Lies that life is black and white

Samira, Ellick and I woke up right about the same time. Pretty amazing considering that Samira and I were out till all hours of the night at the street party at Lapa, and Ellick went to bed early because of his upset tummy. That’s the problem with traveling, you always get sick.

The street party in Lapa was great. We joined a group of folks at the hostel organized by the frat boys from the Univeristy of Washington. Amazing who you run into on vacation. And they are all tall, which comes in handy when 20 of you are trying to find each other in a crowd of 15,000. Josh would just raise his can of Skol in the air and shout “follow the beer!” and we’d all know where to go. By 3 in the morning Josh had followed too much of the beer and Samira was now nicknamed “Poopy Foot” after her traumatic experience in the bathroom. The party hadn’t stopped but it was time to go.

The next afternoon as we were all hanging out in our living room Ellick and Samira decided we needed a plan. There were so many things that needed to be done. An agenda, a schedule, maybe a white board. I said lets to go the beach and figure it out from there.

I laid in the shade while Ellick and Samira debated what was to be done. “We should make a booking for tickets to the sambadrome” Samira said. “Yeah and we should check the internet and research which balls to go to” Ellick added. Bookings? Research? These are words that have fallen out of my vocabulary in the last couple of months. Nobody seemed to like my “plan” of just hanging out and seeing what happens later.

I’ve decided I like this whole extremely laid-back life style. Not having actual places to be at specific times. In fact as much of a plan as I’ve had in the last 2 months is that I had to be in Rio during Carnaval, but that was about it. I’m starting to understand it’s not for everyone. Some people are just much happier knowing what will happen and when it will happen.

Eventually the two of them guilted me into getting up out of the sand and heading back to the apartment. I don’t think just lounging on the beach all day is their idea of fun. Guess it’s not for everyone, but I’ve been pretty content doing this for a while. Of course I am starting to peel. Karma is a total bitch. I’ve spent many years making fun of my white friends who always complain about sunburns and peeling, and after 10 days in the Brazilian sun I’m having the same problem, although it actually isn’t too bad.

Back at the homestead various organizational options were discussed. Samira threatened to make a list at one point and I finally had to put my foot down. I’ll be damned if any lists are going to be made on my vacation. Ok, it may not be a vacation, more like an extended voyage, but still, no lists! But we needed to know where we were going, weigh the various options, their advantages and disadvantages and come up with contingency plans.

We decided dinner first, one of our regular por kilo places. Ellick and Samira have both had some health issues down here. Ellick’s stomach has been bothering him, and while I’ve avoided most of the temptation I still occasionally mock him for chiding me about eating the shrimp sold on the beach. And Samira has something going on with the heat and her feet, but I think that’s just the ill-effects from “Poopy Foot”.

Finally we decided that Samira and I would check out what the folks at the hostel were doing, and report back to Ellick while he lounged for a bit. We’d go find this party after all. The hostel is always fun, people are always social, everyone is hanging out trying to get something started. Tonight was similar, but it so happened to be over-run with Aussies, the English and of course us folks from the Good Ole’ US. All of the Latin Americans had left already because everything was too damn expensive during Carnaval.

Ok, I’ll admit it. Those of you reading between the lines have probably already figured this out. I’ve decided I prefer my Latin American friends to the “westerners” I’ve met. Simply, they’re more fun and they’re better people. Not everyone obviously, people are still people, but there is something about this whole continent where everyone seems to enjoy themselves, no matter what other problems they got going on. I’m sorry folks from the US, I’ve just changed as a person. I’ve found someone else who matches my personality better. I hope we can still be friends. You see it’s not you guys, it’s me really.

Well at the hostel we ran into Karin and Flaco, the Argentineans, and my last two friends South American friends left in Brazil. They had just come back from their trip to Ihla Grande. It was beautiful they told me, you have to go! The water is perfectly clear! But unfortunately for them, it turned out that the hostel had no space left. Actually no one in the city had any space left. They just needed a place to crash for the night until their flight tomorrow. “Well come over to our place” I invited them, “we got two empty sofas you can sleep on and it sure beats the beach.”

I was a little concerned that Samira and Ellick wouldn’t be too hot about this idea. But they were very cool. Flaco only speak a little English (mostly lyrics to Doors and Rolling Stones songs, with some Bob Marley thrown in for good measure). Karin’s English is OK, but she also speaks French. But Ellick speaks some Spanish, and Samira some French. Somehow we all managed to get along, I got to play translator which was fun. We just sat back and took it easy, ate, drank and shared what we had. Headed to the beach and talked, drank some more. I felt like our plan had worked out perfectly, even though this event wasn’t on any of our schedules.

There are two types of people in the world. Those that need to know when and where the party starts, and those that don’t worry about it because the party is always where they are. Actually there are more kinds than that, and I know that because I’m not either one. But maybe those are the two extremes on the spectrum, and I’m starting to gravitate more and more towards the one end.