Our Journal

Back to Granja

We had come to a crossroads.  When we started out, we knew that at some point we would split up in our travels.  Matt decided to take the route south along the coast.  I decided to drive back to Granja to spend Christmas with Wagner and family.  Granja is a close cousin to small Texas towns, not so different from Granger or La Grange.  I had left the boxes in Canoa Quebrada and traveled light back through Ceara.

Back in Granja things were as they had been and as they probably always will be.  I will never again think of small town life as simple because it is as regimented and complex as the big city.  There is an hour for waking, café de amanha, the house is swept daily, clothes washed, lunch prepared, the siesta at midday, afternoon coffee, visiting late afternoon and night, night coffee, and endless talking.  Gossip is sport and everyone knows everything.  People called me by name I don’t think I had ever met.  The rich of town show off their cars and cell phones and don’t mix much with the poor.  The plaza is full every night with young people.  The drinking holes have their nightly regulars. 

Christmas passed quietly in front of the house.  New Years we all went to Lucylane’s, one of the sisters who is an amazing cook.  She prepared an amazing spread of pork and turkey pheasant.  Grandma took one look at the bird and said under her breath that it would do bad things.  No one touched it, but me.  It was delicious and I couldn’t stop eating it.  I had bought a pack of fireworks that day and decided to pull a few out before New Years.  After watching a couple of the brothers light a few off holding them in their hands like roman candles, I gave one a try.  All I remember is an explosion, in my hand, extreme pain, and running from flames that I soon realized where my arm hairs being singed off.  After the initial horror we all realized it wasn’t that serious.  Beers and champagne were passed around and a few of us walked to the plaza for a forro concert.  I spent the rest of the night trying to dance forro with one hand which kept my mind distracted from my smarting arm.  The next the new mayor took office and he celebrated by more live forro in the plaza.  Most of Granja seemed to be there.  The brothers drank until they danced with their wives, daughters, girlfriends, or just about anyone willing. 

I committed some crimes against masculinity in Granja.  One night I had cooked for the family, very non male behavior.  Then, I knew how to dance a little forro which is a lot like salsa.  Just plain weird for small town folk.  I didn’t know how to eat crab and had to take lessons from the kids.   Fingers often get poked and cut while opening crab joints and I made the mistake of showing that it hurt.  Very feminine.

I took a couple of days to travel up into the mountains.  An hour outside of Sobral the road climbs up and zigzags up to a pass.  On the other side the climate and vegetation change.  Dry drought land becomes fertile and green with lots of rain.  The temperature drops and mornings are cold.  I drove and missed the turnoff for Ubajara and had to backtrack an hour in the rain at night.  Ubajara is famous for a cave full of stalactites and mites.  The next morning I drove into the national park and took the cable car down to the cave.  The cave had been used as a chapel for many years and the damage to the formations was pretty extensive, but the area is beautiful and a nice escape from the heat in Ceara.  People seem happier and relaxed in the villages nearby, another nice change from the bleak living in most of Ceara.

Driving back into Sobral I stopped for lunch at a Lanchonete I the center of town.  I got swarmed by guys interested in the bike and spent an hour talking.  One guy, Carlos, was also traveling around Brazil on a Tenere.  He helped me shop for a map and took me over to meet his wife and some other biker friends of his.  They all dropped everything and we went on a ride up into some mountains outside of Sobral.  We spent the afternoon visiting swimming holes and beer drinking spots.  We ate some what I think was rooster with blood sauce.  One of the guys was on a dirt bike and jumped everything he could and spun the bike around in doughnuts.  He knew all the motoboys in Granja and had heard about Matt and I.

A couple of days later Carlos and his wife came and picked me to and we drove out to some isolated beaches outside of Camocim.  15 km down a sand road I learned a little more about maneuvering a big bike on sand.  Carlos drove all over the place.  At low tide we took the bikes along stretches of packed sand that stretched on forever.  We stopped to eat fish, waited two hours while the waiters, looking painfully hungover from the holidays, moped around.  Back in Granja we found the stunt biker with the dirt bike who had been waiting all day for us thinking we were leaving later.  They head back to Sobral at dusk and we talked about other rides. 

My last day in Granja started with Edmo, on of the brothers, picking me up on his bike for a trip out to Periocuara, a swim hole outside of town.  Six bikes and two motorcycles trekked out on dirt and sand roads about 5 miles to a bend in the river with cliff jumping rocks and trees to jump off of.  Most of the family hadn’t been out there for ten years and they all behaved like children inventing competitions of who could stand on the tree the longest while everyone else shook it.  As local legend has it, Dom Pedro, former king of Brazil, stopped at Pericuara to wash his clothes on one of the rocks.  We rode back to town for lunch at Lucylane’s.  Then sat outside the house.  Then rode motorbikes out to watch the sunset at a man made lake (another swimming hole).  Then rode back to sit in front of the house.  Wagner’s adopted son, Lucas, had his birthday party with abut 50 adults and children crammed into his house.  More sitting (kids learn the art of sitting at a young age).  The women served up a massive meal, then cake, singing, more sitting…  Some of the uncles and kids took off for a carnival park that had arrived in town the day before, complete with bumber cars, ferris wheel, and various others that spin in nauseating ways.  I tried to keep my mind off of their standards for safety checks on the rides.  By midnight I was exhausted and said goodbyes, although I don’t think anyone actually believed I was going anywhere. 

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