A sizeable gash…and a heartbreaker
The night ended soon after my Big Bang. We all filed downstairs to our hammocks, and Fábio gave me his blanket to sleep with, which I tried to resist, to no avail. The next morning, I laid in my hammock forever, before finally getting up to go to the bathroom. There was a line, but I took a minute to look in the mirror. Ah! The gauze was completely full of blood! No wonder everyone was looking at me really freaked-out like. I went back to my hammock, brought out my trusty first aid kit and cleaned myself up with a nice, clean gauze, much smaller than the last one. I also got a good look, for the first time. Ick. It was pretty ugly…split open right on the bottom of my chin, nice and swollen – a sizeable gash.
The good news of the morning was that it was Valentine’s Day, and I did have a card to open from Jill. Thanks lady…really brightened the spirits. I showed it to everyone and translated it to them. They were less than impressed, but I loved it. Apparently, they don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, but they do have another day for loved ones, though no one could agree on when it was.
We pulled into the port around 1 or 2 in the afternoon and waited around a bit until we got off. I was sad to say goodbye to everyone after a great 5 or 6 days (I still don’t know how many days we were actually on that boat). Everyone came up and said goodbye as they left, and wished me well in my travels. One little boy just walked right up to me and gave me a big hug. Fábio gave me his phone number “in case I ever wanted to practice my Portuguese”, and I told him there was a good chance I might call if I get bored hiding in my hotel room until my chin healed. We packed up the last of our things and got off the boat…we were some of the last remaining. Olga, Berenice, and their brother were waiting for their aunt to pick them up and Fábio was going to continue on to his town by bus. “Well, I’m going to find a hotel”…I gave them all a hug goodbye, turned around, and I was off.
I walked through town to find a hotel. It felt good to walk, carrying my pack, though I did walk with my head down a bit, ashamed of my stupid gauze on my chin. I already was enough to draw stares, being the gringa in town with a backpack, but now the gringa with backpack and gauze on her chin. I tried to remind myself that once in life, at 16, 17 years-old, I did walk around with a neckbrace on for 4+ months, but that was then, this is now, and I still felt like an idiot.
The first hotel I went to was booked, so they recommended another one to me. This one was more expensive, but they did have a TV, which I came to enjoy during my little hideout. No sooner did I get in the door, but the sky opened up and the rain came down hard. Looking outside, the streets were flooded, like mini rivers. This allowed me time to contemplate whether I should go and get stitches. Some people thought I needed stitches, and recommended that I go to a pharmacy. A pharmacy! For stitches? Sure, in a city like Porto Velho, you can get stitches in the pharmacy; it won’t take as much time as in a hospital. Well, after a while the rain stopped, and I decided to venture out to get some stitches.
I found a pharmacy and inquired about this weird chance that they might be able to give me stitches. No…I would have to go to a “point of health”, which I translated as a hospital. Well, I don’t know where there’s a hospital, so forget it. I don’t want stitches anyway. I grabbed a bite to eat (all I had all day) – a nice misto (hot ham and cheese) and passion fruit juice – my favorite, and discovered that it’s damn hard to open your mouth wide, bite, and chew with your chin all messed up. Walking back to the hotel, I noticed a little fence around a tree with hospital such-and-such written on it…hmm, I thought as my super-deduction skills kicked into first gear. I wonder if this building here is a hospital. It’s doubtful that hospital such-and-such is sponsoring tree fences throughout the whole city of Porto Velho.
The hospital disn’t really look like how you know hospitals to look. It looked more like an apartment building, maybe, a large apartment building (there were balconies). I went in and explained at the front desk (table) that I had fallen and didn’t know if I need stitches. “Let’s see” the man asked. I carefully, reluctantly (probably with a really hateful face) pulled the gauze off…”ahhh, tá.” he said, which pretty much means “Oh yeah, definitely”. He called around a bit, and told me to come back in an hour.
So, I had a nice hour to wait and contemplate my stitches. I wanted them so I could see inside the hospital and so it would heal better, but I really didn’t want to go through the process of getting the actual stitches. I went back and they looked at it again. There was a lady doctor there, who looked at me in the lobby…it’s too late. Apparently, too much time had passed. They couldn’t give me stitches…well, now I was relieved, but disappointed, and a little nervous that it was going to heal real ugly-like. (As of now, a month later, the scar is there, still red…hoping that goes away, though it is under my chin. I’m not a total freakshow.)
So, I went back to my hotel and sat for a few days, doctoring my wound. During this time, I did see on CNN that there were extreme floodings in Bolivia (just where I was headed), and after doing some research, well, it looked like it was exactly where I was headed. Nice. More changes in plans…perhaps now I head a bit more south in Brazil, into the Pantanal and enter Bolivia via the famed Death Train. Not exactly what I had in mind, but, well, I hadn’t really planned to be where I was at the moment either, so what the hell.
As promised, I called Fábio to say hello and explain to him my dilemma about going to Bolivia. “Come to my city!” he offered, and, well, it was a small little town off the radar of most, on the way to the Pantanal, so why not. My chin was getting better, so the next day I headed off to Cacoal. It was a little further than I thought…8 hours. I made a nice mistake of almost getting off the bus without my backpack in the middle of town, instead of at the bus terminal, but I remedied that by knocking on the bus door as it pulled away and jumping back on…
Cacoal was a really cute town…I was surely the only gringa in town, though I guess the only way to really tell was by my accent, though more by my clothes. The town has a touch of Evanston to it (though those who live or have lived in Evanston might laugh at me for the suggestion), with lots of cute shops, though I couldn’t explore them since the power went out all Saturday afternoon. So, well, we sat at the bar in the gas station (yes) and had some beers…they were the only place in town with power.
On Sunday there was a market, and we walked around, me getting to know all the fruits I had heard of from the region. I also tried a caldo de caña, which is pure sugar cane juice…you add a little bit of lemon to it. It was good. They use this big grinder wheel to squeeze everything out of it. They also had chickens in cages for sale there, and they would hang the chickens by their feet, squawking, while they exchanged them.
Later, I tried to teach him some English. Now this is funny. When talking to someone in their native language, they sound perfectly natural…you don’t hear any sort of accent (though I do wonder what my accent sounds like in Portuguese, and Spanish, for that matter). However, once they say just one word in Spanish, instant, thick accent. I have fun with this…it’s one way I get to laugh at these people…give them a taste of their own medicine for laughing at me.
I did a little bit more research on the flooded Bolivia situation and decided that I should carry out my original plan…we’ll just see what happens, though it didn’t look like it had gotten worse, and definitely wasn’t on the scale of what happened in Guatemala back in October. So, I was off. The nice lady in my hotel did my laundry for me (“Almost done…I just have to iron them.” “Ha! Iron them! I’ve been wearing the same clothes for 5 months, stuffed in my backpack, and you want to iron them! That’s very nice, but, really, you don’t have to waste your time!”), so my clothes did smell real nice (for about a day).
Fábio saw me off the the bus station and, just as I was getting ready to go, he started crying. “No, what? Crying? No. No crying. Why?” Apparently he had been crying when I left at the boat dock, too. He poured himself out to me here…In short, he had had fallen for me. Wow. It had been a joke on the boat that he was my husband and I was going to sneak him to the US in my backpack, and I even joked to mom about it, but I didn’t expect crying here…And I just had to leave…the bus closed its door without me, I knocked to get on, and we left…
Tags: Brazil, Tag Index
Tania
March 20th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
heartbreaker. i’m glad you liked the note!