We stop in Buzious, a lovely little fishing village that has
transformed itself into a tourist town without losing its charm, and anchor
just offshore. The harbour is busy; fishing boats come and go, water taxis
ferry tourists from one beach to another, and cruise ship tenders take
passengers back and forth to land. It looks at first glance much more
prosperous than many of the places we have been so far in Brazil with
well-kept-up houses climbing the hills amongst the palms trees and nary a high
rise nor slum in view. The main street that sweeps alongside a long sandy bay
is full of upscale shops and restaurants catering to the many tourists, and the
hotels are what I think of as European style, merely nice hotels with lush
gardens, as opposed to the Caribbean style all-inclusives that try to lock up
sections of beach for the exclusive use of their guests. Buzious is spread out
on a cape, it has 11 distinct beaches each in its own cove, almost as many
neighbourhoods, and wild cacti covered hills separating the different areas.
We are only going to be here one night so I decide to try to
make the most of the time and recapture the same type of wonderful experience I
had had in Fernando de Norohoia. Consequently I pack a sheet into my backpack
with the intention of using the afternoon to explore, taking in some night
life, sleeping on the beach, and then doing something different again the next
morning before we leave. My plan starts out well; I check out the tourist
region of town, stop at an internet café and catch up on missed e-mails, then
head out across the cape to a beach on the far side. There I walk the beach,
take my requisite photo of some fishermen, these ones sitting on land fixing
their nets, hike out to the end of a long isolated point, and end up in a
deserted bay surrounded by cliffs that is supposed to have good snorkeling. I
sit on the bare gneiss shore, so similar to the rocks of the Canadian Shield,
unsure if I have the guts to go swimming here by myself. There could be
rip-tides or an undertow that would carry me out to sea. I just don’t know. Is
it safe? Before I have decided a family with small kids shows up and the father
is looking like he wants to go swimming. I talk to him, in gestures, and
despite a lack of a common language we are both obviously thrilled to have a
swimming partner. I leave my backpack with his wife and we have a grand swim
together. By the time I have walked back to town it is dark and so I know HS
will be back on the boat already and would be disinclined to pick me up even if
I had any way of contacting him so I wander the tourist area again cheerfully
looking for a good place to have lunch and sit enjoying my chosen meal
intensely.
Then, unfortunately, it starts to rain, that sort of drizzle
that looks like it is settling in for the night. I re-consider my plan to sleep
outside and look for a water taxi to take me back to the boat only to discover
that they have been shut for hours. I walk back and forth along the main beach
a couple of times stopping at the different piers looking in vain for a boat
that might be heading out that I could hitch a ride with. At the end of one of
the longer piers, fortunately one with a roofed in gazebo at the end, I stop to
chat to a couple of Argentinians who are hanging out there. By now it is about
8 pm. The drizzle turns to rain and the rain to a downpour. We stand and chat
for a while, all of us reluctant to leave the shelter of the gazebo, as the
rain gets heavier and heavier. It is very dark out, lightning is flashing all
about, and the rain continues beating down. It doesn’t look like I will be able
to find a random boat to take me out to where we are anchored and the prospect
of sleeping on a park bench, even a protected one, is not looking too pleasant.
When one of the Argentinians offers to let me sleep on his
couch I gratefully accept. He moved into a new house that day, had come
downtown to buy a towel since he couldn’t find any in his stuff, and had merely
walked to the end of the pier for a smoke. We wait about another half an hour
for the rain to abate but when it shows no signs of doing so we agree to head
back to his place despite the weather. We are totally drenched within minutes. In
town the streets are running with water 3 inches deep in places. We stop at a
GT clone for a towel and I buy two so there will be one for me too. Ironically,
back at his house, he lathers up completely before learning that, despite the
downpour that continues outside, his shower has no water. After his landlord
has come by to fix this and his neighbours dropped in to say hi, we finally
head out together to share supper and a beer. By this time it is midnight. We
sit and eat together, chat very amiably about all manner of things, and,
although this is not exactly what I had planned, I am totally content with how
my evening has turned out. Back at his house I unroll my sheet on his couch and
am asleep in minutes with barely time to worry about what Cheryl might think.
The next morning I get up early and catch the bus back into
town and then a water taxi back to our boat. HS is there, binoculars in hand,
very concerned about where I have been. I tell him of my adventures and then
fall into my bunk for a pre-departure nap. All in all it has been another great
stop.
The Argentinian’s house, by the way, was not, to say the
least, glamorous. It was small, very small, and dirty, very dirty, and did not
have many of the features that we who live in Canada might expect. The
bathroom, for example, aside from not having running water, did not have a
door, or even a wall. It was merely a large open closet-like room with a toilet
bowl, no lid, no sink, and a hose for a shower coming out of the wall. The
living room/ kitchen was about 10’ by 10’ without a fridge or stove or table or
a single cupboard or shelf, just a couch on one side and a counter running
along the opposite wall with a sink. The sink did have water but, I was told
very clearly, not drinkable water. The only window in the whole house was about
one foot square and plexiglass. I cannot think of one person I know who would
have even considered moving into anywhere even remotely like this place. Since
I couldn’t think of a single positive comment to make upon being shown around
(all I could really think was, ‘Thank goodness I have my own clean sheet to put
on the couch!’) I asked instead, ‘How do you like it?’ He replied that he was
thrilled to have his own place, that it was bigger than the house he had grown
up in, that the neighbours were excellent (read: had weed to sell) and that the
landlord had agreed to run an extension cord to the counter when he could
afford a hot-plate. AKK!
If I hadn’t met this guy on the end of the pier I would likely
have checked into one of the many nice hotels. I assume he offered me his couch
since, for him, staying in a hotel for a night would have been too expensive a
proposition to even consider. In retrospect I am not sure why I took him up on
his offer – mostly I think because it was given with such obvious genuine
concern about my presumed predicament. The possibility of sleeping on a park
bench had made it into the conversation and that of taking a room in a hotel
had not. I could, of course, easily have been raped and/or murdered if not by
him then by his neighbours. I see I learnt nothing in Salvador after all. He
was, thank heavens, a decent guy. I was genuinely interested to hear his story
about how hard life was in his own country and how fortunate he was to be here
in Brazil with a job (illegally employed selling hot-dogs on the beach) making
enough money to rent a house on his own and he, I think, was equally interested
in my story about my trip and the boat.
Couch surfing is, I conclude; a) very interesting b) somewhat
chancy and c) best suited to burly 20 something males!
