Sao Luis to Santarem... boats, drums, dance, 10,000 views of an Instagram reel, indigenous benches, language, and not getting locked in a toilet!
I AM IN AMAZONIA!!!!
Today it’s 12th May – Mother’s Day... I’m on a fast boat (ie 2 days not 6 days) from Manaus to Tabatinga, and have just been given a sweet little ‘mother’s day’ presentation pack by the staff.
And although I’m publishing this blog mid May, I think I’m going to do two or three entries covering the month since my last entry because there’s been a lot going on. This one will take us up to arriving in Santarem... then there’ll be one covering three days in Altamira... and another about Santarem. Alter da Chao and Manaus. And hopefully I’ll manage to get them all done soon. Long boat journeys are great places to get blogs done. My problem as I’ve written before is that I’d far rather be doing something active – visiting another exhibition, meeting another person, chatting to new strangers – than sitting still writing. But here is a perfect situation – speeding down the Solimoes river to Tabatinga with nothing else I can possibly do except drink the unlimited hot chocolate and eat the three meals a day AND between-meal snacks being delivered to my seat..... (note to self: stop drinking the hot chocolate and go onto hot water VERY SOON!)
Maybe a timeline would be useful, because I keep writing entries backwards, talking about where I AM when I am writing and then going back to the last time I managed to write anything!
So here goes...(this might help me too)
10 April: booked to leave Sao Luis, but had to delay two
days
12 April: finally left Sao Luis on an overnight bus
13-17 April Belem
17 -20 April boat to Santarem
20 – 24 Santarem and Alter do Chao inc one day forest trek
24: late overnight bus to Altamira
24-27 Altamira.
27: late overnight bus back to Santarem
28-30 Santarem
30 April – 2 May boat Santarem to Manaus
2 -5 May Manaus
6-8 May 3 day forest trip
9-11 May back in Manaus
12 May (today, as I write) 1st of 2 day speedboat to Tabatinga.
And below we have an entry mostly written on the boat Santarem to Manaus ie 30 April – 2 May, but I’m going to be writing about leaving Sao Luis, ie 8 April onwards...! still with me? Here goes.
So – in the last blog in mid April I was trying to leave Sao Luis finally, and get going to the Amazon. And as I sit down finally to write this, I’m on a BOAT on the AMAZON RIVER getting very close to Manaus, the main city of the state of Amazonas, at the end of a three day trip from Santarem. So I did it – I got away from Sao Luis – but not before reserving accommodation to go back there at the end of June for the festival of Sao Joao.
Which means that I only have another couple of weeks max on my six months visa that I can stay in Brazil in order to be able to do those last two weeks in Sao Luis.
My travels in this country are having to come to an end ....
Having set off last November not really knowing why i was here, it’s all been making total sense especially most recently. On this boat, as opposed to the last 3 day boat I took from Belem to Santarem, I’ve had a view from my hammock. I’ve had a cabin too, which I booked at the very sensible suggestion of a friend in Salvador, for which I’m most grateful , but lying in a hammock during the day watching the banks of the river go by slowly has been the most fabulous experience.
And here we go... what’s been happening since the last blog?
At the beginning of my time in Sao Luis, I’d met a filmmaker, Amarina, who was a friend of the photographer I’d met in Fortaleza. She’d introduced me to a couple of other people – a lovely journalist and an interesting artist/writer.... and the artist, Robson, had taken me out quite lot to different places around Sao Luis (that you saw in the last blog entry). I’d extended my stay for an extra week in order to be present at the opening of Robson’s art exhibition, AND for the screening of Amarina’s film, which were meant to be happening on 4th and 5th April.
After I’d booked an extra week’s accommodation, changed my dates for going on to meet friends in Altamira, and sorted out my bus to Belem, the next town, BOTH of those events were delayed! The art exhibition wasn’t going to happen till 12th April, and the film was held up due to technical reasons. Amarina the filmmaker came over and we watched the film, nearly complete, on her phone – it’s a beautiful documentary, shot over six months entirely on her (very high quality) phone, about the Tambor da Crioula which happens every week in Sao Luis . It hadn’t been happening in the week before Easter so the fact that I was there for an extra week meant that I was able to see a performance in the street on a Thursday night ... which you saw in the last blog.
There was also Tambor da Lua happening on a Tuesday evening in the Fonte Ribeiro outside my airbnb which I managed to see in the last week. This video includes what's happening at the back - there's always one long drum (it’s actually made of a long tube like a carpet tube or something) and someone is drumming on the TUBE too.. The drumming on this video fills my soul.
So for the extra few days I’d booked to stay, I got to see all these, which was wonderful.
I also went back to my first host Brasilena’s music class with my melodeon – and this time we were joined by the most BRILLIANT accordion player, Andrezihno ..
It was going to be my last Cacuria dance class in Sao Luis on Tuesday 8 April. I decided I’d had such a wonderful time there that I wanted to give them something... Robson took me to buy a load of fruit and I made an enormous fruit salad. My Russian friend Maria, of the Russian art gallery featured in the last blog, who had introduced me to Cacuria in the first place , picked me and the fruit salad up and took me to the practice and I put it in the fridge till the end of the night. It went down VERY well.... At the beginning of the evening, the organiser asked me to record a testimony about my experience of dancing with them, for their youtube channel. And here is the link to the Instagram reel - ...and it seems to have garnered TEN THOUSAND views so far!
And here’s a little composite of some videos I took of a rehearsal to give you an idea of what the dance is like...(you’ll have to ask me personally if you want to see a video with me dancing in it, illustrating exactly, and embarrassingly, how English bodies don’t move like Brazilian ones...)
The 'composite' video is about 3 minutes and I think is a great overview of a few of the different dances. Here are two WHOLE dances for my dance specialist friends...
I was all ready to leave on the Thursday of that week.. but my body had different ideas. In the same way that in Salvador I had to put off my departure for two days because I had a sudden attack of a ridiculous fluey cold, this time I had a sudden morning attack of Labyrinthitis on the day I was meant to be leaving. It’s a horrible thing I’d first had a year ago, which takes away your balance and reduces you to lying in bed not being able to move; your body, or actually your inner ear, is telling you that the world is going round in circles and standing up is impossible. Last time I had it I lay in bed for five days, just forcing myself to get up and feed the cat 3 times a day, before I had a phone consultation with the GP and discovered that it was something curable – and, in fact, curable within an hour of taking ONE pill! I am so grateful for pharmacy sometimes. I did have the required pills with me, luckily, but I couldn’t actually get to them (on the other side of the bedroom...) and had to wait till my airbnb landlord came in and was able to pass them to me.
An hour later I was able to sit up, but put off travelling for a couple of days,. which meant that I was able to go to Robson’s art exhibition opening
AND then the next day Robson took me to a special Tambor da Crioula party , on the water near the quilombola community....
before I was finally able to get my overnight bus to Belem.
I noticed another Gringa on the bus, but didn’t talk to her....
I then saw her again when I got to the hostel I’d booked.....
And that night, when I met up with Gabriel, my Lancaster Brazilian friend Juliana’s brother, and his friend Jordan (who is doing a Lancaster phd, I’ve met his supervisor!) ... there she was again at the music bar/restaurant we’d chosen! She's Emilie, a lovely Belgian.
So we all sat together... and we worked out that she and I had studied at the same language school in Barra, and had stayed in the same house a week apart... and had even met, briefly, when I’d come back to leave my stuff at the house when I went swimming in my last week in Salvador!
She and I spent lots of the next day together, going round the amazing Belem market
and trying to go to some other places which were all shut on Mondays.... Everywhere I go I have been photographing the fantastic, inventive, expressive wall art....
but there is actually something called an 'urban art museum' in Belem which is basically wall art, so never closes - PARTICULARLY impressive
And Emilie decided that she’d come with me to Santarem on the 3 day boat on the Wednesday. I’d already booked my cabin but I was really pleased that I’d have company on that trip
On the Tuesday despite the spectacular rain I went to a really interesting and well presented exhibition of ‘indigenous benches’ – absolutely beautiful craftsmanship from different indigenous communities around Brazil
And on Wednesday morning Emilie and I went to the Goeldi museum before getting the boat. It’s a museum set in a park, with lots of information about the trees and wildlife, and some lovely touches - photos of the staff who worked there 100 years ago set into the garden... (sorry no pix as I have 10 minutes to upload this before my internet on the boat runs out!)
I nearly walked straight out when I saw the jaguar in a tiny cage in the beginning. I couldn’t believe that Jordan had sent us here and recommended this place. There was a sign saying that the cages were boing redesgind as they were no longer fit for purpose, they’d been designed as part of the museum when it was first set up, but even so, why hadn’t they just been taken out of use? I hadn’t seen anything like this since the 1960s in Blackpool zoo; utterly horrific.
But decided to keep going because of the recommendation.
And indeed, the gardens were beautiful and had really interesting and 'different' signeage..
And the museum had a really fascinating , imaginative, well put together section on indigenous languages upstairs in the main building. Including a map showing how the invasions of the colonists, waves of massacres, and other interventions right up to the present have massively impacted on the number of languages in the country.
And there was a panel showing Gliceria Tupinamba talking about the feather mantles: I’d met Gliceria in 2022 when Pete’s friend and fellow anthropologist Cecilia MacCallum had brought her to London and Scotland in 2022 with Nelly Marubo and Francy Banawa
– I was quite nervous about taking one of these four day boats on my own, though I needn’t have been, it was a fabulous experience. Emilie had booked a hammock place but slept in the spare bed in my cabin. And it was just as well – if she hadn’t been there when I got locked in the toilet on the first night I would still be there now!
(pix in the next blog from the boat)
Anyway my reflection currently is that.... when i came, I thought being on my own in Brazil after Jen left was going to be DIFFICULT... but in fact it's EASY. As I'm on my own I absolutely HAVE to arrange to meet people in every place I go, so I've reached out to couchsurfers, SERVAS members, friends of friends... they have all been WONDERFUL I have met such interesting people and done such interesting things. And when there's a gap in the people-availability, I've been going to the most FASCINATING exhibitions and museums... people in the curating world are doing fabulous stuff. And EVERY SINGLE TIME that I arrange to leave a town to go to the next, I've been told about something really inreresting happening the next day, the next week.... I really hope this keeps going when I get back to the UK and I keep the momentum going of being utterly interested in things going on around me.
And that’s enough for now.... more soon love Fiona
for day to day updates and a chance to chat you're welcome to join my trip whatsapp group https://chat.whatsapp.com/IAilrufbWa91GyEIDBrE6x
ps I have two phones here, the teracube that I use day to day that doesn't take great photos but I have out with me, and the iphone that takes great photos but sadly doesn't always come out with me so I apologise for some of the quality of some of the pix!
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