Ben Burford: May 2008 Archives

2008 is a very unusual year in that Carnaval was not only two weeks earlier than usual, but in that the Festival of Iemanjá also fell coincident to Carnaval, which NEVER happens. I know that Carnaval dates are hooked to Ash Wednesday and Easter, and that this year it happened freakishly early. Why? Something about the solstice, I think. What's going on here?

The Festival of Iemanjá (Ee-ah-mahn-JAH) is always held on February 2, which is also the Day of Our Lady of Candeias, a holy day associated with Oxum, the jealous queen of sweet water. Here's the great part. You'd think a festival like the one for Iemanjá has been going on since Brazil first rose from the ocean and cooled into a continent. Not so.

According to Bahian history, the festival began in 1923. The fishery was in ruins, and the men of the fishermen's association (!) decided to please the vain Mother of the Waters with gifts. Since they needed a day to do it on, and since the day of Our Lady of Conception had passed (in December), they used the next best thing: the day of Our Lady of Candeias, February 2. They decided they'd deal with Oxum first since it was officially "her" day, and they were bringing in this vain upstart of a goddess to possibly steal her thunder.

Now what about this Oxum? She's the "jealous queen of sweet waters." What does SHE think about Iemanjá and her mirror? I don't know. I'm sure it's not good. I DO know that before anybody gives Iemanjá ANYTHING, they go out at dawn and regale Oxum with music and gifts first.

It's a little complicated. Iemanjá (a.k.a. Dandalunda, Yemanjá, and host of other aliases) is a Yoruba goddess, the daughter of Obatalá and Oduduá, the creators of the world. She wears light blue and silver, the colors of the Bay of All Saints. Her face is like the reflection of water, and she carries a mirror that she uses to gaze upon her reflection frequently. Iemanjá is Yoruban. I don't know what Oxum is, but I'm sure she and Iemanjá behave like soap opera villainesses at a party whenever they happen to bump into each other under the sea. Rowrr!

Vain goddess? Check. Jealous original goddess? Check. Party time? Check.

It's a big day for the Rio Vermelho neighborhood. Over 300,000 people bring offerings to the goddess--mainly flowers in baskets, but also mirrors, jewelry, letters, food and other precious items. After all the gifts are collected, the fishermen (in over 400 boats) take them out to sea and reverently lower them into the water for Iemanjá while they drum, sing, chant, and generally insure good luck in their fishing efforts. Fortunately for the environment, the people only give biodegradable presents, or those that the goddess can really use.

Combine this faithful throng with the Carnaval humanity swelling in the streets, and you've got another scorching mass of flesh packed together like potted meat.


Armed with none of this knowledge beforehand, Jean and I slept like rocks after the previous night at Carnaval. All we knew was that the next day we were gonna wear white (or as close to it as we could), and go down the hill and placate this vain goddess. Oh, don't think the Bahians are only thinking about the goddess. Oh no. They are using this as another excuse for alegría. Who blames them?

That gol-durned Blackberry alarm obnoxiously announced itself all too early. By the time Jean and I made it in to the breakfast room, Carol and Pettus were dressed in white, like a couple of virgin schoolgirls. Robo was actually wearing cotton, and not quick-dry. Jean had originally planned to wear a demure jacket over a tank top, but decided that nobody at the festival would remember her in just a sleeveless shirt. After stepping out of the air conditioned bedroom, I was wearing my 50/50 shirt: 50% cotton, 50% water.

Carol had already begun to prepare her basket. It was decorated with official blue Iemanjá ribbons (Licensed? Surely not. Maybe I ought to have a talk with the Fishermen's Association about that.). We were going to walk down the hill to the festival and buy flowers there. She assured us that there would be plenty.

She wasn't kidding.

Right after leaving the little world inside the gate and getting our final thumbs up for the morning, we took it down the winding hill to the village. On the way we encountered a gentleman peeing on a colonial-era stone wall, a park full of partiers dancing to music pumped out of distorting speakers in the hatchback of a car, numerous food stands, and flower vendors enough to choke Holland.

The delightful odor of urine wove a rich tapestry of olfactory delights when combined with the venerable cooking grease, car fumes, sea air, fish, and homo sapiens sapiens. Truly, though, the Bahians were a non-smelly bunch of folks. I think they bathe two or three times a day during Summer for all the right reasons. Not to be a dickhead, but they smelled okay! Even in huge crowds! I don't know if that would be true in the U.S.

I had wised up to the camera situation by now, and had it with me! I was just judicious about when I took it out. Not around the distorted speakers and peeing guy, but once in town, OKAY!

We first selected the flowers for Carol's basket (as shown above). I loved the irony of the Christian t-shirt on the young man selling flowers for a pagan celebration, and giving the money to his church. God works in mysterious ways.

Carol did tell us that there was a contingent of fundamentalists that had begun to decry the festivities in recent years. I guess that's one thing we haven't got a lock on in America: religious superiority and intolerance. I say, let the Yorubas have their Candomblé. Love it all. It translates into many tongues.

This needs a little clearing up. When I moved here in 1986, the Catholic Church was fairly tolerant of syncretism. When Cardinal Neves was named Primate Archbishop in the late 80s, after having served a number of years in the Vatican, he began to call for a sharper line between Catholicism and Candomblé. To the outrage of many, he would not allow Bonfim Church to be opened during the Bonfim festival, which he said was a pagan celebration.

Several years ago an even more conservative Archbishop was named, Cardinal Majella, who reprimanded a priest who baptized Caetano Veloso's youngest son and invoked the name of an orixa.

However, it is the fundamental Protestant sects that have a vendetta against Candomblé, calling it devil worship. The "Temple of Faith" in your photo is the Igreja Universal Reino de Deus and is growing by leaps and bounds in Brazil and abroad. Its founder Edir Macedo wrote a book slamming Candomblé, which was pulled off the shelves as it was considered hate literature (How's that for being a good Christian?) I would imagine that the flower vendor belongs to a Protestant sect.

Once we made it to the water, we saw the line of umpteen thousand, ready to take their gifts to the goddess.

Carol insisted on standing in the gargantuan line to present her beautiful basket of flowers. It was one of the best offerings in the queue, and I swelled with pride to have such a generous cousin. In reality I was just puffy from gratitude, once Carol told us we didn't have to stand there with her. I had already begun to chug water and spout it out of my pores like the cat in the cartoons that drinks a glass of water after being shot at point-blank range by the mouse. (See illustration.)I couldn't fathom Carol's dedication, but was glad to have her do it instead of me. Robo was openly deriding the entire concept and MOCKING the goddess! I didn't mock her openly, I cursed her silently for not talking to the goddess of the local environment and giving me a breeze of some sort. But no.

Carol got in the line like a dutiful Rio Vermelhoan, while we milled aimlessly through the crowd, trying to get up to see the goddess. There were all kinds of video cameras and stuff going on, so I barged up front politely and took these pictures of the goddess and the people who had gotten to the front of the line.

Who were the ladies in white being interviewed and photographed? I don't know. I suspect they are the wives of the heads of the Fishermen's Association, and probably have an Iemanjá sewing circle at their Yoruba Candomblé (worship place). But then, I could be wrong.

Notice the largish girl in the front. Is she gasping at the beauty of the goddess? Or is she about to throw up? I voted for number two and decided to say "buh-bye" to Iemanjá and skedaddle.

The Rio Vermelho neighborhood had been decorated in an undersea theme in honor of the Festival of Iemanjá. There were nets over the entire area, dotted with colorful sea life. When it got darker, the effect was really cool, but it was neat in the daytime, too.

Danje Cardoso's house was only steps away from the Fisherman's Association headquarters, and Nelson herded us over there en masse. Once at the downstairs door, there was a guard-type guy who wanted to know who we were or who we knew. Nelson gave an acceptable password, because we were soon admitted to a very old building where Danje resided.

The stairs to the upper living area were narrow and looked like they were made of chalk. She had renovated the building with the same elements in mind that she and her sister had used when doing the Villa Forma gym. Recycled materials were put to intriguing use everywhere. There was a spectacular coffee table made from old machine parts and pieces of granite, if I can remember correctly. The art on the stucco walls was all fantastic, and Danje had put out her Iemanjá decor for the holiday just as most of Salvador had also done. Carol certainly had. Before we had left that morning, she showed us a great sculpture and wall hanging depicting the goddess in all her vain Bahian beauty.

The great thing about parties in Bahia is the custom associated with them: when someone opens up their home to you at a party, they are, in essence, making you the owner of the house for the day. Therefore, your friends can be invited once you're in. This may be oversimplification, but as I understood it from Carol, once I was in, the house was mine for the day. Each guest had that dispensation. So, if I wanted to invite a hooker from the beach to the party, I technically could, because I was owner for the day. But I believe the well-mannered guest would refrain from doing stuff like leaving peter tracks in the master bedroom or flushing toilet paper. Boy, would I have loved to have owned THIS gorgeous house!

Here's the view from the front balcony, which faces the street by the beach. The whole second floor was mainly for living: kitchen, living room, bathrooms, bedrooms, front balcony, back courtyard, and whatever else I didn't see.

The feature that interested me most at the moment was the cooler full of water and beer, and the shady courtyard with chairs aplenty for us. A couple of the seats were pretty flimsy, and I feared sitting in one only to have it give way and drop my sweating hunk to the ground. After looking around, we found suitable accommodations for all of us, save Carol, who was out in the streets sweating it out for us.

We sat around, everyone sipping beer, me chugging water, discussing existentialism with Nelson, who not only speaks seven languages, but knows his way around Nietzsche and all those other deep thinkers the way he knows the streets of Rio Vermelho.

I emailed Robo this morning and asked him what it was we were discussing, since my encapsulation just couldn't do it justice:

At 05/09/08 10:23 AM, you wrote:

Hey there pal.
What was the existential conversation we were having with Nelson the day of the Iemanjá festival? When we were at Danje Cardoso's house?
I know you remember, because you ruminated over it the entire trip. So spill.
Thanking you in advance, I remain,

Robo replied:
He referenced a German (I think) philosopher -- seems like he was early 20th century -- who espoused that proof of existence could only be based on observation by another conscious being. I don't think we nailed down too many specifics on it. Among several questions related to it that I later posed when Nelson was conveniently not available: Was the philosopher alone when he wrote that? And if so, did he even exist?

Is that the conversation to which you are referring? [No preposition on the end of that sentence.]

Notice his remark about the preposition. He's an erudite sumbitch, I'll say that!

By this time, Pettus had gotten antsy and had to move. She decided to go down and wait in line with Carol for the rest of the way. When Nelson looked up and asked where Pettus was, and we said she had gone to meet Carol, he had a mild freakout: "Mollie will kill me! I was supposed to keep an eye on you!" with his vocal patina from years of teaching, and the inimitable caress of English that only a Latin can give. What a voice!

We assured him that Pettus was no hothouse flower, and if anything happened, she'd take care of it. It would have been funny to come out and find her standing over a local Salvadoran tough after having cold-cocked him. Because that's what would have happened.

Here's a picture Pettus took of Carol delivering her basket to the keepers of the gifts. Good shot!

Meanwhile, back at the house, Danje had come into the courtyard, and I looked at her like she was a rock star. I was going to wait for Carol to get there to make the introduction.

Carol eventually showed up with Pettus in tow, and neither the worse for wear. Carol did chug a water upon arrival, but freshened up instantly. Amazing. Nothing ever fazed Pettus from the get-go. I was waterlogged, sweaty, still thirsty, and a little knotty in the midsection again. But not enough to keep me from swooning over Danje and pulling my most perfect "suado" and "beleza" from my bag of tricks.

I got a shot of the group, and we kissed and "beleza'ed" our way down the narrow stairs, out into the streets, and began the trek home.

Oy! It's a hell of a lot easier to get down a hill than up one. Duh. But we managed. By that time, we knew the way, and knew the landmarks, too. There was a dental supply place that had a funny name. We parked there all the time and passed by just as much. Carol will supply the name. Maybe it was their logo. What was it?

Anyway, we threaded our way through the tapestry of smells, past "urine wall" and "distortion park" up, up, up the hill to Carol's house. Jean and I did pretty dern good considering her heel problems and my general blobbiness. Pettus, Robo, Carol, et al were right ahead of us. Up the hill we went, doggedly plodding our way home.

Past the front door of the house, which is really on the ground floor and opens into Cerqueira-la; past the gate man, his vertical thumb and his beautiful birds; past Carmen and Suely in the kitchen preparing for the upcoming pizza party in our honor; past the "whufft" of frigid air coming from under Daniel's still-occupied sleep chamber; past Patricia's "how was it?" and my "great!" exchange in the hall; into our bedroom to sit on the bed for 30 seconds before my mouth heated up like a lava lamp; and finally into the bathroom to BWAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH all the water in my stomach into the little toilet with the beautiful green tortoise shell toilet seat.

Welcome back, Ben! Did you have fun at the festival?

So here it all comes around. The synchronicity is shocking and insidious:

1. We fail to get up at dawn and regale Oxum, "the jealous queen of sweet waters."

2. I drink copious amounts of coffee, made from the "sweet waters of the tap."

3. Robo begins to deride Iemanjá, and is not even aware of the existence of Oxum. (The fact that he was so hip to the quick-dry material that's so popular in Brazil must have afforded him some sort of immunity to the wrath of the goddesses.)

4. I, the bloated tourist come to town, drink most of their "sweet water" and turn it into something else right before their very eyes. The goddesses can't take it anymore, and work together for the first time in Bahian history to exact a poetic revenge.

5. I return a huge amount of their sweet water at one time to their quaint sewer system.

6. I then immediately jump into a cold shower and stand as still as I can, covering myself with the sweet waters, which drain out of the tub in the same direction as they do here. Just like in Psycho.

Today's lunch entertainment was another party: a pizza fest in honor of Iemanjá and us. Carol had hired Ulysses to come in and do the pizzas--another master of the caliber of Sr. Itamar and Joasias. The pizza oven was the last piece of Cerqueira-la that had not been used on our visit. Like being able to use every bit of the pig but the squeal, we used every square inch of Cerqueira-la: all the chairs, all the tables, all the ovens, all the sinks, all the ping-pong tables, all the hammocks, all of the beauty and all the water. If we didn't use all the dishes, Carol made sure to hire a Bahian to come in and lick what we hadn't used, just to make sure it was all done correctly.



After my liquid prayer session at the altar of Iemanjá and my redemptive shower, I flopped back down on the bed, this time covering up properly. Once again, I took a little nap while the guests arrived. All I ended up having to do was bring down a chair, my camera, and my groggy self. The sprinkler had been on next to the steps to Cerqueira-la, so the granite was wet and potentially treacherous to this cotton-headed oaf carrying down a chair, a camera, and stepping gingerly like a hippo ballerina in new Havaianas.

I tried to enter the party as surreptitiously as I could, but was nabbed. Half the place turned to look at me (through a fisheye lens). I felt like a convict in the spotlight, and wanted to do a dance into the little kitchen and through the secret tube back to the bedroom. Instead, I pulled out the camera and started shooting while I figured out what to say. The nap had fried my brain, and it was harder to get it started than a crappy old Toro lawn mower.

Ulysses was the natural thing to photograph, especially after Robo prompted me by saying "Look at him do that." Good simple sentence. Ben understand.

Every good Salvadoran knows to decorate for the Festival of Iemanjá, and Carol had done her civic duty to the utmost. She had hung the beautiful tapestry over the buffet table, and the sculpture of the vain Iemanjá admiring her reflection stood among the vegetables, fruit and silverware. She had also tied foamy blue and white net and ribbon all over the place.

Too little, too late, if you asked me at the time. Iemanjá had made her displeasure with me known already. The old girl was high maintenance, that's for sure. And I say "old girl" with complete confidence, being as she IS the daughter of the creators of the world.

I continued to roam around the party, sampling a pizza petal now and again, but still chugging water like a fiend. I talked to Amina Dickerson for a while, learning that she worked for Kraft in Chicago. I told her how much I liked her Velveeta and her logo; being a big eater and an advertising man, I was qualified to do both.

Amina and her husband Julian Moore (who eluded my camera) were there for the evening festivities: Carlinhos Brown, another venerable Salvadoran music legend, had erected three or four massive stages on the very streets we tromped on that morning. Carlinhos and crew  (a bunch of stars!) were the ones to run through the streets at dawn, singing for Oxum. I hated to have missed that, but I was wallowing in the rack.

Carlinhos was also the spearhead behind the massive Iemanjá decorations, and was the Big Daddy of the huge family of entertainers who were going to pass through those stages. More music! On top of the sonic blast from Carnaval. It only happens once in a blue moon, and we were there to witness it.

Hold on!! That meant we had to walk back down there and back up again! Aieee!! Well, at least there were a bunch of other folks to share to trek: Cindi and Bill Howley and their kids, a very nice bunch, I'll say. The youngest son was what an old lady (or I) would call "a little scamp". All the kids were cute as hell, polite and not afraid to speak to weird old men in new Havaianas.

Wait! I just found Carol's dossier on the Howleys. Encapsulated: The Howley family is Bill, Cindi, Annie, Clara and Tom. Bill works for Winrock International, an offshoot of the Rockefeller Foundation whose mission is renewable energy and sustainable development. Cindi recently went back to work at a winery -- right up her alley. They lived in Brazil for almost five years, roughly between 94-99.

So. The Little Scamp's name is Tom. He'll always be The Little Scamp to me.

I was also in error about Ruybela. She doesn't teach with Nelson: Ruybela Carteado was with Julian and Amina. She is a dynamic promoter of anything to be promoted that keeps her going between her home here and in Philadelphia.

It was time to go. And the new shirt I put on became an old shirt instantly.

Down, down, past urine wall and surroundings, past the dental supply place, finally breaking "free" where we came out that morning. But breaking free involved running into a brick wall of humanity grooving to the Brazilian sounds coming from Stage One.

No camera. Jean had the disposable. Which gave the event a whole William Eggleston quality to it. He always took only one shot of anything. Not a billion shots of the same thing. One shot. The three taken with the disposable are the only ones, if I'm not mistaken.

It was flat packed to the gills down there! And everybody knew all the words to the songs again! Grrrrrr! Our group moved through the crowd with the cohesion of a paramecium, undulating from all sides. One person would see a good place to stand (forget about sitting) and pull the crowd that way. Then another move. Then another. We were actually better where we were at the beginning. We could see and hear the stage better. The move that looked attractive, up a little rise on a side street, was ultimately not as good.

And goodness gracious was I ever thirsty! We ALL were. But the crowd-to-vendor ratio was woefully bad. If one of the enterprising Bahians had had a REALLY big cooler full of water and a few beers, he could have put his children through college on the money he would have made that day. God bless Bill Howley. Not only did he carry Tom on his shoulders for a large part of the time, he voluntarily pierced the throng to buy us beer. And he wouldn't even take my money, to boot! What a guy.

I drank half the beer Bill brought me, but my body screamed "WATER!!!" We were on a rise, the street made of cobblestones. My Crocs were steady and sturdy 99.9% of the way, but the cobbles would get me every now and then. I staggered through the crowd, throwing around an occasional "licença" (excuse me). I finally found one vendor who was being besieged just as he set down his giant styrofoam treasure chest. Talk about your piranhas! I managed to snag a water and have it finished before I could make it back to the mother ship.

All the music from the stage was smoking hot Brazilian when we first got there. The crowd was happy and benign, and singing along, probably like they'd do at a kids' soccer game. But then the music got slow and introspective and quiet. For a long time. The crowd was getting kind of distracted because they were louder than what was coming from the stage. There is no reason to do that. These people should have been rocking the house. Carol even got bored, and asked if anybody was ready to leave.

The Howleys were ten steps ahead of us. We watched them disappear into the crowd, eventually only seeing a very tall Tom as they were enveloped by the mass.

On our way out Carol and Nelson stoped to samba to some of the music blaring out of huge outdoor speakers at this bar. They far eclipsed the sound from the stage, disappearing in the distance. And the people at the bar and outside were raising hell and having a blast.

That's why I couldn't understand why the groups on the stage had ceased to play the party music. Don't get me wrong. The slower stuff was pretty, and would have been great if you were sitting in a bar listening to it while a ceiling fan rotated slowly above your head and a beautiful Bahian served you roskas. But here, we were international potted meat, and wanted to get our pipoca on. I'm sure it was just a slow stretch, but it felt like an eternity, and a large group of festival goers tends to be pretty ADD. We were no exception.

It's such a weird sensation to break free of a gigantic jamboree like that one. The crowd becomes thinner and thinner, the streets clearly show the aftermath of the human traffic, and the smells are presented to you in a crystal clear fashion. The disappearing dusk drove it home even more. There were a bunch of us, but it was still kind of a lonely feeling at the same time. I'm sure that our having to leave the next day added to it. For some reason, it was a vivid reminder of leaving the Alabama State Fair by the secret gate that only a "few" people knew about--the one with the best parking and the non-crowded entrance.

We magically made it up the hill somehow. Surely our training of the afternoon hadn't hurt. At the house, I decided to sit in the cold tub for a while. My engine tends to run hot all the time, but it was in overdrive, and I needed to cool 'er down. Jean and Carol sat up there for a while and chatted while I played the manatee and watched the sky.

We had a pickup kind of dinner. Carol dragged everything out of the refrigerator, and we had a big ole smorgy accompanied by the ever-popular manioc flour. At this point, it was decided that Daniel and Patricia were going to join us in Rio.

Robo had posed the idea earlier in the trip. Daniel and Patricia were the perfect traveling companions for many reasons: smart, fun, lively, curious, irreverent. Oh. And they both spoke Portuguese. We may have still taken them even without all the glowing adjectives. And Robo was not terribly keen on being language deficient in Rio for 7 days. Relying on me to tell everybody about my sweat and about the beauty was just not gonna be enough.

Therefore, as president of whatever one of his endeavors it was, Robo authorized a grant to underwrite part of D&P's trip to Rio to stay with us in the huge house (that slept 13), learn about Rio and its Carnaval themselves, and help us survive same. Carol immediately went upstairs to book flights, and I went into Daniel's temporary lair to celebrate our success by watching TV with my new BKFs. I had completely flipped into paternal mode, and was loving it.

Would Carol want them back after we got through with them? There are a million literary and musical references from throughout history that say "não."

Once we had entered the plane we saw that it was not totally packed. It gave us a glimmer of hope that the 3+-hour flight could possibly be made with an empty seat between Jean and me. When we're flying Southwest, we have a method that usually yields us the empty seat:
• Make no eye contact with those coming down the aisle
• Buy or rent Enquirer, Star, Globe, and Hustler and spread them all over the three seats
• Buy or rent used cups and food paper to spread around with the magazines
• Take shoes off and display sock feet prominently
• Sit as fatly in the seats with as much body spilling all over the place as possible--think "Jabba the Hutt"

But this was TAM, and the seats were assigned. We went ahead and tried the "method" anyway, hoping that any possible row companion would be compelled to find another seat without even attempting actual contact with us.

Either "the method" worked, or there was nobody else assigned to our row, because we had that golden empty seat--a small piece of aeronautical real estate worth more per square inch than the finest Fifth Avenue penthouse.

To top off this small victory, the TAM candy greeting was right behind. This time, we both took two candies. I still didn't have the nerve to get a handful like I had seen other people do. Being that we were gonna be on the plane with the stewardess for all that time, I didn't want our first introduction to be greed-based. I was counting on some real TAM service, untainted by a bad first impression. THIS time, I wasn't going to even THINK of the people up in first class. Uh huh.

The stewardesses were cute as hell, as usual. THIS time, maybe we really WERE gonna experience the TAM luxury they foretold with the candies. Then, as if by magic, our little TVs came on with the flight instructions given in four or five languages. Yippee!! Until Jean's TV immediately began to strobe and change colors rapidly. It was totally trippy, but useless for watching anything. She turned it off and looked at me. We both burst out laughing.

And don't think the in-flight entertainment wasn't top notch. If the trip weren't long enough for a couple of movie options, they would stick in a videotape (not a CD, a videotape) of either a CBS drama or comedy. The problem was, besides the inherent rotten playback quality of an overused videotape at the get-go, they tended to start a one-hour drama when there wasn't enough time left in the flight to see the end. That happened several times during our travels. It was as if whoever it was that taped the show had forgotten to set their VCR correctly and the last 10 minutes were missing, so they played it back for the passengers accordingly.

After a little flying time, I was hungry. The coconut water had cured me! Not really. Flying makes me hungry. Like anything does. Suddenly, the big "food and beverage cart parade" showed its head at the back of the plane. Of course. We were almost at the front of the plane.

So here they come, moving like slugs, greeting people left and right in Portuguese, and doling out what, on any menu, should be called "The Oliver Twist." First of all, you're sitting there trying not to obviously crane your neck to see what they're serving. Then you're trying not to drool all over the Enquirers and Hustlers, but can't WAIT for that stupid cart to get to your place. By then you've figured out the pattern: left aisle; smile; serve meal, ask for drink order; give drink order to drink caboose; serve drinks. Right aisle: lather, rinse, repeat.

And then it gets close to you, and suddenly the pattern changes! They start going three rows at a time on one side, completely bypassing YOU! WHAT???

Did I still have a little taint from Iemanjá on me somewhere? Now, besides just squirming and salivating; I was politely, internally steaming, too. But here was the cart, finally! Two foil-covered packets were handed to us rather unceremoniously, I thought.

"Drink? Uh. Bloody Mary?" asks Jean, doing the traditional raised volume and implied quote marks.
"?" replies the stewardess.
"Tomato juice?" asks Jean, loudly.
"?"
"Liquor?" asks Jean. I lean over and do the "drinky-drinky" motion for the stewardess. She nods and holds up a bottle of wine.
"Diet Coke? Coke Lite?" Jean enunciates, as if she were chewing ice. The stewardess pulls out a can of Jean's second choice, plops two ice cubes in a tiny plastic cup, and pours it three-quarters full.
"May I have the can?" Jean shouts, masticating and enunciating like a pro. The stewardess is nonplussed as she hands her the can.

Having already decided that unless I wanted a Red Wine Sunrise, there was nothing liquory to be had. Besides, the red wine was already open. Uh. This was a morning flight. When was it opened? Shudder. I ordered club soda and lime AND coffee. Egads, in retrospect, I wonder if the coffee was made with "plane water". Double shudder!

Never mind! The FOOD was here! Jean and I both reverently furled the foil on our breakfast treasures. "Fresh"-like fruit salad, some bready thing, and then the items that scream "LUXURY": the butter, packaged as if it were churned by the actual descendants of Dom Pedro II; the cheese, with some logo on it indicating how only the most elite get to eat it; and the "jelly" made from the belly button lint of Venus and "kissed" with a hint of jasmine or equivalent. Yeah, great. But it was in reality, a FREEKING PAT OF BUTTER, smaller than a credit card size piece of cheese, and enough jelly to spread on a communion wafer. I'd rather have a trio of Brand X butter, cheese and jelly with a decent Zippy Mart-sized pack of saltines to go with it. Hell, a small "classy" tin of sardines or fish steaks would also be great with the saltines, too! Except a whole planeful of that would be kind of "fragrant."

We nevertheless attacked the food. It's always great to open that stuff, like the little baby butter, especially with my sausage fingers. All that internal packaging does nothing but take up potential food space! Sigh. I was beginning to seethe again, as I envisioned them in First Class, eating Eggs Benedict, drinking Mimosas and laughing at all of us in "economy class" as they watched us on closed circuit High-Def TV.

After our airline meal, Jean and I "settled back, relaxed, and enjoyed our flight to Rio." Not. It has always amazed me that the captain has the balls to tell the passengers to "sit back, relax and enjoy the flight to blahblahblah." UNLESS YOU ARE IN FIRST CLASS, there is NO WAY to relax and NOTHING to ENJOY about the flight. Anywhere. I get grumpy just thinking about it.

The pilot's initial greeting was in Portuguese. It was long, flowery, sexy, and ended with not only the suggestion to enjoy the flight, but to possibly "get some" on the way. Next came the Spanish translation. Shorter, slightly less warm. Finally came the English. Three sentences: "I am Captain. We are flying. You will enjoy." But it was still English spoken by a Latin. Still sounded like butter on pancakes.

I fidgeted my way through the rest of the flight. With all the movement, I may as well have walked to Rio. But we were finally FREE!! We had no problem finding our luggage, and went to the place where Jean told us we were going to be met by the Rio Holiday-authorized driver.

The house we had rented in Rio (actually Niterói, across the bay from Rio) came with access to a concierge, a cook/maid who would prepare breakfast each day, and a driving service. The guy who owns the outfit, Steve, lives in Washington state, I think. He is an ex-Microsoft exec who invested in nice rental real estate in Rio. Jean had researched it extensively on the internet, communicated with Steve a bunch, and the deal was great. We originally had more people on the trip when we booked the house, but despite the fact that poor "Other Nancy," (Nancy Blackledge) couldn't come with us, it was still cost effective. And that's including the couple of days we couldn't spend there, but paid for anyway, due to the length of rental required.

So anyway, we went to the place where the driver was supposed to meet us, but of course there was no driver. Had the clusterfuck actually begun so quickly? But Jean had the number of our concierge, Sylvia, and was in immediate contact when we weren't picked up soon. We were standing at the tourist information booth, and though they were pleasant and cute, they were no help. In addition, the maid had come to clean the counter. She sprayed stuff all over the place, then began an expert wipe-down, all the while chatting amiably with the booth girls. They were all having a high old time speaking their Portuguese. I wanted to know what they were talking about.

After a bunch of speculation in English on our parts, and a bunch of "girl talk" in Portuguese on everybody else's part, Jean got it from Sylvia that the driver had gone to the international pickup place. He didn't know we were coming from within Brazil. But I thought we WERE at the international pickup place. Mongo confused.

Well, who cared. Our driver was here! We met halfway between the curb and the information booth. He didn't know he was supposed to get us there, he said, in good English. But he was pissed off about the snafu, I could tell. We followed him across to the parking deck where his car was parked. Earlier, Robo had been telling me about some of the cars in Brazil that were powered with Propane and gas. Wow! Interesting, Robo! He had also told me about how they weren't quite as powerful as a full-on gas engine. Also interesting. I didn't know how it would apply to me other than just a neat fact.

Our driver's car was one of those hybrids! I was looking at Jean's and my three massive pieces of luggage, all these humanoid passengers, and then at the giant propane tank in the back of the car. How was this going to work? Between Robo, Jean and the driver, we got all the stuff in there. They piled in the back seats, and let me have the front seat again. I turned to tell the driver that I was sorry about the mixup. He immediately reminded me of Peter Dinklage, one of my favorite actors.

I asked him his name.

"Marcelo," he replied.

"Well hey, Marcelo!" we all chirped. And off we went into a misting, grey day in Rio de Janeiro (pronounced "Hee-oh Zzzzhhah-NEH-ro" all the while swallowing that last "r"). Marcelo didn't say much on the way, while we all jabbered incessantly in English. I wondered if it was as mysterious to him to hear it from us as the Portuguese was for me. We did all agree that we wanted to find a liquor store, and Jean had been Jonesing for a Bloody Mary ever since being denied one on the flight. We asked Marcelo if there was a liquor store.

It was then that I saw for the first time the expression that I would see so many more times during our stay in Rio and come to love: Marcelo would repeat the word in the interrogative, in this case "Liquor?" all the while looking in the rear view mirror, his eyebrows raised, but still at their permanently sympathetic angle. But inside that head of his, the wheels were turning at a furious rate. In this case, he was thinking, Holy shit, these people want to go to some liquor store. Everything is closed for Carnaval. I've got another group to pick up. (He always had somebody else to pick up after us. I felt so cheap and third-rate.)

"Well, there may be something." He dosed out the words.

On we drove, toward Niterói. We were staying across the bay from Rio, a recommended thing from many people. Niterói is like a friendly suburb of Rio. Not that Rio is not friendly, but Niterói was spawned as a fishing village, and still has the more relaxed vibe. It's so weird. It's only across the bay! We drove past several beaches, asking Marcelo if we could swim there.

"Swim?" he asked. "No. I wouldn't swim there." He used contractions in some cases.

"What about that liquor store?" we asked.

"I think I know a place," he repled. "But we must hurry. I have someone else to pick up. . . ."

"We'll hurry!" we promised. Marcelo responded by driving some back streets of Niterói and finding a bodega on a street that ran perpendicular to the bay. The mist had turned to a light but steady rain.

"You have ten minutes," Marcelo said, completely deadpan. I looked at him. "And then I'm calling the police." I burst out laughing.

"We'll hurry, I swear!" I vowed.

I already loved this guy.

Marcelo hung around outside, chatting with one of the men from the bodega. I got the impression that he didn't want to crowd us, and wanted to remain at arm's length due to whatever type of driver protocol there is in Brazil--or anywhere else. It also must be considered from his point of view: here he comes to get us after a miscommunication right out of the chute, he's got somebody else to pick up later, and it's US that he's picking up. The sight of Jean's and my luggage would have been enough to put anyone on guard.

What he didn't know about us is that short of his being some kind of serial killer or something, we would have loved to have him hang around. The house had plenty of room. We could have made him owner for a day like they do in Salvador.

But meanwhile, we had a mission: liquor, snacks for Pettus, and Bloody Mary mix for Jean. Right. It didn't take too terribly long to peruse every shelf in the store and find not only no Bloody Mary mix, but no tomato juice, either! It was becoming apparent that in Brazil, they don't drink their tomatoes. (That's one thing they're missing! And they COULDA had a V-8! Maple syrup is another thing that's rare as hen's teeth there. Carol had us bring a couple of jugs of it to her. In Salvador, a 6 oz. bottle was like 30 Reais, or fifteen bucks!)

There were several people working in there, all friendly and smiley,especially after my mangled "boa-tarde" to each one of them. I found the guy who looked like the owner: he was mopping and ordering everybody around at the same time. I tried to ask for tomato first, then juice. No way that was gonna work. I held up my finger politely for a pause and dashed outside to ask Marcelo what the Portuguese word was for "tomato".

"Tomate," (kind of pronounced toe-mah-tay) he said. Why I didn't ask him for the name of the whole finished product in juice form, I'll never know. I headed back in and said "toe-mah-tay" to the man and then did the drinky-drinky motion. Ahh! he understood! He pulled me to the back to show me the fresh tomatoes.

Finger up. "Desculpe," I said. Out to talk to Marcelo. All the while, a tall guy had been standing by watching this Berlitz opera play out. After some speedy Portuguese with Marcelo, he relayed their conclusions to the owner.

"Ahh! Tomatksvvi;ahjlav0diu!" he beamed, understanding. A golden pause. "Não," he concluded, his face losing its glow.

I was crushed. Jean was crushed. I had begun to feel the lure of a good old BM, myself and this was indeed distressing news. Not for the tall guy! He said something to the manager, then disappeared out the door. We stood around kind of looking at everything politely, having no idea what he had gone to do. Robo and I were standing there with our liquor purchases. Vodka and, you guessed it, Bacardi Gold.

Were we supposed to wait? Marcelo was still standing outside, and our ten minutes were UP! I stuck my head out the door and hollered, "Don't call the police!" Marcelo's eyes disappeared under the canopy of eyebrows as he let out a laugh that made him my international brother instantly. "No," he said. Surely he was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, we weren't assholes. Quite a breakthrough, in my opinion.

Back inside, Pettus had paid, and decided to come back in and look for something else. Whatever it was, it wasn't there, and she tried to get back out to go to the car. The elaborate turnstile system was of a design that none of us could decipher. She started asking one of the guys how to get out, mainly by pointing, and trying to say "saida" (exit). He handed her a pack of batteries with a quizzical look on his face. "No," Pettus said, laughingly exasperated. "Saida." I was no help. All I could do was watch and wait for the tall guy. Pettus' new friend then handed her some water. "No," she said, shaking her head and making a lunging movement with her arm toward the door. The cashier, enjoying the spectacle, finally clued in to what Pettus really wanted, and let her out.

Just then, the tall guy reappeared with two tiny cans of tomato juice! We all cheered, I "obrigado"ed the shit out of him and everybody else, and told the owner how beleza his store was. Believe it or not, I was not sweating at this time, so I had to leave the "suado" card in my pocket. We laughingly piled into Marcelo's car. The rain had picked up, and we still had to find Mirante de São Francisco, our house for the stay.

Jean had the address. Marcelo had the address. We had liquor in the car in addition to TWO tiny cans of tomato juice and the snacks Pettus had bought. I had nothing to worry about, as usual. I couldn't logisticize my way out of a paper bag, so having Jean to plan everything is a blissful thing, indeed.

Marcelo piloted us almost surreptitiously through many of the same back streets as before, and seemed to know the area pretty well. We later found out that he was indeed from Niterói, but at this moment, we were just amazed at his skills. He picked up his radio/cell phone and began another mysterious conversation with his "contact" on the other end. Given all the fast, slidey, zzhh-zzhh talk going on sotto voce between them, I couldn't tell if he was looking for the house, or arranging to have us kidnapped. It would be just our luck to get THAT driver.

We finally came out at a large four-lane boulevard with a nice planted median broken by turnarounds all the way up and down the street. The side opposite us was striped with roads all going up the mountain to different subdivisions, apparently. Marcelo took a right, got in the left lane, turned through the median and got on the other side in the right lane. We saw a gated street on the right, and he turned in. Marcelo rolled down the window and began a quick conversation with the "guard," a guy in street clothes wearing a windbreaker and managing to smoke a cigarette under the hood without getting it wet. Looked qualified to me. He shook his head at Marcelo, his ashes flying in a semicircle, and pointed down the street. I heard "dois," I think.

Marcelo gave his first thumbs-up of our visit, to my secret delight. He zoomed off down the street (as fast as one can "zoom" with God-knows-how-many pounds of humanoids AND 3 tons of luggage) and began to turn in the next street. It was also gated, and there was also a guard, but he didn't even get up from his lawn chair. The gate opened obediently and we pulled right through. Marcelo rolled the window down and did the short directional interrogation. The guy shook his head and pointed UP the street. Great. This gave me a second to reflect on the security industry in Brazil. Obviously thriving. No office required. No investment. Plenty o' business. Only requirements would be an ability to appear whoop-ass, and surface trustworthiness. And in many cases, I suspect the mere presence of a guard is just enough deterrent for would-be criminals.

Marcelo pulled out, went through the median, and turned back in the other direction. He made another left turn through the third median, just in time to realize that the street we wanted was 50 feet BEHIND us. Sheiss! Back to the next turnaround, down the requisite number of blocks, and then a turn onto our street. With no gate. And no guard. Hmmm. I was immediately assuaged when I saw the initial houses on the street--cool modernist architecture in the Brazilian style--the delightful marriage of clean lines and Mediterranean accents. Me likee!!

The road was steep immediately, and we began to slightly rattle up the rough surface. Every turn was a hairpin as we climbed steadily. At the second curve, I saw what appeared to be a concrete favela on the right, and casually said, "There it is," all the while waiting on somebody to refute the remark. Marcelo just looked at me with no expression. I began to wonder if that appeared to be an elitist asshole American remark, though meant in jest.

We continued up and around, trying to find our address. It was then that we discovered that the houses were numbered randomly. Odd and even numbers appeared on both sides of the street, and we passed 2230, 512, 440, 132, 3235, and never did find our number. Another Brazilian oddity? I didn't think so. Marcelo seemed as baffled as we did. He got on the radio again to chat with "control."

"Okay," he said, and immediately took a right turn onto a small street that was at an 89 degree angle up the hill. The valves clattered, the car stuttered, and I turned to half-jokingly ask, "Do we need to get out?"
"No," he said calmly, as he rolled back down the street to get a running start. We all began to cheer him and the car at the herculean effort. It took the hill with the surety of a mountain goat. At the top of THAT road, he took a left and began going around a curve surrounded by rock walls on both sides. The houses were all behind wooden or iron gates, which came right up to the street. There were very demure little V-shaped spikes on all the walls, rooflines, and anywhere else a ne'er-do-well may put his Havaianas. So much classier than good-ole razor wire, which was also in existence, but not so blatantly. "There it is," Marcelo said, and we saw a little guard shack with a windbreaker-clad guy smoking inside. It was between two houses, ours being the one on the right.

The gate had a digital keypad on the outside that worked in conjunction with the key. After 8 or ten tries, with Marcelo's help we got in. Immediately inside was a small courtyard, partially covered by the house roof. The water was sheeting off the barrel tiles onto the concrete, and I trod gently in my Crocs, fearing a slip. Meanwhile, we had been met by a young black Brazilian with a tall, Frankensteinish head, wearing black nerd glasses with white adhesive tape on one earpiece. This was Robson (pronouned "Hobson." Carol told me that she felt sure that his name was "Robson," a very common Brazilian name, and that, of course, it would be pronounced "Hobson."). With him were a couple of other guys and two women. They immediately began to bring in the luggage, Robson orchestrating the whole event in Portuguese, speaking only rarely to us in obsequious English. This was always accompanied by an unnerving half-bow, both hands in prayer position. I really don't want anyone bowing to me. Oh, all right. Maybe Jean. Hahahahahahaaaahhaaaaaaaa!!!!!

Jean had thought it prudent to line up Marcelo for the next day to take us to Copacabana to get our Carnaval tickets from the broker. "They told us we had access to a driver the whole time we're here," she said in her international tone. "Are you our driver?"
"If you want me to be, yes," Marcelo replied. Did I detect a slight gleam?
"We do!" we all shouted. "Can we just arrange with you?" Jean asked.
"Yes, but you must call and book me," he said.
"Okay, we'll do that, but we'll tell you first. Can you take us to Rio tomorrow?"
"Yes," he said. "You will call Sylvia."

We waved goodbye to Marcelo as he did a beautiful 3-point turn in the narrow, cobbled street, gave the secret sign to the guard, and disappeared around the corner. While Robson and his minions distributed the luggage, we walked into our (gulp!) un-airconditioned-except-for-bedrooms house. There was a large fan in two corners of the huge room. I set them to work immediately before anything else.

Of course the Kennemers didn't care about the lack of air. They can live comfortably in any environment. Their home in Birmingham (designed by my father!) is a gorgeous, what they now call "mid-century" house on the crest of Shades Mountain. It was without air conditioning when they bought it 28 years ago, and they kept it that way until very recently, being perfectly happy with the breezes off the mountain that rushed through the breezeway. Pettus said she got hot a few times in the summer, but most of the time was fine. They had an air conditioner in their bedroom that made Robo cold. Pettus would describe lying in bed with no covers burning up while Robo snored under three blankets.

Jean and I, meanwhile, like our air conditioner set at "meat locker" 24/7.

We went out onto the back porch to look at our stellar view of the bay: Sugarloaf, and the Christ statue, in addition to several forts, sailboats, and even a McDonald's. What?

Wow! Idyllic.

We then looked to the right and down one tier at some of our neighbors. The dichotomy of lifestyle quality in Brazil in such close proximity slapped me in the face. I don't know if this was an abandoned house under construction, as the one we saw earlier may have been, because both houses had construction chutes. Given the fact that our neighbors' construction chute doubled as a mudslide for the kids, it was probably abandoned construction.

Once back inside, we saw that Robson and crew had taken the luggage down one floor to the bedrooms. There were three on the floor, the master bedroom suite featuring all the steam/jacuzzi stuff of hedonist dreams. We gave that bedroom to Pettus and Robo and took the one nearest the stairs. It was cozy goodness. There was a balcony that ran the length of the house on this floor as well, but we never went out on it, of course. It was the kind of thing that a vacationer would use only after having exhausted all other Rio entertainment. We didn't have that kind of time.

By this time, Sylvia, the mysterious concierge from the other end of Jean's phone calls, had appeared upstairs with Maria, our cook. We headed up to meet them. Maria said hardly anything at all. She had an Amazon native look about her, with a body that went from her torso immediately to her head. She was very sweet, but also smashed by submissive body language. I knew I was gonna have to work hard to make her love me.

Sylvia was a dish. She elicited an immediate Roy Orbison growl, which drew a smile, but not a giggle. Sophisticated city girls don't tumble as quickly as the Bahians?  Hmmm. Tough crowd.

She led us downstairs to the bottom floor for our orientation and our first caipirinhas. The basement area was incredible, painted a gorgeous Pantone 361 green. The stairs ended in a large wet bar with refrigerator and drinking water machine, the bottle hidden by a needlepointed cover that said "Rio Holiday," bearing a sign that said "WE DRINK BOTTLED WATER HERE." I gave an involuntary shudder at what was obviously another message from Iemanjá.

There was shelf after shelf of gleaming glass topped with all sorts of different liquor for use/purchase. Not a drop of Meyers's Rum anywhere, but THREE bottles of Bacardi Gold. Sigh. The prices for consume/buy were comparable to what you would have paid at a store. We actually paid a little more for our Bacardi Gold at the bodega than we would have had to pay to have the bottle fall over on the shelf and pour into our mouths.

The bottom floor also had a pool table, a ping pong table, big screen TV, and an elevated bedroom suite in the middle of it all. It opened out onto the patio and pool, replete with barbeque facilities, etc. Just like Cerqueira-la! What a fabulous place.

The two other women were working busily at the bar making our drinks while Sylvia gave us the lowdown on Mirante de São Francicso. Her English was stellar, with an accent like one of the Muldovian princesses on any episode of Mission: Impossible. Woo! The only word that she missed repeatedly was "taxi," which she pronounced "tax." It was so charming to hear her tell us we could go down to the restaurants, then call her to get a "tax." It was then that I felt compelled to ask her the big question:

"Sylvia, can we flush toilet paper here, or do we have to use the garbage cans?" She looked at me with an expression that changed from incredulity to amusement to business in a split second.
"You can use the garbage cans for the toilet paper if you want," was all she said before moving on to the next feature of the house. In retrospect, maybe she was so flummoxed by the fact that I would not only know about the toilet paper secret, but would ask about it. But I'm sure her mind's eye was viewing a film that she would rather not see.

By then, our drinks were ready. They were delicious, and we were gonna learn how to do them. That's what the "unlimited caipirinhas" part of the deal meant. We had access to all the cachaça we wanted, and bowls, baskets and bushels of limes, limes, limes! Yessiree! Get down!

NOT SO FAST, BURFORD.

I was still a little green around the gills (not quite the Pantone 361, more like a 373), and though I sipped my drink, I didn't wolf it down the way the REAL Ben Burford would have. The pod person sitting in my place almost hurled as Sylvia mentioned the fact that we could have a chef come over and do us a barbeque if we wanted.

I then realized that I was experiencing anxiety on all fronts. Here's this huge fantastic house with all this room. Blackledge can't come. We'll never use all the space. It's raining. When will it quit? When will my gullet set me free? How much was this house? Are those people down the hill happy? Will Marcelo remember to get us? You mean you have to come all the way down here for the liquor? When will we use this pool? What about the kids? I wonder if the dogs are all right. What am I gonna do about running out of flash card space? I don't play pool well. Nor ping pong. What's this checkers set with shot glasses for pieces on the table? I can't drink that much. How will we ever take advantage of our free caipirinhas? We'll never use all this space. Why is there razor wire everywhere?  What are we gonna do here? Will it be hard to get places? Will everything be crowded? What about our Carnaval tickets? Did we get ripped off? WHERE THE HELL is CAROL?!

Sylvia was wrapping up her presentation. It was time for me to learn how to make the caipirinhas, which was a great diversion at the time. The two ladies demonstrated the smashing of the limes with the mortar and pestle (wooden), the addition of a couple of spoons of sugar from the covered dish designed to dissuade ants (not), followed by two shots of cachaça, measured with a jigger. The instructor looked at me quizzically to see if I got it? Of course I got it. As she repeated the directions for closure, ending with "and then two of the cachaça," I countered with "o mais!" Both ladies giggled. Ahhhh. Still golden, though still jittery.

Sylvia's job entailed anything we wanted her to do. Well, you know, not ANYTHING, but really, anything. She would even order pizza for us, get the "tax" to bring it to us, and tell the driver how to get here and everything. That sounded good to us. (Or as good as anything could sound to me). We wanted to hang around on the main level and learn how to work the TV, internet, and free long distance.

Ahh, yes. The FREE long distance. It became my three companions' major obsession getting it to work. They kept talking in carrier-ese, and saying stuff about Seattle that I didn't understand. Jean talked to a couple of people, Sylvia first, and I believe it was fixed in a couple of days. Who knows? I didn't want to call anybody. I wanted to figure out the dern TV so I could have some more Brazilian video fun.

The night panorama was breathtaking, and had a very calming effect.
But there was the McDonald's sign in the bottom left corner. The only thing that could serve to yank me back to enough familiar reality to short circuit the scene temporarily. Corporate sponsorship logos are like pimples on a pretty face. That's pretty dangerous talk for an advertising guy.

Two other very, very important things happened this night.
• I learned how very stupid I was for not having taken acidophilus, like our pal Jim Klopman, the world traveler and bon vivant, had told us to do. Robo had his with him, of course, and that evening I began to take it. Even before our Queen Pizza arrived in its nifty round cardboard box.
• Robo told me that the coffee in Salvador was made with the sweet waters of the tap! I may should have watched that.

To top that off, the acidophilus seemed to put me on the road to a miracle cure, and I began to feel better. Surely the placebo effect, but better nevertheless. The few slices of the Queen Pizza I had were delicious. If we ordered it again, given my rate of improvement, we'd have to order something substantially bigger.

Then we figured out the TV.

I could sleep in peace. We had no firm plans for the next day except for getting our Carnaval tickets. We thought maybe Marcelo could kinda show us around a little bit, then we could come back and rest, go out to dinner in Niterói, then go to Carnaval around 11:00.

Why the HELL was Jean setting that stupid Blackberry?

Because Maria was going to have breakfast for us at 9:00, the time we kind of landed on. Nobody wanted to miss THAT.

We had asked Maria (through Sylvia) to have breakfast ready at 9:00.

After enduring several rounds of Blackberry Roulette and losing to Jean, I finally got out of bed and trudged up the stairs. I smelled coffee. Jean stayed behind to perform those pesky morning tasks. By the time I got upstairs, the breakfast had been out for a while. Well, hell, it was 9:30 and we asked for 9:00 breakfast. Subtract 0 from 30. We were that late.

Robo and Pettus had just gotten up there themselves, though they were both bathed, scrubbed and pumped full of vigor. Pettus had just come in from the balcony where she was listening to Robson sing. He writes religious music, and was singing to her about the poverty. Pettus said he had a beautiful voice. Robo kicked in immediately with "I don't trust him."

We all marveled at the breakfast: fried eggs on a platter, toast, bacon, those little cheese biscuit ball things, two kinds of juice (though slightly watery), coffee, chocolate cake (!), three kinds of melon, pineapple, cigar-rolled ham and cheese slices, regular biscuits, hot water, cocoa powder, and a blap bag for me.

The massive amount of food ordinarily would have sent me over the edge, but I was STILL ever so slightly touchy in the appetite. Lucky for Pettus. She was able to eat the cheese biscuit things like popcorn, because I was absolutely no competition, Robo was diverted with some of the other food and Jean wasn't up there yet. The fried eggs were cooked for 9:00 consumption, so they were kind of cold-ish, and beginning to get that Dorian Gray's portrait look about them. But I love eggs more than anything, and ate two. They went down pretty well with an acidophilus chaser. The bacon was a no-brainer. I could be in a coma and still be able to eat bacon.

Overall, breakfast was a success for me, and I could feel myself climbing out of the abdominal abyss. Once again, however, Robo ratted out the cook. He told me (after the dern trip) that Maria was making the coffee with tap water. Hmmmm. And I don't think there's a coffeemaker in Brazil that gets hot enough to sterilize the bad juju out of coffee water.

Jean finally arrived to a half eaten breakfast, though we had saved her the good parts. She popped a Diet Coke, got us both a Danactiv out of the refrigerator (an earlier habit we had taken up courtesy of Jim Klopman. Why, oh WHY didn't I listen to him about the acidophilus at the get-go?) and came back in to report that Robson had told her that Maria was appalled that the food had been sitting there so long and felt responsible for the cold breakfast. We all decided at that moment to schedule tomorrow's for 9:30. "I don't trust him," Robo said.

There were heavy clouds outside and it was kind of misting. What the HELL? This was RIO! What was up? Excuse me sir, there's a collect call from a Miss E. Ahmanjah. Will you accept the charges?   

Jean called Sylvia. Sylvia was going to call Marcelo. We hung around waiting for the deal to  go down, everybody checking email in rotation, me alternately standing in front of the fans and walking out on the balcony to see if the weather had changed. We heard a horn, grabbed our stuff, (my camera in relaxed duffel position 2, Jean's myriad envelopes and massive purse, along with super-travel-sized Ziplocs of only about one-tenth of the medicine inventory, Robo with his little bitty video camera, and Pettus unencumbered as always) and rushed out to meet Marcelo.

We all assumed our positions, greeted our new pal warmly, and headed down and out. I began to understand why we had been told of the glories of Niterói. The beach at the bottom of our hill was nice, though not necessarily for swimming, inhabited by what appeared to be a very reputable bunch of folks, and the vibe was very relaxed. Not quite Bahian, because they were still touched by the urbanity of Rio, but more laid back than Rio, possibly because of their fishing heritage. There was a row of great restaurants all fronting the bay, all probably a result of the modern booming of Niterói. Just like in America, I imagine the people in Rio discovered that Niterói was ONLY ACROSS THE BAY, and more the kind of place you'd want to raise your children, with wooded, hilly, winding streets and charm everywhere.

But wait! There's also the modern art museum AND a ferry terminal, both designed by the world-revered Oscar Niemeyer. Ooh la LAH! How incredible can you GET? How about incredible enough to also be the birthplace of Sergio Mendes?! If that doesn't cap it off, nothing can.

We cruised through the streets of Niterói heading toward the bridge to Rio. The two ways to get from Niterói to Rio are the bridge and the ferry. It's a short hop to the terminal in Niterói, and it lets off in Rio right downtown. But then there's the bridge. We never saw any real traffic there, and when we were with Marcelo, that's the route we took. But he also managed to tell us a few horror stories about the traffic there, enough to make us totally afraid of the unseen menace.

We were itchy to get to Copacabana and pick up our Carnaval tickets. Jean had been dealing with several brokers at one location, going back and forth from elated to bummed out to broke to thrifty. We had finally landed on seats in Sector 7, which is for the locals. The tourist sector has reserved seats, but the only ones left were right on the ground. None of us thought that would be as good, and opted for taking our chances in Sector 7, which has no reserved seats. You just got there and plopped down, kind of like at a high school football game. The brokers assured us it would be a great Carnaval experience, and the tickets cost less than tourist sector. After having been once, I can see how it might be an interesting alternative to be at ground level--but not with the tourists--definitely with the locals.

Marcelo went some mysterious way through Rio to Copacabana, occasionally pointing something out and telling us what it was. We passed a bunch of fantastic governmental buildings from the colonial period and later. They were huge, ornate, and filled with broken windows and covered with graffiti. They were right at eye level a lot of the time as we zoomed through Rio on the expressway. It broke my heart to see the waste of beauty and the destruction of same. I asked Marcelo if any of these historic treasures were being renovated for re-use. He said that a few were. At least they weren't tearing them down. Better to have them sit there and be reawakened at a later date by somebody with some vision than to be bulldozed just for the land. But I suspect there isn't a bunch of money lying around Rio to participate in THAT KIND of foolishness.

We wound through downtown Rio, weaving our way to Copacabana. Everything was closed. And I mean EVERYTHING. The metal garage-type doors were down everywhere. Each was covered with graffiti, of course, and it presented a creepy post-apocalyptic scene. Jean asked Marcelo why everything was closed for Carnaval, when it seems like the merchants could make more money when more people were in town. Marcelo replied in a tone filled with respect, humor and bewilderment, "Because they would rather be having fun." And that RIGHT THERE is the heart of the Brazilian existence. Marcelo's respect is well felt.

After ten or fifteen U-turns in various places, we arrived at the ticket place. It was still raining, and the sidewalk came right up to the street in a giant puddle. Marcelo pulled right up onto the sidewalk enough to park over the puddle for us to get out. Wow! Like an automotive Sir Walter Raleigh, he was! We all tiptoed out of the car, me especially, since I had on vented Crocs with socks (standard) and knew that the water could still rush into my shoe.

We dashed into the place, which was very cool, with no walls, only glass partitions and large curved counter at the back of the room. There were mannequins dressed in various Carnaval costumes, and pictures of the different samba schools on the walls. A couple of videos of a never-ending Carnaval (probably from last year) were going nonstop, and a staff of several good looking Brazilians was helping the clientele.

We were all elated to find that our tickets were indeed there, legit, and without strings or asterisks attached. We trooped back outside, dodging rain and puddles and piled back into the car. I had left my camera in duffel position right on Marcelo's floor. Like leaving it with a priest. At that point we had decided that we lucked into meeting the only guy we would want to usher us through life in Rio. Particularly since Daniel and Patricia weren't due to arrive till 7 a.m. the next morning. Marcelo was going to take us to Carnaval that night, then pick us back up when we called (expected to be around 4 a.m.)  I never for one minute thought anything different would happen, and it was one anxiety crossed off my list.

As we pulled off, Marcelo asked us where we wanted to go.

"Take us to see some old stuff," I said. The others didn't seem to care, and nodded in agreement.

"All right," Marcelo said, and headed toward the old part of town. On the way, all of us asked him various questions, many inane. He would respond in his patented manner each time, and seemed to know more and more every time we asked him anything. I was giddy with busting down not only first-acquaintance barriers, but having another language coach to help me with my Jones to learn fluent portuguese in three days.

We arrived at a square and parked with no difficulty. There was absolutely nobody downtown. We were right across from the Old Cathedral and next to the statue of Tiradentes, two vital pieces of not only Rio's, but Brazil's history as well.


Somehow, this gorgeous Cathedral had escaped the insult of graffiti, as far as I could tell. Across the street was the Palacio Tiradentes, an old public building that was now serving as a museum. During our various excursions around Rio, Marcelo would point out several historic buildings that were now museums. I liked that.

In front of this fantastic building was a statue of Tiradentes, Brazil's number one martyr. Marcelo gave us the lowdown. (Man! He knew a bunch about Brazilian history!) In a nutshell, during the late 1700s, Portugal was taking Brazil's gold (a true motherlode) rapidly, and using the Brazilians to mine it. When they mined less than Portugal expected, they were taxed on the difference. Tiradentes saw the heinous inequity, and plotted to overthrow the whole rotten deal and establish freedom for the people. He was betrayed by a man he believed to be a friend and compatriot. Tiradentes was arrested, hanged, then quartered, his body parts marched throughout Rio and sections of Brazil to truly quash any type of rebellion they may have had in mind. I hate people that