tysontrips

7 October, 2005

Sorria, Voce Está Na Bahia (Smile, You´re In Bahia)

I have arrived in Barra Grande, an even smaller, more remote, more paradise-like, more isolated town at the end of a sparsely inhabited peninsula. Just a few sandy roads - under hundreds of shady fruit trees - connect endless stretches of...you guessed it!...white sand beach.

Above: See, I told you

My method of arrival has become more and more tenuous as the islands and towns become smaller and ever more undiscovered. Today's buses were the most local of local buses which have ever been in operation - one of them transporting me less than 30 miles in three hours on precarious mud roads. Being back on the bus again after 16 lazy, sun-filled days in Itacaré started me thinking about just how much more bus time I have to look forward to in the next several months. How much, Tyson? Well I don't know, but for you quantitative types I have devised a simple equation. It is based on the fact that it has taken me about six hours of bus travel for every one degree of latitude North I move. Can you check my algebra here, Andy? The equation is X = 6Y, where X = time traveled in hours, 6 is the constant of 6 hours per degree of latitude crossed, and Y = the number of degrees latitude traveled. Ya dig? I left São Paulo - located on the Tropic of Capricorn at 22.5 degrees South, and it has taken me more than 48 hours of riding hard to arrive at 14.5 degrees South, where I sit now. So I figure, if the pace of the buses holds steady at the current limp-like average of 30 kilometers per hour (18 mph for the metrically challenged), it will take me at least 84 more hours of bus riding just to make it to the equator (did I mention that the roads are becoming progressively worse as I move North?). The thing is, the equator marks only one-third of the total distance I am attempting to travel North via bus. I left all of my belongings at my parent's´ house in Olympia, Washington, which is located at about 45 degrees North latitude. At the above indicated pace, that makes 360 hours (about 15 full days) of busing my ass before I arrive in Oly.

You: "So stop whining and take a plane then, Tyson!"
Me:"No, you take a plane, man, you take a plane!"

You are missing my point. It is my goal and intention to travel all the way home to Olympia from Southern Brazil by bus. Let me explain this much more clearly by way of a convoluted analogy: In Brazil there is a proverb which effectively says: If the banana is high enough in the tree the monkey will pretend he doesn't want it. That is to say, sometimes people won't do things they want to do just because they think it is too difficult or not worth it. And then they will act like they didn't want to do it in the first place. Indulge me in this analogy, will you? Imagine that I am the monkey in the banana tree, the banana is my goal of traveling from São Paulo to Seattle without progressing by plane, and the banana tree is the distance and the time between me and my banana. Well, this damn monkey is going to get that damn banana no matter how high it sits in the damn banana tree, damn it!!!

Or if not, I will just fly. Either way is cool with me.

Bus-ness As Usual

Alright, I got a little off track there with my monkeys and bananas. But what originally brought me to the idea of questioning my travel goals was today's bus rides. As with almost any experience in life, today's rides were a mixed bag. There were the good things: I arrived safely and at my proper destination (did I happen to mention the white sand beaches?); the transportation was cheap; it was an incredible experience to view the jungle covered hills, the cacaú plantations, the practically nude locals washing their clothes in the muddy streams; their tiny, one room shacks made from anything from mud to sticks to plastic tarps to old boards to brick; to venture across creaky bridges and pot-holed dirt roads, and finally through a mangrove swamp (via a ferry).

On the other hand, the bus rides had their share of the bad things as well: when I entered the first bus it smelled suspiciously like vomit. It didn't take but ten minutes of plying the windy, steep and rutted roads to realized why this was the case, when several locals (I was the only gringo, as usual) began vomiting out the window (at least intending to make it out the window) while others ran to the front of the bus in hopes of stopping it before it was too late. The heat, roads and smell made for a horrific and compounding combination. And I think those who had imbibed a bit too much at the four day festival of São Miguel were feeling the effects the most. The bus putted along at an average of 6 mph on roads which looked like footpaths through the jungle. I couldn't believe said puke wagon would even attempt this trip day in and day out. Among endless stops, a few examples of what we made pause for: chickens in the road, mud puddles, the bus driver to have loud conversations with locals out of the windows of their houses or with natives riding horses in the road, for barf breaks, for seemingly nothing, for kids to sell us peanuts, to check the tires for flats, etc. In the end, however, the good inevitably outweighed the bad because of the end result. I ended up on a tranquil island sipping a coconut water and laid lazily under the sun on the, that's right, say it with me, white sand beaches.

Next time: Tyson will elucidate the answers to the following question: In Bahia, just why is the sand so white, the sky so blue and the water so clear?