Pernambuco, Maracaipe
all stories and essays by Avram Klein
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Tamandare First
During Carnival, she had given me the cold shoulder a few times. She thought that the war in Iraq was awful and kind of found it a turn off that I was not anti-US. Also, I had made friends with a few travelers from Israel, one of which was in Olinda. The fact that I wasn't anti-Israel also didn't score any points with her.
By the end of Carnival, I think that she was ready to do something either on her own or at least without me. The real situation is that she had a crush on this 19-year-old girl who had also visited Recife for Carnival. She had put me on the spot during her exit in the bus staion, forcing me to accept the fact that her relationship with the girl was more important than her relationship with me.
My gut reaction was that being guilt-tripped into taking her lesbian relationship with a girl ten years younger than me seriously was too much to ask. So that was it, we both turned and walked away from each other. This didn't settle well with my subconscious.
Recife is not inexpensive like Salvador. My room for a hundred reals a night had no window, a bag of cement for a pillow, and a wooden board with some foam on it for a bed. Recife is also not touristy and the beachfront is made up of major thoroughfares with cars going about fifty in every direction.
I checked out the beach, Pria Adventura, and then visited the oldest synagogue in the Americas. The Portuguese had come to Brazil and rounded up all of the Jews in Recife for Inquisition torture back in Europe. Some of the Jews had escaped and were the first in New York City.
There was no bus for the surf spot in Pernambuco, Maracaipe, so I took off for a place that my Fodors Guide said was a nature preserve called Tamandare.
When I got there, I learned that Tamandare was really a small Brazilian town in the middle of nowhere. I had hitched a ride along with a fellow traveler who had apparently told the driver I would pay for him and also that he would be staying with me.
To avoid him, I took off down the beach with all of my stuff. The music was pumping, the locals were dancing, the beer was flowing, and I realized for the first time that I was completely alone.
I had a seven-foot surfboard, a huge atobaque drum, and a heavy backpack that I had been carrying with me for hundreds of miles. I was walking along a beach with more sand than most deserts. I had only slept once since raving all night and wasn't ready to think about anything.
I thought for sure I would take off the next day to go surfing. That night the room was hot and full of mosquitoes, and the bathroom was only seperated from the bed by a shower curtain. In the morning I was delirious. I was going to write Karen from an Internet café, but the lady pointed down the beach and said, "Un pria muinta bonita. Uma hora y media. Eesoo en the French, preca."
That was it. I was off down the beach. I didn't turn around even to get a hat or suntan lotion or a bathing suit. I ended up burning off some of the hair on my head. This was not good, because I have more hair now than at the beginning of my trip.
I found a reef of black coral which looked like lava that had cooled while exploding. It stretched out from the sand at a 45-degree angle for about a mile. The reef created a huge bay of gorgeous pale blue water.
About 50 yards up the reef, there was the most beautiful natural pool I've ever seen. The water was a color of green which can't be reproduced, and the perimeter of the pool was encrusted with black, spiked sea urchins.
The topaz bay was lined with giant speedboats and the emerald water of the natural pool was filled with Brazilian millionaires. Women bathed in designer sunglasses while little girls hopped off the coral into the water.
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