Llama for Lunch (28 page)
13 Where the Amazon
meets the Atlantic
We reached Belem and pulled up to a wharf on the outskirts of the town. Belem, the first centre of European colonisation in the Amazon area, was settled by the Portuguese in 1616. One hundred and forty kilometres from the open sea on one of the arms of the Amazon delta, it remains a trading centre and the gateway to the interior. Strongly influenced by the Amazon and the jungle, it depends on the river for contact with the outside world as the highway to the south is only open in the dry season.
At the landing in Belem there was not much to see except a few vehicles parked on a piece of dusty ground. Getting transport was no problem. Two taxi drivers came aboard to negotiate with the four foreigners – James, the Austrian couple and me – who seemed the only passengers requiring this service. Comparing notes with James I found that he had the same hotel’s address that I did. We lobbed at the desk, where a charming young man, who seemed delighted to be able to practise his English, asked me how long I was staying.
‘Not very long.’
‘Is this your husband?’
‘No,’ I replied.
He then gave us a list of prices by the hour. I looked around and suddenly it dawned on me. Charming. I was in a brothel. But it was reasonably cheap, right in the main street, it looked clean and the staff appeared respectable. I managed to get through to the desk clerk that I wanted a room all to myself, thank you very much, and another gorgeous smiling young man, a Ricky Martin clone, shooed me into the antiquated lift, clanged the metal grille shut and up we creaked.
I dumped my bags and zoomed on up to the roof-top dining room to partake of breakfast. The Hotel Central, built around 1920, is classical art deco in design and must once have been quite grand. It would have been great up here on the roof in the hotel’s heyday and even now, in its declining years, with all its glass doors open and a cooling breeze blowing through, it was a pleasant spot.
I was sorry to hear that it only catered for breakfast. A beer garden would once have graced the roof either side of the dining room, but now it was vacant except for some litter and a few pigeons. I sat in a cane chair that looked an original 1920s’ model while a courtly older man served me. The coffee had no sugar. Ah, civilisation at last – the sugar bowl was on the table, not in my cup. James joined me and I think my breakfast went on his tab. It seemed to be unusual for a woman to be running about loose. The taxi driver and I had conducted a long conversation, all of which I managed to work out, concerning the whereabouts of my husband, if this wasn’t he in the cab with me. This place was beginning to sound like Saudi Arabia, where the first and last words spoken to me had been: ‘Where is your husband?’
Hotel Central was four floors high and it presented to the street a facade of pale-green and white tiles. Its foyer opened right onto the footpath and the tiles continued on the walls in there. Black and white tiles marched across the floor to the back wall, where a well-worn grey marble staircase with an old brass hand-rail ascended to the rooms alongside the venerable lift. All the stairways and corridors were covered to a fair height with off-white-with-age tiles topped by a black-and-white-tile frieze.
Each floor had a sitting area on the landing at the top of the stairs in front of tall French doors that opened on to a small balcony over the main street. This space was tiled in a bilious shade of mustard, patterned in an attempt to convince you that it was marble. None of the exterior windows or doors possessed glass, just green wooden shutters to close against the rain. A three-piece lounge suite, classically square-shaped but re-covered in an excruciatingly ugly maroon vinyl, sat on a threadbare carpet in the sitting area near my room. The carpets all looked as though they had been in situ since the year one – and in the darker recesses of the passages, a faint whiff of old socks came off them. They were so worn that in places no carpet at all was left, just the threads that it had been woven on.
This establishment didn’t run to a vacuum cleaner. The housemaids swept the carpets with a broom. During my sojourn in the Central I used to read in the sitting area, as there the light was good, and here I met the odd short-term tenant, each of whom was very agreeable.
On an exploration foray, ambling along the main street under the huge old mango trees that line it, I came to the town square, the Praca de Republica. In a large, leafy park, a pre-election rally, as well as the usual Sunday market, was in full swing. Stalls that sold crafts, clothes, and food covered the walkways alongside the lawns.
Searching for lunch, I discovered that Belem shuts down more tightly than my home town of Adelaide used to on a Sunday. Nothing was open. I walked all the way down to the riverside, where a swish new building housed many exclusive shops and galleries. Beside this enormous edifice, the ramshackle stalls of the market wandered a great distance along the waterfront. Fish were sold in a lovely old building but the rest, mostly fruit, vegetables and foodstuffs, was outdoors in lean-tos and shaded benches. Near the end, the market degenerated and became sleazy.
It was siesta time and, except for a few stallholders snoozing alongside their goods, there were few people about. A man and woman approached and the man spoke to me. ‘Senora,’ he said. And went on earnestly in rapid Portuguese. I think he was telling me that it wasn’t safe to walk in the street now. It certainly looked seedy and the area was deserted except for some strange-looking people lying about in doorways. I beat a hasty retreat back to the safety of the town, passing many closed cafes on the way. By the time I finally found one open, I was desperate for food and, taking a wild stab at the menu, ordered a meal. Then I waited an hour to discover that the cook had barbecued a whole chicken for me. The chook was delicious, but so would have been fried running-shoes in my famished state. Even so I could still only eat half of the fowl. Yes, truly. Only half. I asked for a doggie bag.
Restored, I went to stock up on guarana drinks. I entered a doorway that I thought led into a shop, but actually went into the next building. Inside, in a foyer, I encountered two smart-looking young men dressed in white shirts and ties, who were handing out metre-long, gold-coloured plastic trumpets. I thought that this must be some kind of sales promotion. I didn’t want a trumpet but the smiling young man forced it on me, as well as a sheet of paper covered in Portuguese. I followed some other people down a hallway and entered, to my very great surprise, not a shop, but a large auditorium full of seats that sloped down, row after row, like a picture theatre. At the bottom was a stage with a central dais above which hung a massive banner proclaiming, ‘Jesus es me Senor’ – Jesus is my Lord. Good heavens, I had bumbled into a revival meeting. I would be expected to blow my trumpet, stamp my feet and shout ‘Halleluiah’. Apart from the fact that the show would all be in Portuguese, it wouldn’t be much use to me – I am way past saving. The young men guarding the exit were most reluctant to let me go and tried hard to persuade me to stay. ‘No, no, no!’ they said, ‘You’ll really enjoy this show.’ Or words to that effect. I pushed the trumpet back at them and bolted. I knew I’d enjoy getting a guarana fix from the shop much more.
It had been hot, thirsty work walking about Belem and when I reached my room in the late afternoon, I had a shower and zonked. James came to see if I wanted to go out to eat but I said I would rather continue with the siesta. When I woke it was dark, so I gave up on this day and, doing a Scarlett O’Hara, told myself I’d take up life again tomorrow.
I got up at the crack of dawn for a very satisfactory breakfast. Elegantly presented, it included cheese and ham slices, crispy French rolls, a huge slice of watermelon, fruit juice and really good strong coffee. The constantly beaming waiter was the only elderly person I had seen so far in Brazil. A dear old man, he looked a hundred, but probably was not a day over ninety-five. I sat by the open doors and fed the pigeons on the roof my watermelon seeds and bread crumbs. They were big, fat, glossy-plumed birds, one of whom wore white, 1920s’ spats that make him look heavy-footed but were in keeping with the era of the hotel. Two pigeons were behaving themselves nicely with a couple of bread crumbs when a smaller pigeon flew in. One immediately stopped what he was doing and started posturing in front of her. From past observations I have come to the conclusion that pigeons seem to be utterly and totally obsessed with sex. This female was just trying to get a feed and was probably saying, ‘Oh, just get out of my way will you,’ like any sensible woman would when food was on offer, but the idiot male continued to bob up and down around her like a thing demented.
At the tourist office, which was set in lovely gardens, an agreeable young man listened intently and tried hard to understand me. He spoke English but his accent was so excruciating I scarcely comprehended a word. But he did his best to find me a boat down the coast to Rio De Janeiro, roughly four thousand kilometres away. I had achieved my goal – crossing the continent overland. Now it was time to go home and the logical place to get a flight back to Australia seemed to be Rio.
It was all to no avail. I could see that the young fellow thought I was quite mad – tourists are supposed to fly, and that was such a simple operation. Why did I persist in making trouble for poor travel agents with my eccentric ideas? At one stage he interrupted the phone call he was making to a shipping company to ask me: ‘Will you be on this ship on your own?’
‘Yes,’ I said, not wanting to confuse the issue, but privately I really had hoped there might be a couple of sailors to drive the thing.
Parting friends, he shook my hand and gave me a fine map and a special price of only $5500 to fly back to Sydney from Belem, which I declined gracefully. I didn’t want to buy the bloody aeroplane, just rent a small space on it for a short while.
It was still early morning and reasonably cool if you kept out of the sun, so I walked up the shady side of the main street and entered several airline offices where various young ladies tried to find me a better fare without success. Finally one took me by the hand and led me a couple of doors down to meet someone she said might be able to help. They offered me a fare for four thousand. I nearly had a fit and asked if I could whittle it down a bit by taking the bus to Rio and flying from there. This reduced it to $2200. Then I discovered that all flights to Australia were fully booked. The first available seat was three-and-a-half weeks away. I put myself down for wait listing, or ‘weight lifting’ as it was put to me. It sounded as though I might as well be doing that.
After an enormous by-the-kilo lunch I racked out for a two-hour siesta. It was terribly hot in the middle of the day and by that time I always felt so hot and sweaty that I longed for a cold shower. That was lucky – there was no hot water in this hotel.
In the evenings I promenaded around the square on the lawns and under the trees with the rest of the populace. Wandering about at night among the food stalls and flood-lit statues seemed reasonably safe and was very pleasant. But, as there was no breeze, it was still not really cool. I imagined that it would be cooler down on the waterfront but from what I heard this would be madness. Big strong men don’t walk by the river alone at night, let alone medium-sized women.
My spacious and spotlessly clean room had a beautiful parquet wooden floor. I was intrigued by the extreme height of the ceilings and doors throughout the building. I estimated the distance to the deco-style ceiling cornice in my room to be at least four metres. The door into the corridor was three-and-a-half metres high, the top metre being patterned glass in a wooden frame. A second door in one wall connected me to the next room. The door handle had been removed on my side – I hoped it had been on the other side too.
I possessed two windows, both of which were innocent of glass and opened into the corridor. But they did have louvred wooden shutters, the top half of which could be opened for air – and to allow people passing by in the corridor a sight of the top of your head. All the woodwork, doors, frames and shutters were painted the nauseous shade of green that had been popular in the twenties and they didn’t look as though they’d had a touch-up since then. The furniture was also original 1920s, a classic oak dressing table with a black-marble top and a big oak wardrobe commodious enough to secrete a lover when your husband came home unexpectedly. And there was a little sink that was surrounded by hectares of white tiles edged with a black border and had an intriguing brass lever instead of a tap. A light swung from a cord in the ceiling a hundred kilometres away and a pedestal fan was plugged into a powerpoint that had been added as an afterthought. Well, a ceiling fan would have been useless way up there. The room was completed by a reminder of the good old days when there were rafts of servants at your beck and call – an ornate service bell of porcelain surrounded by brass was positioned in the wall by the door.
Each floor of the hotel had a huge ablution block that was entirely covered in tiles – floor, walls and even the corridor leading to it. First you entered a great room that was no longer used, but still contained a row of cement laundry troughs under the windows on the far wall. Some guest-room windows opened into this area and I wondered how this set-up worked back in the days when the maids would have been out there washing by hand in the early morning. Progressing through the laundry you came to the bathrooms. Segregated into male and female sides, they contained not only showers and bidets, but colossal cast-iron baths, big enough to wash a baby hippopotamus in.