Manaus, AM - In what is probably my last entry, I find myself, once again, pounding out words in an internet café. Travel weary, I now await my flight to return to the states, to the city of my birth, to another great unknown (an excellent opportunity to wax philosophically about life, changes, and the future). We arrive into Manaus, as usual, by riverboat. While the concept of travelling down the Amazon River may sound exciting, it is relatively relative (perhaps a native Amazonian would sense the same excitement of traveling by Greyhound bus down I-5) and loses it's appeal quickly, [View Full Entry]

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The city of Anapu lies rougly 140km east of the river Xingú along the Transamazonic Highway. The city is literally spread out along the road, the commerce and hotels scattered over a paved section of the infamous dirt highway that stretches across the Amazon. There are roughly 20,000 people living here; almost everyone is from somewhere else. Thirty years ago, the city was no more then a small villa - the highway in it's infancy. To understand the region of Transamazonia it's necessary to step back some 40 years. In the 1970's, the military government began a project to colonize and [View Full Entry]

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In Belém, I've booked a hotel straight out the Lonely Planet guidebook. It's justly full of tourists from every corner of the world that all speak English. The hotel staff is like the Adam's family, but if they were really indescrivable monsters and not family friendly comedians with a laugh track: the old woman, a stout ball of anger the shape of a stool; her grey haired giant son lurks clad only in a purple towel, amphibiatically darting in and out of the shower. As one of the few bilingual, I get the chance to be a bridge between the [View Full Entry]

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A quick update of the following months from which I seemingly vanished: I leave Pernambuco and head North into Paraíba, traveling through small dusty towns of the deep interior and into the state of Ceará. Greeted as a curiousity, as always I recieve loads of stories about whatever person from another country once passed through. I never once meet another foreigner or tourist. I make a beeline to Fortaleza and pass a week scoping out the city before recieving my parents. We pass a week along the coast, experiencing the coastal strip of tall dunes and one church towns and a [View Full Entry]

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The Northeast of Brazil is known for it´s beaches - white sand, swaying coconut palms, blue-green water, massive dunes, giant capital cities of festivals and sleeping fishing villages. But this is merely the crust. The mass of the Northeast begins only a few hundred kilometers inland; as you pass, the vibrant green of the coastal strip fades, the rolling hills transformed into rocky crags. In places, the horizon stretches indefinitely, a flat landscape of twisted shrub and cacti in wide variety. There is little water here. Occassionally one sees a small lake or a muddy puddle. More often it is [View Full Entry]

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I'm in a city called Caruaru, slightly into the interior of Pernambuco. The coast here is beautiful; green, rolling hills, cane and coconuts swaying in the breeze. It's only a short trip inland before everything turns brown, rocky. But this isn't the sertão, yet. That doesn't truly begin until Arcoverde, further interior still. The city survives on clothing. Yesterday was the day of the Tuesday street fair, and epic weekly event that the city lives and survives on. The night before, there was an energy in the streets of anticipation. Push carts lined the sidewalks and sleeping bodies lin [View Full Entry]

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The past (month?) has blurred together in a whirlwind of traveling, as I crossed through Bahia, from Bom Jesus da Lapa to Chapada Diamintina, to Salvador, and exited into the northern coastal state, Sergipe. The common thread that ties these experiences together is tourism. Bom Jesus da Lapa, my first stop. A long one. I waited here for the arrival of a new camera, and due to some difficulties with the mail in the interior, ended up stuck there a week. The city is a Catholic tourism destination, the second largest in Brazil, and during certain festivals recieves millions of tourists. [View Full Entry]

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Foremost. The other morning I lay dreaming. In the dream, I was traveling and reflecting on my experiences, transcribing my thoughts onto paper. Gradually, the sunlight filtering in through the mosquito netting draped over my bed and the ongoing calls of roosters brings me into consciousness. And I realize that reality is far stranger than anything I could have possibly dreamnt. My location, a small village of roughly 300 people called “23,” deep into a rural zone of southern Bahia. How I arrived here. Wednesday morning, I awake in Manga, make a mad dash to the river bank to cli [View Full Entry]

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I bang out these words on a beaten keypad, in an internet café in the city of Manga, named for the mighty fruit, the manga (or mango). The region is full of said fruit, albeit it early in the season, and they dangle like green potatoes or giant lima beans. Popular myth suggests there is a danger in approaching the mango at this time - in Itacarambí I met a woman who claimed her 4 year old cousin died last Sunday from just this. Temperamental fruit, it should never be eaten with pork, eggs, of milk. So I wait, and unfortunately [View Full Entry]

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Traveling without an itinerary is freeing. At the same time, it can be exceedingly difficult to buy your bus ticket without a destination. I left the uninteresting town of Capelinha and headed to Turmalina, 40km north. The further I travel in this direction, the hotter it gets, and the city was toasty. I spent most of my time in the city sitting around the central plaza - which always contains at least 3 elderly men passing the time. One directed my to the Hotel Turmalina, an old building built behind a residence. Maria and her husband run the hotel. Maria is [View Full Entry]

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