Bus to Beach
19 July 2005 (Tuesday) – Natal to Fortaleza to Icapui, Brazil
Gisele, my amazingly giving host, woke up at 3:50am together with me in order to drive me to the rodoviaria. Gosh, and the poor dear had to return to the office late last night and worked with her colleague til after midnight! Really, I felt so bad about all the inconvenience I had given her, but her family kept shushing me whenever I tried to thank them. In fact, her mother had sighed, “Now that Trisha is leaving, the house will be sadder…” What? I was so surprised when Gisele translated for me. Oh, my dear, dear Brazilian mama… She had rushed off to her sister’s place to have my pocket sewn up and yesterday when I collected it, it was as good as new. Muito obrigada!!
My ride to Fortaleza lasted about 9 hours and the bus pulled up at around 2+pm.
My host in Fortaleza, Isabelle, had arranged to meet me at the taxi entrance. When I arrived, I was surprised to see an entire party welcoming me!
There was Isabelle with her wide, wide smile… her friend, Marilia, who immediately claims she only speaks a little English and no Spanish and two Argentine boys – Javier and Cristian – from Hospitality Club as well, and who are staying with Isabelle now and who speak only Spanish and broken Portuguese. So, we were all speaking in a mixture of English, Spanish and Portuguese.
We packed my stuff into the car and headed home. There, I was told to extract enough things for 3 days at the beach and right after that, we hit the roads again to buy some groceries and drive 2.5 hours to the little town of Icapui.
Throughout the ride, we were playing music at the top volume and singing happily when at one point, we heard a boom and realised we had a flat tyre!!!
Thank goodness, the strong Argentine gauchos were around to heave and shove the tyres around. I took charge of placing the reflective triangle some distance from the car. After quite a while which included hunting for one missing nut, we were on the way again. We finally pulled up at the house of Marilia’s husband, Marcelo, after 8pm. Poor Isabelle who did most of the driving was thoroughly thoroughly exhausted for we had taken 3.5 hours instead.
Wow, I went from the bus station straight to a little friendly beach town with 5 instant friends, no less. This is great! At night, we slung hammocks around the huge house and slept.
Tags: 03) The Land of the Spirits, Icapui
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