So I hate Christmas and normally pracitce complete avoidance of all the Christmas nonsense, but being so disassociated from normal life has actually driven us to seek some sort of familiarity and commemoration, and we’ve been walking tropical streets singing Christmas carols.
We did our Christmas shopping in the Sao Cristovao market the day before Christmas eve. Thirty minutes and a 40 reais budget each, we each dashed off and reconvened with bags full of brilliant presents for each other. Sao Cristovao market is utterly brilliant; it runs from Friday evening straight through the whole weekend. It’s inside a kind of stadium thing (turnstiles and metal detectors to enter) and as well as over 600 stalls selling a combination of crafts, food (hot barbequed cheese on a stick, oh I am in heaven) and tat of the finest order, has several music stages and a host of pub-cum-restaurant-cum-dancehalls around the periphery, where old and young samba with friends and strangers, whirling each other about and around each other with a skill we are totally devoid of.
On Christmas eve we took a bus (actually the most comfortable coach I’ve e ver been on in my life) to Paraty, which is a sort of tropical St Ives, with white houses and cobbled streets, contained on one side a gentle sea, on the others, forested hills disappearing into cloud. We did some frenetic last minute Christmas shopping in the rain and gradually reduced our pace as the rain eased off and the soporific ambience of the town seduced us.
As the day faded we stepped into the doorway of a church, where a service was slowly unfolding by candlelight, the unfamiliar carols achingly warm and gentle. Locals and visitors, pressed close together and spilling onto the street, turned together as an enormous double rainbow suddenly framed the clearing evening sky, and we all stood together gazing upwards as the voices from inside the church swelled and soared. A and I stood with our arms around each other’s shoulders watching the rainbow until it faded, peacefully and blissfully happy.
Later, we came to the square; a group of men had taken a table into the street and sat around it playing and singing samba songs about Paraty, drums, guitars, pandeiros, percussion, a centrifugal force of songs that everyone seemed to know. Others falling in and out of the periphery, joining in, taking over the instruments, the men from the bar circling and refilling the beer glasses, “mais uma? Mais uma?”.
We woke up in our Christmas pousada, had our Christmas coffee and breakfast, then told a couple of white Christmas lies in order to check out of that pousada and took ourselves off to a much posher one round the corner. There we sat in the Christmas tropical garden, reassembled our plastic Christmas tree and pile of Christmas presents (wrapped using strips of elastoplast in the absence of any sellotape) and exchanged our Christmas gifts, which collectively included some Christmas cachaca, a Christmas catapult, some Christmas Havainas, a Christmas pamphlet entitled O Amor Na Tempo Do AIDS, an abundance of various Christmas sugary goods, some Christmas nuts, and much Christmas jewellery.
After a thorough session of Christmas epilation, we took ourselves off to the Christmas beach, where we did some Christmas swimming in the nice warm Christmas sea, ate some Christmas burgers, had a little Christmas nap and got a little Christmas sunburn.
We found a great restaurant to have our Christmas dinner (huge prawns in a passion fruit sauce), came back late, spoiled, sated, and finished the day pulling our three slightly squashed Christmas crackers
Our other flatmate, the lovely L, who is at home holding the fort while we gallivant around here, gave us the crackers when we left. They’ve been in my backpack for 3 weeks, which is why they were squashed. L has an amazing ability for creating surprises, crafting perfect little moments ages in advance. She had predicted with uncanny aptitude how much we would love wearing paper hats in a foreign clime (I’m typing this in bed at 2am, still wearing mine). We discovered in our crackers, alongside chocolate coins and some handmade Christmas decorations, a little handwritten quote each that she’d put inside each one. Anais Nin’s advice that “life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage” provided the perfect end to a lovely day. Thanks L.
Finally, much love to all, sorry I wasn´t in touch, but my thoughts were with you. x
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