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Published: November 27th 2008
Classic Horse Play
My horse, CasablancaEvening all, how the devil are you, hope all is well in snowy England! Weve had a pretty mental time here in Brazil, starting off with a town called Manaus, the 2nd largest town in the Brazillian Amazon, and where we ultimately ended up spending 10 days, as opposed to the planned 2 or 3. The reason for this, is that when we arrived in the city, we were having a little saunter around and noticed that at the Teatro Amazonas and other destinations that there was to be a film Festival for a week! This we figured was worth doing, and so in order to pass the week before the festival started, we popped into the jungle for 3 days with a couple of Scotish girls, a German and an ex-israli soldier, ( Who i had a rant at about occupation and walls and ali got off with, the balance was restored - tait x). This provided mild amusement in the form of Piranah fishing (we caught about 10 between us), a visit to a rubber plantation where we made condoms (not overly practical, the thickness of a shoe), and spent a night in the jungle in hammocks, waking to
Kite Surfing Sun Set
A regular scene on the beach of Jericoacoara the sound of howler monkeys as they go about their morning business.
The film festival itself was pretty amazing, im not going to pretend I can review films as well as Mr Tait can, so here is his run down of the films we saw...
1. Tulpan (French, Kazak) Set in Kyrgystan, about soe nomad who stumbles across a really remote traditional village where the hottest young women is married to a relgious brute and is constantly harrassed by some other cliched fat man, so aforementioned nomad falls for her has lots of bust ups with the men, they run away - que epic riding horses in front of snowy mountains with nothing else around with tottally over the top music and tottally over loud due to soething wrong with the sound system in there was glad the films were subtitled couldnt hear the talking half the time., horribly good advert for the country however, its offcially on the tea oddyseey dont care if the dont produce the stuff. and then they get chased and roll about in meadows and almst die in snow but against all the odds survive and escape to a better life in kazakstan,
A long way to the top
The mammoth sand dune we voarded, sledged and stacked it down or begging on the streets, police brutality and deportation to a gulag - the sequel sounds better already.
2. a load of brazillian shorts. One was absolutely incredible pixar esque animation about a jungle kid being abstractly attacked by elements of the mdern world, definalty going to Great Expectations the director, (along with a peruvian street artist in murnaus and a stringed orchestra in forteleza who we watched practice, its becoming quite a theme, but with my money and influence it cant be too hard.) other shorts ranged from terrible dcumentairies about blind people, yeh give em a voice but it is a visual medium first and foremost., something the director seemed to forget. and some other alrite stuff.
3. some fil i cant remember what its called but invovled native indians having land disputes with modern folk and lots of peope hanging themselves and then attking each other and driving out some europeans, had no idea what it was trying to say it was so confused and pretty shoddy stylistically and we both fell asleep so maybe not n the best posiiton to judge.
4. Captive (russia) a russian war movie was hoping it wuld be
Pao de Asuçar
Free climbing the back of Sugar loaf Mountain come and seey but save for a little homage was fairly bland. fell asleep.
5. The Empress and the Warriors (Hong Kong) whoever the festival programer was should be shot for putting this in a competitive film festival, and forcing people such as Sir Alan Parker and the composer of spirited away,howls mving castle, monoke plus aload of other Gibbirs to watch it. Was like Crouching tiger Hidden Dragon, with absolutly no style, and considering the lack of substance these films have, it have nothing going for it, chuck in a whole subplot about the princess falling inlove with some guy who lived in a tree house, set to terrible music and making it all lovey and using totaly awful SFX backgrounds. Worst of all was the fact that the film was definately more than 50%!s(MISSING)low motion. (that was Ali[s choice, he now has a life ban on selecting any film to watch whilst i am present. if it happens again blood will spill, and you[ll most likely never see either of us again). I apologise for my apostrophe button making brackets.
Ali ate a poisnous cashew nut shell.
Post film festival, we bought hammocks
Rio sunset
Pretty damn sexy from a market stall in preparation for our 5 day boat ride down the Amazon river, from Manaus to Belem. The boat itself was bigger than expected, there was room for around 300 people, each with their own hammock, strung up along the length of the boat. This was brilliant, sailing down the river amazon sleeping in our own hammocks, Tait reading Heart of Darkness, talking to random people we come across, including a Peruvian guy name Wilson-Yuri (after the US president and the Russian cosmo-naut) He was a legend, been travelling South America for 30 years on his own, funding his trip by tradng in telephone cards and always carrying with his a little massager which he had no inhabitions about using on anybody he came across. Once we arrived in Belem we had a right little party, there was Me Tait Wilson Nico (a French guy who spent 18 months working in Haiti) and Chris and George (two retired French Canadian cousins travelling South America together). Belem itself didnt provide much in the way of sights, due to us arriving on a Sunday, and entire cities closing due to the Sunday day of rest and the monday day
Oscar Niemeyer
The musuem of Contemporary art, designed by the famous brazillian himself of sod the tourists!
We moved on after a day or two to the next town along the coast, Sao Luis. We arrived at the bus terminal early to buy tickets for the 7pm bus, but due to it being full we had to settle for the 8pm bus. Once in Sao Luis we discovered that the 7pm bus around 5 in the morning (Brazil is huge and buses take anywhere up to 28 hours to get from one place to another) the the bus had been shot at, boarded by armed robbers who then ordered everyone off the bus so they could take all money cameras and phones on the bus and on people. They then ordered the bus to drive into the woods, where they opened the storage hull and ransacked every bag of everything of value. The robbery took 1 hour and they left without a trace. No body was hurt, but a few were shaken up, including Nico and Wilson who were on the bus at the time.
Sao Luis was a nice enough town, colonial buildings, incredible hot dogs, good places to drink beer, listen to Reggae, and have arguments with a Brazillian
Brazillian Hostels
We checked it out, its worse on the inside guy about football (apprently we invented it and they upgraded it). One night in a hotel under construction and we were on the road again to Barrerienahs, home of national parks and sand dunes. It a very wierd experience having spent 6 weeks travelling cities, jungles, mountains and more, to come across on the north coast of Brazil, these unbelieveable sand dunes, right in between rivers and lush forest, pure white sand and natural lagoons created by rain fall which we could swim in. Was epic, and the sunset over the dunes wasnt too shabby either.
Two days over sand dunes in 4x4s and buses, we arrived in Jericoacoara, a small party town with no paved roads, only sand. We arrived on the Saturday, and as it happened there was a one off beach party happening that night. We moseyed on down to be greeted by a swimwear fasion show (very nice), Capoeria dancing to Brazillian drumming, live music, oh, and at least 15 cocktail stands serving drinks with fruit that can only have fallen off the tree hours before due to the incredible freshness of them. As you can imagine I was a little excited by the prospect
Catch of the Day
Amazon fishing for Piranah of fresh fruit cocktails on a beach in brazil, so we spent the evening testing different varieties and comparing each others (I can recommend a kiwi-riniah and a mango-and-passion-fruit-oska). A spot of dancing later and it was to the sand dunes for star watching and chilling.
Jericoacoara also provided the opportunity to go sand sledging and sand boarding. Apparently if you over wax the bottom of a sledge and send it down a large sand dune with a Tait sitting on it, and once said sledge hits a bump at the bottom, said Tait ends up performing quite a spectacular jump into a pool of water.
We left Jeri in order to head South to Salvador, the most African city in the Western Hemisphere, apparently. We arrived last night, and in the course of 3 hours, got robbed of R$10 (3quid) after getting threatened by some guy who reckoned he was in the mafia, ended up buying a kid a hot dog because he followed us around for ages, ate crepes and retired to our room with beer and Lapsang.
A little wierd to think we did Venezuela in 3 n half weeks, and having now spent
Termite Nest
Suspend in the trees of the Amazon jungle 4 weeks in Brazil were still really quite far North, and still have Rio and Sao Paulo to fit in before we move onto Paraguay. As we have learnt so far though, dont plan anything, it never works, and if given the choice, take the later bus!
Todo Bom en Brasil!! x x
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