Arriving in Ilhabela | Brazil
Journal excerpts dated March 21st, 2023:
Kiana, Maiharra, and I in Kiana’s Fiat Uno, March 2023.
I cracked my eyes open. My head was groggy from the night before. Too many Heineken. I slept harder than I had in years. The windows were open, and a breeze blew in with the morning light; it was ten in the morning. Maiharra and Kiana were already awake. They were chatting quietly. Maiharra sat on the floor, and Kiana was still in her hammock.
"Bom dia!" Kiana had noticed I was waking up.
“Eu quero café da manhã.” I said as I stretched.
Maiharra had already made coffee and orange juice. We had to eat a quick breakfast because we woke up later than expected. Ilhabela was a four hour drive and we needed to get on the road soon. We had butter toast and eggs with our coffee and then packed our bags.
Out on the street, the car was boxed in two cars deep. Maiharra spoke with a neighbor who called someone else. We loaded our luggage and waited around for a moment. Within ten minutes, the owners of both cars had made their way from wherever they were to let us out. This interested me; the U.S. doesn't work like this; there, people call a tow truck. It was interesting to see the community function.
It was a minor delay, and we were backing out of the tiny alleyway and on the road by eleven. Driving out of the city was even more humbling than driving in from the airport. We drove for an hour, and the city kept going on and on. Eventually, the buildings around us shrunk, and the roadside became technicolor; the green foliage contrasted with the bright red Brazilian clay. The city faded as we rolled through the countryside to the coast.
Everything was a new sight for me. We stopped at a ranch off the highway for lunch. Chickens roamed the restaurant. We had a traditional Brazilian meal and sat on the patio. After eating, we meandered around the gift shop and bakery. I bought some snacks for the rest of the drive. Back in the car, we rolled a spliff— as you’ve probably realized we do with our down time, and we video-called Kiana's mom. Tanya has a classic American Valley girl dialect. She answered the phone.
"Does Wil have a sunga yet?!" She shouted as soon as she answered, "Wil-a, you have to get a sunga; Kiana's going to take you to get one— Kiana, go get him a sunga." I was blushing. Tanya always made that her goal, I feel like. I'd known her since I was fifteen; she was always like this. For those who don't know, a sunga is the quintessential swimwear in Brazil. They vary in size from a thong to a brief. Brazilians are famous for their asses; they know it, and we know it. Sungas show that off.
Kiana finished their conversation, and we got back on the road; it was only a short time until we passed through a long tunnel that cut straight through stone deep beneath a mountain. It was a marvelous piece of infrastructure. Many foreigners have a perception that Brazil is undeveloped and full of crime. And while some systemic issues, corruption, and abuses of power plague the government and affect the citizens of Brazil, they are not an undeveloped country. Brazil is the 9th largest economy in the world, and apart from its rich culture and history, Brazilian engineering feats will genuinely have you in awe of the capabilities of humans.
The sun gleamed through the open mouth of the tunnel, and a few seconds later, we came out on the opposite side. The next half hour was spent zig-zagging down the slopes, back and forth as trees rose around us, obscuring the mountains that cascade into the ocean.
Caraguatatuba and São Sebastião from the mountain that day, with Ilhabela to the right, March 2023.
Kiana pointed to a sign. "Read that.", she told me.
“Caraguatatuba.” I read.
"That was actually pretty good!" she judged.
She pointed to other signs as we descended the mountain, and she would correct my pronunciation when I got it wrong. We blasted The Pussycat Dolls and Destiny’s Child and sang along while we made our way through Caraguatatuba to São Sebastião, where the ferry to Ilhabela waited.
Brazil, like the U.S., is a collection of many different names. We have native influence; for instance, Massachusetts is Algonquian, and we have colonial influence in places like Georgia and Virginia, but also places distinctly American, like Washington. Brazil has native influence in names like Caraguatatuba, which is from the native Tupi, and São Sebastião has a Catholic Portuguese influence. This is how I first started to learn about the history of Brazil, and I wanted to know more.
Several lanes lined up to board the ferry. We were guided to the back of a lane when Kiana threw her hands up beggingly and pointed toward an empty column. She wanted to be at the front of the line for two reasons. The view was beautiful, and she wanted me to see it. Secondly, we would also get to disembark first. The guy looked at the empty lane and the one we were supposed to go to and then shifted his body to let us go to the front. We all leaned to the window so he could see us and put our hands together, thanking him and shouting gratefulness through the tinted glass.
We hopped out of the car once we'd parked, and I let my surroundings fill my eyes. I was reminded of a Wes Anderson film. It was the novelty of being on this bright and rusty ferry and the foreign nature of it all: the hot air and the sweat on our foreheads, vintage cars, and the sweet sounds of Brazilian Portuguese drifting on the salted wind.
We sat on the hood of her car over a spliff and counted waterfalls in the cliffs. We talked meta for a moment about how great it was to be together, and she began to talk about how stressed she'd been with this project she'd been working on for a few years. I remember when Kiana first told me about her plans to sail across the Atlantic Ocean on her rustic and questionably seaworthy vessel. I thought she was crazy— I knew she could do it, but still. Crazy.
And there we were, her reminiscing of the time she did that thing. I gave her some unsolicited advice on what I thought of the situation. The ideas were well received, and she joked that I should really move there and work for her. A feeling was there inside me, and I knew what it was. I hadn't been happy for a long time, and I wanted to do something more.
I had a shelf full of beautiful things back home: knick-knacks, my collection of vinyl, books, dead bugs, and dried flowers. I often walked around my house, pacing and looking at everything I'd collected and cherished. They represented who I wanted to be. Still, I wasn't happy with all my trinkets in a box; I didn't want that bookshelf to illustrate what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to live that life and a feeling was pulling me toward Brazil.
"I think I'd like to," I nodded my head. "I really think I'd like to."
Kiana and I on the hood of her Fiat Uno on the Ferry to Ilhabela, March 2023
Through our conversation, we'd crossed the inlet and were almost to the island. We climbed back into the Fiat, and Kiana gave the key a turn. The engine sputtered up, and we waited to disembark.
"Oh! I forgot to tell you, there are these bugs, like mosquitos, called borrachudos; we need to get some repellant for you." She showed me the bites on her feet, big bumps with dark needlepoints in the middle.
"They're tiny, you won't even notice them, and the bites last for months; they call it an Ilhabela tattoo, and there is no avoiding it," she warned.
It would've been nice to know beforehand, but I came for an experience. We drove up the coast while the sun began to set, and we stopped at a beach in town for a swim after the long car ride. We changed into our swimsuits in the car and ran to the water. Maiharra jumped onto my back, and I grabbed her and spun around in circles until I lost balance, and we toppled over into the shallow waves. We floated in the warm water until Maiharra's friend Steve arrived on the beach. Maiharra would stay with him for the week while Kiana and I stayed at her boyfriend Felipe's house on the island's north end. It was late when we finally got there. Kiana showed me my room, and we sat at the kitchen table, reminiscing until the early hours.
I woke up to quiet kitchen noises from my open door. I stretched and sat up on the edge of the bed, blinking the sleep from my eyes. I stood up and walked over to the shutters and opened them. The cold morning air from the shady grove outside rushed in, and I could smell the dirt and sweet decay of the leaves that had built up over the seasons. I stepped into the next room.
"Bom dia!" I croaked as I stretched my arms and back up into the shape of a 'Y.'
"Bom dia! Você dormiu bem?" she inquired, cleaning dishes from some dinner they'd had nights ago.
"Yes, I slept very well, so good." I yawned back, "What's on the agenda today?"
"I'm going to go for a morning swim, and then I need to take care of some things on Mara Noka." She was staring out the window at the water.
A photo of Mara Noka from my first morning staying with Kiana, March 2023.
I saw the small wooden catamaran with its hull painted black in person for the first time. It floated a few hundred feet from the rocky cliff the house was perched on. Under the wooden table situated between Kiana and me, Felipe's dog, Budda, chewed on a flip-flop.
I turned back to Kiana, "We gonna eat first?"
"I'm making tapioca; how much bacon do you want?" she asked.
"Four, please." I smiled timidly and shrunk. I like food and a lot of it, and I hate asking for too much. And four is modest but self-assured. Right?
I grabbed a bag of oranges and a juicer and went to my room. That was the only room with an outlet that would work for the juicer. I've found things like this are common in Brazil. Construction is interesting, beautiful, but interesting. There are often quirks with any house you go into; the toilet flushes weirdly, or the shower head electric heater trips out the A/C. Maybe there are false knobs in the shower that don't control anything, stuff like this. This happens in American homes, too; we all have that friend with the quirky apartment.
I sat on the floor, squeezing and twisting oranges. I'd been sitting with my legs crossed, and I glanced down at my foot. I had a few minor bumps with black dots in the middle. Borrashudos. They had gotten me already, and I hadn't even known it. I felt a bit of pride in the marks. It was a part of the experience, an inevitable thing. I was there.
I felt a tickle on my thigh and looked down. I saw the tiniest little fly. It looked very delicate; when it flew, it floated like a ball of dust. And then I felt the slightest itch. I smacked it, and there was blood. Holy fuck, that's a borrashudo? It was so cute. I stared still through the air, and I could see lots of large floating balls in my periphery. I ran to the shutters, closed them, and into the kitchen.
"Kiana, they fucking got me. I didn't even notice it." I confessed.
"The borrashudos?" she asked knowingly, "Yeah, I was going to say something else, but I forgot, they come out just in the morning and evening, and they like shade. You opened the window?"
"Well, I closed it now," I said.
"I watched this video on YouTube. Apparently, they don't have a needle like mosquitos do. They have these tiny saws in their mouth; they make an incision and then drink your blood. Crazy." she finished her tangent, horrifying. And then she handed me the special repellant.
It smelled like cream and citronella. I rubbed it on every inch of my body. I didn’t want these cute little dust motes anywhere near me. Kiana did the same. I was all for the experience, but I also didn't want to look like I had smallpox for the next several weeks.
Breakfast was ready. I was introduced to tapioca here— well, this kind of tapioca. It's pan-fried and has everyday breakfast fare on it: an egg, bacon, onion, avocado, tomato, and hot sauce. You fold it in half and eat it like a breakfast sandwich. They have different kinds, though. Sweet ones with chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, and bananas. Tapioca is a blank canvas food. You can do anything with it. They're a popular food sold in the street mercados throughout São Paulo.
After we ate, we walked down steep steps that winded their way to the water. It was glowing blue. We dove in and started swimming to Mara Noka. After only a few seconds, I realized the boat was further than I thought. It seemed a lot closer on the dock. I am a strong swimmer, so I wasn't worried, but it wore you out getting there. It took a few minutes, but we made it. Kiana taught me to pull myself onto Mara Noka by grabbing the net and hoisting our bodies.
My first time aboard Mara Noka, March 2023.
It was very nice to see where my friend had been living. Kiana splashed water on the deck to keep it hydrated. The sun was already beating down hard. She told me stories as she organized things. We talked about little things that annoyed us, past relationships, and what we wanted to do next. This time together meant so much to both of us; it was back to being kids again.
The year was 2013, and we sat for hours filming ourselves smoking joints on her front porch in Adel, Georgia. Back when she was trying to teach me how to say São Paulo correctly, neither of us knew we would be here together so many years later.
Kiana once shared this theory with me on one of these afternoons when we were teenagers smoking on her front porch.
"What if when we think something, the electrical impulse in your brain also sends that out on a wave? Like a radio wave." she thought out loud.
"That would be cool." I was too stoned to think much deeper about it.
"Yeah, but what if, like, everyone's brain has a station, and some people are tuned to the same station, and that's how people can, like, read each other?" she continued.
"That would be cool," I repeated, nodding.
A decade later, I still think about this moment. I am not super esoteric, but I am eccentric and can vibe with it. I shared that memory with Kiana then.
"I don't fucking remember that," she busted out laughing, and so did I.
Nonetheless, Kiana and I know each other intuitively, so much that it is eerie at times, and this was an extraordinary moment getting to see Mara Noka and spending this time with her. It wouldn't be until nearly a year later that we would have this same opportunity again, this time in Paraty— just before I left Brazil for the second time. But that is a story for later.
Eventually, Felipe came home. By then, we'd swam to shore, showered, and gotten groceries. It was now the early evening, and Kiana wanted to go to this place in town for dinner. We drove into Ilhabela after the day had receded. Felipe was in the middle of the road the entire time. He said the road's shoulders were steep; if another car came, he would move out of the way.
He turned back to me, "Do you like Brazilian music?" he asked.
"I don't know any," I admitted.
"Well, my friend, you are going to learn some today," he replied, turning up the stereo.
He played Metamorfose Ambulante by Raul Seixas. "Wandering Metamorphosis.” The song is about wanderlust, embracing change, and challenging preconceived notions. He also played other artists, including Pitty, and I told them that Pitty sounds like the Brazilian version of Avril Lavigne. They agreed. I love music, and as an English speaker, I'd never gone out of my way to listen to music from other cultures and languages, except in very particular instances. Now, I wanted to learn Portuguese, I wanted to know the words, I wanted to sing them.
We cruised into town and pulled over on the side of the road; across the street, there was a little shed set up in a gravel parking lot. The plastic patio chairs and tables that were spaced intermittently throughout the lot mostly sat empty. It was the restaurant we were going to. The music stopped abruptly as Felipe shut off the truck and cracked his door.
"You're going to love this place, you guys," he told us, and we hopped out of the truck and crossed the street between moto boys zooming past.
To be continued…
Next post:
The three of us have a very special dinner, Kiana and Felipe sing the Brazilian national anthem, and I learn what pisco is. The next chapter will close out the night, stay tuned for the next blog post!
Kiana and Felipe sitting with the restaurant owner, March 2023.
