Arrived in Belem, Brazil at 3am today all in one piece, save for two packages of whopper malt balls which had spilled open and coated everything in one of my boxes! Stew picked me up at the airport in Belem and we drove the 20 minute drive back in his 2009 vintage VW Kombi bus through some super rough neighborhoods to the school's little fortress, only slowing down at red lights as its unsafe to stop here at night. The gaurd in their alley lowered by hand his little chain to let us pass, and Stew laughed and shook his head. "Like that thin chain is gonna stop anyone".
The gaurd at the high main gate was more intense, but opened it right away when he saw it was Stew.
We bumped along a curving red dirt lane under a canopy of palm, acai, and towering glossy- leaved ficus trees toward, passing quiant white- washed bungalows along the way to his house.
As I took all this verdant jungle flora in through the Kombi's bulbous bay window i was struck by the realization that i'd traveled an amazing distance in a relatively very short time. I was in fact, worlds away. Just yesterday, Monday July 19th, starting at 6am morning a shuttle bus with my Dad and I on board wove his way through downtown Manhattan traffic horns blazing and deposited us at 7am at JFK airport. From there I flew Delta to to Miami, then to Aruba aboard an ancient 737 on Surinam Airways, and then to Paramaribo, Suriname. There, after much nauseating hassle to get my luggage actually on my soon to depart connecting flight, I fly on another ancient Boeing 2 hours south to finally touch down in Brazil. And on my 29th birthday too!
So I am taking it easy today(the sky just opened up too for my first Amazon-style rain shower), have a bit of jet lag and just plain exhaustion after a week driving across the USA with my pal Lindsay Fuller, visiting her amazing family in Birmingham, AL and the flying to Newark, meeting up with the Dad for 2 days of visiting relatives in Warminster, Philadelphia and 3 days exploring the sweltering sight's of the one and only Big Apple- New York City (Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, top of the Empire State Building, staring up slack-jawwed at the anemic Flatiron building, ferry to Staten Island, walk through Central Park passing by the Guggenheim Museum, delectable street food, perfect pizza, nightly beers at The B'Way Dive Bar, the fun never seemed to end)
The plan now is to hang out here for a week and visit with my dear friends the Stewart's and see the sights in Belem, and then to head down the coast of Brazil and eventually get to Cuzco, Peru by September 6th to hike to Machu Picchu via the Salkantay trail.
I am uploading a rather portly batch of photo's to my Flickr account right now so please take a gander and let me know what you like. It's good to be on the road finally, and in a foreign country. The horizon has never seemed so full of possibilities for adventure.
Breakfast at Lucile's in Boulder with (L-R) Julie, Aubrea, LF, me, and Uncle Mark Miller who lives in nearby Arvada and who we called up last minute and he was thankfully home and met us this morning for a great meal. had not seen him for a few years and it was great to catch up with him! He is a musician too, as well as all those girls there so we had fun talking music. had a cajun omelet,yum!
After sitting like this for 5 whole minutes in Seattle, no one picked me up. So I called my friend Lindsay Fuller and she offered to take me as far as Birmingham,Alabama. We left an hour later. We are in Boulder, CO tonight. Had a fun night out in Denver at the Ogden Theatre, saw a band called The Hold Steady with Lindsay's friends Aubrea and Julie, old classmates of her's from Baylor U. yesterday we went to the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City where I almost got converted by a really cute LDS, but LF saved me at the very last moment and we left the heart of the beast and walked down the street to a bar called The Beehive Inn and downed a pint of cold refreshing Polygemy Porters, whose motto is "why have just one"?Indee. One was enough though.
