I found this nail in my shoe this morning. I had a beef with a broken house yesterday. It looks bad, I know, but you should have seen the house! It won’t stand for many
I found this nail in my shoe this morning. I had a beef with a broken house yesterday. It looks bad, I know, but you should have seen the house! It won’t stand for many years.
Ate something for breakfast. No idea what it was, but it looked fried and cost 0.75 euros. Thought about my dad who used to travel a lot and said that you ask for something, get something else, and just eat it no matter what it is. It’s energy.
I walked to the police. I chose a different way to not run into the driver kidnappers from yesterday. As I was all super-secret on my little side street, someone started talking to me. It sounded like sell-talk, so I kept moving on. Until he touched me. I turned my head and stared into the eyes of the kidnapper from yesterday! I kept walking to the police until I lost him. And the other guy who also tried.
At the police I had to wait for a while. And who was there, if not the kidnapper! Jesus. He must have been running there. He kept looking and talking at me. And another guy asked 200 real (50 €) to drive to Macapá and I said no thanks.
The police exited me from Brazil with one stamp, and while I was standing there all paperless, he checked my whateveritwas. There was nothing in my whateveritwas, so he could sign me into the country again with a 30 days visa. So now I’m at least like a sex tourist in Fortaleza. Tell that to the kidnapper.
The police also recommended getting a night bus to Macapá. I took a taxi to the bus stop, mostly to understand where it was. The police said that 10 real was the most I had to pay, and the driver accepted that after some negotiations. The bus ticket to Macapá was 135 real, so almost like the private taxi. If they hadn’t been such pain in the asses I might have considered it. But this is at least more environmental, and punctual, and taxes paid etc.
I was so broke now that I needed more cash, and went back to the only cash machine in the city that accepted my card. There was a huge line to it, while all other cash machines were empty. People started worrying and took out as much cash as possible. So when it was my turn, it was empty. The hunger, the thirst, the coffee urge, in a super-hot city without cash! I kept walking around looking in stores feeling all poor.
With 17 real left, I decided to get some water and walk to the bus station. Maybe some tiny cookies. But in the hotel, I had quite a google translate discussion going with the owner, who hated me yesterday, but came to love me now that I paid 100 something for a messy room without windows, and she promised to get me food that I could pay by card to her. I asked for beans and she said ”just relax”, and after half an hour I got a container of bean soup. Plus a bath tub packed with meat to not starve like a poor northerner.
I ate it all. And checked the dictionary for ”vegetarian”. I hate using that word, but maybe it’s needed to not get your mouth packed with burning forest.
I then spent 7 real on two coffee coada and 3 on water and started walking towards the bus station.
Halfway the bus came, I waived, and they picked me up and brought me to the station. I guess that is tourist positive discrimination. The good and the bad. At the station I waited for half an hour, looking through the window on a man shaking some poles.
I had booked the first place to see the landscape wide, but this is what I saw there:
It was great to get going through the countryside. I saw two fires, although not very large. Decided to take a picture of fire number three, but it never came. The windows got misty quite soon. I wonder if that’s because we were going in an AC-cold bus through a hot jungle. But before that there were great views. I think we’re technically entering the Amazon now, as we end at the Amazon river. I love the jungle. My favourite were the lakes – water with trees in them, like an illustration of some fairy tale. Then it got dark. It started feeling a tiny bit dangerous, as in cozy-dangerous, as the street got more and more narrow and the jungle starting touching our windows as we broke through in high speed.
I put my sweater on for the first time since I left Europe. My body was like ”nggh, are you back in Sweden? Warn me first!” The knees were super-cold as well, so I just put on my sleeping bag. It was the first time I used it. Once upon a time I hitchhiked to Spain and back, and was stuck on an ice-cold night near some world war graves in northern France, and emptied my backpack to put my legs inside, and the clothes on the top. Since then, I always have a sleeping bag, even if hotels are booked everywhere. The comfort of just snuggling up in a bus! It’s incredible how nice you sleep.
