In Fortaleza

The first part of my trip to the NE part of Brasil is under way. As soon as I arrived yesterday, I went for a very long walk down the beach. The pace of life here is quite a bit different than that of Rio. You can walk down a portion of the beach and see people fixing their rickety fishing boats while gruff, old men play cards and laugh over beer. I watched one man create a fishing net on the sidewalk. He had two lengths of thick fishing lined tied to two trees. One was above the other by about 4 or 5 feet. He then set to work weaving thinner fishing line between them. His work took his entire focus. I don’t think he even knew I was there.

Today I’m meeting a guy from couchsurfing.com. At least I hope I am meeting him. We talked last night about getting together for a tour of the city. I’ll give him a call this afternoon. He seems like a stand-up guy. It’s always nicer for me to see places with someone else. I tend to have more courage in groups. That’s probably true for a lot of people.

My Portuguese has improved a lot lately, but I’m still not where I want to be. I can usually ask the question I want or make the statement I want to make, but I can’t understand the reply. This happened a lot on the plane here. For some reason, a Brasilian dude took a liking to me. He was really talkative and wouldn’t listen to my pleas to slow down. Maybe he had an accent or something, but I couldn’t even recognize simple words. He was asking me about the hotel I was staying at and the word “hotel” was completely lost on me. He repeated it several times before I realized what the hell he was talking about. Granted, The word “hotel” is pronounced differently in Portuguese, but I’ve heard it a lot since being in Brasil. He called this morning and we had a fruitless conversation. I have no idea what he was talking about. He said “mulher” (“woman”) a lot. Maybe he’s some sort of pimp who was trying to hook me up with his finest ho. Oh well, my loss, I guess.