This post is born thanks to the very little traffic that I experienced on some of the roads in Brazil, thanks to one social worker Eliz Songe I met in Manaus, a town by the very Amazon river, who gave me a notebook for a present, to my grandmother whose pencil I used to write in it after my pens had run out of ink. This is a chronicle of a fraction of my road from San Felipe(Venezuela) to Macapa (Brazil) which started October 2nd and ended October 12th 2009 and which tries to put in too few words the too many things that happened
DAY ONE: THE BEGINNING
To tell the truth, I really did not see it coming – the Amazon River. My going to Brazil at that particular time happened only due to the nearing of my visa expiration date. I promised both David and the nuns to be back as soon as possible.
Sister Jasna kindly offered me money for the trip - yes, they truly were the missionaries of charity, but I had been there to help them give, not take. So I refused the money and started the trip with zero bolivars (Venezuelan currency where 1$ is about 5 bolivars) in my pocket. It was to become an experiment, partly a practice of the words the priest had read from the bible the day before:
“You received free, give free. Do not procure gold or silver or copper for your girdle purses, or a food pouch for the trip, or two undergarments, or sandals or a staff; for the worker deserves his food. Into whatever city or village you enter, search out who in it is deserving, and stay there until you leave. ” (Matthew 10:8-11).
Nonetheless apart from “gold or silver or copper”, there was a full backpack of stuff that I carried: food, clothes for different weather, tent, sleeping bag etc. I still had my staff from Alaska with me, I was wearing sandals, but in my pack, waiting for their time were sturdy boots. So I was not exactly Saint Francis of Asis and not even close to the apostles setting out for my journey from the house of the missionaries.
Did the apostles or the Saint travel with a map, I wondered. At least I did not have one that time. I was told to go to a place called Barquisimeto where the road to Ciudad Bolivar in the southern part of the country was supposed to branch off. My first ride, a bus, agreed to take me for free to Valencia. Talking to the driver I learned that Barquisimeto had remained in the opposite direction. So that is how I ended up in Valencia in the North of Venezuela instead.
Buses generally take you to bus stations which are mostly in the middle of the city -the worst place to find yourself in when you want to hitchhike. To continue your trip from there you are bound to get another bus or walk out of town.
Getting off the bus in Valencia’s huge bus station I was facing the last option. Without any idea where to go, I approached two young fruit salesmen with the question. Yet instead of giving me answers the two guys flooded me with questions.
One of them understood me well, in his eyes I recognized a similar flame as I spoke of the road, the kindness I had received and the Everything which had happened allowing me to be where I was, doing what I was doing. I believe that he too was a nomad in his heart, and knew well the things I spoke of, because whenever his friend had trouble understanding my way of being, he would explain it to him, then look at me for confirmation, and receiving it through a nod, smile. After the conversation he rewarded me with an apple. I felt honored.
It started raining. I sat on the bench by the fruit-stand eating my apple, happy that I had something to do. It was a good apple.
“We’ll talk to the bus drivers they could perhaps take you without money,” suggested the guys. So how realistic was that, I thought watching the sky through the falling rain. I had nothing against hitchhiking or setting off to find the road, the day was still young, but I did not want to get my stuff wet, so I kept sitting on that bench. A piece of paper on the ground caught my eye – could it be what I thought it was? I asked the fruit-man who had previously had trouble contemplating my story. He picked the paper up and handed it to me - a twenty bolivar bill (about $4).
“It’s yours!” he said.
“You see!” I triumphed after thanking him, “Now I have money to take a bus out of town!” and after a moment thought added: “Just tell me which one.”
“You have to go to San Felix,” said an elderly gentleman joining our conversation. He must have been listening to us for a while because he knew where I wanted to go.
“Can I get there for twenty?”
“No, the ticket will cost you about seventy,” said the gentleman.
“Well, then I can’t go, because I have only twenty,” I stated with a smile.
“Come with me,” said the man, “the buses to San Felix leave from another place.”
I wondered if he had heard me, but followed the guy anyway. The fruit-men shook my hand wishing me luck and gave me more apples and pears for the trip. This was becoming interesting.
We walked to the other end of the bus station where I saw fancy two-storey buses awaiting their passengers. The ticket to San Felix cost indeed 70 bolivars, like the guy had predicted.
“Would you take me somewhere along your way for twenty?” I enquired the drivers.
“No,” was a cold reply with no consideration whatsoever.
One military officer overhearing the situation handed me my second twenty bolivar bill of the day: “for the journey,” he said and then disappeared in the crowd.
“Now I only have thirty missing,” I rejoiced.
One perfume salesman heard my words and handed me 10 bolivars. Soon he came back to hear the rest of the story after which he gave me the missing sum. “It will come back to me,” he said and asked me to teach him some expressions in the languages I knew, which I then gladly wrote down on a piece of paper for him.
A little while later, telling the bus ticket salesman how five strangers had come together to help me continue my journey, I handed him the money.
“Our tickets are eighty five,” he said counting it, but then looked at me and said “I will make it seventy for you.”
The ticket salesman, the perfume salesman and the elderly gentleman were very happy and of course I myself as well. “I will go tell the fruit sellers that you made it,” said the old man before we parted. The next two hours that I had to wait for the departure of the bus, I spent playing the flute. The noise of the crowds and buses coming and going was so loud, I was sure no one would mind.
That made it six strangers helping another stranger without expecting anything in return. I love hitchhiking, and am generally against taking long distance busses – you miss out on so many people and adventure, yet that time was different. That time I witnessed something beautiful happen, and I did not even have to do anything else but just be there and receive the kindness that these people carried inside them. Perhaps, I thought, the independence and the self-sufficiency that most strive for is not a strength to the community but a weakness, as it excludes other people’s care, and the world as a result becomes a colder place. It is one’s ability to receive that makes giving possible.
DAY TWO: TO THE BORDER
Next morning, after spending the night crossing Venezuela in a bus, I arrived to San Felix bus station in the south of the country. Except for the geography of it, the situation was pretty much identical to the one of the day before – I was in a bus station, penniless, and needed to get out of town. One ticket salesman to my question “how?”, talked two bus drivers into taking me to the toll-gate on the highway. As we were reaching the spot and I prepared to get off, one of the drivers asked me where I was going.
“To Brazil,” I said.
The drivers exchanged looks and then one of them turned to me saying they would take me to Eighty-eight.
“Thank you!” I said sitting down again, whatever that Eighty-eight was, it seemed I did not have to get off yet.
Eighty-eight was a little town, I learned after more than a six hour drive. Was I close to the border now? After being more than 24 hours on the road I would have really liked to see my location on the map. Still wondering about where I exactly was, I had luck getting a free ride with another luxurious two-storey bus. The ride lasted three hours and took me to a little place called Santa Elena.
“Am I close to the border now?” I asked in the bus station.
“No, it is quite far from here,” one woman replied.
“How far?”
“About twenty minutes by car.”
I laughed with relief, after all these hours on the road, twenty minutes I considered a rather short distance. A kind police officer to my question where I could pitch up my tent, allowed me to sleep in his office. That was the end of day two – I had arrived to the border. Almost.
DAY THREE: MY BIRTHDAY
I woke up in the bus station and looked around – it was my birthday, yet first time in my life no one wanted to congratulate me. I then stepped out of the station and looked around for presents: found the first one in the sunshine and the blue sky, found another one in pretty landscapes I discovered during a short hike I did off the road, and the third one I found in a quick ride to the very border of Brazil.
The first person to congratulate me was the customs officer who had discovered it was my birthday after a thorough study of my passport. That was it. After crossing over to Brazil everything became difficult: empty road, heat, thirst, language barrier. At one point hitchhiking under the midday sun in Boa Vista I was so thirsty that when saw a tap, lost all caution just to drink some water.
One very kind couple who picked me up from that same town made a short stop at the girl’s parents’ place. I saw two chocolate cakes on the table.
“For me?” I asked the road hopefully.
“Nope, just teasing,” said the road as we continued the trip another hundred kilometers further to a place called Karakarai. I went on waiting for traffic for another hour – no cars passed me. Finally I saw one car which to my great joy pulled over.
These were the same people – they had come to take me to…
“A party?” I asked the road again.
“Nope!” was its cold reply.
Instead I was brought to one gas station another half a kilometer further, where the couple had thought I might have more luck. I ended up putting up my tent under the roof of that place, very tired, happy to go to sleep.
The next day I wrote in my diary:
“Yes, I should honestly admit that I was expecting a big party with candles on a birthday cake, but all birthdays cannot be the same, can they? Instead wrapped in worn and dusty paper I received the Road and Brazil for presents. One should not judge the gift by the package though.”
DAYS FOUR,FIVE AND SIX: HITCHHIKING BOATS ON THE AMAZON RIVER
“To Manaus?” I asked the driver of the car that had stopped.
“Are you going to hit me with that stick?”
“No”
“Are you from the States?”
“No.”
“Then you can come along.”
A bold-headed man in his early fifties stuffed my pack in the trunk of his car and the journey started. I learned that it was nearly six hundred kilometers we had to travel to reach Manaus.
And then suddenly I saw the Amazon jungle. And it lasted for hours. And it was beautiful and wild. And there was nothing there, except for the woods, the road and a few natives we saw on the road.
The jungle of Amazon
With the help of my driver Eduardo, who in his youth had hitchhiked a lot in South America and thus could speak Spanish, I learned my first Portuguese.
“In my house you should speak my language,” said Eduardo remembering the words someone had told him during one of his early journeys where he was struggling making himself understood.
“In your house I should speak your language,” I repeated and learned my first three words in Portuguese: THANK YOU – OBRIGADO; HELLO (BON DIA) and GOOD-BYE (ADEOS).
“From Manaus you will have to take a boat - the river is the only way,” said Eduardo.
“It would be an honor to travel the biggest river in the world,” I said and we started composing a text I could present to the captains asking them to take me on board free of charge.
We reached Manaus before nightfall, Eduardo waited with me for the bus that was to take me to the port, then paid my ride, kind fellow!, and with this we parted.
It was nearing five o’clock in the afternoon when I came to the port. I made a debut reading the text to the guards who seemed to have liked it. Nonetheless the key people had already left the scene by that hour and the guards told me to come back the next day. I walked into the nearest church to ask if it were possible to stay there overnight. It wasn’t. Instead of an invitation the priest sent me to another church and kindly gave me the direction.
“At least I have somewhere to go”, I comforted myself as I started walking, “even if just for twenty minutes.”
I was about to enter the building when one “Oh, and where do you come from?” stopped me.
That was how I met 65 year old Stefanie from California, though currently living in Holland and her companion young Rana from Pakistan living in Brazil and managing one International Youth Hostel in Manaus. When Stefanie heard that I was going to the church to ask for accommodation, she handed me a twenty real bill (Brazilian currency: 1 real is about $0.75). It did not take me more than a few seconds to realize what I could use that money for.
“So how much is one night in your hostel?” I turned to Rana.
“Twenty two reals is the cheapest place in the dorm.”
“Could you make it twenty?” I asked.
“Sure!” smiled Rana, who then started searching for something in his wallet and a moment later handed me a bunch of coins:
“This is the two reals that you are missing, it’s just that I am not working tonight,” he explained. After this conversation Rana and Stefanie invited me to join them for dinner.
“What you need is given,” I said and smiled to the Road – again it managed to surprise me in the most wonderful way.
“So when was the last time you had a warm meal?” asked Rana when we were waiting for our pizza.
“Four days ago,” I said, but seeing a shadow of compassion come over my hosts’ faces, quickly added:
“The nuns I stayed with in Venezuela gave me crackers, I still have some left, so I haven’t been hungry, they just weren’t warm,” I said and then added:
“Have you ever read a book, which you truly loved and reading it forgot about everything, even about food and sleep? This is how the road is to me. When I am on it I feel I have thirst for it, and it is unquenchable thirst – I drink and drink of it and cannot get enough. Holding that cup I am happy and satisfied, I do not feel hunger unless I am offered food, I do not feel tired, unless there is a place for me to rest. I also think that the feeling is mutual and just as I thirst for the road, the road thirsts for me and when I am walking it, it becomes one happy road.”
“And when did you last sleep in bed?” asked Rana.
I told him that it was also four days ago in the missionary house, but then remembered that also there I had always slept on the floor. When was the last time I slept in bed and would I still be able to do that, I wondered – you can get used to sleeping on hard surfaces in the very same way as you can become used to sleeping in a soft bed. I remembered that the last time I had paid for a night in a youth hostel was in Ecuador four months ago, and before that in Panama when I had had an accident with my tooth in March.
My second night in Manaus I spent in a place called “Casa de Migrante” (in English: House for Migrants), a very clean place that offered free food and shelter for maximum eight days to people who came to Manaus for health treatment or other temporary purposes and did not have means to pay for their stay in a hotel.
My getting there is another story which includes asking boats to take me, them sending me to social service, the latter giving me some contact in a Catholic church run organization for immigrants and them helping me to find a place to stay. Not exactly what I was looking for, but still very necessary to have some shelter and food too, preferably, while the boats were refusing to cooperate.
Truth, I was tired of it. I had doubt. I did not want any organization to pay for the ticket, truth, I did not want the ticket – I wanted a free ride which seemed impossible with how things were going. What was it all about – money? I had money on my account and a card to take it out. Yes, that would have meant end of the experiment, yet there seemed no other way. I had been going from one port to another for two days now. So I approached the bank machine with the intention to get some money for the ticket, when someone called to me in English:
“Who are you, come here!”
I turned around and saw a man behind the stand with logos of Amazon Travel on it.
“I’ve seen you so many times here. What are you doing? Maybe I can help you.”
You can try to fight the Invisible Hand, but never win, I thought putting my wallet back – the experiment continued.
That is how I met Iralcy Barros, Director of the Amazon Explorers who helped me get through the gate of the port building to the pier where the boat to Belen, a town on the Atlantic coast, was waiting for departure. I squeezed through the crowd of passengers and asked around for the captain. A young fellow, perhaps in his early thirties, he had kind eyes, so I started hopefully:
“I am in your house yet I do not speak your language. I apologize.
My name is Carina. I come from Estonia, a small country in the northern Europe, and am travelling around the world for over two years now. This is how I have come here (I showed a small map of the world with my route on it). The Amazon River is the biggest in the world. It would be an honor to travel it.
I do not have much money. I move mainly by hitchhiking. Yet from here there is no other road but the river, which is why I came to talk to you. Do you think it would be possible for me to hitch a ride on your boat or at least work for my ride?"
Yet despite the fact that by this time I had almost learned the speech by heart and could do a lot of eye-contact, it did not work. The captain’s answer was a regretful “No” - ticket price for that five-day trip was one impossible sum of 150 reals.
Returning to Iralcy, without any more ideas left, I suddenly remembered one gift I had received about a year ago in Canada. It was 100 Canadian dollars that the Indian Chief Morley Googoo had practically forced me to take. I then told him I would put the money in my first aid kit and use it only when it came to last aid. Was that perhaps the time? I believed the chief would not have minded me using the money to travel the very Amazon itself. Iralcy helped me with exchanging the sum for 110 reals. It was not enough to go for it to Belen, yet more than sufficient to reach Santarem, which was half-way. I quickly bought the ticket for 50 reals, did some food shopping for the trip for 10 and had another 50 left over for the remaining part of the journey.
I left Manaus on a boat which two days (DAY SEVEN AND DAY EIGHT of my journey) and two nights later was to bring me somewhere else along the river. Yet was I awake to the fact that I was on the biggest river of the world – a dream to see for so many people? I guess not – to me it had presented an obstacle, an unwanted stop on my road, a feeling of being a lesser human being because I did not have money to pay for my ride etc., and all these unpleasant emotions jeopardized the sentiment of admiration that I ought to have had for my majestic host. Did the river feel it? And if so, then was it trying to make up for all that hustle through presenting me many friends on board that boat, who gave me food, coffee, nuts, fruits, allowed to use internet, and then gathered around to listen to my stories. Portuguese was so similar to Spanish that having listened to it for a few days it was easy for me to understand it and make myself understood. Having felt like poorest of the poor, here I was being treated like a queen. Even my sleeping conditions were better than everybody’s - as opposed to sleeping in a one of the hammocks crammed together on the dock, I had my own spacious tent. They laughed at me and I laughed at them, and no-one felt bad.
Sleeping on the river
DAY NINE: I BECOME A STREET MUSICIAN
It was an early October morning when the boat arrived to its destination in Santarem.
Santarem quai on the Amazon river
Santarem is a little town which stands half way between Manaus and Belem or Manaus and Macapa - both are the Amazon’s “end stations” near the Atlantic coast. From Belen the road goes south, from Macapa you can travel by land north to French Guayana. As I was going to return to Venezuela, I chose to go North, in my imagination crossing French Guiana, Surinam and British Guayana to arrive, what I thought, within a week to the point where I had left off.
“How much is the ticket to Macapa?” I asked one young man who helped me find the boat.
“125 real.”
I thought I had misunderstood and asked again to which he wrote the number on the paper.
“I only have 50,” I said showing him what was left of Morley’s donation.
He did not say anything, just introduced me to the captain and left.
I took out my speech again, but now instead of saying I want a free ride, I asked for a discount.
“The ticket costs 100,” said the captain.
100 was better than 125, yet still I had only 50.
I tried again, but there seemed to be no compromise possible. The captain said the boat was to leave at 6 PM in the evening and that was that. I had over ten hours to get the missing sum. But what could be done?
The bank gives out cash within a second, so I left it for the last option. I looked at my flute and remembered Justas – a traveller from Lithuania who hitchhiking on empty roads in China had learned juggling – the skill he later used to make money when he needed it. Could I do the same with the flute?
I explained my idea to the captain nad asked him to help me write the sign “A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD. MISSING 50 REALS TO MACAPA” in Portuguese.
When the captain saw that I was not joking, he lowered the price to 80. “It is going to be difficult,” he said, but did help me write the sign, because even with the generous discount I still needed 30 reals.
So there it was, my setting : the boat I wanted to get on for a background, my pack and my staff by my side, the sign and a coffee-cup in front of me and in the middle sitting on a mooring bollard (an iron post used for tying the ship to the quay) me playing the six tunes I knew.
I could not have imagined it would be so hard to earn, what, some 20 US dollars! It took me more than an hour to earn my first two reals. I myself was tired of hearing the same tunes over and over again. It was crazy, why had I started with that game, I thought to myself, to take out the money would have been so easy. But it was too late now. I wondered if I did not have the sum by six, would the captain show mercy and allow me to travel with the boat anyway – this is how impossible it seemed.
I felt embarrassed to be there doing what I was doing. All the people must be already annoyed with the music, I thought, when had already lost count to how many times I had repeated the sequence of some Estonian songs about snow. Perhaps they will come up with the money so that I would stop playing, I thought hopefully. I think I was just hungry and the sun was getting too hot.
One old sailor, as if hearing my thoughts, told me to go to town suggesting there I’d be more successful and could sit in the shadow. I did not argue, probably he had had enough of the music. Not finding a suitable spot to play in town, I found a place in a park to eat one orange and a few crackers – those I still had with me from the missionary house. After “lunch” my mood got better and I decided to return to the port. I chose a spot a bit further away from my boat and started to play again.
In less than an hour “MISSING 28” became “MISSING 18” and the rest is history.
How I made 36 reals playing a flute in Santarem
One fruit salesman donated apples, and the last 10 reals came from a group of salesmen who were going from boat to boat offering its passengers watches, sun-glasses, chewing gum, pies and other things. They had been passing me so many times that day, always wishing me luck and rejoicing when seeing a change in the sign. Now everyone was indeed quite happy with the result and many came to listen to my story.
When I passed the cup full of coins and paper money to the captain he was happy as well. He helped me put up my tent on the roof of the boat as there was too little space in between the hammocks, danced with me and never passed without greeting me. On this boat too I was to spend two nights before arriving to Macapa.
DAY TEN: I AM GOING TO CURACAO
The voyage started at sunset. The ship was much smaller than the one that had brought me from Manaus to Santarem and the meals were included in the price. Besides me there were two more foreigners aboard, we quickly spotted one-another out. Gijs and Hans, two Dutchmen now living on the Curacao island in the southern Caribbean Sea were travelling the same route I was, but on motorcycles. Hearing that they come from the island next to Bonaire, I said that this was exactly where I was going. Truth, I myself was surprised to hear that – was I really going to Curacao?
After a long while it was very liberating to speak English again and I greatly enjoyed our conversations. Hans, in his youth a passionate hitchhiker himself, used to work as a fruit salesman to earn money for his trips. And then years later he found himself settled down and working as a judge on a Caribbean island of Curacao. How did that happen?
His motorcycle Hans had re-built himself which lead us to an interesting discourse about the processes of creation. Both of us agreed that not to plan is always more exciting than to plan and then seeing what comes out of it you get a sensation of surprise. To me creation is an organic process which leads me step by step to its fulfillment. All problems appear one by one leading to solutions. For me it makes no sense to think of the solutions before there is a problem. Inspiration is like a current that picks me up and I just go with it until I feel I am there. Inspiration uses me, and not otherwise, to create something that should be created through me, but not by me. In the end it is a synergy of the two, of the hands and the matter that allows creation to happen.
Gijs, a sailor and a ship-mechanic used to live on his boat for 17 years with his family. “The system tries to keep you with all means possible,” said Gijs telling the story of how he managed to get away. In 1992 together with his wife and their seven year old son they cruised from Holland to Curacao, where they were supposed to make a short stop, but ended up staying for years. Now Gijs is one of the present owners of the Curacao Marina and the president of the Curacao Sailing Festival Foundation. At the moment he was supposed to be busy organizing the first Heineken regatta to be taking place on his island in the second weekend of November, but instead he managed to get away (again) to travel the Amazon with his bike.
On the day that we parted Gijs put some money into my hand and did not take any notice of my refusal. “If you don’t take it, it will hit you when you need it,” he said. I did not look how much it was, put it into my first aid kit and heartily thanked him. Only later I saw that what I thought to be a twenty was a fifty US dollar bill, and even later I learned that what I thought to be one, was actually two bills of the same value.
Gijs setting off from our boat in Macapa
“When you get to Curacao, I promise to get you to Bonaire,” said Gijs.
It was day eleven I said good-bye to the Amazon River and started my journey on land towards French Guiana.
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