagra – it´s an idea that sounds like fun for my next Manaus visit.

Around Brazil – Santarem & Alter do Chao

Santarem is probably the second biggest port on the Brazilian section of the Amazon. After seeing all the tiny towns along the way, a proper city came as a bit of a shock. The huge grain tankers aren’t, as they regularly pass silently downriver as they head for the Atlantic. The structure that fills the containers shouldn’t be a shock but it does stand out a little from the trees.

The construction of this structure is claimed to be an environmental disaster and not just because it was built without proper planning permission by one of the largest agri-businesses on the planet. It is closed at present and Cargill may have to remove the structure at some point but don’t hold your breath.

http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/cargill-amazon.pdf

http://www.cargill.com/news/issues/issues_greenpeacereport.pdf

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2007/2007-03-29-02.asp

With Santarem being on a deep part of the Amazon, so close to the junction of the Madeira with the Amazon, the southern edge of the world’s largest jungle is being cut down rapidly. Not for cattle, as in Mato Grosso in years past, but now for soya plantations. The soya beans were shipped down the Madeira by smaller boats and stored at the grain facility until one of the tankers arrives. This ease of transportation means that many people want to cut down a patch of forest to plant soya. With nobody around to stop them, the jungle shrinks by around 6 football pitches per minute, according to Greenpeace estimates.

Now don’t go blaming our vegetarian friends and their burgers for this. The biggest buyer of Brazilian soya is China, where the soya is the fuel for the animals that fuel the people that fuel the booming economy. The joys of globalisation mean that China’s development is one of the biggest threats to the Amazon Rainforest. Interesting huh? Obviously Europe takes in huge amounts of Santarem soya too, so don’t think we have no effect.

Alter do Chao is a short drive and a whole world away from Santarem. On the edge of a lagoon formed by the Rio Tapajós, the entrance to which is partially blocked by a 2km sandbank. This is just one of the stunning river beaches in the area which were mostly under the highest waters for 25 years when I was there. It didn´t matter to the locals or tourists, though. Life carried on, with the waters so full of people that one ice-cream seller was pushing his cart through three feet of water. What a dedicated salesman. The bars on the sandbank were all full - of water. Some almost up to the roof and some halfway up the legs of the chairs, tables and drinkers outside.

We hired a rowing boat to cross to the sandbank and climb the hill on the far side of the lagoon. It looked like the views across to the other side of the river and over to the main artery of the Amazon would make it a fantastic spot for a good old English picnic. We never made it. Never found the path, not even close. Instead we had our picnic, our champagne and our beer in a rowing boat as another Amazon storm came over the hill we´d been trying to find. We sheltered under an overhanging tree, pulled in the oars and drifted gently. Our tree made me realise why snakes evolved such patterns to disguise themselves as branches. See?

We toasted the tree, the storm, the boat, the bars, the jungle, the river, everything. Everybody should go to the Amazon. You get such magical moments there.

Around Brazil – Amazon Swarms and Amazon Storms

After a three day trip had turned into 7 drunken nights, 8 break-down, 9 towing booze cruise of 10 remote Amazon towns, we rocked up in Santarem in a different boat to the one in which we set off. We might still have been marooned downriver, sitting ducks for the mosquitoes that could bit through hammocks and clothes. I guess in that empty part of the river, humans don’t stop too often so they have to make hay while the sun shines. Their bites hurt so much we had to go swimming to hide. The thought of another Mosquito Dawn had us begging every boat that passed. One finally stopped at dusk, but only under duress. Saved! We boarded with all our gear and hundreds of boxes in a frantic mid-Amazon sunset swap. It’s not easy to climb between two decent-sized boats with backpacks.

We waved goodbye to our boat, the crazy chef, the captain who was going down with his ship, and the crew who were probably going down with malaria if they stayed there much longer. They might still be there for all I know.

The second boat was full already. The only place where hammocks weren’t hanging, dead cows were. A goat was tethered to the front like a figurehead, but despite these accoutrements our new boat lacked the sloppy character of our old one. It had a proper bar at the back for a start, with striplights that attracted a million Amazon moths. Maybe they liked the music pumping out of the speakers. There was nowhere else to sleep except on the benches by the bar. Narrow, hard, noisy and full of insects it might have been, but even this part of the trip had its charm. Once the bar closed, the people and music disappeared and the moon came out. With only three or four electric lights within a hundred miles, an Amazon moon has no competition, especially when it has huge rings around it which can’t be seen all the time. The gentle ripples behind the boat reflected the silver light in calming patterns as the silhouette of the jungle slipped by. At moments like this, there is no need to speak, just smile, enjoy the ambience and be glad that you’re in Brazil.

Even better. A dark, dark cloud was looming over the tree-tops, sweeping millions of stars up in its path, making the brightest of silver linings out of them, and contrasting beautifully with the coming storm. We rolled the tarpaulin down but not all the way. The rain was so loud it was pointless talking. The jungle disappeared behind it as the moon and stars had done. The girl who’d told me once that gigantic rings around the moon meant a storm approaching was as right this time as she had been before. Nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to feel except the rain of the rainforest.

Understanding Brazil – Playing Pool

If anybody understands the rules for playing pool in Brazil, could they let me know please?

Ok, I suppose I’d better write a little more on this. Just like my games of pool in Brazil though, I’m not sure how to start. Playing with the local kids in the Amazon town baffled me so much that I gave up and asked my partner to point at the ball he wanted me to hit. It didn’t help that the balls weren’t traditionally numbered. Three #6’s, two #3’s and a couple of an indeterminate colour that I’d never before seen on a pool table – somewhere between green, yellow, orange and brown (the colour of chip-shop curry if you understand that reference). It isn’t just in the out of the way towns of the Amazon that I feel confused, but every game I’ve played from Oiapoque to Chui.

It went wrong from the first match. I was invited to break, and a stripe went down. I potted another and was stopped from taking a third shot. I was told that I’d potted the wrong ball. I looked at two fairly obvious stripes, then at my opponent. He laughed, picked up one of his own balls and dropped it in the pocket. What kind of game was this? How was I ever going to win if he didn’t use a cue? Or the cue ball?

Ah! Then he used the cue. To pot one of my balls. Then one of his own. I was lost. To try to blend in, on my next turn, I picked up a ball, dropped it in a pocket and received a Brazilian finger wag. No-no. He picked another one up and did the same. What? Different rules for Gringoes is it? Then he used the traditional method to pot two more and offered me his hand to shake, with the black still on the table. Lost? Totalmente perdido.

Months later, I was told that the teams went for odd or even numbers, even with spotted and striped balls, even when the balls are so old that the numbers are illegible. There are still more surprises in store though. Matches of the regulation 15 balls that start with 14 on the table! The yellow #1 only makes an appearance after seven odds (including yellow 9) or seven evens (including the lonely #8) have gone down. Then the opponent chooses the cushion alongside which to place the #1. Really.

I still find new local rules in different places, one being that if my name is next on the board, it means that my turn will come immediately after the group of friends finish their fifty games. I haven’t yet seen in any Brazilian bar the sheet of Pool Rules taped to the wall. I don’t think anybody has enough tape. Or enough paper. I’ll never know, but at least I can claim to be almost famous for playing pool in Brazil, even if I didn’t know what I was doing. In Itacaré, I was featured on the town website taking a shot, with that half smile of somebody under the pressure of the camera. I probably missed but I guess they only wanted the photo so everybody could laugh at the strange gringo, still playing pool with a stick in the 21^st Century.

Around Brazil – Gurupá

The Amazon River is full of small towns clinging to the banks, sometimes half submerged. The river boats stop at every one to load supplies and passengers and to deposit passengers with collections of cameras and wallets. There is around half an hour to hunt down more booze and ice and have a little look around. In only one of these towns did I spend more than half an hour and it was highly memorable for all concerned.

Our boat had broken down at various points, the latest one appearing to be almost terminal. A tiny boat towed us for some way and then gave up. We spend all of Blondie´s birthday marooned at the edge of the Amazon, swimming amongst the floating islands (only after the crazy chef had done it first) and drinking from before dawn almost through to the next one. What else was there to do?

A unique way to spend a birthday was enhanced at the finish by a boat full of buffalo arriving out of the darkness to tow us to the nearest town. The next morning found us hungover and struggling to climb out of our hammocks or whosever hammock we´d fallen into. We were moored at a pier. Some of our group had already hit the town, the rest followed higgledy-piggledy in the early afternoon. It could well be that the town won´t forget our day either. By the time we met up again outside the bar by the pier, everybody was drunk again, all having different stories. Some played a game with the local kids that involved putting a bike tyre around the ankles and pulling it. A tiny Amazonian kid could pull a hairy gringo off his feet. Others visited pools or played pool with the locals, making friends all around.

We explored the town until we realized there was nothing to explore. The jungle was behind. We couldn´t go any further. A hot equatorial sun was burning down. We saw a pool table in a backstreet bar on the last street in town. The shade made sense, the beer made sense, the pool didn’t. After a game or two a crowd of local kids had gathered. We invited them to play, not knowing that was illegal, and they baffled us with the rules which seemed to change with every game. After finishing our sport for the day, we chatted to the two sisters who owned the bar. They told us so much about their way of life and how hunting the jungle animals was illegal, but everybody did it anyway because they were poor and needed food. Despite the obvious poverty, they showed us their Açai processing machine (like a meat-grinder), and one of their sons shinned a huge palm to bring us down a branch with the small green nuts attached. They gave Blondie some earrings hand-made with Açai seeds and generally treated us like visiting relatives, including inviting us back for the Reveillon party in the town. Their hospitality was warmer than the overhead sun and is one of the main reasons that I´m glad our boat broke down.

Back at the pier, things started to get messy towards sunset. The drinking turned to singing and chanting and roaring and dribbling, none more so than the crazy chef who was in the bar halfway down the pier, making more noise and having drunk more than the rest of us put together. He was already a legendary figure in my eyes, but not for his cooking skills. It looked like we could forget dinner that night. I won´t forget Gurupá though, and one day I´d like to go back to see if our friends remember us. Then, as well as a unique birthday, we could experience a unique New Year on the Amazon.

Around South America – Peninsula Valdes

Mother Nature likes to hoard her most valuable treasures and keep them hidden together in different parts of the world, like a pirate burying troves around the globe. Two of her finest bounties are in Brazil – the Amazon and Pantanal. A third is on the Atlantic coast of Patagonia, half way between Buenos Aires and the End of the World.

Peninsula Valdes and the surrounding coastline have some of the finest and most varied marine life that can be seen from terra firma. Being a part of Patagonia, the wildlife watching in Peninsula Valdes is a relaxing, dreamy past-time that takes place under a clear azure sky and on top of a deep marine sea. The area is renowned for whale-watching, but there is so much more than that, including foxes, guanacos and wonderfully obedient armadillos on the land. Just watching the Southern Right Whales that breed in the area would be enough reason for me to return though. Arriving in Puerto Madryn and seeing whales for the first time, playing in the waters just off the beach, is a fine start. The next morning’s high tide at Playa Dorillado was one of the times when I have been almost too excited at seeing wildlife. The steep beaches and calm waters of Golfo Nuevo are the playground of these gentle creatures (that is, gentle as long as you aren’t plankton – in which case, it’s a daily massacre) that come to the area between September and November to give birth to 5m calves that grow to around 18m long. Floating upside down with their huge hands in the air, they look like they’ve just flopped backwards into a cool sea on a hot Bahian day. Rolling around and patting the water with their fins, they duck and dive, breach the surface and land with a boom of spray, and blow air so hard that you can feel it from the beach. But then, it is only about 20m away.

This is the beauty of whale-watching at Peninsula Valdes. Nowhere else on earth can you observe such huge creatures in their own environment so closely and in such a relaxed manner. They are curious too, often coming to sniff around the tourist boats in the bay. One woman even got to touch the tail of a whale, a rare treat when just seeing the classic tail dripping sea water in the sunlight happens only occasionally. The largest whales are female and, being Latinas, they know how to tease, so every sight of the photogenic fins brings gasps from the watching humans. The highlight for me was seeing a whale calf or two lying across the mother as she gently rose above the surface, lifting baby and tail almost clear of the water before sliding slowly back into the blue. It looks like fun being a whale. I can’t see any other reason for this behavior. A whale of a time.

I could have watched all day, every day had they stayed, but there were seals, sea-lions and elephant seals to see by the sea. The Atlantic side of the peninsula is where my favourite nature footage ever was filmed. April and May bring the best chance to see a drama that even the Masai Mara can’t match. The orcas also appear amongst the seal colonies at other times and can also pick up a penguin or two for a snack.

Punta Tombo has half a million Magellan Penguins, the largest accessible colony in the world. So accessible is it that you can wander through the scrubby dunes up to a kilometer inland and see penguins sleeping under bushes, standing above eggs and waddling to and from the ocean. Penguins are one of those species (along with monkeys and ducks) that are funny just by being penguins. Seeing thousands standing in a field with their wings out, drying in the sun has to be on of my favourite surreal sights in nature. Again, the proximity to vast amounts of wildlife is a large part of the attraction in Punta Tombo. Penguins casually wander around your feet as you try to photograph them, but don’t pick a breeding pair as I did. I’ve had a few close encounters with wild animals that might have turned nasty – African elephants, Asian rhinos, crocodiles and caimans, but to have been attacked by a penguin would have been embarrassing. I ran away.

Around South America – Patagonia

So why then, and this is not only my particular case, does this barren land possess my mind? I find it hard to explain… but it might partly be because it enhances the horizons of imagination. That’s what Charles Darwin had to say about Patagonia and I wouldn’t want to dispute his theories. I certainly shouldn’t try to elaborate on them either but I’ll try in this case. For his theory On The Origin of Species, Darwin spent five years travelling the world on board the Beagle, a ship that had the pleasant task of charting the South American coastline, including the Galapagos Islands. I spent a few days travelling there and back on a bus and a few hours driving around, so you’ll forgive the lack of depth in this article. I’m not sure I needed much more time though, there isn’t a lot there.

Excluding the Andes and Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia consists of almost a million square kilometres of flat, treeless landscape, broken only by the rivers that work their way from the mountains in the west. The steppes are covered in scrub with waist-high bushes giving each other a little breathing space. There are genuine tumbleweeds too, I saw my first one rolling across the road in front of me. Normally these bushes are used to show that every body has left a one-horse town. In Patagonia, there aren’t any towns.

At least not many for tumbleweeds to roll through, blown by a constant wind that has nothing to break it down, no trees, no houses, no hills and no valleys. The wind is free to blow where and when it chooses for hundreds of miles in every direction. If I’m making it sound like the Siberian wastelands or the Mongolian Steppes, that’s probably because they sound very similar. So why the romanticised view of Patagonia? There are other featureless landscapes that inspire fear as much as respect – the blinding polar ice-sheets; the burning Australian deserts; the emptiness of the Botswana salt-flats; and the claustrophobia of the open seas. It is hard to find life in such places, and being there is a constant reminder of mortality. Patagonia doesn’t have that fear factor attached to it. An English sailor shipwrecked in 19^th Century Tierra del Fuego walked across Patagonia to Buenos Aires. It took him five years, but he managed it. Perhaps the clear, cloudless skies and the vivid colours of a thousand Patagonian dawns and a thousand Patagonian sunsets kept his spirits up as he dream of returning home.

Is it the knowledge that survival is a possibility that allows you to relax as you stare at the distant horizon? With nothing to distract it, your mind is free to drift away into a dreamland. The chance to dream while awake is rare and therefore precious, it allows you to collect your thoughts and expand on them without interruption. Patagonian Dream Therapy. In my case, it allowed me to stare at the horizon for hours, wondering at the appeal of the area to Darwin, to me and to many more. Perhaps Patagonia only appeals to the dreamers of the world, but isn’t everyone a dreamer?

Around South America – Montevideo, Uruguay

I had a weekend in Montevideo recently, having decided to go on a visa run from Buenos Aires. The ferry over the Rio de la Plata stops at Colonia, which has a lovely little historic part to it, and cobbled streets where you can eat paella under trees in the square, or eat calamari by the river. Colonia has the air of a church or a museum, the kind of place where everybody walks around with their hands joined behind their backs and nobody ever shouts. It’s a relaxing day away from the big city across the brown water but not much more than that. So having been there twice before, we decided that we had to go to Montevideo this time.

It was a Saturday. It was raining. It was grey. There wasn’t anybody else around. The first stop was the Solis Theatre. Signs outside mentioned opera, we had visions of a cultural weekend instead. There was nothing on. Nothing. Saturday night. We went for lunch across the road. The café was empty of customers, a bit of a surprise as it was the only one open. Nobody passed the windows either. The rain didn’t ease. The old town seemed to be so old that nobody lived there. The Iglesia Matriz was open though, so we paid some money to an old woman and wandered inside. A service was taking place in the little chapel to the right so we wandered around the church in the dark until we were politely asked to leave. It was closing.

The night was no easier. We’d asked the waitress in the café where we should go at night. She recommended the cinema. We went back to the pedestrian precinct by the theatre (behind the large building in the photo) and wandered around looking for a restaurant that had closed down. There were a few kids hanging around outside and a few adults in the bars. We walked past a group of similarly baffled Brazilians and headed for the bright lights. A shout from behind us made us turn. A couple of the kids were scuffling on the floor, no big surprise. One of them got up and made to run off. The other one on the floor had grey hair. His companions were shouting, they were older too. The kid turned around and held both hands up, like he was apologising for bumping into the man. Then he ran up a dark street as the people started to complain. The man patted his pockets. He still seemed to have his wallet. We checked that they were ok and walked on. Ten seconds later, another yell. Again, somebody on the floor. Another kid was running away. I shouted at him and started to run. He stopped and looked at me before heading up the same direction as his mate. A dark street, two of them there carrying who knows what and with other friends around – these are the things that you have to be aware of, if only to excuse your own cowardice afterwards.

The woman’s bag had gone and so had our night. We went to the beaches the next day, where we were advised to go the night before, but still found nothing. No bars, cafes or kiosks along the beach road, nowhere to have lunch with a view of the water. The whole place had the air of a tired English seaside town stuck in the 1940’s on a Tuesday afternoon in early February. Even the mugging couldn’t make it interesting.

Around Brazil – The Amazon

It’s just one of those names, isn’t it. You hear the word ‘Amazon’ and immediately think of all kinds of dramatic scenery, exotic people and odd occurrences. As far as I’m concerned it definitely lived up to the hype. I had such an amazing time travelling up the River Amazon and I will never forget it and will recommend that everyone takes a journey up the world’s mightiest river.

Perhaps it wasn’t quite how you may have been led to expect - no indigenous warriors lining the banks with blowpipes and poison darts, not many caimans or anacondas following us around, and no sign of the piranhas that aren’t anywhere near as dangerous as legend has it. All of this is a shame but never detracted from the experience. The absence of the candirú (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candir%C3%BA ) was an obvious bonus, but you can´t be too careful. The reputation of this fish induces so much fear that even going to the toilet on a boat on the River Amazon is a nervous experience. Always move from side to side, just in case. (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010907.html)

It didn´t stop me swimming in the river though. To the layman, swimming amongst vegetation to escape mosquitoes that have savaged every passenger on a broken-down boat in the knowledge that they´re not likely to encounter humans again for many years in that part of the river might be difficult to romanticize, but it was easy for me. I was swimming in The Amazon!

What I did experience there was a total sense of culture shock that I´d never had in other places in Brazil. The cities and beaches of the south are a little different to back home, but not amazingly so. The lifestyle of the caboclo people who live alongside the Amazon River and its various channels towards the mouth is an incredible thing to behold. Somewhere between Ilha do Marajão, with its buffalo-riding policemen, and Santarem, hundreds of houses built on stilts sit directly above the water during the wet season floods. Surrounded by half-submerged trees, the wooden dwellings are very simple, small enough to have two rooms at the most, and often with a satellite dish. This surprises some people as though the descendents of indigenous people and the colonial Portuguese shouldn´t be allowed to watch television. Buffaloes wallow in the fields to the side of the houses, boats filled almost to the point of sinking chug their way up or down through the floating trunks and grass islands that are heading towards the Atlantic.

And then the kids arrive. From the sides of the river, like one half of their ancestors attacking the other hundreds of years before, they paddle into the middle of the river in their dug-out canoes to meet the big boat. Only there aren´t any waves of arrows, just waves of little hands. They don´t try to attack, they try to attach their canoes to the back of the boat and catch a ride up the river. These tiny canoes are the equivalent of bikes, and the kids bob up and down in the swell behind the boat for fun. Even our boat dwarfed them. My jaw dropped when I saw one girl of around 4 years old paddling happily into our path like a mosquito about to be run over by an elephant. I couldn´t take a photo of her. I was literally holding my hands over my eyes and peering through my fingers, wailing. This little river veteran didn´t bat an eyelid as the prow of the boat passed within 6 inches of the front of her canoe. She smiled and waved, smiled and waved in rhythm with my pounding heart.

Around South America - Bariloche

It was love at first sight. I knew immediately that this was one of those places that will always have a place in my heart, like the Costa Verde, Chapada Diamantina or Lençois Maranhenses in Brazil, just from arriving at the bus station. Even Rio, with all of its treasures, cannot boast a stunning bus station. Not many places can, and certainly not many can compare with Bariloche. On one side of the road you have the terminal and on the other a line of solid, tall pine trees, which help the place to smell as good as it looks. Through the trunks you can see the train tracks, then some more trees and Lago Nahuel Huapi, with an ethereal mist rising from the surface as it reflects the winter sun. The lake is a beautiful dark blue dotted with pine-green islands, while the surrounding Andes point at the sky, showing off their winter coats. What an entrance.

It only gets better too. Snowboarding in the Andes was one of the things that I really wanted to do in South America, because life must be going ok as a gringo away from home if you find yourself snowboarding in the Andes. Sadly, having to work as well kept me away from the slopes too much but I’ve never worked in a place with a better view than the cabaña on the road to Llao Llao. If I thought Bariloche was special, then Llao Llao even trumps it with the big hotel looking out over two lakes at once. That area of the Andes has distinct weather systems that change drastically from the high desert of the eastern end of the lake to the lushness of the forests just 30km to the west, brought about by the clouds that sit on the highest mountains and spill the rain. The landscape there is famous for being the inspiration for Bambi, especially the beautiful and bizarre Arrayanes trees that only grow in a few areas of the planet and are threatened with extinction. Their fawn-coloured bark is decorated by light spots reminiscent of – you guessed it – a deer. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luma_apiculata) With a covering of fresh snow on the branches, heavy falls that bring down the bamboo grasses over the forest paths to make beautiful tunnels, and mirror lakes that reflect the mountains that you can see from the beaches, you would be inspired too, if only to repeat ‘que lindo’ at every turn.

What I know and Walt Disney is that Bariloche is also very popular with Brazilians, skiing, snowboarding, riding the teleferico to the top of Cerro Otto, filling the town in colourful groups with their travel company winter outfits, and having photos taken with the ubiquitous St Bernards in all the tourist spots. Like the huge groups of Argentineans who have travelled there to celebrate finishing school, they are generally well-behaved and the only problems come from them somehow not being able to understand each other. Which was how I, with my passable Portuguese and slowly improving Spanish, was totally bewildered at having to translate between the two sides up in the ski station. ‘Eh dificil para pagar depois?’ said the brasileira. Blank looks all around from the argentinos. How could they not understand?

The only thing that I didn’t understand about Bariloche is why I left.

Understanding Gringoes - Drinking

For those Brazilians who have ever wondered why your Gringo friend is usually the drunkest person at a party full of locals, I’m going to try to offer an explanation, as I know I’m not the only one to experience this phenomenon. As well as the obvious cultural differences that we gringoes drink to embarrassing levels as a matter of course, there are other factors to take into account.

Important Factor #1 is that we generally like to have a drinking buddy along to accompany us and are never happier than finding some like-minded person to hide in the kitchen and share a bottle with at a party full of strangers. When you are the only gringo at a house party, this can be a little more difficult, especially when speaking Portuguese is still a work in progress.

Important Factor #2 is the amount of Brazilians who speak English better than we speak their language. At parties, it is very difficult to practice your Portuguese when everybody else wants to speak English. And wants to talk about English. Or your Portuguese. Nobody wants to spend a whole party talking to the gringo about languages so the novelty value understandably wears off rapidly, which is good as it can get a little wearing talking about the same subject all night, but bad because it means that eventually you have to try to join in the group talk.

Important Factor #3 is the amount Brazilians love to talk. I have stayed in pousadas around Brazil and heard breakfast conversations outside my room involving at least 4 people. When I leave the room, it has always been a shock to find only 4 people sat around a table, all of them talking. So to try to follow conversations, which needs heavy concentration at the best of times, is impossible at parties with loud music - like watching a tennis match played with 3 balls at once. This is when we resort to Defensive Drinking – constant sips because you can’t or don’t want to contribute to the conversation. It happens in other situations too – for example when stuck amongst in-laws with whom you don’t have much in common, or while waiting in a bar alone for your date to arrive.

Important Factor #4 is that we’re used to drinking from large glasses which we don’t share with anybody else. Then we can go at a casual pace, but sharing brings out our greed and we constantly bottle-watch. We finish our drinks first to ensure we get a full glass, and we fill up the other glasses at the same time. Then we go to the fridge to get a fresh bottle for more and also in order to give us something to do as we haven’t spoken for twenty minutes. Exactly the same process happens with caipirinha, and we will usually be the ones who end up in the kitchen making them, testing them, handing them around, making another, testing more before passing it on, making two, handing one around and drinking the other.

And so on. Don’t be too surprised if your gringo friend needs helping out of the door at the end of the night, and don’t be too hard on them for it. It’s only because they’re in need of a proper drinking buddy. And when they find one, things will be even worse, but at least along the way they learn to make fantastic caipirinhas.