Chegada

Although my multitude of blog groupies are probably dead with suspense by now, I will venture back 9 days to the occurrence of a certain *spoiled* event.

To continue where I left off… Sasha and I bought our tickets to Muriaé and lugged our bags to the platform to wait for the bus. While we were waiting, an elderly Brazilian man spoke to us in a long string of animated Portuguese and chuckles for about 5 minutes straight. We smiled, nodded and played along the entire time, and he showed us pictures of his grandchildren (presumably) on his cellphone. When he started asking us questions, we finally had to blow our cover that we hadn’t understood a word of whatever he had so excitedly told us about. We boarded the bus and made friends with a Brazilian guy sitting next to us who seemed about our age. We chatted and laughed in a combination of English, Spanish and Portuguese. Incredible how funny things can be when people don’t really understand each other. We gazed out the windows at rolling green hills, thick, varied stands of trees, eroding chunks of red earth…zZzzZzzzZz

I awoke to Sasha’s gentle, repeated pokes, and finally opened my eyes to see a few policia boarding the bus. I looked outside and noticed we were stopped in the middle of nowhere. Next thing I knew, the young gentleman from the back of the bus was being led off in handcuffs. Soon, the policia were searching the bag of the old woman across from us. They took her bag and led her off the bus as well. Sasha and I had no clue what was going on. Everything was strangely quiet, but we were dying to know, so we attempted to ask our friend. This is what we gathered: DRUG BUST! The young man in the back had a bag full of drugs, we think Marijuana and Cocaine. The old lady had drugs in her bag too, but she was soon let back on the bus. Apparently there was a padlocked case of drugs in her bag that she had not put there, and I thought I heard her muttering about her sister afterwards…

Anyway, as exciting as the idea of a Brazilian drug bust is, the whole ordeal was surprisingly calm. Despite our 30 minute delay, we made it to Muriaé just in time to catch our last bus to Rosário da Limeira, the small town that is closest to Iracambi. We were immediately greeted by Claudio, the owner of the bar where we were dropped off and the son of Carminha, the cook at Iracambi. He hooked us up with a taxi, and we began the last leg of our long, exciting journey to Iracambi. The taxi ride reminded of of the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland: Dark, windy, rattly, hilly, surrounded by nature noises, nearly getting stuck in the dirt multiple times… One miniscule difference arose when the cab driver pulled out a pop out video screen and inserted a DVD of Brazilian pop music videos. Sasha and I were amazed as he successfully delivered us to Iracambi in one piece while simultaneously watching the scantily clad women dancing around on a little screen.

We arrived at Iracambi and everyone seemed a tad bit confused. Turns out they all thought we were arriving on Friday (it was Wednesday). Oops! Also, I later found out from Liz that Carminha thought I was a Brazilian soap opera star from one of the shows she watches. We brought our stuff into Centro (where we stay), met everyone (except for Jaim, whose head/ face were busy exploding), and then headed to the “restaurant,” “Sabor de Serra,” for our first Iracambi supper: rice, beans, and some other delicious accompaniments. We also met Bean, the last remaining kitten (the others went to other farms).

The next few days we familiarized ourselves with Iracambi. Emma showed us around the trails and the hills, and we explored on our own for quite a while. We hiked the nature trail and the medicinal plants trail. We marveled at fungi of all shapes and colors. We admired leaves of all textures and sizes. We traced winding mazes of vines up the trees.  

We are especially intrigued by the Dragonsblood tree, which oozes a blood-red sap. When smeared on bug bites or other itches, it works better than any store-bought anti-itch solution any of us have ever tried. Over the course of our stay, dragonsblood application has been multiple times mistaken (by visitors) for bloody skin gashes.

We explored more, talked with Robin about our projects, went on Robin’s famous Iracambi jeep tour (some great stories to come) learned a lot of things, and spent an afternoon/evening in Limeira. Perhaps (hopefully) I will not forego details of these occasions; however, Iracambi happenings must make way for the enthralling details of our recent, spontaneous 5-day excursion to Rio de Janeiro!

Centro, where we all live, is the small building in the middle

Funkay fungus