You know, I just remembered something. When Val and I left for Brazil, we had a very general plan of where we were going, what we would be doing the week after we left Salvador. We had flights booked since it was cheaper to get the travel pass from Tam airlines and fly about than travelling by the seat of your pants and getting on a plane when and to where you felt like. We'd booked the flights using an extremely detailed itinerary that Airell had gotten from a group in Saskatchewan.
I? Am not so much with the detailed itinerary making myself. I can sure as heck follow one, though. Eventually. I like to wait til the last minute to book things, because usually there are more interesting things to do than make a decision about what flight to take and what hotel to stay in. Even with an extremely detailed itinerary Val and I put off making plans until the last minute.
Anyway. I'm getting ahead of myself. Wednesday. Conference stuff over, and time to wander off to our hotel.
A view from the 4th floor of the conference centre:
We (Irene, Val and I) went back to the Bompreco, which was crazy full of people. We ran into Airell and Cibele in the store - who wisely gave us their stuff to purchase since the lineups were that long. That reminds me - I ended up paying for all the stuff because I was at the wrong damn end of the line-up - AGAIN - and I don't think any of them ever paid me back.
How exactly did I become my mother, and so quickly, even to the paying for things in stores and restaurants?
As it turned out, Val and Irene headed back to our hotel and I wandered over to the beach. It was cold, it was windy, and I think it was raining. It was still more awesome than whatever you were doing that night. At least to me. What you were doing was probably pretty awesome too. Then it became time to think about getting ready for the closing party. There were busses coming to pick us up and we'd made a collective decision to depart from the other hotel. Val and Irene were waiting outside our hotel when we walked up - they were hoping there'd be a conference shuttle to shuffle them off to the hotel. There was talk of walking over to the hotel. I'd have been down with that but I was not in any state for a party. Sitting on the beach, salt spray, wind, rain, hot sweaty day. Umm. No. I needed 9 minutes. I announced that I would be back in less than 9 minutes if they could just wait for me that long.
This was met with basic disbelief but damn, they have no idea. In 9 minutes I showered, changed, put on some mascara and called it good. I might have been back in 8 minutes. Val and I took a cab because she was afraid of getting her party hair rained on. So naturally we beat the other walkers back to their hotel. It did not rain.
I was ok with this. Then. We. Waited. For. Everyone. Else. To. Get. Ready.
Don't get me wrong, I can take an hour to get ready myself. I didn't mind that they all took so long to get ready. We had fun making fun of ourselves and each other. Irene's suitcase had finally turned up after days of waiting so she was pretty excited to see her stuff. I can only imagine.
Eventually, after much time, we set off for the busses down in the lobby. And that's when it happened. I was standing in the hallway and my back just gave out. I was standing. Not moving. Not even wearing foolish boots or shoes. Standing.
I may have sworn. I may have walked very carefully down the stairs, very slowly, leading the group down to the lobby. Eventually someone asked what was up and I shared my tale of woe. Damn, that hurt. I needed some booze, stat.
Thankfully the Brazilians had thought of that. We got into a bus, and were whisked away to another bus a few blocks down the road. (Weird). Then we were hauled to the venue, somewhere across town. My back hurt like hell, I don't mind saying.
When we got there we were initially disappointed. A meeting of 3000, no idea how many tickets they'd sold to this thing but there was probably seating for less than 100 people. They made up for this by having free flowing alchohol. Seriously. Everywhere you looked there were waiters with some kind of whiskey shots, beer, and you could go get a fruity caiphirinia thing made at a booth in the corner.
I was underwhelmed by the whole thing at first. Nowhere to sit and it hurt like hell to stand. I actually sat on the cement out in the covered patio area just outside the venue. Eventually I found a comfortable chair in the foyer, away from the people and I rested my back there. Read a book on the kindle app on my phone. Texted with various people back home. Had a lot of time to sit around and think.
Lordy. This was the first time that was a bad idea. My head is screwed on pretty straight most of the time. I can make some stupid, spur of the moment decisions any day of the week but at that time? My head was not screwed on anywhere close to straight. Visions of test results and nasty papers about prognoses with the numbers and the type of cancer I had (and I hadn't told anybody what I'd read. I figured me going crazy with the knowledge was quite enough, thanks). So I think maybe people thought I was over reacting.
I said it before, and I'll say it again. No matter what kind of cancer you have in you, it's going to mess with your head. No matter how level headed you might be.
So yes. I got a little crazy sitting out there in my comfortable chair. Then I got a text message that changed everything. At least for a while. At least long enough to send me to the bar, anyway. I was watching the dancers, sort of watching for the people I'd come with, nursing my drink and wishing my stupid back weren't so stupid. I don't remember who found me, but the evening just improved the hell out of itself from there on in. I couldn't begin to tell you how much I drank. I had conversations with a lot of people. Eventually I had enough alcohol to kill the pain in my back, and dammit, I danced to celebrate. My recollections from there on in are hazy. There are pictures of the crazy, but I got obsessed with photographing the desserts instead of Val with a rose between her teeth. We did wear flowers in our hair. Any night where you can since and dance with Abba's Dancing Queen is a good night in my books.
See? Dessert:
I have about 40 more pictures with varying degrees of focus. I could not possibly tell you if these were any good. I expect yes, since I didn't eat anything I didn't like while I was in Brazil.
Oh. Did we have fun. Fuuuuuuuuuuun. I switched from beer/vodka/whiskey to water about half an hour before we left. To make sure the next day would be fuuuuuuuun. The funniest part about that? Pretty sure the water came straight out of the taps. When we got to Salvador we were afraid to even use the water to brush our damn teeth. Heh.
You know how you have weird conversations when you've had too much to drink? I had one that still has me scratching my head a little and really hoping I misunderstood.
Albertans have a bit of a rep at large scale poultry events. We close down the parties. Well, when we got to this party I didn't think that would be happening. However. We're true Albertans, every one of us because damn if we didn't shut the place down. The bus ride back to the hotel was... interesting. We'd met a Japanese scholar that had been in school with someone that hadn't come to Brazil, and we were supposed to bring greetings. Except. Not a one of us knew who he was, and I think he might have been speaking Japanese when he asked us to pass on the greetings.
The next day we'd made plans to tour Salvador once the conference wrapped up. Cibele's taxi driver was there to pick us up at the appointed hour and we proceeded to see the sights. I've got pictures of some it!
We went to this church - the taxi driver told us in no uncertain terms to only buy ribbons from a specific shop, so we did. Then you took certain colors and tied them to the fence, making a wish as you did.
Fascinating church. People come there, pray to be healed, or a family member or friend. They'll even bring the body part they want healed, or take a picture. That was kind of creepy.
Next we went to a fort kind of area, with a shack that sold cold coconut water directly out of the coconut. This was awesome, because they open the coconut by attacking it with a machete. I have video, somewhere. The coconut water was so damn good - trust me when I say this was not my last coconut water. Apparently it is supposed to be awesome for recovering from a run or exercise (so says the teenaged kid bagging my groceries last weekend. He was making fun of the cashier for drinking the stuff from the can - I told them about the real deal and they were all into that).
We did some shopping in a giant market. Val was blown away, she'd never seen anything quite like this before. I was once again blase, because I? Have spent a whole lot of time in these types of markets. Across the world. Call me a jerk, but I was pretty selective in what I wanted from there as a result. I bought a towel (THANK GOD!)
Later we rode this giant elevator that takes you from the lower town up to the pelhourino. The elevator was basically terrifying - it stopped a few inches off the actual floor and I was the first one off the damn thing. If I am going to fall to my death, I want to see it coming.
We went for lunch in the Pelhourino after being driven over to the square we'd been at the other evening. We'd all been told in no uncertain terms that we were to say Nao! to anyone that tried to give us anything, or sell us anything, or basically look at us crooked. We practiced and everything!
Airell got out of the cab and immediately was met by someone that sensed weakness. Bless his heart, he said sim! (yes!) to whatever the guy was offering.
We made fun of him for the rest of the day. I think Val and I made fun of him the next week too. And I might have brought it up from time to time after that.
I cannot remember much of what we did in the Pelhourino other than complain about how hungry I was and for the love of heaven, could we just pick somewhere, anywhere, I don't care where, to eat? Please? Pretty please? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD?
We ate. We drank. We took pictures. We had ourselves a good time.
And when we ended the day, we ended up in our hotel room once again. There were plans to be made! (Ha! I came full circle in this post. Go me.)
The next morning Val and I were flying to Rio de Janiero. For the weekend. As you do. We had nowhere to stay. No idea where we could stay. My laptop (brought along only because I neded to write my stupid talk the week before) became the device of destiny - what would we all be doing with our first Friday in Brazil?
For Val and I, it was the weekend in Rio. Hee. I still love saying that. I used tripadvisor to find us a nice hotel on copacobana beach. It was #3. I didn't want #1 because it was $600 a night. And under major renovation. #3 seemed just about right, we got a suite right on the beach with ocean views for $200 a night (seemed good at the time) and I justified it with the 'I had cancer' argument.
Martin, Doug, Cibele, Irene, et al were in the market to see some turtles and golfing.
Airell was off to the Amazon with the other group from Saskatchewan. We were going to meet up a few days later in the Pantanal. I still had to book all of that. That wasn't until Tuesday though, and this was Thursday so I figured I had plenty of time. Airell did pass on the contact information so I could email when we got to Rio.
Cibele, bless her heart, before she left gave us the phone numbers where she'd be staying with her family while she was still in country. In case we needed help. What we needed was her traveling with us, but alas. That was not to be.
So. That leaves us with this installment with Val and I ready to flit off to Rio (for the damn weekend! Ha! I never get tired of saying that). Foreshadowing - before I left Brazil I'd have spent 3 weekends in that city.
And I say this now - those won't be the last weekends I spend there either. I will be back.