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Since moving here, Charlie has helped so many foreign men do the same, that he’s decided he may as well make it a business. I am his first client. He finds me a hotel, shows me the most popular restaurants, and gives me recommendations about what to see and do while I am here. We’re driving around when Charlie points to a tall building facing the sea. "An American millionaire lives in the top floor penthouse,” he says. "Why?" I ask, wondering why anyone with lots of money would choose to live in Fortaleza. "Same reason anyone lives here,” Charlie says. “The guy is 70, he’s got a 31-year old Brasilera wife and a nine-month old baby. " Of course. What was I thinking? "Charlie, are you going to have kids too?" I ask. "Well sure," Charlie says. "Lord knows I have enough already, but why not? You only go around once. Besides, it comes with the territory when you marry a Brasilera." A hot gale whips hair into my face as we walk across a parking lot to a restaurant. The palm trees look like inside-out umbrellas flapping in the wind. "Is this the reason kite surfing is so popular around here?" I ask. "Absolutely right!" Charlie says. He adds, "Fortaleza is the number one vacation spot for Europeans. The Americans would be here too but they’ve got Cancun." I knew there was something familiar about this place. "Are the rumors about prostitution being a problem here true?" I ask. "That’s changing,” he says. "The Brazilian government is putting a stop to sex tourism in Fortaleza. All kinds of people vacation here now.” “Where are the female tourists?" I ask looking around. I haven’t seen so few white women since Bangkok. Charlie says,” There are 100,000 more women than men in this city. The Brasileras come from the interior hoping to find a husband. They actually LIKE older foreign men.” I can see it
in my mind’s eye, a full page ad in a men’s magazine: “Get laid without
the hassle of three dinner dates and a movie – WHILE you tan.”
The girls? I’m guessing they’d call it an even trade. The foreigners offer them hope, otherwise called survival. In return, they offer the men a final swipe at life and love. But then, I’m a little grumpy. I’ll sleep on it another night. In Never-Never Land "Are you Robin?" I look up from my laptop in the lobby of the Sol Melia Hotel to see a stocky man in his mid-60's wearing a sleeveless t-shirt, baggy shorts which end below his knees, and Teva sandals. “I'm 'Ted'," he says reaching over to shake my hand. His voice bespeaks thousands, maybe millions of cigarettes. The whites of his eyes are not really white, but the shade of caipirinhas. Ted had written me in the States a few months earlier about his plans to build a yacht harbor near Fortaleza. He hoped I would visit and that my resulting articles would attract investors to his project and foreigners to the region. Since I’d been thinking about checking Fortaleza out someday anyway, I tacked the city of 2 million onto the end of my itinerary. After a few pleasantries, Ted gets to the point; “My partner and I are leaving in the morning for three days of scouting out sites. We’ll take four-wheel drive jeeps as far north as Jericoacora. Want to join us?” I’ve just arrived. My clothes are filthy. I need a bikini wax to go with my itty-bitty Brazilian bikini. (You know the world’s gone global when you can’t find a Brazilian bikini wax anywhere in Brazil, yet, Vietnamese-run salons all over San Francisco offer them.) I need a pedicure (make that a sandblaster), and there is the updating of my website to do, not to mention hundreds of emails that have backed up. And besides I don’t even know these people. However, the offer is a generous one, a chance to explore the dunes of Northeastern Brazil, to get out of Fortaleza, and to witness two men chasing a shared dream of building a yacht harbor in South America. (Build it and they will come?) “What about your wives?” “You think
our wives would let us go off alone on a trip like this? Hell no, they’re
coming too.”
Ted’s partner, a yacht designer from London, is like Bob, also middle-aged and recently divorced. His girlfriend Tania is a young towering, buxom, heavily made up, hair verging on huge, blouse open to belly button, knockout, who balances her tall frame atop four-inch platform shoes. She rolls her Rrrrrrr’s; she is Russian. And yes, that’s what I was thinking too. Yvonne, a fire-y, early 40’s Brasilera with Godiva chocolate skin, rounds out the foursome. She puts long E’s on the end of most every word same as most Brazilians: “like-y” and “My name-y is Yvonne-y”. She takes it upon herself to be the caretaker of us all. Are we happy, would we like this, some more of that? Yvonne and Ted met a decade earlier when she was the maid in his U.S. household. Ted decided after a time that he loved Yvonne more than his wife, so he divorced the latter to marry the former. His kids are still pissed, but Yvonne tells me that she and the ex-wife are now friends. Ted doesn’t look or sound the part of a bank investor, especially with his heavy Brooklyn accent, but he’s clearly enamored with Fortaleza. On the terrace of the Outrigger Hotel where we five sip caipirinhas, we toast the city by the sea. “Can you believe this Robin?” Ted says taking in all of Fortaleza with the sweep of his right arm. “Yeah,” I answer. Truth is, I haven’t made up my mind. I need time. “The Northeast” – words spoken by Brazilians with a mixture of affection, a touch of reverence, and something else I can’t quite put my finger on. Sort of like the way someone might refer to a “special” relative in the family. At the end of the evening, the group wants to know, is I in or is I out? Let's see, there are the powdery sand dunes to explore via jeep, the infamous coastal village of Jericoacora, and shallow emerald seas. And of course, the four merry pranksters I hadn’t yet met two hours earlier. “In,” I say. And we are on. (Check out next month's issue of EscapeArtist.com for the conclusion of Fear and Loathing in Fortaleza - join Robin Sparks as she embarks on a 3-day journey to the dunes of Northeast Brazil with five strangers.) The following
is a list of articles that Robin has written for the magazine:
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Walk
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