On dress codes / On flying / On Copacabana

It is getting earlier by the day, which is actually good in this fiery climate (here, one should wake up at 5 am, work until noon, rest a few hours, do some more work, an hour or so, and then indulge in caipirinja or something else "sinfull"). We were in Santarem before 8.45am, Ruby in order to make a few interviews with some local NGO people for her master´s thesis, me just for having a look at the town and, unevitable, having a few entertaining drinks.

Santarem is a town, if not a city, more or less midway from Belem to Manaus, at the point where Rio Tapajos meets Rio Amazonas. One can clearly see the meeting of rivers, since Tapajos is blue-green, clear river whereas Amazonas is silty, light brownish one. The waters flow side by side for quite a while, which is rather enticing thing to look at. I did look at it for quite a while today, since Santarem is really hot place to be and I, being one with easily burning skin, had to take cover in a bar. The bar I eventually found (not that there would be general shortage of bars, but I did not want to sit inside), was in front of the church (the first one I have ever seen having air conditioning and dozens of fans) and had a clientele of all types of down-and-out, including me. I got regular chatting company from the local drunkards, but the fat prostitutes did, luckily, judge me as a desperately monogamous, true guy. Or then hopelessly poor one, given that my white "Kenneth Cole"-shirt was clearly not too clean. Or something.

Oops, I got carried away from the subject of Santarem. So, Santarem is the only townlike place withing 400 kilometers, and there are quite a lot people living in the area. This means that Santarem is the main supply point for them, which makes it fun place to look at the hustle and bustle. There are tens of boats, of all sizes, docked by the riverside. People are coming and going from and to the boat carrying their things, some for a continuation journey towards Manaus or Belem, some for taking them home. There are shops selling everything commonly, and something not so commonly, needed by the riverfront. One shop specializes in fridges, which are rather necessary here, another in sandals, third in drugs, fourth in hammocks. I did buy one hammock, Ruby bought another one, and we got quite a nice deal buying together. But, as said several times now, Santarem is hot. There are not so many trees giving shade, the perpertual river breeze is not able to penetrate the dense network of narrow market street, and there are no covered sidewalks. All of this means that one ends in walking in full tropical sunshine on rather half-melted tarmac. Which is not something one would like to do. This is why I, after walking aroung for one hour, took cover in that down-and-out drinking place. Before Ruby was done with her interviews, I had managed to consume 3 large Cerva-beers. Fortunately, she came and after a 20-minutes of random driving we eventually found the Peixaria Piracatu-restaurant. They serve world-class fish-dishes. We had superb fishballs wiht mayonaise and delicious fishsoup. If you even end up in Santarem, head directly to Avenida Mandonca Furtado 174. You will walk away satisfied.

Back in Alter de Chao, I had a beer at the beach (but not in the water, which is also possible due to having tables and chairs half-submerged). It was so quiet, there were only a few other customers, some dogs, and quite many urubu-vultures, which keep the beach clean of anything eatable. They are about the size of large seagulls in Finland, rather formidable birds indeed. But Brazilian beer is not that good and one start to long for a decent caipirinja, which is a longing almost too easily satisfied here. So, I had one, and sipped it looking at a game of beach football. The game was played at an oval patch of recently dried beach, with audience and the extra player remaining soaking upto their necks in the lake. Could life be nicer?

On dress codes

I have been toying with an idea of classifying dress codes on the continual axis between implicit and explicit. On the implicit extreme, we have the conservative Islam-dress, which covers whole person and, futhermore, hides all hints of the shape of the person. On the extreme explicit side one has no clothes at all: nudism. Most cultures and people fall somewhere between these extremes. The problem, of course, is where one puts the neutral place, what is the neutral way to dress. I think it varies by time and cultures. Anyway, here in Brazil I have notices, that too explicit way of dressing kills of all imagination and, at the same time, most of, if not all, visual appeal. There is nothing left for imagination, the most erotic organ we have. On the other hand, too implicit dress codes lead to ridiculous situation like those of having Victorian people covering the legs of pianos just to be sure not to arouse anyone. Just thinking...

On flying

Since times immemorial, man has dreamt of being able to fly. Today, flying is quite commonplace and all too uneventfull. During my about 140 flight, I have had only a few exciting event. Once, flying from Frankfurt to Shanghai, someone went to a toilet for a cigarret. Unfortunately, he threw the burning cigarret in the waste basket causina a fire and some rather fast reactions by the crew. Here in Brazil, we took of from Belem for Santarem. After flying 10 minutes above the Amazonas, there was really loud "KLONK"-noise at the back of the plane. We turned immediately back and landed safely back in Belem after a few circles for letting extra fuel out. There was something wrong with the landing gear, and after two hours of trying to fix the plane, they gave up and ordered another plane from somewhere. This meant for me spending the whole day in the airport. Fortunately, there were a couple nice Dutch guys to have a few caipirinjas with. The replacement plane flew totally uneventfully to Santarem. The third occasion of something exiting was in Copenhages, where the captained announced that he is about to reboot the airplane. Which he did. Fortunately, we were still on ground.

On Copacabana

One evening, I was killing some time in Copacabana by having a couple you know what and people watching. On my right, two really skillfull teams were playing beach-football. It was nice to see how fast moves, passes, and shots they can do on soft sand. On my left, a black guy sporting a Halloween mask, some white paint all over his body and makeshift icehockey goalkeeper legprotectors was walking behing people and imitating their movements. It was really fun to look at, more than any hidden camera show ever. Further on the right, a lonely prostitute was selling her services to drivers of passing cars. For some reason, she could not make a deal. Or she did not want. What was more interesting was the fact that there were long interval without any cars stopping, but whenever one did stop, there was always another one queuing. Anyway, there was no deal and after 1.5 hours some beggars, other prostitutes and other down-and-out joined her and the market closed. Then a "auto escola" car stopped by and the teacher let out another prostitute. At this point, I was ready to go to another bar, in which I watched something else interesting.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs November 2004".