+Cut01.JPG)
Oi amigos e familia,
You know those 1am taxi rides from the airport where Marcelo runs 12 red lights in 12 minutes and hares along at 80 km through the hot, wet, and mostly free of other traffic, streets and alleys of a ramshackley, colourful, patchwork, awesome looking jungle city where out of your open passenger seat window stray mongrel dogs run free in small packs, the cops look like special forces and a man pushes himself in a wheelchair down the middle of the road on a four lane street while in the back of your sleep-deprived mind you admit to yourself that if Marcelo wants things a certain way you don´t have much in your armoury no matter how fast you think you can run in steel-cap boots and bellbottom jeans to argue with him or the five or seven or nine semi-automatic toting hoodrats waiting around the next corner down the alleyway in your imagination but Marcelo decides not to change your life for the worse and instead drops you safely at Hotel Machado´s and makes sure you´re taken care of before he peels away again into the appealing madness of the Amazon night?
That´s how cool it is in Belém. A bunch of people said to me in the months before I finally took off, “Lordy, lordy Ben, you´re going to have such an awesome time, and you´re sexy as hell.” And so far it really is a surreally awesome time (apart from the bug in my gut that didn´t let me sleep last night, but beggars can´t be choosers, right?) and I really am surreally sexy (apart from when I have sleep deprivation from the old chunder and rear evacuation samba… actually that is pretty sexy too … that´s right, you heard me … sexy as hell).
I spent the first two nights and one day in Machado´s trying to find sleep halfway across the world from where my genius brain seems to still think it is. In that room, with its rattling aircon and cold shower, I watched a tribute to Sir Ed on ESPNBrasil and parts of the Auckland Open. In between the tossing and turning and tossing some more I also saw, or at least heard or bathed in, loads of beautiful football. I watched footage of cops in Jacarezinho in Rio de Janeiro crushing a drug gang hideout. They have very big guns and an armoured vehicle that looks like Mad Max´s ultimate paddy wagon. When it comes out there are (non-penetrating) bullet holes all over it.
On the second day Ben Hur, a garrulous, grey-bearded southern brazilian who fell in love with the north and is the boss of Amazon Fruit, swings by Machados at 630 in the morning and we shoot off to his offices. In the car I meet his son-in-law, a young german food scientist called Kay ( pronounced kai) and one of his administrators, Donna Adaize, and at the offices, a group of air-conditioned converted containers, I meet more of his crew. Fast-talking Jorgeane, one of the teachers, Salamir, another administrator and keen to practice his English with me, Polaco, the happy dirty-cowboy-hat-wearing foreman on the island, aunty-like Dona Léa, who limps and is Ben Hur´s sister in law, Joyce, a quietly amused office girl who drives me to McDonalds for lunch. I also meet serious but likeable Andre, the NU Fruits Of The Amazon (the company part owned by Jon who´s responsible for putting me on the path to where I find myself now) main man in Belem.
The 30 odd foot timber boat with a pumping, chugging diesel and a tarp for a roof that takes 15 or so of us to the island at 7 is as used, ramshackle and charming as Belém. Every moment I´m waiting for it to sink in where I am but it still feels very normal for me to be here, like it´s just supposed to be that I´m in the Amazon. We cruise into one of the island´s jetties after 12 or so minutes and I climb the steps and follow slow walking Tania on a nice little tour of the operation. It´s like you´d picture it (or at least like I pictured it) here but so intoxicatingly alive and four dimensional (the fourth dimension is the hot wetness of the air, and it´s beautiful). Four and five story high palm trees, parrots overhead, Portuguese flying through the air (the language, not the people) above background noise of generators, cicadas and crickets. The island has all the charm of Belém but in a different way.
Crap, I´m falling asleep at the computer here in the Amazon Fruit office/container. In the four nights since I arrived I´ve spent about 10 hours asleep, and that´s after the 36 hours of travel with only a couple of hours sleep in the plane. Part of it´s the hammock, a cool idea I haven´t found a way to be comfortable enough in yet, and part of it´s my genius brain, but mostly it´s the buzz of really, really being on a jungle island in the Amazon of Brasil. The Brasil.
Next time, probably the people and animals on the island and how I´ve fallen in love with tarântulas. For now, I´ll probably fall asleep on the Amazon Fruits lunch table. I miss you guys, but not in the way I want to be home in NZ, in the way I wish yous could all be here be amongst the awesomeness of this place. Of course it´s not everybody´s idea of a way to live your life for a while, but even just for one day, I wish I could bring you here. It´s totally aces.
You know those 1am taxi rides from the airport where Marcelo runs 12 red lights in 12 minutes and hares along at 80 km through the hot, wet, and mostly free of other traffic, streets and alleys of a ramshackley, colourful, patchwork, awesome looking jungle city where out of your open passenger seat window stray mongrel dogs run free in small packs, the cops look like special forces and a man pushes himself in a wheelchair down the middle of the road on a four lane street while in the back of your sleep-deprived mind you admit to yourself that if Marcelo wants things a certain way you don´t have much in your armoury no matter how fast you think you can run in steel-cap boots and bellbottom jeans to argue with him or the five or seven or nine semi-automatic toting hoodrats waiting around the next corner down the alleyway in your imagination but Marcelo decides not to change your life for the worse and instead drops you safely at Hotel Machado´s and makes sure you´re taken care of before he peels away again into the appealing madness of the Amazon night?
That´s how cool it is in Belém. A bunch of people said to me in the months before I finally took off, “Lordy, lordy Ben, you´re going to have such an awesome time, and you´re sexy as hell.” And so far it really is a surreally awesome time (apart from the bug in my gut that didn´t let me sleep last night, but beggars can´t be choosers, right?) and I really am surreally sexy (apart from when I have sleep deprivation from the old chunder and rear evacuation samba… actually that is pretty sexy too … that´s right, you heard me … sexy as hell).
I spent the first two nights and one day in Machado´s trying to find sleep halfway across the world from where my genius brain seems to still think it is. In that room, with its rattling aircon and cold shower, I watched a tribute to Sir Ed on ESPNBrasil and parts of the Auckland Open. In between the tossing and turning and tossing some more I also saw, or at least heard or bathed in, loads of beautiful football. I watched footage of cops in Jacarezinho in Rio de Janeiro crushing a drug gang hideout. They have very big guns and an armoured vehicle that looks like Mad Max´s ultimate paddy wagon. When it comes out there are (non-penetrating) bullet holes all over it.
On the second day Ben Hur, a garrulous, grey-bearded southern brazilian who fell in love with the north and is the boss of Amazon Fruit, swings by Machados at 630 in the morning and we shoot off to his offices. In the car I meet his son-in-law, a young german food scientist called Kay ( pronounced kai) and one of his administrators, Donna Adaize, and at the offices, a group of air-conditioned converted containers, I meet more of his crew. Fast-talking Jorgeane, one of the teachers, Salamir, another administrator and keen to practice his English with me, Polaco, the happy dirty-cowboy-hat-wearing foreman on the island, aunty-like Dona Léa, who limps and is Ben Hur´s sister in law, Joyce, a quietly amused office girl who drives me to McDonalds for lunch. I also meet serious but likeable Andre, the NU Fruits Of The Amazon (the company part owned by Jon who´s responsible for putting me on the path to where I find myself now) main man in Belem.
The 30 odd foot timber boat with a pumping, chugging diesel and a tarp for a roof that takes 15 or so of us to the island at 7 is as used, ramshackle and charming as Belém. Every moment I´m waiting for it to sink in where I am but it still feels very normal for me to be here, like it´s just supposed to be that I´m in the Amazon. We cruise into one of the island´s jetties after 12 or so minutes and I climb the steps and follow slow walking Tania on a nice little tour of the operation. It´s like you´d picture it (or at least like I pictured it) here but so intoxicatingly alive and four dimensional (the fourth dimension is the hot wetness of the air, and it´s beautiful). Four and five story high palm trees, parrots overhead, Portuguese flying through the air (the language, not the people) above background noise of generators, cicadas and crickets. The island has all the charm of Belém but in a different way.
Crap, I´m falling asleep at the computer here in the Amazon Fruit office/container. In the four nights since I arrived I´ve spent about 10 hours asleep, and that´s after the 36 hours of travel with only a couple of hours sleep in the plane. Part of it´s the hammock, a cool idea I haven´t found a way to be comfortable enough in yet, and part of it´s my genius brain, but mostly it´s the buzz of really, really being on a jungle island in the Amazon of Brasil. The Brasil.
Next time, probably the people and animals on the island and how I´ve fallen in love with tarântulas. For now, I´ll probably fall asleep on the Amazon Fruits lunch table. I miss you guys, but not in the way I want to be home in NZ, in the way I wish yous could all be here be amongst the awesomeness of this place. Of course it´s not everybody´s idea of a way to live your life for a while, but even just for one day, I wish I could bring you here. It´s totally aces.
