Part Two….Going Solo

I’m all omm’d out

I float away from my hillside yoga retreat full of bon homie and wind. This is the new Anna. I embrace serenity; I shun cheese on toast. When I close my eyes, my internal chatter is gone; all I hear is the low rumble of a didgeridoo entwined with the ‘orchestra of nature’. FOR GOD’S SAKE, WILL SOMEBODY SLAP ME?

I prepare to come down to earth for some good old fashioned trekking. But where am I going to stay for the next couple of days? Diaine, my friendly pigeon-English-speaking taxi driver has a suggestion. She picks me up in her clapped out Vauxhall Cavalier and takes me to Donna Didi’s (pronounced GiGi), a pousada on the outskirts of town. Didi, a plump Grannie type with a twinkle in her eye, has clean but VERY basic rooms. The socket flashes when I try to plug in the TV and the sink tap has just two settings: irritating drip and flash flood. I elect to wash my pants in the shower. It’s all mod cons here; there’s a bin for bum wipes, a fridge and a picnic table with plastic flowers. There are also three beds, plenty of room for an orgy but Didi tells me no men are allowed in the room; with this she winks and blows me a kiss. I think Donna Didi may be verging on lesbiana. She certainly can’t be getting much action from Signor Didi, a snowy-haired indolent individual whose arse seems permanently glued to a rocking chair by the front door.

Having spent the last week screen-free and alcohol free, I decide to go crazy with a beer and a spot of tele-visual low-culture. This being a Sunday evening, Brazilian TV delivers meagre choice. There’s a spiritual smorgasbord of preaching ranging from Evangelical i.e. delivered by men with slimy hair and ill-fitting suits to Catholic i.e. delivered by men in fancy hats and dresses. I flick channels to watch a teary-eyed young woman and her mother talk to camera about how she’s been cured of a hideous dermatological condition by the power of heavenly belief (well I’m guessing it was Jesus not steroid creams that had done it for the scabs). She looked pretty peachy now but boy does she bang on about her boils. Strangely, I also discover three channels devoted to cattle, that is lots of humpy white cows with excess neck skin wandering around in a field. I keep with it for a good half an hour but there doesn’t seem to be a storyline and there were no people or other animals, just cows, just hanging, in a field.

It’s a bigger drop than it looks

The next day, I’m fancying a bit of a yomp so Diaine hooks me up with her mate Lady, an English-speaking guide who sidelines as a yoga teacher. Lady offers me a day trek and vinyasa combo and we set off for the nearby Chapada Veideiros national park. In searing heat we hike through the rocky, scrubby terrain to two canyons where we eat bananas, sing the praises of Greta Thunberg and slag off Bolsonara and Prince Andrew. Then I cool down with a swim in a beautiful waterhole while Lady strips down to her bikini and goes through her flow on the rocks above me. I decline her invitation to join in the dogging. The water is super refreshing plus my hard skin is getting a chomping from some tiny but very hungry fish. I could do without the leeches joining in the party but this is Brazil after all; there’s always something around the corner ready to eat you.

At this point I am oblivious to the leeches swarming around my downstairs

The next morning I pay Donna Didi (who, despite advertising that she DOES take credit cards, in fact DOES NOT take credit cards at all which means I am now down to the last of my cash). Luckily, I have enough to pay for my shared taxi back to Brasilia and have used my credit card for my onward bus ticket to Lencois in the neighbouring state of Bahia. And so, at the crack of dawn, I find myself wedged into a very small taxi with three strangers. My knees are around my ears and the middle-aged man next to me keeps making heaving noises with his Eustachian tube. The most ominous part is when everyone crosses themselves as we lurch from the dusty high street onto the Brasilia highway. My seatbelt doesn’t work so I’m already visualising us in a head-on collision with a juggernaut whereby I’m catapulted forwards pushing the dolly on the front seat through the windscreen. Thankfully, after three hours ploughing the busy highway punctuated by a visit to a roadside caff for a breakfast of vile coffee and yellow things, I’m despatched at Brasilia’s rodoviaria, ready for my 22 hour mammoth coach journey north. Bahia here I come…