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Prior post: http://blog.bucksvsbytes.com/2020/02/08/south-america-by-subaru-20-02-06-susan-heads-home/
I wake up this morning without Susan and the impact of traveling without her strikes me immediately. In addition, I have a message from daughter Helene in Berkeley, California that her labor has started, which means I am on the verge of being a first time grandfather. I wander downstairs and find Francisco preparing breakfast for us.
I’m not seeing much of Jairo because he is studying continuously. He’s on his way to becoming a judge which, in Brasil, means he must first become a lawyer. He’s been in law school and the day after tomorrow must take a make-or-break test. It’s similar to our bar exam but doesn’t immediately allow you to practice law. It’s very difficult, requiring memorization of tons of detail, and you only get to take it 3 times. If you fail the third time, all your law school effort goes into the trash. Jairo is determined to pass the first time and studying has consumed him.
Since Francisco is working and Jairo locked away, I decide to move on today so as not to be in the way. I start doing research on where to go next and it turns out to be more time consuming than I thought. There’s a private nature reserve I’d like to visit, one of the few places where the endangered golden lion tamarin, a small monkey, is thriving, but it takes hours to find out that the next opportunity is 5 days from now — longer than I planned to stay in this part of Brasil. I decide to hedge my bets by trying to stay with a host in the Rio de Janeiro area, even though we just spent 9 days there, and see how I feel about waiting around for the reserve visit. I contact a Servas host in Rio who had invited us to stay with her 3 days ago and ask if I’m welcome solo.
I start the same long drive back eastward that I just did yesterday, not sure where I’ll end up tonight. By 2 PM, I get a “welcome” email from the host, Déo, and plot a route to her address in Laranjeiras, a Rio neighborhood we hadn’t visited earlier. Six hours of hard driving, interrupted only for a 30 minute nap, refueling, and 2 tiny cups of cafezinho — the ubiquitous Brasilian expresso offered as a courtesy in many gas stations and stores, or at a minimal price in every restaurant. I roll in to my destination after dark at 8 PM. It’s a street that dead ends against a rock wall at least 200 feet high — only in Rio are the residences immediately adjacent to precipitous, wooded mountains all through the city.
The short street is populated by six residential towers of about 20 stories each and an equal number of seven story edifices.
I park the car and search out the exact address on foot. To my surprise, Déo’s address isn’t one of the high rises, but a tiny, gated, perpendicular, dead end alleyway lined both sides with small attached homes.
It’s like something out of a Sherlock Holmes setting. I find my way to the correct house, knock on the door, and am assured I have reached the right place. After carefully squeezing the Subaru into a parallel parking space in the narrow alley, I’m welcomed into the house by Déo and Gilberto.
Déo had warned me in advance that the house was messy and now I see it’s because it’s under major remodel, with construction supplies and displaced furniture piled haphazardly in much of the open space. Nonetheless, the alley is a charming anachronism in an otherwise tower-dominated residential street.
Although Gilberto speaks no English, Déo is fluent so my initial use of Portuguese quickly changes to English to enable more efficient communication. I’m wiped, so after a couple of hours of get-acquainted conversation (during which I’m watching my phone for further updates from Helene — there are none), I go to my assigned room and drop off immediately.
Next post: http://blog.bucksvsbytes.com/2020/02/09/south-america-by-subaru-20-02-08-a-taste-of-carnival-in-rio/
