Our Trip To Cabo Frio

My first wife (Karen) and I went to live and work in Brazil in September of 1979. I have held this story for some time – it is interesting to me that I remember this experience rather often, having not been to Brazil for more than 30 years. It had been a tough year in our marriage, but I do not know if either of us expected this significant change to help us in sorting things out. Nor do I know if it did – my memories (snippets only and foggy) are more of the difficulties we experienced external to ourselves than anything to do with us, personally. The project we worked on, in a village called Bananeiras, was not a particular success, and both the other couples on the project team were having marital difficulties. As well as our young selves, there was a family of refugees from Mozambique and a small contingent of teenagers with us.

Bananeiras is nestled in the mountains east of Rio. And ‘nestled’ is really the right word. We had little direct sunlight each day because of the steep hillsides on all sides of the village. They weren’t so high, but climbed steeply up from the river that ran past us. At one point, having been in Bananeiras some three months, I had occasion to make a business trip to Recife. I can still remember the wonderment I felt disembarking from the bus on arrival in Brazil’s north-east – Recife and environs are so completely flat that the size of the sky shocked me a bit.

To get to Bananeiras we travelled through Niteroi, up highway 101, passing Rio Bonito and heading to Silva Jardim, the nearest town of any size. As I write I have diverted to Google Maps to locate Bananeiras exactly, but my memory just does not suffice. I am quite confident we took the RJ-126/ RJ-140 north and east, to the end of the road, but I could not swear on it. What is certain is that it was around 20 kilometres from the highway turn-off (a bit of dog-leg from the Silva Jardim corner) to Bananeiras.

Karen and I worked as volunteers on a community development project. As this was late ‘70s, ‘development’ wasn’t the industry it is today. I would not for a minute suggest it was less capable, or achieved less outcomes – I merely point out that today ‘development’ is an industry, and practitioners often earn excellent incomes. In those days it was heavily church organisation and/ or heavily volunteer focused. We were provided room (literally about 3m x 3m), board and about $30 a month (although we didn’t always get this money). We also had health insurance and travel paid for. I won’t dwell today on these things – better to write specifically about them in another post. For this ‘remuneration’ we were engaged in the project for six and a half days a week. We had off from Saturday afternoon until Sunday, later in the day when we gathered as a whole team to eat the Sunday meal.

This is a story about our ‘day off’.

We caught the bus around 8 am – one of the two buses that came to Bananeiras daily, the other being around 6 pm, on which we would return in the evening from our trip. At the corner, where there was a small tienda (shop) that serviced travellers, where we would drink a cafezinho (very short, very sweet Brazilian coffee) while waiting for the bus. We then boarded a second bus for Rio Bonito, where, at the bus station, we found our third bus for the day, to Cabo Frio. It all went like clockwork, and we arrived in Cabo Frio late in the morning.

I’m the anxious one about travel, and suggested upon arrival that we should confirm the return time for the bus before going to enjoy ourselves. No more ‘like clockwork’ – the bus had already gone. We were more than 100 kms from home, had about 20 words of Portuguese and probably about $5. The anxiety kicked in heavily, and we spent all of 15 minutes at the beach before starting to hitchhike back to Rio Bonito. For over 30 years I have regretted this decision – it gained us nothing in terms of our trip home, and I have no memory at all of Cabo Frio or the beach there. And I imagine I was a bit of a stressed-out idiot the whole day.

No one wanted to pick us up. We walked and walked and walked, for what my memory tells me was hours, before finally being picked up by a group in a bright pink Volkswagen. They dropped us in Rio Bonito, where we caught the bus to the turn-off at the corner near Silva Jardim.

We saw our bus for Bananeiras driving off into the distance.

It was summer, so there was daylight until later in the day. It was however Brazil, and while in no way was it the jungle of the Amazon, it was a heavily forested area, and 20 kms or more home. What to do? We were getting plenty of advice – too bad we could not understand most of it. I’m fairly confident we would have had a cachaza (cachaça) or a Brahma Chop. Or two. Everyone knew of us, everyone was interested in our predicament and in trying to help us, everyone had suggestions and no one had the answer. No bus until morning, no taxi, only one villager with a car and in any case no way to contact them, no hotel or guest house. We calculated the distance and the likely time, and whether or not we would make it before dark (no chance). We talked about making a wrong turn and becoming lost. We talked about poisonous snakes. There was quite a lot of argument about whether or not we should just walk home – argument to which I (at least) added significant detail, making excellent use of the alcohol I was drinking and those 20 words of Portuguese.

A key player in the discussions was a tall man with a moustache to match his personality – big, full, alive. I have always felt about him that he was quite a bit older than me, but on reflection I would guess he would have been early 30s (to my 26). He had a great appreciation of cachaza, and as the shadows lengthened he became more drunk. As evening came he took more and more interest in our well-being, and when we insisted we would just walk home he was adamant that we could not. He insisted we come home with him, although it took some time before we could understand that this was what he was suggesting.

About 10 pm his wife arrived – quite likely on her nightly trip to the tienda to collect her husband. She was cute, darker than him, shorter than him and just as insistent as him. They basically herded us out of the tienda, and led us west, along the shoulder of Brazil Highway 101, towards Rio. We walked about a kilometre, crossed the highway, went through a break in the guardrail and followed them down a narrow dirt track. After a couple of hundred metres we came to their hut.

Made from sticks and mud, the hut was square, about 4 metres on each side with dirt floors and two, equal-sized rooms inside, one of which was the kitchen/ dining room the other the living room/ sleeping room. Their three darling children were already well asleep on mats on the floor. The couple insisted we sleep on their double bed – they retired to a cardboard mat on the kitchen floor. In the morning we met the children, enjoyed a coffee and meal they had prepared for us and made our way to the corner in the company of our moustachioed friend.

We returned a few months later to thank them. I have silly visions of visiting them again. Although they probably tell the story themselves, I can hardly find Bananeiras on the map, how would I ever find the family that grew out of those two lovely Brazilians in their little mud hut who gave up their bed to us to sleep on the dirt floor.

(As I wrote this I got snippets of memory flooding in – people and things to make me laugh and things at which I just shake my head. I remember Guillerme and his family – they ate only bananas; Nucim – black, dynamic, fun; ‘the Mountain Drunk’, and how he was a source of great hilarity for the community; Brahma Chop, a nice local beer; the two Berlim and their small tiendas (shops); the Doctor – for the level of his education, not because he had a medical degree; walking to the Doctor’s home, and crossing the river on a narrow log to get there; the night the ants marched through in their millions. I remember two of the owners of banana fazendas (plantations) but am sure there were at least three. I remember the night Brian’s hut burnt down. I remember our two dogs – Hinky (always fly-blown) and Mutti. If I was a good writer I’d get a great story out of Brazil, and a book out of Peru.)

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Tags: Brahma Chop, Brazil, Cabo Frio, Cachaza, Cafezinho, Holidays, Recife, Rio, Rio Bonito, Silva Jardim, South America, Travel