Canoa Quebrada

Canoa Quebrada first became part of my vocabulary back in Itacare. I was talking with a Norwegian girl, who seemed very well travelled within Brasil (fluent portuguese), and she mentioned it when I asked where else I should go, saying I would like it if I liked Morro. Then another northern european blonde in Itacare told me her circuit would be Itacare, Pipa, Canoa Quebrada, and Jericoacoara. Finally the french couple in Pipa confirmed it was worth a visit. I didn't make it on my whirlwind tour of the northeast because I wanted to give myself enough time in Jeri, so it was time to see it now. It was a bit of a journey, bus to Recife from Porto, then plane to Fortaleza, then bus to Canoa, but I made around sunset the next day and stepped off the bus in the pouring rain. That seems to be the trend of me arriving at new places. As it turned out I was dropped on the steps of a very reasonably priced pousada so instead of trudging through the rain to find the famous Pousado Do Toby or Pousada California, I dropped my bags and got out of the rain right then and there. After settling in and then heading down town for some dinner in the rain, I got an eerie feeling that I had come to a ghost town at the edge of the continent. There was a long main drag with endless bars, restaurants and shops, but 80% were closed and the remaining were empty, with the employees motionless in the doorways, following me through the rain with their eyes. I wasn't encouraged. I had a quick eat and called it a night.

The next morning things looked better. I had a great free breakfast at my pousada, the sun was out and it was hot, and I could see the sea from my table. I set out to discover Canoa. Things weren't much changed on the main drag. Most shops closed, though not as many as the night before, and mostly locals hanging out, not many obvious tourists. From the looks of the place and the numbers of restaurants and bars, the place must absolutley explode during the high season. However being May, not much was going on. I got off the main road for some wandering and soon found the big name pousada from my guide book. I took a look around then headed down a promising alley with a view of the beach to find out what the beach scene was all about.

Good thing. That's where everybody was in the middle of the hot day- the beach! Go figure. There is an interesting vibe throughout Cearå and Rio Grande Do Sul, that I have found in Pipa, Jericoacoara, Fortaleza, Natal, and now Canoa Quebrada. There is something of the feeling that you have landed on a new planet- an outpost of human civilization in an alien landscape looking to the sky for news from home. It's almost like you are at Luke Skywalker's house and the second and third suns are going to come up any minute. There is a quietness to all these places, even the huge cities like Fortaleza, like the air sucks up the sound and it doesn't travel. And the sky over the ocean is just so big somehow. And all the land is sand, whether covered with roads or buildings or palm trees or brushy greens, oozing from every crack is white sand. And in the smaller towns of course there are no roads at all, just dunes and donkeys and buggies, beach shacks with creative signs and restaurants in town with candle lights. There is a haze, very faint, but it colors the sky a color which is... different. And the ocean even more, it is a light blue, or is it greenish, or grayish bluish? Its... different, and bigger. And then there are always cliffs at the edge of the sea. They chime in with their pinks or rusty reds. I wander these landscapes in some awe, staring at the locals as if they must be alien to live here, and they stare back at me as the alien that I truly am in these places.

I emerged from the tightly clustered buildings of downtown Canoa at the top of a sand dune, or cliff, or both. As I bounced down the soft sand, the whole of the beach came into view, curving away from me in both directions. Beach barracas made of driftwood, coco trunks, and palm fronds were serving local food and drinks and dotting the shore in both directions. Also sailboats, looking picturesque pulled up onto the sand everywere. The white dune and beach sand was punctuated regularly by rusty red cliffs, eroding their color into the white beach sand like a painting running in the rain. There were plenty of people, swimming, tanning, sipping drinks, eating, looking at the other people, working, etc. The sweep of beach swept away in either direction as far as I could see, before the haze ate it up. It was time for a walk.

I walked to the end of interesting civilization in one direction, then turned and walked to the end in the other direction, then sat down for a drink. After hydrating I took a quick swim, then decided to test a theory that I no longer sunburn. I test this theory every so often, always with the same result, such that you'd think I would scrap the theory, but I don't. I sun dried causally with no sunscreen for some time, then wandered back up into town, getting lost repeatedly as a way to get to know the area. I could see the potential, but in the end Canoa was a vacation town that nobody was vacationing in, or almost nobody. It was nice but it was dead.

Or so I thought. I had lunch, I had dinner, I chilled out and had a drink, I had a nap, and eventually I went downtown to see what saturday night looked like in Canoa Quebrada. Canoa is somewhat famed for its nightlife, but from what I'd seen I was not having high expectations. OMG. Where did these people come from? There must have been 500 people on the street, 99% local brazilian, and young, and single. There was some definite electricity in the air, as the girls and guys made the rounds, seeing and being seen. About ten bars in a row were serving drinks and pumping live music on their dance floors, everything from forro to techno to pop and back again. Things were looking up.

I went to the pool bar to have a drink or two and warm up. After watching a game I offered to play the winner and we were playing short order. My game was going pretty good and before I knew it all my balls were down except the eight, while the other guy had like six left. I felt pretty good, considering I hadn't played in months. That's when the guy took a shot on the eight. He missed but something was wrong. You only shoot the eight when you've sunk all your other balls, which in his case consisted of all the spots on the table. I asked his buddy, who was less drunk, why he did that. After some confusion we arrived at "par e ipar". Guess what that means? Odds and evens! All along, I had been playing American eight ball, where each player sinks either 1-7 or 9-15 then the eight, where he had been playing odds and evens, where (apparently) each player sinks either all the odds or all the evens. Looking at the table in this light, suddenly I wasn't dominating like I thought I was (probably because I had been sinking his balls all along with him not telling me). Oh well it's just a game, and I beat him anyways, and there's like three hundred girls on the street I have to go meet.

We shook hands, smiling at the cultural collision, then I paid my tab and ventured onto the street. I walked up and down surveying the scene, checking the dancefloor options, and eventually wandered into the forro spot. This couples dance is super popular in northern brazil with young people, and it is great to watch a skilled couple. This place was packed and there were many skilled couples. It was fun to watch for a bit but I soon decided I couldn't compete with any of that so wandered back onto the street. I lurked around on the sidelines for a while like the rest of the guys, watching people go by. Suddenly the right girl walked by and it was time to move. I'm not sure quite how I pulled it off but soon enough we are chatting, having drinks, and meeting her friends, then dancing and getting crazy. Somehow that last caipirinha had turned me into a fabulous dancer and we were ruling the dancfloor. She had this one maneuver where she would kind of lunge backwards in a backdive and my job was to make sure she didn't crack her head open by catching her waist before she hit the floor, somehow not breaking my back either. We had a few other tricks too. It was a good night.

The next day I changed pousadas. This was something of a feat considering the hangover and the out by noon rules. I pulled it off and was lounging dazedly in the courtyard of Pousada California by the pool when a white dune buggy pulled up filled with three cuties. One of them turned out to be my girl, the other her cousin, the other her friend. "Bora Miguel?" I didn't know where we were going or if my hangover plus sunburn could take much of anything but given that three cute girls in a dune buggie were kidnapping me for adventures unknown there was really only one answer- "Vamos". I grabbed a few things, then hopped in next to cousin and grabbed the roll bar on the back of the buggie. Off we roared. We made a few stops, picking up among other things a bottle of rum, one of vodka, one of coke, and one of water (that was my idea), a cooler full of ice, two brothers, and one pandeiro.

We motored crazily out of town, doubling back at least once to pick up the cousin who couldn't make up her mind about going. Eventually we sped down the beach and turned off into the dunes. We bounced through the sand, over ruts, through gullies, around grazing donkeys, through pools of fresh water, along the barbed wire fence, through the thin green foliage. We passed several large pools, but we hadn't found the "one" yet, I guess. "Tres coqueiros" was the destination. Three palms. We eventually found it and unloaded, made drinks, and flopped into the cool fresh water with the sandy bottom. One brother looked at me with great seriousness and said "muito bom pra tirar resaca" (good for getting rid of the hangover). Though I was feeling a bit crap at the beginning, soon I felt better and we had a great day. One brother could not put the pandeiro (small brazilian tambourine) down or stop singing all day long, except to hand it to me and listen to me play it for a while. After a few drinks he tried to teach me a song or two, the kind of long samba songs that have no chorus, just endless verses. He never stopped smiling, nor did I, though I made little progress with my singing career. Everyone else was equally fun, with the girls breaking into spontaneous samba performances and group song, and plenty of swimming, lounging, and drinking. We stayed til the sun went down, which I caught on camera. The way home was fairly exciting as cousin, who was hungry and didn't want to wait, had set off a half hour earlier and we caught up to her. She was pissed I guess and didn't want a ride, but her family wasn't having it and tried to kidnap her into the buggy. We were running doughnuts around her in the buggy with the whole family screaming and her crying and running away. Eventually she was tackled and pulled into the buggy. Passionate people these brazilians.

I spent a few more days in Canoa, met some more locals, and some foreign business owners, in particular the norwegian pool bar owner, but I couldn't shake the ghost town feeling. I was ready for some excitement, something new. In fact, I realized, it was time for Rio. I had wanted to check back in on Trancoso and Arrail Da Ajuda, nice spots in Bahia I had visited five years earlier and thought were worth a second look, but the heck with that, and the heck with Bahia, I was ready for something different. Time for Rio. I was a bit scared, due to the stories. In fact sitting on the beach in Tamandare, a brazilian woman told me how an american had just been knifed to death on the beach for refusing to be robbed. I got attempted robbed in Salvador probably a hundred times, but no weapons ever. Whatever, when I lived in Colombia the terrorists took over the supreme court, the army burnt it down by accident killing everyone, my dad's office building was blown up, and his pipeline was bombed forty times, and I never felt slightly threatened, so what could Rio do to me? Before you can say "Vamos gente" I was on a bus, a cab, a plane, another plane and flying over the coast of Rio De Janeiro at night, lit by city lights. Soon I would be on the ground, and those sights, those smells, those sounds, that air, those lights, and that energy, would be mine.