These mini travelogues are the result of an exercise I once tried; writing one hundred words a day for one hundred days, the point being to gain discipline and economy with the written word. Once started, it became addictive. A terse sort of prose is the usual result; in which one tries capturing the essence of time and place. Although I may have been a little liberal with the facts in some, it’s only to better express the spirit of the experience. Some over the one hundred word parameter have been added, just for mischief. Maybe you’d care to count?
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Escaping the pretentiousness of the township, one glides up through refreshing alpine forests to the summit. Hovels line the road to the top; local black kids wave, smiling as we pass. From the peak one is immediately swept up in the grand vista of rolling grasslands and vast hulking bluffs spreading away as far as the eye can see. One imagines the first explorers here on horse back, these lands simply there for the taking. What must their first thoughts have been? I wanted to get on a horse and just ride away, sharing that freedom. Of course I didn’t. Instead we climbed back into the car and went for coffee in one of the ridiculous make-believe Swiss Chalets in the town.
Swiss style architecture at Campos do Jordan |
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Campos do Jordao, highland retreat for wealthy Paulistos wanting to escape the madness of Sao Paulo. They come it seems in summer to this bizarre collection of Swiss Chalets, as incongruous in the lush semi-tropical landscape of hibiscus and frangipani as they are ugly. A frightful mudslide once killed hundreds of the local blacks who live alongside the township in rough makeshift shacks; there to serve the dominant whites in modern day servitude presented politely as a summer resort. We drank rich Brazilian coffee in high raftered coffee houses snacking on Swiss style chocolates amidst cobbled lanes and rose gardens. |
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BORDER SIGN AT ST LAURENT DU MARONI |
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It’s a Graham Greene kind of sign; conjuring moldering border posts in corrupt banana republics. This one innocuous enough, simply a timetable of ferry crossings between St Laurent du Maroni, French Guiana and Albina on the Suriname side But it’s the rusting print ravaged by equatorial heat and rain that evokes images of something darker, more sinister, menacing even. One thinks immediately of mercenaries lurking along the verdant river banks; of shady dealings conducted in the decaying colonial houses that line the streets; of venal officials taking bribes and all the while treacherously setting one up for arrest and lengthy unexplained detentions. The bullet holes in the concrete reception post do nothing to assuage that impression.
Border Sign at St Laurent du Maroni |
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I take only my shorts and towel, nothing else. Afternoon heat makes the scrubby savannah behind Kourou’s beach unbearable. I pass an Amerindian woman wearing rubber boots and carrying a machete. Small groups of them subsist here. On the sand I kick a small black twig until it writhes and realize it’s a water snake; the most venomous there is I understand later. Wandering back, refreshed; planning my first rum punch, I see the woman now, slashing her machete at a pack of circling, snarling, mouth-frothing dogs. There is rabies here and I have only my towel to defend myself. |
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Freed from bureaucracy’s claws, we trudge away from the cooling river onto the unrelenting heat of the dusty, potholed road leading to the main township of St Laurent du Maroni and with luck, an air-conditioned hotel. There are no taxis and we struggle under the weight of our bags. We pause at a café for fresh croissants and coffee. Ceiling fans whirl overhead, giving brief respite. Gnarled old men, some tattooed, but all wizened, decrepit with vacant, unsmiling countenances stare silently at us from shaded doorways as we resume our trek. Who are they, ex-convicts? Still France’s unwanted I wonder?
Piranha country Marowinje River: Traveling from Albina on the Surinam side to St Laurent Du Maroni, French Guiana |
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Travelogue