The Long Way Back From the Beach

The drive to Guarapari was only 13 hours. The drive back was 15 due to traffic, although that was hardly the worst part of it.

There is always danger eating food from street vendors and beach vendors are even more risky. I think that the kiosks and bars are fine, but the guys walking along the beach with fresh oysters, for instance, deserve a bit more care. They get the oysters early in the morning, put them in a little basket, and walk around in the hot sun selling them. Patrícia and I had some one morning and they were the best I ever had, opened in front of me and served with lime juice and salt. Absolutely delicious!

The day before we left, Patrícia and André had some at about 10:00 in the warm sunny morning. Everthing was fine until the next day...when I packed the car, she was feeling bad and André looked particularly unhappy. Sure enough, 20 minutes into the trip home, he did an Exorcist immitation and vomited all over the door, the seat, the blanket, himself, the floor...

With my lovely woman feeling under the weather too, it was up to me to clean up the mess. Bleah. I came close to joining André in reviewing what I ate for breakfast. The poor thing had to endure about eight hours of twisty roads and he threw up six times, the last five in plastic bags, thank god. As for the rest of us, we had to smell vomit for 15 hours.

Road Danger

After waiting through a painfully slow traffic jam we passed a rolled over car in the middle of the road with one of the dead occupants still sitting in the back seat. The others had been thrown onto the roadside. We also saw a number of smaller accidents, however that was not what caught my attention. In driving so slowly, I had time to really look at the road. Specifically, all of the scratches in the asphalt from terrible accidents. On both sides of almost every curve, there were the marks of what must have been head-on collisions.

Finally arriving into a satellite city of Brasília at 3 am, I felt like I could relax with nice large, well-lit, familiar roads. Of course, that was exactly when someone, shooting out from a side street, clipped the car in front of me, smashing both cars and spinning them like tops to the side of the road.

Showering and getting into my own bed after 15 hours of smelly vomit driving was a pleasure beyond words.

The drive to the beach

I was 13 hours of driving to the beach. I was strongly warned about the roads before we left. At first the roads were fine, then the rain came. If you have never been in a strong tropical rain it is difficult to image just how much water we are talking about. It makes driving a little dangerous, particularly when there are little mini-rivers running across the highway. A few times I could feel the car hydroplane a little.

Then came the section of road I would describe as craters of the moon. It was like a video game, trying to drive as fast as possible but swerving back and forth avoiding the larger suspension damaging and car swallowing holes. It was safer driving on the shoulder than on the road itself. This section was only about 25 miles long and the road got better. Strangely, I found the experience entertaining and a better part of the drive.

Then came the curves and curves. The problem was it was dark and raining intemittently and I was tired. It was draining. We passed a couple cars that had damaged their cars after hitting big holes. We also saw a dead motorcylist laying in the street and a few lesser accidents.

I was relieved when we arrived a little after midnight. Unfortunately, the kids slept most of the way and were awake while I only wanted to collapse.

Day 192 Dead in New York

The dead body in the hostel lobby might have struck me as a bad sign if I had not been so tired. I didn’t kill the guy so I really didn’t care—just as long as they changed the sheets. The only thing that did bother me was the disinfectant that the maintenance guy was spraying everywhere but especially on whatever was dripping from the body as they carried it out. It wasn’t blood and my curiosity didn’t go so far as to make me ask.

Then the clerk told me that they did not have any record of my online reservation or deposit. Even worse, they only had two beds available, both more expensive than the one I had booked. I pled my case and got a discount on the one that wasn’t recently occupied by a corpse.

It had been a long day of travel by bus and subway from DC and by the time I got into my dorm room I was ready for bed. The first thing I did was to sniff for disinfectant to see if I got the right bed. It was the only time I was ever reassured by the lack of disinfectant, usually the opposite is true. It was midnight and I hit the pillow hard. I had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to get to the airport for my flight to Brasil so I needed all the sleep I could get.

Needless to say that I was less than pleased when, at 1:30 am, the security guard woke me from a deep, peaceful sleep by yelling at me. He was under the impression that I was in the bed under false pretenses and demanded to see my receipt. I groggily and irritably dug it out and thrust it at him. After checking it, making a call to the reception, and saying only, “sorry,” he left. They had overbooked the room and someone had come up to find me where they were supposed to be. It only took about 5 minutes but I was so irritated by the whole thing, I almost did not go back to sleep. I was even less thrilled in the morning when I found that one of my roommates had left the door ajar; anyone could have come in while we were sleeping and taken our bags.

Sleep deprived, I stumbled out into the frigid morning air at 5:00 am. I did not have time to stop at my favorite bagel shop across the street. I was loaded down with an extra bag of clothes and my new Rollerblades and could not sit down to enjoy my usual NY breakfast of a coffee, bagel, eggs, and home fries ($5). It was snowing hard and the two blocks to the subway left me fluffy white. That is, until it melted and it left me unpleasantly damp. While it took almost an hour to get to the airport, I was happy that I did not have to take a taxi.

The check-in line was short, I was right on time, and security went smoothly. I should have known something was wrong. The plane had been delayed coming from Brasil and was going to be departing three and a half hours late. I was going to miss my connection in São Paulo and would have to stay in a hotel. On the positive side, I had plenty of time to get some overpriced breakfast to eat. I got coffee and a bagel and paid 8 bucks for a days worth of wi-fi (for which I found out later they double charged my card).

I was happy to finally get on the plane. Even the hour of de-icing time sitting on the tarmac did not bother me. I was on my way to what my mother aptly called my “happy place.”