damned Brazilian bologna

I sort of danced around the topic of Amber's health in the last posting, mostly because I wasn't sure if her mother knew the story yet, and partly because it probably isn't the least bit interesting anymore.

The real story is that she had a mild relapse after our trip to the dunes. Her fever shot back up to around 102 the day after the tour, and she spend the next five days in our hotel room. The nausea was back, too--so lots of soup and liquid tylenol for a day or two. She got better quickly, but her body is clearly a long ways from being okay. Every time she spends even half an hour outside--even in the shade--she comes back inside with a mild fever. Not fun.

In case I forgot... if you see a mosquito today, smash it for me.

Twice. One smashing for each time Amber has had a high fever.

So we stayed in Barreirinhas for a full week, just for health reasons. Nice town, but nothing to do there. No bookstores, movie theaters, or newspapers. And only one TV channel, with nothing in English for poor Amber. The boredom sometimes seems to be a worse villian than the dengue.

We're back in São Luiz just to build her strength back up for the next bit of traveling, a flight to Fortaleza, probably on Thursday. And she'll be back in bed there while I have a good look around the city, scouting for places to rent an apartment.

In the meantime, I think we're settling into some routines. It's all about wasting time as pleasantly as possible, in spite of the fact that we're in places that aren't necessarily inspiring to us.

For example, Amber is in the hotel room. Nice room. Not inspiring.

Breakfast is always included in Brazilian hotels and pousadas. We've experienced the full gamut of Brazilian lodging options, from hammock space on a boat to dingy crap motel to mid-range restored colonial mansion to five-star hotel, and the breakfast is always the same. Bread, juice, coffee, fruit (always papaya; pineapple or watermelon if you're lucky), and then something to put on the bread. Like "ham."

By and large, I really like Brazil. A lot. And if you're still reading this blog in a few weeks, you'll probably hear a lot more about why.

But then there's the ham. Why do they have to process the living hell out of it, and turn it into bologna? It's honestly a challenge to find any lunch meat--turkey- or pig-based--that doesn't taste like bologna. And why do they have to do the same thing with juices? If you go to a grocery store in Brazil, you can't buy a bottle or box or jug of just juice. It's always some sugary juice beverage. If you're particularly unlucky, you'll get a soy-based sugary juice beverage. This in the land of the most amazing fruit on earth. Very strange.

Okay, that's my bit of gringo whining for the day. If you're keeping track at home, today was morning #38 of bologna and papaya for breakfast. Since we're just killing time these days, it's all about trying to make breakfast as long of an affair as it humanly possible. So that means lingering over a third (small) helping of bologna and papaya. Every day. It's the routine, now.

Coming soon: pictures of my new potbelly.

mechanical bull, eat your heart out

When I last wrote, we were planning to take a long, slow road from São Luiz to Fortaleza, through Lençois Maranhense and a buttload of sand dunes.

Well, that didn't really work out so well, but we got to play rodeo for a day.

We went to Barreirinhas, a town of about 13,000 people (according to the guidebook) on the edge of Lençois. After an obligatory day of rest (required--every time Amber has a day of activity, she has to spend a day in bed... we agreed to that rule as part of the dengue recovery), we took a half-day tour into the dunes.

The dunes and lagoons were pretty stunning--exactly what you might expect. Hills of sand as far as the eye can see, punctuated by the occasional pool of shallow, warm water. Which had zillions of tiny fish. Surprisingly, they bite. Seemed to have a special penchant for my nipples. Hm.

But the hour-long trip to the dunes might be the part that I'll remember the most. We rode on some benches in the back of a large 4WD pickup. There was no road, just a couple of divots in the sand. I've ridden on some rough trucks/cars/bikes/buses over the years, but this was a winner. Brought back fond memories of the weekend I worked at the rodeo in Tucson, right next to the mechanical bull tent.

And that bull had nothing on us. Hilariously bumpy ride, everybody holding on for dear life, dodging the branches of cashew trees that tried to whack us from the side and top.

And best of all, there was no annoying country music or American flags.

So after a week of twiddling our thumbs in Barreirinhas, we're back in São Luiz. We chickened out of the slow road to Fortaleza, and will hop a bus or plane later this week. I'm off to explore some beaches outside of town, while Amber enjoys another obligitory rest day.

Happy belated turkey day, everybody.

did anybody see a tree somewhere around here?

Well, we finally escaped from Manaus after 18 days, which made us both really happy. We took the 13-hour speedboat downriver to Santarem, a journey which usually takes 36-48 hours on the standard boat...well worth the extra US$45 per passenger, especially if you're recovering from dengue and don't particularly relish two nights sleeping in hammocks slung alongside (literally) hundreds of other travelers.

So, yeah...that was our first real look at the Amazon rainforest during the boat ride, since we'd only seen hostels and hospitals during the previous weeks. And guess what? We really didn't see a whole lot of trees, at least not the big kind (with pumas and anacondas and stuff) that you would expect in the Amazon.

It was honestly a depressing experience, in spite of the otherwise-comfortable ride (six movies in a row...sweet). The shore between the two cities was almost continuously occupied--not at all what I expected from 500 miles of river in one of the most infamously remote regions of the world. Lots of grass, scrub brush, cows, factories, and an occasional soy field. When there were trees, they were small and spindly--certainly not primary forest.

You all know that the Amazon is going buh-bye at a really fast rate. But it's another thing to be in the middle of it, and see how far gone it already is. Sad.

After a night in Santarem (sleepy, nondescript city of about 200,000 people), we headed to the nearby beach resort of Alter do Chão, which is deservedly the subject of a bazillion postcards. Bill Gates already vacationed once in the town, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was scheduled for a visit to Alter do Chão while we were there; he never arrived, due to some goofy Brazilian politics (something about Lula and the local governance being from different political parties).

So yes, it was a beautiful place and all that. Big white-sand beaches on the river, stretching on endlessly.

We only had three days there, and it was our last chance to try to, like, see some trees or animals or something. We almost signed up for a two-day tour, and the guide didn't even seem to know whether the forest we were visiting was primary or secondary. But he promised lots of nice meals on the beaches. We passed.

In the end, we took an expensive (roughly US$180 per person) two-day tour with another agency, simply because it was the only trip we could find which involved a hike through some virgin forest. It was a great trip, in the end--we took a boat down an unbelievably fat Amazon tributary (Tapajós, which made the Mississippi look narrow), canoed into a little creek, went snorkeling there, visited an indigenous community where we explored some of the traditional food-processing methods (really interesting...honestly), took another tranquil bird-watching ride in the canoe, rowed back to our boat, spent the night in a hammock...

All good stuff. The next day, we made our six-hour hike through virgin forest, mostly just so that we could say that we saw some. We got a few glipses of monkeys and saw a few monstrously-large trees, but it was by no means the most impressive nature hike we've ever taken. Still absolutely worthwhile, thanks mostly to our unbelievably brilliant 20-year-old native guide. He's one of those rare geniuses who can identify every bug and plant on the trail, but who also understands every bit of the big picture of politics, economics, culture, and history. Had some great conversations with that guy.

And that's really about it. We spent the next day taking it easy in Alter do Chão, sleeping in and eating lots of obscenely tasty fish in a cococut milk stew...mmmm. Next day, we flew to São Luiz, Brazil's most famous colonial city. It's a likeable place with some interesting old archecture, but neither of us have fallen in love with the place.

For those of you who don't already know, we're now starting to look for a city that we really like. As soon as we find one, we'll stay there until our visas expire in March or April. São Luiz didn't make the cut, so we'll take off tomorrow in the general direction of Fortaleza, the next 'candidate' city.

But we'll do it the hard way. Instead of the 18-hour bus on paved roads, we'll head along the coast, through a dune-filled park called Lençois Maranhenses (http://viajarbrasil.com.br/lencois_maranhenses_maranhao.html if you want to see a few photos and read some Portuguese), which sounds far more amazing than most of what we've seen on this trip. After that, it'll be a bumpy series of trips on 4WD vehicles to get to the next bus connection on a paved road, close to Fortaleza.

This might take awhile. I don't expect to see any internet cafes until we get to Jericoacoara in a week or more, so (*attention motherly types*) you might not want to get your hopes up for any emails or calls anytime too soon.

my posts are starting to bore me, too

Funny, this has turned into a forum for not-terribly-interesting medical updates.

It's our last day in Manaus, finally. Amber made her sixth and final hospital visit yesterday--virtually all of her blood counts are back to normal, except that she isn't allowed to drink alcohol for another couple of weeks. Apparently dengue inflicts some weirdness on the liver.

But that's fine. There's no fernet in this damned place, anyway. Believe me, I've asked almost every bartender and liquor store owner in the city. We even spent a night at Manaus' only 5-star hotel (rumored to be a haven for imported liquors) to celebrate Amber's birthday and dengue recovery. It was luxurious by our recent standards (great view, rooftop pool, and our first warm shower since September 25) but strongly resembled a HoJos off the Jersey turnpike. And of course, no fernet. Bastards.

You might be interested to know that I have a friend who reads this blog exclusively for medical updates. She skips the part about dengue fever, though; turns out she's just waiting to hear that I have worms in my feet.

Not yet--those are in the Northeast.

But we might have an encounter with piranas or candiru fish in our next stop. We hope to spend at least a day or two in the jungle, but much of our time will be on the beach in Alter do Chão, rumored to be the "Caribbean of the Amazon."

I hear good things about the place, but after spending a few weeks in the Caribbean...well, I'm highly skeptical.

But about the scary fish...Piranas aren't actually all that dangerous, unless they're unusually hungry and you happen to be bleeding profusely. Candiru fish are the little spikey fish that supposedly really like urine. Rumor has it that they will swim up a stream of urine if you try to pee in the Amazon--I think I might have mentioned them in an earlier post.

Part of this is utter bullshit. No, they can't really swim up a stream of urine. But an exposed pee-hole might be appealing to them.

Anybody wanna come for a visit?

Amber the Unlucky

In spite of the fact that absolutely nothing has happened lately, I feel a little bit obligated to scribble a few lines. Last time you checked, Amber had just gotten out of the hospital. And if she weren't lucky enough to be female, her tropical disease would have made blood spurt out of her ears.

But at least that would have saved her a few boxes of tampons.

And diapers. Did I mention that there were no tampons or pads to be found anywhere when she started hemorrhaging? So she wore a diaper, complete with little happy bears on it. I am not making this up.

And really, she's fine now. Still weak, still spacey...but fine. No fever for four days now, and she's eating fairly well. We still have to make a couple of trips to the hospital for testing and the full green light from the doctors, but I have every reason to believe that this mess is almost over. We should be on a fast boat down the Amazon by Saturday.

At least for me--and I think this also applies somewhat to Amber--the toughest thing lately has been boredom. I've basically chased my tail in circles around downtown Manaus for the last couple of weeks, trying to turn grocery shopping into an interesting adventure. Amber has mostly sat in front of the TV.

From a cultural perspective, I despise globalization. Those of you who have known me for awhile have heard this before, but I find it maddening that most cities in the world have so much in common with each other. There are shopping malls, fast food, and American shoot-'em-up films everywhere; sometimes you actually have to go looking around a foreign city to find something uncomfortable or unusual. If you conked me on the head and dropped me in my old neighborhood in Santiago, Chile, it would take me a few hours to figure out that I wasn't in Los Angeles.

But for an American dengue fever patient, globalization is cool. TNT and HBO and ESPN--programming in English, commercials in Portuguese--have made her life a little bit easier. I can't say that Amber gives a damn about ESPN, but I got to watch the Red Sox close out the World Series. That provided a little bit of joy for me in the middle of the most worrying phase of her illness.

Still, we're in one of the most fabled, exotic-sounding places in the world, and I can't say that it feels unrelentingly foreign. Maybe that's just because this isn't my first trip to South America, but I honestly believe that relatively little is different. Sure, there are plenty of little things that you can't help but notice on a daily basis--the insanely sugary coffee, Brazilians' incredible patience and lack of pushiness (even in the most crowded markets), the ubiquity of prostitution (see the classified ads in any Brazilian newspaper for starters), the incredible Brazilian appetite for a good party.

But it's still amazing how you can have a fairly "normal, American" life in a place like this. It might be a little bit tricky to find a jar of peanut butter, but you can always find ways to close your eyes and pretend that you're still in the United States.

At least until one of those two-inch wasps, poisonous caterpillars, or fist-sized spiders decides to nibble your bum.

always talk to Brazilian strangers; never talk to the mosquitos

About a week ago, I wrote some horseshit about how Amber just has a little flu. Ooops, I'm dumb.

The mistake was an easy one to make at that moment. I had just gotten over a flu (really), and Amber had the same symptoms. She spent one day with a high fever, and then was better the next morning. I wrote the blog entry that afternoon--I thought she was on the upswing, and I was just kind of bored, trying to nurse her back to health using my mediocre hostel-cooking skills.

Shortly after I wrote the blog, she got messy. The fever shot back up and she got really nauseous. She barfed up both the advil and the soup.

I got indignant. What, you don't like my cooking???

The next day, her fever was still flying. She kept the advil down this time, but still was feeling pretty foul. Off to the emergency room, where she took a malaria test (negative), and got a prescription for...drum roll please...tylenol and vitamin C. Brilliant! We hadn't thought of either of those.

The next day--Day 4 of the illness--she was blazingly hot, vomiting, and incredibly weak. Couldn't even make it to the bathroom without help. I'd already taken her to the nearest ER, and there wasn't a whole lot they could/would do for her. Kind of a scary situation--I had no idea where else to take her.

Enter our angel, a young Brazilian architect named Paula. She just moved to Manaus two months ago, and she lives in the hostel while she (slowly) looks for a suitable apartment. I'd barely spoken to her, but we had exchanged pleasantries over breakfast every morning, and she knew that Amber was sick.

Without even knowing our names, Paula made a few phone calls for us. Her aunt is a dentist in Manaus, and has some useful connections. By 1:00 that afternoon, we were in the best private hospital in Manaus.

The next 24 hours were pretty damned ugly. Amber had a fever of 104 degrees (40.0 celsius) when we got to the hospital, and I don't think that was her highest. Her blood pressure was dangerously low (I didn't quite catch the number, but the nurse was vaguely horrified), and she was taken to her room in a wheelchair.

They hooked her up to oxygen, and stuck an IV in her. She went through six IV bags in the next 24 hours. She had diarrhea on top of it all, and I had the pleasure of going in with her so that I could hold the IV bag up while she did her business. I think that probably bothered her much more than it bothered me. Amber isn't exactly the kind of person who enjoys needing my help to take a dump--especially when she was making bathroom trips every hour or so.

IV in, watery poo out. Loverly.

With lots of (injected) drugs, the nausea and fever subsided overnight. I slept in a small chair by her bed, just in case she needed something, or if translation services were required. Somewhat surprisingly, none of the doctors we spoke to throughout this whole thing spoke English or Spanish--or at least none of them tried to speak either language with us, in spite of the fact that they invariably heard me speaking both. My Portuguese isn't great, but it's better than Amber's, and I had no interest in leaving her alone for more than a minute or two.

By morning, Amber was stable from a fever/dehydration point of view, but started to "menstruate." She had just finished her period ten days earlier; it wasn't menstruation, really. Just a convenient exit for dead platelets.

After Amber's fifth blood test in three days, the doctor pulled Paula and I into another room for a chat. Told us that she had hemorrhagic dengue, which is the scary flavor of the disease. Basically, platelets die like crazy, and the body tries to expel them. Luckily, Amber has a vagina as a convenient escape hatch. When men get hemorrhagic dengue, the blood gets to choose another exit orifice--eyes and gums are surprisingly common.

The slightly-panicky doctor insisted that Amber couldn't set foot outside of a hospital for three or four days, and sent us to the (public) Tropical Disease Hospital for further testing, and probably for a long stay.

I should mention that angel Paula was around for most of this. She stayed with us from 1:00 in the afternoon until 9:00 the first day, then came back at 9:30 the next morning. She accompanied us to the other hospital, and stayed with us until the end.

Luckily, this story is mostly over. The doctors at the third hospital did some more tests, fed her some tasty soup, made us wait awhile, and then sent us home. Said that she had a bad strain of dengue, but not the worst--hemorrhagic, but not the scary brain-bleeding sort. She could go home ("home"...a youth hostel), but had to return in two days for a fresh consultation. Lots of hydration fluids, fever meds, nausea meds, etc.

We escaped from Hospital #3 on Tuesday, and returned for a quick chat on Thursday. Today is Friday, and she's doing pretty well. Still weak as a kitten, but fever-free for over 48 hours. She has an incredibly itchy dengue fever rash (broken blood vessels in her skin, on her entire body) that has interrupted her sleep. It apparently can't be medicated (we've tried, hard), but at least the worst of it seems to be over. We're heading back on Tuesday for more tests, and I don't expect to travel again for another week--it takes a long time to rebuild her platelets and white blood cells, both of which are still desperately low. Not dangerous or anything, but travel is a really dumb idea until she feels much better.

The moral of the story is, mosquitos really suck. If you see one today, smash it for me.

The other moral of the story is, wonderful strangers really don't suck. Amber spent 24 hours at the private hospital, and then they refused even to charge us for it. Paula's family had made sure that Amber would be taken care of, and completely for free. And Paula spent most of two days with us in the hospitals, translating from the doctors' Portuguese to my "Portunyol", and making sure that we effectively navigated the bureaucracy.

I have absolutely no idea what would have happened without her. My Portuguese is conversational at best--fine for ordering food or talking about the price of plane tickets, but not so good when I need to completely understand every word of a doctor's diagnosis. They usually understand when I speak (fluent) Spanish or (Spanish-accented, Tarzan-ish) Portuguese at them, but it's tough for me to catch the nuances of medical Portuguese. Paula saved us from a lot of unpleasantness.

I promise that my next blog will be much more fun. In the meantime, let me know if you have any brilliant ideas for a good thank-you gift for Paula and her aunt. It's tough to appropriately thank somebody who does something like that for you.

And if any of you are worried or curious about Amber's illness and want some more details, feel free to send me an email (cbibilos@gmail.com)--I have a little bit more energy for answering questions right now than she does.