February 2009

[Sweder]

I fancied a crack o’dawn start this morning but awoke, deeply refreshed, to see the sun climbing high above the rooftops, modesty preserved by a veil of heavy cloud. Yesterday I’d opened the shutters to a familiar scene, vaporous leviathans queuing up like fluffy white battleships to cruise across the rippling Atlantic. Impossibly slow, gun-decks stacked to the heavens, bearing a precious payload for the inland rainforests.

And so this morning; warm, humid, overcast, calm sea reflecting brooding skies, a sense of anticipation – precipitation – in the heavy Brazilian air. I throw on my Hammer vest and blue shorts, pull on my road shoes and head for the lobby. On the street runners, walkers, amblers and ramblers, nut-brown, laconic, economy of effort to be envied. Urban poetry in motion.

On the hilly oceanside streets preparations are well under way for Carnival. Scaffold towers grow out of the pavements, temporary structures casting giant shadows across the grubby, pot-holed streets. Raucous music blasts out from huge speaker cabinets as the workers emerge blinking into the sunlight, a background of hammering and the clang of steel on concrete in curious harmony with the thumping salsa beat.

My legs feel like they’re wrapped in barbed wire. Week-old Almerian acid sloshes deep in the muscle, aches and pains chattering noisily as I loosen the grease. The old knees are iffy, another hard-top outing not what the medicos ordered. Selah; it’s my first run since Monday’s mountain plummet and, though reluctant to face the music, I’m grateful for the opportunity to shift a belly spoiled with a week of culinary marvels and excise some of the dead cells.

After a couple of klicks I reach the celebrated Salvador lighthouse. Stubby by comparison with its Northern Hemisphere kind, this black and white beacon is more than just a dis-used shipping tool. You can just make out the structure in this photo (it’s in the distance . . . )



São Salvador da Baía de Todos os Santos, or "Holy Savior of All Saints' Bay", is known as Brazil’s ‘city of happiness,’ in part due to the easy-going nature of it’s inhabitants but also for the Carnival. Compared to its famous cousin to the south Carnival here is an ‘interactive’ event which, I’m assured by the locals, is an apocalyptic five day party. They ain't been to Almeria for the half, it's all I'm saying . . . The whole thing kicks off next week – timing, dear boy, timing! I’m told I can expect rock-all response to my follow-up e-mails until it’s all over. There’s something refreshingly honest and deeply satisfying about that.



I flog myself around the base and past the lighthouse, reflecting on how the black and white stripes signify the gently layered, mixed society of Bahia today, wondering just how bloody was the struggle when those first Europeans landed. I stay on the coast road, heading for the Bahia Yacht Club, home to the restaurant first visited after my epic journey from Almeria to Murica, bouncing in a pinball blizzard via Gatwick, Heathrow and Lisbon. That first night I was treated to a vast platter of outrageous seafood, all manner of sea monsters grilled and severed, legs and antennae all over the shop, octupus tenatacles the size of a childs' arm draped casually across the feast.

As I stretch out in the shadows I spot another runner – dark, swarthy, fit-looking, though equally bathed in sweat. He has a number on his shirt. I’ve seen no others around – weird – and we pass without speaking, our flaccid Shearers acknowledgement enough of a shared suffering. I’m really very hot now, running back into a fully-engorged, unveiled and quite merciless sun. My vest and shorts are soaked, top almost translucent, which I know must be a treat for the ladies. An ebony woman in her mid to late twenties moves down the hill towards me, barely-tethered impressively large jiggling jubblies glistening with perspiration. That excuse for a leopard-skin bikini top will surely give way . . . but she passes without mishap to leave me with my thoughts . . . and the road.

Once more around the Lighthouse (for luck!) and onto the burning road to joust with ancient, smoke-pluming buses filled with dark, fan-waving faces. These growling beasts tear-arse around tight, blind bends with homicidal disregard for life or limb. I'm soaking it all up, this wealth of living, an organic expression of what it means to be alive, to interact with the world. Everywhere easy smiles on contented faces. Not much money if the worn clothes and ancient flip-flops are anything to go by, but as someone once said, why care for money when money can’t buy you love? These people have love, and, it seems, time enough to enjoy it (apart from the bus drivers).

Back on the tarmac the runner's ahead of me. He’s slipped by as I staggered around the lighthouse – the swine! Has he no heart? I reel him in along the Avenida Oceanica, raise my pace, feel my hamstring groan at these unreasonable demands. On his shoulder, my rasping breath loud in his ear, he turns; a shoulder-twitch, nothing more; he knows I’m here. He ups the anti and we’re running in tandem, feet beating out a rhythm all their own, pounding the kerbside. I pull alongside as we hit a steep incline - a hill! Carpe diem . . . I kick hard, leave him for roadkill, strike for home which (I hope) can’t be far away.

At last the Othon hotel appears above the garish shop fronts and I lurch right, onto the impossibly steep access ramp and into the blissful embrace of the cool shadows. I grind to a halt, an ugly ball of sweat, beet-red, chest heaving, hands on creaking knees, drool hanging from trembling lips. Yet I grin, sad man that I am, happy with my puny victory :o

Thirty minutes later I’m stuck into breakfast on the 12th floor of the hotel. Semolina crepes stuffed with melted cheese, mini bacon and egg tarts, fresh mango juice, fresh pineapple, white and delicate as coral, sweet as candy cane . . . White walls and windows frame a light blue sky joined to a darker sea. A tiny yellow boat bobs in isolation on the vast ocean, its lone occupant slowly pulling in his piscine bounty. I doubt he feels as lonely as me right now. Here I am, in a city swarming with three million busy inhabitants, drinking fine coffee overlooking paradise but seeing only home and loved ones, soon to be embraced yet still half a world away. I watch the man pull in his catch as the minutes slip casually, carelessly into hours, and dream of being home.

I didn’t rate Sao Paulo but I fell in love with Salvador.
Don’t think twice EG (it’s alright).