9 November, 2005
Night Of The Living Foot Beasts
Canoa Quebrada, Brazil – This is a simple story, as is my life right now. But I intend to complicate it through needless detail, as is your life right now, so you may relate to it better. I have spent the last 10 days bouncing around from one sandy beach town of less than 3000 inhabitants to the next beach town of imminent relaxation. Each town has its own vibe (bro), hip or hippied-out traveler scene, and pack of local dolphins with which one can swim in the calm, warm bays. Even the site of a sprawling and noisy and polluted Brazilian metropolis sends shivers down my sun-drenched spine as I leisurely bound my way up the Brazilian coast along white sand beaches (you knew that was coming eventually), enormous and colored dunes and surreal land- and seascapes. Hip Praia de Pipa and wondrous Canoa Quebrada (Broken Canoe) are the two trendy beach villages I frequented during the last week or so.
Above: Paradises of a feather...(Pipa and Canoa)
Mentally, I would be quick to admit that I am not challenging myself much here in Brazil. After six months I have finally grasped Brazilian Portuguese well enough to have decent conversations, even with those with the fewest of teeth, without much struggle. So my mind is left to wander and bask in its free time. I have counted my steps on the beach for hours, flipped a coin repeatedly to prove the accurate inaccuracy of simple probability functions and (I know this seems like a foreign idea to many) even sat down to think about my life and where I want it to go. I wonder about those, during my time on this planet, who have told me that they can’t stand a life without structure – one where they are endlessly free to be and think and enjoy themselves without the unnecessary pressures and stresses of westernized living compounding their existence. I am of the other mindset, friends. The one where you are free; free to do what you wanna do without being hassled by the man. Am I really one of the few people who enjoys the luxury of ‘the devil’s’ idle time and free thought – time that shouldn’t drive one crazy but allow one to relax? I hope not. Let me think about it more in my endless spare time and I will find the answer. So that’s me mentally. Physically, I feel wonderful. I can swim long distances, jog on the beach, throw down for a few push-ups, go body surfing and grab a two-hour tan, all before lunch – which always includes the healthy Brazilian staples of rice, beans and salad. I would have to say that life in Northeast Brazil is misleadingly easy for me at this point; that is to say, I may be in for a shock at some point. But not anytime soon.
Honestly, probably the most difficult thing I have to do on a daily basis is to break a bill of 50 reais (Brazilian monetary equivalent of about 20 US dollars) when purchasing an item at one of the tiny stores in these beach villages. Usually the clerk will go through a dramatic act when presented by me with this bill of mind-boggling magnitude. First he will look at the bill as if he won’t accept it due to some printing error or possibly he might act as if he has never seen a bill of this type in his life (although the 50 is as common as any other note). Then he will shoot a faux look of utter desperation toward me, ask if I have any change, then either grudgingly hand over his few small bills as change or march out into the street for the long journey of finding another person in town who has correct change for a 50 (and whom is willing to part with it). And then the next potential money changer will go through the same denial processes described above before handing over his change to the clerk. It is almost as if I set off an uncontrolled economic chain reaction every time I introduce a 50 into the small system. Other times I have even been told by the merchant that he will not sell me the items if in fact he has to make change for a 50. It’s just not worth it for him. I always get a kick out of pretending this scenario is taking places in the US because, for so many capitalistic reasons, it would never happen there. So I usually laugh instead of complain that I can’t have my bottle of water. Or if I am feeling defiant and thirsty I will open it and start drinking from it so the clerk has to get off his lazy ass and find me some change.
What I have also enjoyed endeavoring to do is to stick to my financial guns and never pay more than ten dollars a night for a place to rest my head anywhere in Brazil. I have had much success with my stubbornness, but this unachievable goal has led to miles of extremely uncomfortable walking in the heat and humidity, and worse, extremely poorly located and fairly low quality dwellings when I finally do arrive. Hot water has become a myth in the last two weeks; the idea of a private bathroom: a long forgotten dream. The dollar’s steady slide against the Brazilian Real is not helping things. Just today, in my stubbornness, I may have walked an extra two hours before I found a pousada (hotel) below the ten dollar mark, thus saving myself a whopping $4.50 a night. Well, what else was I going to do today? Oh yeah, surf. But the hours of walking have bestowed positive experiences on me as well. For instance (oh, here is where the simple story I alluded to long ago begins), when I stumbled into Canoa Quebrada, the beautiful town which sits on a pink sand dune, last week around 11pm, I was convinced for a brief period that I wouldn’t find a pousada under 25 dollars a night (that is more than my entire daily budget!) based on where I was being led by my new friend and tout, David, an eight-year-old local who was showing me through the poorly lit town of sand roads in order to make a dollar from whichever exorbitantly priced pousada I eventually gave in to.
Above: Canoa’s sand streets
But I gave in not. After my seventh time strolling the main drag I was beginning to feel a little frustrated and thought I might have to sellout, but I should have known better. Out of the shadows emerged a smiling woman who immediately went into a spiel about her chalets – her ten dollar chalets! After 15 minutes of winding through the dark sandy streets we opened up her front gate made of dead branches, walked across the sand lawn past two ducks and an Amazonian parrot and she showed me my tiny room.
Above: The ‘chalet’ and the sand lawn backed by the turquoise sea
The next day I awoke with the sun at five am to the fabulous view from my ‘chalet’ and decided to commence my traditional exploration of town. I walked north, east, south, and west of town, above it and below it, through every sandy street, and then I looked at the time: only 8 am. I gazed out at the horizon to which ran only deserted desert beach as far as the eye could see. So I decided to walk there too. On my nine hour adventure on the beach I didn’t see one human until after I returned home for sunset. Really there was not much life at all out on the sand, apart from the flock of buzzards which formed in the sky above me, slowly circling as I wandered further away from town. Otherwise I only came across endless empty beach - marked only by a few dune buggy tracks - and dunes rolling into the sea.
Above: Big dunes and a bigger dork
As the day progressed and temperatures soared, my pace slowed and the buzzards gained in numbers and confidence. They thought I was done for. I resolved to make it back alive if only to spite them. Finally I reached the edge of the sand-earth – a dreamy sandbar sticking out into the sea. Further up ahead of me was only more endless beach and dunes; behind me, the tiny village on a pink dune where I began my odyssey; back from the water only more dunes; and the only other direction was out into the vast Atlantic. This was the point of no return, marked by a giant squid which had washed up onto the shore, and quizzically, a pack of five wild dogs (at which I had to throw sand and shells to keep from attacking me).
Above: Canoa from a distance and dunes rolling into the Atlantic
So I turned back and walked to the tiny pinpoint of a city until it grew large enough that I could enter it and purchase some much needed water (I didn’t have to break a 50!) and rest my blistered feet. Just yards from town the circling vultures gave up in disgust. Ha, I win! The End (of this paragraph).
Above: Touché, you rapscallions
By nightfall the town’s main street had become effectively a wild street party, complete with the compulsory groups of young Brazilian prostitutes who frequent any party and who are sometimes (and I believe purposefully) very difficult to distinguish from young Brazilian non-prostitutes. By chance I encountered my chalet-mom in the street and we had several drinks together at a reggae bar. Nothing particularly spectacular transpired this night despite the surprisingly intense festa for such a small town.
The next morning I awoke – not realizing I had been officially inducted into the familial unit – to my chalet-mom knocking on my door at 10:30 am.
“Tyson, are you dead? C’mon, I am drinking a beer!”
“Already?”
“I never stopped!”
Oooookay. Well, it is the weekend, I assured myself. She has every right to drink all hours of the day and night. Although in the back of my mind I really had questions whether it was the day of the week or the 50 reais rent I had given her last night was dictating her celebratory behavior. So I lazed away the day in front of the chalet with my new chalet-family, the single mom and here two sons of 17 and 15 years old, listening to forró (traditional Northeastern music), chatting with the parrot, the kids, the neighbors and anyone else who would listen, and polished off beers and vodka and an unsustainable pace with my chalet-mom. This turned out to be a good thing, however.
When I told my new family about the blisters I won from my long walk the day before, the younger, very astute son took one look at my feet and said to me dryly, “Vocé tem bichos de pé.” (“You have foot beasts.”)
“Excuse me?!”
He pointed down to the spot on my left foot which I had thought was irritated from walking all day in the sand, but what actually turned out to be a thriving community of blood-sucking insects and their eggs living (and growing in size) deep within the skin of my feet. Hmmm, that’s interesting, I thought, pretending not to be frightened and disgusted. I never learned about these guys in parasitology class.
Above: The bicho him/herself
“We must remove them,” he chanted.
As he dug through a tool box for some non-sterilized surgical equipment he told me I must have acquired them walking on the beaches further south of Canoa because they don’t have bichos in Canoa and the bichos take weeks to mature to the size their colony had grown to inside my third toe. Apparently my traditional discovery walks in each beach town were really no more than open invitations for bichos to burrow into my flesh and live freely. This was when the vodka came in handy. The whole family and a few passers-by crowded around the spectacle of a non-hygienic, anaesthetized surgical bicho removal, as performed by an unlicensed 15-year-old physician. The group cringed and looked at me to see if I was cringing as well, so I remained stoic as my chalet-brother dug into my feet with a large, semi-dull pin of some sort and a set of nail clippers. He was having a ball:
“See this one here? It’s the mother because she is big and black,” he explained as he wiped her slimy mess of an infection from the nail clippers onto a napkin. As he probed deeper in the wound he found more bichos and had to cut them out as well. After 20 minutes and several vodkas he switched feet and operated on the other infestation (or what I thought had been a blister but was actually more bugs in my skin, now that he mentioned it). In actuality it didn’t hurt much – at least no more than the strange, tough and bulbous insect eggs which were growing under my skin and I had to dig out after my visit to Paraguay. But at least this was a good excuse for some top-offs and sympathy. A dinner plate was even brought out to me, loaded with a tasty salad and some grilled sausages.
After ‘dinner and a surgery’ my chalet-mom, who was legitimately hammered by now, said she noticed how unkempt my feet looked, so she set them back onto the stool and clipped my toenails. Wow, not since my childhood had I received such treatment. Then she went on to file them. This was the life. Next she began to massage my feet. I became a little skeptical of the situation. It then became excruciatingly apparent that in her intoxicated state she was offering some much more ‘personal’ services to me if I was interested. But something about her level of drunkeness, the fact that she was my chalet-mom and that her kids were probably closer in age to me than she was made me feel quite awkward so I made up an excuse about having to go into the town for something. Fine, they all said. But first I had to watch the ‘Bicho de Pé Finale.’ My gentle and free-of-charge surgeon fetched a lighter and the napkin onto which he had wiped off all the bichos. Because darkness was falling, the display would be all the more fantastic. He lit the napkin on fire and it crackled like a dry log.
“Hear that?” he asked about the popping, “Those are the bichos de pé exploding!”
Everyone had a hearty, if sinister laugh. What a scene. I needed a break from it though, so I smiled and told them thanks for everything that day. And I limped off into the night through the dark sandy streets, as happy, confused, and buzzed as any other night in any other tiny beach town in any other coastal state of Brazil.
Above: See, I toe-ld you. I only hope the doc got all of the foot beasts out.
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