Whale Time: Re: Avram

Re: Avram
Avram Nomad

all stories and essays by Avram Klein

Natal and Pipa

It was difficult to leave Maracaipe. Smoking joints with Christchopher and Sergio was nice. When we rolled the pot cigar, Christchopher's girlfriend was trying to speak English and was saying, "I-e rike-e ma-hey-e-wan-a."

Trying to speak English is actually a pretty good joke that I enjoyed this summer traveling through the northeast. The jam of the summer was this song about a guy who owns a mare and when the horse walks it goes, "Bo-ki-tah bo-ki-tah bo-ki-tah." The whole song is a joke about sex.

It has a Miami booty-shake beat and the beginning of the song is the guy saying, "Me-I name-e eez em-e sey ser-geen-oh." Then the song goes, "Bo-ki-tah bo-ki-tah bo-ki-tah, ee-yah-gui-yah bo-ki-tah." Everybody goes crazy for the song and all the girls do the booty dance.

There were also a lot of animals in Maracaipe. There was a pony that stepped in a tomato sauce can and would run and kick stumps and rocks trying to get it off.

There was a giant bee and a huge red-orange and army green toad that hopped along my fence and did a big hop over an empty coconut as if life were a Nintendo game.

There were black horses with unkempt manes and tails that trailed to the ground with hair bleached orange in the sun.

There were dogs and cats bleached by the sun with soft, dry, scruffy fur singed short by the heat.

I saw a five-year-old girl steering a motorcycle down the dirt beach road with a man sitting behind her only holding onto the seat.

Upon arriving at the airport in Recife, I lugged my atobaque drum, backpack, day pack, and two surfboards through the terminal to the post office. The postal lady told me she wouldn't take the surfboard. I screamed bloody murder and she still didn't take it.

I took the drum and my sister's board to where they wrap luggage in plastic and had both items shrink-wrapped. I sent the drum and then rather than turning me loose with two surfboards, the postal lady instructed me to go to another mail service. She said it was at the end of the parking lot to the left. She also said I only had a half hour to get there and I should hurry.

At the end of the parking lot, to the left, was a parking garage. At the other end of the parking garage was the other side of the airport. By the time I got to the postal building, the door was locked. I thought it was 4:30 p.m., so I started slamming my fist on the door trying to get them to let me in. They had just closed so everybody who worked there came over and looked at me as I commanded them to open the door. A lady inside assured me that they didn't send mail outside of the country.

Completely covered with sweat, I was so pissed I fucking slammed my foot into the ground and began walking away. I asked a kid selling lunches what time it was. It was noon on a Friday. I decided to not give up.

The lack of sleep, the sunburn, the crack weed, the pot smuggling, the theft, the incredibly heavy load I was carrying, and the liar postal ladies had caused me to be delirious enough to spend the weekend naked on Tambaba Beach, three hours north. However, there was no bus to Tambaba. There were only taxis, so Natal became my next destination out of necessity.

I arrived in Natal at about 9:30 p.m. at the International Hostel of Natal, located in an ancient castle. The woman on the phone told me the rooms were 15 heyies a night and I would be sharing the room with six other people. After a 30 heyie cab ride, the woman greeted me saying she hadn't spoken to me on the phone and the rooms were 28 heyies a night and they were shared with ten people.

There was also this guy standing behind the counter with this ridiculous grin on his face, looking at me as if to say, "It's true. You've finally made it to paradise." I just looked at him like, "Why the fuck do you think I would be excited to share a room with ten fucking gringos?"

The castle had some kind of chain-linked drawbridge and getting out of there was like walking through a playground. My travel book said Pria Artista had surfing, so off the cab went. The posada cost the same as the hostel and was nice. It was the weekend, but I was exhausted and fell asleep.

The next morning on the way to Porto Negro, the cab driver pointed out the strip club where gringos pick up prostitutes, suggesting it was muinta bom. It was called Fantasia or something and I'll be damned if it wasn't on the same little random street that the hostel was on, letting me know what the shit grin the guy had behind the register was all about.

When we pulled up to the beach some gringo johns sitting in front of a posada stared me down to see if I was there for the party. There were a few strippers and gringos on the beach. There was also a gay crowd.

As I walked past, one of the locals must have noticed the disgusted look on my face, so he gave me a little shock by flicking his big toe under a paddle ball and popping it up into his hand. I thought it was pretty tight.

There was also some kind of a surfing competition going on about half way down the beach. I took a picture and hopped back in the cab and headed for Pria Artista.

This is the local hero beach of Natal. Everybody on Pria Artista was totally real. There were about a thousand really hot teenage girls out there with about three thousand adults who had decided to party for life.

The beach was packed with locals and the beach itself is gorgeous. There is surfing at the southern end which is broken by a rock reef that forms a two-mile long natural pool ending at a fort.

I ran, worked out, did yoga, bought some new shorts, bought some glasses, had my pictures developed, and went to see the film, The Pianista. I also met a proud postal lady who dragged my sister's surfboard across the postal counter as if it were a Christmas fruit cake.

I called my parents which was nice. I told them I planned to travel up the Amazon, over the Andes to the Pacific, and then down to Chile for snowboarding season. The next day I got an e-mail from my dad saying the unemployment checks I had been receiving had just run out.

There was a Dutch girl named Esther there with some Italian and Israeli guys. She had only been traveling for four weeks and was concerned about the time, the buses, the price, her e-mails, etc.

We decided to travel together to Pipa, but it was odd to travel with someone who I couldn't open up and talk to. She was quite preoccupied and we sat in silence for part of the time. When I dropped her off, her friend, an enormously muscular Dutch guy, looked pissed. As he shook my hand, his twitchy gray eyes stared into mine. I didn't have the slightest clue what was going on with his twitching eyes. I thought maybe he was sunburned.

I smiled, waved tchau and that was it. My campsite, at first glance, was the cutest place I had stayed during my travels in Brazil. Pipa itself is gorgeous. The beaches are unreal with cliffs, surfing, and jagged black rock formations.

I was also able to eat for about 5R a day, which was important. I would have stayed and surfed for a few days, but that night I heard one of the neighbors hitting a woman. It was awful.

In the morning, I spoke to a cop, took some pictures, and was on the bus to Canoea Quebrada by one o'clock. Canoea in the dark seemed mostly deserted. Some locals sat playing dominoes.

I went to bed but couldn't sleep and at about midnight I started to hear some kind of rave in the distance. Following the music, I found a tiny reggae club blasting pure roots reggae.

The room was dark with about twenty die-hard roots reggae fans twisting in complex reggae dances around the floor. There seemed to be a few old school hippie women, a few cute girls, and one old white guy in the middle of the dance floor who could barely dance.

I watched them for a while, especially a cute lady in the middle of the floor who was dancing close with one of the local fishermen. After a few songs, a group of five teenage girls walked in and stuck their chests out, flanking the old white guy.

My eyes had adjusted to the light, and I realized there was nobody in the club just dancing. Every single girl in the club was a prostitute. There was only one gringo and the teenagers were trying to get his attention, jumping with excitement if he glanced at them.

There was also another elderly white guy who came and leaned on the window sill from outside. It was nightmarish. The next morning I took some pictures of the red cliffs and was on the two o'clock bus for Fortaleza.

Go to Fortaleza