Hans on Traveling

It was a Sunday morning when we left Rio, eager to avoid any math-challenged Riosidents who had forgotten it was no longer Kidnapping Thursday. Buoyed by the curious lightness of the car, and the curious lightness of spirits that a weekend at the beach sometimes brings, we made short work of our return to Sao Paulo. The sole spot of bother being that the e-mail announcing our impending arrival ended up in the wrong hands (although we are pleased to note that if we ever need to, we can stay with Aaron’s Uncle Gary), and no one was home when we arrived. There followed easily the most exciting moment of our second go-round in Sao Paulo, which involved Sheldon surreptitiously scrambling over a high garden wall, and then stacking patio furniture in order to hoist himself in through a second-floor bedroom window.

Cat burgling aside, the days that followed were inescapably dull. We dropped our car off at the mechanic’s (where our Portuguese-is-Spanish-with-a-weird-accent theory took a hit so grievous that we ended up having to call a local missionary to translate) walked home, and waited.

The sky was gray most every day,
The heat drove all ambition away,
We’d seen the sights, Gavin was out,
So mainly  we just sat around.

One night This Guy made apple pie,
The next we competently stirred some fry,
Updated the blog, balanced accounts,
And read a truly prodigious amount,

Thrice we attempted to call about,
Going kayaking near the house,
The phone didn’t work, so we passed the time,
Watching basketball, and TV shows online,

…And then we walked to the other missionaries’ home to see about the kayaks, but instead got a ride to the mechanic’s, where we picked up the car, and a missionary connection some ten hours’ driving down the road.

Next morning we drove. Afternoon--drove. Evening--drove. Then, just as our resolution foundered ‘pon the heat of the day and the be-rattlement of our brains in the car, we bumped up one dirt road, down another, and found ourselves, miraculously, at Burger King.  Actually, it was the home of Jonas and Iria Braun, who welcomed our scruff and grime and stink into their lovely walled-in property, where we spent two nights and a day, enjoying their company, the shade, and food fit for home. We told Iria that--could they be present--our mothers would thank her just as fervently as we did for pouring some nourishment o’er our sunburnt skin ‘n bones.

While we were there, we visited the Goiania YWAM base, at which Jonas and Iria’s son-in-law Mario is the director. He showed us their facilities, let their parrots climb on our shoulders, showed us their rehab program, and told us he’d be happy to give us yet another YWAM connection in Cuiaba, the city where we were hoping to drive next day.

The following day we set out early and made good time. In fact, we made such good time that when we missed our turn-off, we didn’t catch it until we’d been driving in the wrong direction for half an hour, at least. We corrected course, drove back to the place where we’d gone off-course…and spent a full hour getting facefuls of gesticulation and Portuguese from policemen, gas station attendants and bystanders. The Brazilian government--for reasons they’ve neglected to fill us in on--does not hold with this newfangled practice of signs that say road names on them. It is therefore possible that no one in the town actually knew the name of any road, and that that is why they pointed in 360 different directions. Then again, it is also possible that we were lodged behind a language barrier. At last, as we rolled hesitantly through a marketplace, we saw a small, battered wooden sign on it, bearing the name of a town along our route, and an arrow. We followed the arrow, and found ourselves again upon the proper path.
I choose the word ‘path’ because ‘road’ became swiftly inappropriate. Those of our readers who knew me at age 14 may recollect some general aspects of my complexion at the time. I do not exaggerate when I tell you that my fourteen-year-old face, stretched to the length and breadth of Highway 70 in Brazil would have provided a smoother ride, nose and all. Well. Perhaps not nose, but you know what I mean.

We spent a few short hours listening to what seemed like the ghostly wails of a thousand disembodied suspension engineers crying out together at each pothole, before traffic ground to an absolute stop. As night fell, and we saw on the GPS that we had covered less than half of the desired ground for the day, we reluctantly pulled into the parking lot of a hotel that seemed built specifically as a venue for composing gritty blues ballads. Instead of composing any, we spent the evening eating steak kebabs and staring at the air conditioner like thirteen-year-old boys, discovering suddenly that their calling in life is just to love, devotedly and without question.

Regrettably, morning pulled us away from our air conditioner, and placed us back on the road. The potholes, however, waged a less-aggressive war on our tires, and the worst that happened was a windshield wiper abruptly abandoning ship during a cloudburst. Oddly, this disaster was followed almost immediately by us discovering that some foreseeing hand of Providence had placed a spare windshield wiper blade in a small utility compartment beneath the rear storage space. And one infinitesimal piece of His mysterious ways clicked into place. We arrived in Cuiaba that evening, a blessed--if grungy and aromatic-trio.