Life goes on - Joanópolis

The view from the road home.

Yesterday I drove three hours to our fazenda house, spent an hour collecting stuff,  and then drove three hours back. We are going to Argentina next week and we're going to need our hiking boots. For some reason, we haven't been able to fit a fazenda visit into our schedule since Carnaval in early March. So since we're leaving Tuesday for Ushuaia, off I went.

I quite enjoy the ride--it is not long until I am in the curving mountain road of Rodovia Anhanguera. Yes, there were a lot more trucks than on our weekend outings but that just made me slow down more and enjoy the trip. At about 2 1/2 hours, the road becomes dirt and gravel and the cell phone doesn't work. This is the only place that I worry about traveling alone--our history of flat tires recently means that I am quite nervous about every noise from under the car. 

When I reached the house, it was all opened up because the housekeeper was airing out the rooms. She knew I was coming from one of the other ranch staffers -- nope, she doesn't have a phone either. When you need to communicate with the workers, they travel at set times to a place where their cell phones work. Fortunately, as renters, we don't have to worry too much about managing the staff.

Just as I pulled up at the house, the monkeys started calling loudly to each other. They were as close as they ever get, jumping from branch to branch in the pine trees. Far away there was the sound of a chainsaw as some ranch or another cut their eucalyptus trees.  Spiders jumped away from my stomping feet.

Of all the places I have lived or visited in Brazil, the Casa do Alemão or German house, our rented country house, will be the one I miss the most. You can read about it here. I fell in love with this house ten years ago when the owners first bought it from "The German". I waited 8 years to be able to rent it myself and now we will be giving it up in August. 

While I stood there and listened to monkeys and saws, an unusual sadness filled me. Unusual because the fazenda makes me happy. I realized how much I will miss the solitude, the sounds, the brushes with nature -- monkeys, parakeets and lightning bugs (not so much the spiders). I will miss hiking on trails with no trail blazes. I will miss watching my kids run up and down the hill in front of the beautiful mountain of Morro Selado. I will miss a place where the tv, internet, cell phone and home phone don't work. I will miss you, Alemão.

And as I stood there thinking all this, I realized that the Alemão will not miss me. The monkeys will live on safely away from bad guys, the parakeets will keep their house in the roof, the spiders will actually have a better life away from the capture-and-release routine they get with the twins. Life goes on at the Alemão, but soon not for me. When I return after August, there will be new tenants. When I return after August, it will not be "mine" (in fact, it never really was).

Life goes on. It's not something to be sad about but rather happy.  I wouldn't want things any different for the tenants and furry, feathered and 8-legged residents who will be there when I leave.

Lucky them!

Werewolves - Joanópolis

Emporio Cachoeira: where we fill up on cheese and munchies before braving the werewolves...

This is a photo out the window in the middle of Joanópolis, the "cidade-sede" or headquarters of our rented country house. It's a pretty city and bears exploring more when I'm not piled into the car with kids, dogs and food for a week. This never happens.

Joanópolis is known for two things. Well, okay, I know it for two things, most people for one. The first one, of minor fame, is that it is absolutely chock-o-block with Fuscas. You know, the old VW beetles. There are some from the 1950s all the way up to the more recent maybe 1980s versions. I've never seen the New Beetle but it could be around. There are so many Fuscas that I call it Fuscópolis. I think I wrote a blog on it somewhere. Ah, here it is.

The second thing is for real fame. It is the worldwide capital of Lobisomen, or Werewolves. Yes, this cute little town of 12,000 has the most number of reports of werewolf sightings in the world. Not including the stuffy ones outside every store (you can take your picture with the two in the photo above).

Now, I have no fear of werewolves. There are other scarier things in this country (motoboys, the stupid bugs that chewed me up this weekend, etc). But I did some reading about them this morning and I might have to go take my kids to be baptized after all. Apparently they chomp non-baptized kids! Or maybe they just have to wear silver all the time. Hard to know.

The other thing I learned this morning is that normally the seventh child after six born of the same sex is the one that turns into a werewolf. Now this explains why our housekeeper's mom stopped at six daughters. Fear of the wolf! Oh, all right, some other legends have it as the eighth kid or the seventh boy after a full moon or something like that. 

Also here in Brazil these fuzzers come out on Friday nights, not just full moon nights. This is a problem for me as we are always heading out to the country house on Friday nights. Seriously, do I need to think about this from now on? 

Sources here (in Portuguese):

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobisomem

http://portal-dos-mitos.blogspot.com.br/2013/02/lobisomem.html

Things I will miss. Fazenda. - Joanopolis

And if anyone asks why I do love Brazil given its many problems of security, corruption, etc, here is how I answer. The place we go on weekends, in a photo essay:

Hillsides and horses

Kids with bug examination kits

Hydrangeas and pretty houses

Sunsets

Rainstorms

Dogs and barbecues

Without words

A little look at paradise - Joanopolis

Three hours driving from Sao Paulo, there exists a tree-fiiled, country hike paradise called the fazenda (ranch). This weekend we caught tadpoles, made a new trail and sat out in the star-filled evening with good friends. Makes me (almost) forget city living.

A friend reminded me this week about how important it is to get our kids out of the concrete. And let them know the difference between seeing large spiders at Instituto Butantan's museum, and seeing them in mommy's room. One involves looking closely and saying "cool" and the other involves screaming and squishing with (your husband's) shoes. 

Who says life's lessons are simple?

Fuscópolis - Joanópolis

The Fusca, also known as the VW Beetle

I know I have talked about the "Fusca" before in my posts about visiting Joanópolis, a cute country town, population 12,000. It seems that Joanópolis (or as I call it Fuscópolis) has about one Fusca for every three residents. Nowhere inside or outside of Brazil have I ever seen so many VW Beetles. I frequently challenge visitors to our rented country home to count as many as they can from the start of the dirt road, but no one has beaten the record of 51 Fuscas (in 17 kms) counted by my friend Emily three years ago. 

Fuscas are ubiquitous in Brazil. They were made here from the 1950s until 1986 when the factories were shifted from Fuscas to the Fox and the Santana. But ex-president and now dead Itamar Franco (he of the friend with no underpants and short skirt) asked VW to bring them back in 1993...and they were produced here from 1993 to 1996, when they finally ceded the Bug to Mexico. Which means a whole lot of these cars on the road are very very old.  

I spy with my little eye....a Fusca!

How these less-than-sporty cars can get down the pockmarked, pothole-filled, frequently muddy-to-the-doorstop dirt roads, I really will never figure out. I drive a 4x4 that seems to have more trouble than these Bugs. Perhaps I'll have to try to pick up a second hand one when Dia do Fusca (VW Bug Day) is celebrated nationally on January 20, as it is every single year. I love a good holiday.

And another one!

The mother of all spiders - Joanopolis

Don't tell my kids but I hate spiders. It's true. Yes, I take them to the spider and snake museum (Instituto Butantan) about once a quarter but it is only part of my ongoing therapy. I love snakes. I hate spiders.

So when my kids caught this spider in an ice cream container this weekend at the fazenda (our rented country house), I had a hard time not screaming. It's carrying 100s of babies. Yeeecccchhhhh!

You do reap what you sow. When I got mad at the kids (pretending I cared for the safety and health of the kids and the spider), one said "but mommy, we checked first and it's not an armadeira because it didn't put up boxing hands". Armadeiras are one of the three deadly spiders in Brazil. Yay! My kids know how to threaten a spider so it will box them!  Or not.

Then the other one said "and mommy, it was heading towards your open bedroom window so we got it!" And I held on to my first response which was KILL IT and all its babies--I just said "oh, okay, thanks."

Then when their backs were turned (they released mama spider into the woods), I killed every last baby still heading toward the window. I counted 30 squishes. The horror.

The Road Less Traveled - Joanópolis

Here's the view out the front of the our AWD car on the ride back from our rented country house in Joanopolis. I mention the AWD because you're really going to want to have one if you ever visit us there. Unless you feel lucky. This photo is from about 5 minutes down the gravel and dirt road, and before things start to get hairy. As in lumps and bumps and holes that have swallowed small goats.

The dirt road from the fazenda (ranch) house to the asphalted main road to Joanopolis is 27 km. On one side there is pretty much a constant wall of earth, frequently topped by rows of eucalyptus trees. The other side generally has a sharp drop-off to lower fields and farms. The turns are hairpin and the source of constant terror to me as we frequently meet enormous flatbed trucks carrying huge tree trunks.  On my last solo trip to the fazenda (not a trip I relish--3 hours with two crabby boys) I was stuck for 15 minutes as two tree trucks met and had to maneuver carefully past each other by shutting side view mirrors and clearing an electric pole by one inch. I closed my eyes as one truck leaned precariously to one side--the side with the free fall drop 70 feet to certain death.

Not all cars are four-wheel drive. The most common car on the dirt and asphalt roads of Joanopolis is the Fusca, or the VW Beetle. Old, creeky, rusty, marvelous. I say marvelous as they seem to be able to get through the muddy season swamp and the dry season ruts. There are so many Fuscas in Joanopolis that I often refer to it as "Fuscopolis"--my record on one trip through town was sighting  52 Fuscas (in a town of 12,000 people, that's pretty impressive in an afternoon).

During the rainy season, the roads are awash with mud, and there have been minor landslides in the area. Especially where neighbors have cut the eucalyptus. Friends have gotten their small Peugeut stuck--a friendly local truck driver helped them push it out. A couple of friends have simply not shown up when they turn back. One spent the night in his car when he got stuck late at night. Since there is no phone service or cell phone service at the ranch, we have to just assume the best. Yes, we are Brazilian--we assume the best.