The statue of Cristo Redentor - Christ the Redeemer - in Rio de Janeiro

The benefits of being a mid-level maritime officer are legion, but having lots of shore leave isn’t among them. Luckily there are also the members of the crimson choir, one of whom won’t be missed and can be sent on errands; i.e. go shopping for shampoo, razor blades, condoms and occasional photo shoots if the enticement of the port of call warrants such an endeavor.

Rio certainly does. My homie Ludin has a steady eye and promising feel for composition. He also has a mirror reflex Canon of unclear origin, but wherever he purloined it, we’re not there now, and I confidently send him on a reconnaissance mission towards Rio’s signature statue of Cristo Redentor – Christ the Redeemer – which has stared vacantly over the town from the top of Corcovado Mountain for eight decades now.

It’s a little after breakfast. I tell Ludin to don his civvies. “Taxi up, taxi down,” sound my staccato commands, while shoving three twenties in Ludin’s shirt pocket. “Ten minutes to shoot it. You should be back before coffee time.”

Later that evening Ludin waggles back on board. He’s wearing someone else’s shirt and is pulling Johnny Walker vapor trails. When he’s done explaining how his taxi had sprang a flat tire, how he was held up by the local gendarmerie after an undisclosed misunderstanding, and how he had lost his way back to the ship when he couldn’t afford his taxi ride back anymore, we tie his camera to the computer. Out roll close to two hundred photo’s of dazzling Brazilian beach babes, also revealing Ludin’s uncanny creativity in selecting focal points and zooming talents. Cristo Redentor is in there too somewhere. “Made by French guy,” Ludin exhales and unfolds a crumbled and sweaty promo flyer, “By guy named Paul Landowski.”

“Yeah, that sounds French,” I admit.

“Design by local guy name Heitor da Silva Costa. Stone come from Sweden.”

“Marvelous.”

“Is now one of New Seven Wonders of the World.”

“Wonder why. Are you going to go back to work anytime soon?”

“But I haven’t had coffee time yet!”

“Ah well, see you tomorrow then,” I say while behind me the storekeeper quietly begins to cast the two hundred Brazilian babes into an everlasting slide show.



Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado Mountain, Rio de Janeiro

Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro

Christ the Redeemer - detail

That's what it looks like when you're there...

Ludin was assigned volunteer duty and spent the next day cleaning filters...

Fog and Redemption in Rio de Janeiro

The port of Rio de Janeiro is one of the most spectacular ports to approach, and whoever isn’t on watch, stands out on deck to catch a glimpse. If there is anything to catch, however, the thick fog catches it first, and we stand there quite for nothing but to listen lusky to the town’s distant din floating in through the haze.

After a while of drifting in a featureless milky world, a lazy shudder informs us that we’re probably docked now. Some guys we’ve never seen before break from the clouds, angrily explaining things in Portuguese, from which we deduct that indeed we must be tied to shore. Someone surprisingly understands that these men are riled-up port, state and health authorities, but much of their explaining is lost to our inability to understand Portuguese.

Luckily my Draga is perfectly lusophone. She’s also as charming as two week old puppy, and soon the explaining becomes less urgent and seems to evolve from issues concerning pending maintenance and grave health violations to the exact whereabouts of the nearest H. Stern outlet.

Draga, namely, is besides besottingly charming also celebrating her birthday. I’ve been on high alert for weeks now, have selected the prettiest gems a generous but modest budget may be turned into, sent out spies to scout the land and have sworn the troops to secrecy apparently so effectively that Draga expects nothing but my forgetfulness.

We have the evening off and we can go ashore. That happens about once of month, so destinations are carefully selected and vehemently debated. Of course, with her having her birthday, the debate starts dangerously in my disfavor. I weaken her defenses with a set of ear-studs – made from astonishing black diamonds, which the naked eye can’t possibly distinguish from fake ones. Draga once explained that diamonds are so special because only the owner knows whether the diamonds are real or fake, and since no one but one self knows whether one truly loves someone else, diamond are the preferred medium to express this certainty. Since I truly love Draga, she gets to wear real diamonds. Now all I have to do is make sure we don’t end up somewhere noisy tonight.

“I’d like to take you to the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer,” I confidently try, “Then maybe we can swing by a cathedral or two, stroll a park and then head for a quick bite somewhere not too crowded.”

Draga poses in front of the mirror, flips her hair back and stares dreamily at her studs. “Oh, let’s go to Ipanema beach,” she says slowly. I am after all the only one who knows whether my diamonds are real. So let’s spend our precious evening of shore leave having a dinner in a restaurant full of bikers and half-naked bodybuilders rubbing their oily hides. I’m sure they all have girlfriends clad in green fluorescent minikini’s and they’ll serve the entire evening to prove the genuineness of my diamonds.

A shuttle bus takes us through town. My teary eyes cling to museums and churches whisking by and after a break-neck turn somewhere I fling myself in a reflex against the windshield to steal a photo when the contours of Christ the Redeemer flash like the Second Coming over the mountains. We tear along the famous Copacabana beach, where tourists can have their picture taken whilst being mugged, and come to a screaming halt at Ipanema beach, which is just west of Copacabana. The driver explains that the Rio guild of muggers has vowed to not mug tourists at Ipanema, so we can move around freely, speak English at full volume, take pictures and flash our sweaty wads of dollars around. Because, he assures, Rio de Janeiro is truly enlightened and tourists may pay in US dollars anywhere.

Soon after we are settled at an outside table of restaurant Astor, overlooking the beach. There’s a six lane highway between the beach and the rest of the world, and it has no safe way to get from beach to pub or vice versa. Traffic hurls itself hungrily onto crossers; fists are raised, curses are cast, but curiously enough, no one ever honks their horn.

Draga and I sit in relative peace and I’m even relaxed enough to realize that I’m blessed beyond the compass of superlatives. All bustle and dazzle of Rio dissolves in her single glance. All needs to know and regrets to have learned become superfluous in the simple urge to love and the ultimate joy of being loved back. Finding her at the heart of everything I realize that I love her entirely.

Foggy morning  - drifting into Rio de Janeiro

Christ the Redeemer through the window of a speeding bus

Ipanema Beach by night

Restaurant Astor on Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro

It takes a death defying bolt across six lanes to get to the beach

 

Salvador, Brazil - Dark Town

Under a leaden canopy Salvador lies still and sinister. In the distance myriads of churches become visible against the skyline. Perhaps a nice town to stretch the legs in some, I catch myself musing.

Perhaps in some other life. In this one, there’s no such thing as a day off.

“Welcome to Salvador!” cheers the pilot when he’s safe and well on board. “You want woman, woman? We have woman all kind. Big woman. Small woman. We have.”

Salvador, it appears has been a hub of depravity for centuries and it’s somewhat of a local objective to keep the predicate earned and obvious. But other than in, say, Skagway, Alaska, here tourists are actually warned. “Stay on the right side of the road,” advises the agent helpfully. “If you go on the left side, you might get stabbed and robbed or mugged.”

“Does that happen often?” we ask in arrested amusement.

“Hardly!” insists the man. “Last month only six or five times, maybe four.”

“Killed?”

“Only little bit. Not so much.

We decide to stay on board. Too bad though. It appears that this town has a particular persistent African influence on account of the many slaves that were moved through here. Not that I’m that wild about African influences (very much voodoo, says the agent) but any kind of foreign force usually makes for fun clues hidden in art and architecture, often put there by the labor force without the funding body’s knowledge, let alone consent.

It’s rumored that in Salvador there’s a church built by black people; their own place of worship as they weren’t allowed to come into white churches. It’s called Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Rosario dos Pretos (Church of Our Lady of the Rosary of the Blacks) and apparently is filled with statues and images of all black saints.

I would have gladly braved the left side of the road to see that church.

Arrival Salvador, Brazil

Salvador, Brazil on a rainy day

Salvador - Churches in all directions

Salvador - churches near the port

Bright seascape at departure Salvador

Maceio, Brazil - a slow and sweltering word

In the sweltering heat lies Maceio, yet another Brazilian city. For some peculiar reason I keep forgetting how large this country is. And we still have a few ports to go before we leave Brazilian waters.

We drift by cranes and barracks into the mouth of the city. The horizon melts and heaven stitches to the sea without a seem. Out in the distance ships are afloat, suspended on nothing, like the earth itself. Bright beaches highlight the skyline. A small tug slowly approaches. It’s too warm to do anything fast, it seems to say as it gentle nudges our hull and begins to push us onto our berth.

Maceio, Brazil

Drifting into Maceio on a hot day

Palm trees on the coast of Maceio, Brazil

Pier head of Maceio, Brazil

Tug boat in the port of Maceio, Brazil

Trinity

Boats suspended on nothing

Morning birds off the coast of Brazil

I love the mornings. Hours before anybody else I stand on deck and watch the world. Today a flock of birds accompanies us. I know they see me, but their interest goes after the fish our bow scares up. I don’t know what birds they are; they look like gannets but I recall that gannets don’t occur in South America.

We’re rounding the eastern most point of Brazil. The sun rose warm and the ocean is blue and smooth. The birds take turns diving down, then they glide along side us. I’m sure they’re looking at me, like I am looking at them. For one brittle moment we belong together. Then they go back to diving, and I return to work.

Morning birds off the coast of Brazil

A gannet, perhaps?

A bird flying over the ocean

Bird over water, seen from above

Bird over water

Two sea birds flying toward the sun

Fortaleza, just north of the eastern-most point of Brazil

A small but beaming man stands on the dock arrested in a half-dance. “Welcome, welcome!” he shouts when the first lines are cast through the pelting rain. “Welcome to Fortaleza!. It rarely ever rains here!”

We Dutch are no strangers to rain but rain like what’s falling on this city of millions, notorious for its drought, is powerfully at odds with our sense of moderation or justice for that matter. It’s really denser than a shower, raising a deafening racket from the roofs and decks and the water around us. During our approach we saw the sun-bathed skyline of Fortaleza rise like a tsunami on the horizon, but as soon as we reached the breakwaters, the sky turned black and the city disappeared behind a sheet of frosted glass.

We’re in with a group. It’s always a bit strange to see other ships so close. At sea encounters are deadly and are avoided with zeal. In ports we carefully drift together, forgiving and needy, like clumsy nomadic creatures during mating season. Directly to our stern a Panamanian vessel is loading. Off the pier are tankers, rubbing like whales. Crews stare at each other, wondering if life is the same, better or worse on the other ships.

Landlubbers have no idea about life at sea. Even the passengers of the great white cruise ships can only guess. Sometimes an apprentice turns into a writer after a few months of sailing, but very rarely a true veteran - a true ancient mariner – remembers enough of land-life to be able to convey the slings and arrows of sea-life. We stand on the aft deck and look silently at the men standing on their own. Someone ought to go tell them, we think. Let them know where we are.

Approaching Fortaleza, Brazil

Ships in the harbour of Fortaleza

A ship in the harbour of Fortaleza

Fortaleza, Brazil

Tug boat in the harbour of Fortaleza

Out to sea again

Nightfall over Fortaleza

Fortaleza by night

Panameaian vessel loading

Crossing the Equator

It’s always a bit of an adventure, crossing the equator, and although I’ve crossed many times before, crossing the equator never ceases to instill a certain other-worldly feeling in me. Crossing the equator brings us as much to another world as is possible. We will spend the next few weeks in the southern hemisphere. It’s summer here. Ocean currents and thermal winds go the other way and we are aliens to whoever we meet.

The equator is exactly 1296000.000 (that’s six raised to the power of four followed by a bunch of zeroes) nautical miles long, which may seem a miracle in an Intelligent Design sort of way but is far from it, in any way. One sea mile is defined as one arch-second of the equator. Since the equator, like any other circle, covers precisely 360 degrees, and every degree consists of 60 minutes, and every minute consists of 60 seconds, the length of one mile equals the circumference of the earth at the equator, divided by 360 x 60 x 60. When the mile was standardized, the equator was thought to be 2400192000 meters long, resulting in a standard length of the sea mile of 1852 meters.

Pushing mile after mile behind us, we’re headed for Antarctica. It may be the last time I see that great continent. In an emailed newspaper we read that international shipping agencies have decided to no longer allow larger vessels access to this great wild continent. That’s probably better for all of us, I must confess, but I’m glad I’ve been one of the very few who’s seen it, and will again, once more.



Crossing the Equator



East bound on the Amazon

It takes us days to follow the Amazon river east out to the Atlantic ocean. And all the while the ship is enveloped in the thick smell of rain and jungle. We cut through showers so thick that we have to slow down blinded, then speed up again beneath towering cumuli, crying out in amazement that the Amazon has beaches like Greek islands.

Whenever we stop – to disembark a pilot, to wait for something that the captain knows about but the engineers can only guess at – canoes pull off the banks towards us. Four kids approach us slowly. Shouldn’t you be in school? we shout in English first, then Portuguese, but the kids stare at us silently. Two men come in from behind and try to climb on board through the bunker break. We ward them off. The kids stare and say nothing.

The coasts diverge and fall away but the yellow mud is still around us. Geographically we’re on the Atlantic again, but the water we drift in is still that of the river. Then the ship gets picked up by the swell that rolls in freely from the east. We head south towards the equator and the water turns to glass.

Felipe Lettersten at the Palace of Justice in Manaus

Have we heard of Felipe Lettersten? asks the kind lady who guided us through the museum of the Church of Immaculate Conception in Manaus. Draga and I confess that we haven’t. Well, that’s an outrage then!

We follow her to the Palace of Justice, just down the street. The exposition is closed, explains a nervous young man at the entrance but the kind lady wags her head, unclips ropes and pushes us past the ticket counter. Shouldn’t we pay something, I try, but the lady urges us to keep moving.

Felipe Lettersten appears to be a sculptor of Scandinavian descent but raised in South America. A text explains that  he’s learned his skills in various places in the world – hyper-realism in the Netherlands, I proudly learn – and now uses it to depict South American natives in full sized sculptures.

His work is nothing short of amazing. The exposition covers several rooms and everywhere we’re met by the dreamy, other-worldly stares of real people that were alive just a minute ago, their movements arrested in their frozen times. It’s probably as close as an uninitiated observer can ever get to these people without turning them into tourist attractions. Draga and I stroll like invisible angels through an ancient village, feeling like we’re truly treading holy ground.

Find Felipe Lettersten on Facebook

 

Sculpture by Felipe Lettersten



Sculpture by Felipe Lettersten



Sculpture by Felipe Lettersten



Sculpture by Felipe Lettersten





Sculpture by Felipe Lettersten





Sculpture by Felipe Lettersten



Sculpture by Felipe Lettersten - close up

Sculpture by Felipe Lettersten