| They clawed
at the sand beneath the tires with bare hands. They wedged palm fronds
and sticks under the tires and whatever else they could find, which wasn’t
much on this lunar landscape. The jeep sunk deeper.The water was rising
half a foot every few minutes.
Huck Finn
& Company To The Rescue
I looked up
to see a log raft gliding towards us from the other shore. There were a
gaggle of young boys onboard. They came ashore dragging two long wooden
planks through the sand, and began wedging them under the tires. You could
tell they'd done this before.
Everyone pushed
from the front and then the back, getting splattered in the process with
black wet sand. The boys repositioned the boards and everyone pushed some
more. This went on for some time and the water crept closer. We were beginning
to
think about calling the rental company with the bad news when the jeep’s
tires grabbed onto the boards and backed onto the surface of the sand.
Everyone jumped up and down cheering. Then we began working on the
white pickup truck. More pushing and mud splattering and hollering and
loud revving and sand spitting, until finally the white truck was free
as well.
The boys took
their boards and climbed back on their raft and were gone, drifting swiftly
to the opposite shore. We tried to pay them, but they would not take our
money.
Oi Mate
y
A truck appeared
out of nowhere, and out stepped a man who could not have looked more like
a pirate if he'd been cast by Hollywood. His gray-streaked jet-black hair
was gathered in a ponytail, his facial features carved into angles (by
years of blowing sand?), a hoop in one earlobe, and he wore billowy
pants, no shirt, no shoes.
This was
Julio, I was told, the owner of the infamous El Pirata (Pirate) nightclub
in Fortaleza. Jean told him how the boys had rescued us. Julio knew
the children and their families. I would learn later that Julio takes care
of the locals, builds their schools, provides them with boats, helps repair
their homes, and brings them medical care.
Julio offered
me a tour of the area. The others said, yes, go, we will wait.
We whipped
up and over the dunes alongside the ocean, leaving clouds of powder fine
sand hanging in the air. Julio told me that this land, all of it as far
as we could see, was his. “In a manner of speaking,” he added. He
told me that he has purchased as much of this land as he can with the proceeds
from his nightclub, El Pirata.
“What will
you do with the land?” I asked. “Nothing,” he said. “I bought
it so that no one can develop it. It is the only way to save the turtles,
the animals, the plants native to the area, and the way of life for these
people.”
Julio ended
our tour and sailed away over the waves of dunes.
Hmmm
We drove through
several more small towns, on mile after mile of desolate road, and were
never entirely sure we were headed in the right direction. Ted talked and
talked about how he had plans to dredge a harbor for the big yachts somewhere
along this coastline. I asked him, “Have you checked into the legality
of this?” He indicated, that no, he had not, but that it wouldn’t be
a problem. He has connections he said. You know, guys like Julio.
We stopped
for lunch at a lagoon to eat and drink caipirinhas. Windsurfers flew across
the surface of the white rippled water outside while we scarfed down feijada
(beans), rice, and picanha (steak). I looked at Ted and Bob closely as
my B.S. detector had gone on red alert. I asked Ted, a stocky man with
a strong Brooklyn accent, who seemed to be more working class than investment
banker, how he and Bob, a designer of yachts from London (who ordered
from the wine list at every meal in this beer drinking country) met.
“It’s not important how we met,” Ted said. “Uh, well, it is part
of the story,” I countered. Bob stepped in, “We met at a convention
in California.” It was all suddenly clear. Bob might have been a designer
of yachts, but Ted was no investment banker, and this yacht harbor? Just
a pipe dream. At least I hoped so.
Oz On the
Oasis
I was pretty
much assuming at this point that we were just going to keep on driving
forever and ever when Jean announced, “We’re here!” We roller-coastered
up and down sand dunes and then idled at the top of the tallest one.
There it was.
A blanket of green so vast and smooth that we couldn’t see where it ended
and the sky began. Nestled between the dunes and the sea below, the beach
town of Jericoacoara glinted in the sun. Now this was the Northeast Brazil
of the tourist brochures! The land of the dunes, where the pull of the
tide sucks the sand out to sea, only to be blown back into piles upon the
shore by gale force winds, sculpting the sand into an ever-shifting lunar-like
sandscape.
Jericoacoara
is an oasis of kite surfing, fresh lobster, and snow boarders who slalom
down steep faces of what look like God-sized piles of salt. “Jeri”
is an oasis of car-free alleys and lanes of packed sand. Of cute boutiques
where you take off your shoes when you enter because the floors are piled
several inches deep in sand. But most importantly, it’s where hundreds
arrive daily from around the world to partake of the ritual of the setting
sun.
Once in town,
I lost the others, grabbed my camera and joined dozens of strangers to
shuffle zombie-like up the steep side of the 100-foot high Dune of the
Sun. We stood at the top in a direct line of vision with the horizon. The
dune changed hues from beige to rose, to a deep mediterranean terra cotta.
It was time.
The golden
globe grew fat like a ripe pumpkin and wavered on the edge of the sea.
A girl stood
in front of me holding her sarong out at her sides, the wind whipping it
in the air. A horse galloped below on the shoreline. The fishermen on the
jigandas (fishing boats) put down their nets and faced the sun. A kite
surfer glided past the shimmering globe framing it briefly in a transparent
sail. The wind stopped. Reversed. Waves stood on end as if confused. Then
the golden squashed pumpkin rolled off the edge of the sea and disappeared.
Sun worshipers
from dozens of countries around the world descended the dune together in
silence as the sky turned indigo. The twang of a lone berimbau (Brazilian
instrument) sent out waves of its own. Jericoacoara lit up and twinkled.
Soft strains of Bossa nova filled the night.
At that moment,
I saw that my Fear and Loathing of Northeastern Brazil had gone down with
the sun.
I thought about
Ted and about Bob and about the yacht harbor they dreamed of building.
And I thought about their visions of yachts pulling into a harbor, of passengers
stepping onto a pier at the foot of a resort that they themselves had created.
I looked for
my fellow merry pranksters and found them doing what they had done for
most of the past two days - smoking cigarettes and getting smashed.
Jean was taking a sailor's nap in his hotel room or out buying a joint
with
$20 I’d given him. The women were planning what to wear to dinner that
evening.
I told them
that I was going to remain in Jeri for another day, another sunset. And
that I would take the bus home.
I’d found my
Field of Dreams. I hoped they’d find theirs too, somewhere else.
Epilogue:
Fortaleza
In the early,
soft (have I mentioned that the light on Fortaleza is bright white?)
morning light, and I do mean early, like 6-7AM, I discovered a completely
different Fortaleza than the one I’d become acquainted with in the afternoons
and evenings. The seawall was alive with bicyclists, joggers, chatters,
walkers, and surprise of surprises, they were all ages. Mothers stretched
their hamstrings together. Old men, and I'm talking 90's here, jogged,
lifted weights on the beach, and people everywhere chatted socially in
small groups.
I could like
this I thought. It felt all warm, and fuzzy and family-like, as opposed
to hunter prey-like. And it wasn’t even all that hot. Just golden with
a gentle sea lapping at a long crescent shoreline.
The following
is a list of articles that Robin has written for the magazine:
|
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