The days were speeding by, and soon it would be time to leave.

The near month had passed quickly, and her mind overflowed
with information……..her heart with feelings as yet unsorted.
The memories of what those last two weeks held tumbled
into view, as she anticipated leaving Brasil, and Him.

Soon after the daughter went home, and half their time together
had already passed, he took command and as Captain of the
little Gervel ship, deciding it was time for him to show her the
world out there, beyond the gates.
They packed and planned for a grand getaway into the hills
behind Rio, and he did his military thing, with a checklist,
and assigning her her duties.

One very amusing aspect of this trip was their musical choices…
She had brought some favorites from her now vast Brasil collection,
and chose carefully,  packing up a little zipper bag of her very best
ones.  For years, as she’d listened to so much music from Brasil, and
she’d wished he’d been there to translate….and  now…!

He, meanwhile, packed up His bag of favorites, and once in the car
and showing eachother what they’d each brought, they had quite
a laugh….
There She was with Jobim and Veloso and Nascimento, and
Here He was with Willy Nelson, Neil Young, Janis, the Stones,
Van Morrison, and Sade ….  funny stuff.

Well, at least they had a good selection, although facts were he didn’t
want to listen to Brasilian music at all…. overload perhaps….?
so they dined on the USA all the way.

His bitter disgust with Brasil in general had a lot to do with that,
but more so, she thought, it was his nostalgic love of the past times…
Ten years…… of living in the States.
He had issues with the politics, but he loved the freedom
and free thinking West Coast of California.
He actually envied her having been a hippie in the sixties… and
knew that if he’d been here, he would have been right beside her.
And she loved his taste in music, especially Neil and Sade…

Since she had seen little of Brasil, besides the freeways and this
quaint island in the middle of the Bay, she found it hard to imagine
what lay ahead, but his excitement overflowed onto her.
Ever the Adventurer, he would now be in his element.

The Gervel performed like a little jeep, and once they were on the
backroads of red clay and gravel and sometimes cobblestone,
sometimes stones,  they moved back in time, through layers of
this convoluted land.
There were times when the views from rainforest mountain
tops were completely 360,
…Nothing but forest in every direction.

Thrilling, mesmerizing, terrifying, waves of every feeling and
emotion passing over her through the hours and days they took
into the unknown.
They didn’t see another car for hours at a time.  Mostly Not…
They were truly into the wilderness, and with wild and treacherous
landscapes.
Still, she trusted him implicitly, and knew he would take care of
her, no matter the circumstances.

It seemed like every turn revealed yet another Waterfall, a
Cashoeira… such glorious beauty, with flocks of loud and colorful
birds scattering into the trees and across their views.

One day, it took Two Hours to go Two Miles.  It was a varying
combination of dirt, then large rocks mixed with deep ruts, then a
little patch of road of some sort, then rough gravel over old
cobblestones, then drop off to big rocks and ruts…. the little Gervel
performed like the trouper she was… climbing and plunging,
crawling and struggling, yet always proceeding onwards…
…Sort of like Him.

This was on what was called The King’s Road, and he told her that
this was where all the Gold in the country had been carried over
the mountains on the backs of slaves, eons ago.

“…and don’ you think one or two of them hid some gold somewhere,
when they stopped to pee?
Don’ you think some was dropped, when they fell down and
were being beaten ?
“Babe!  if we had a metal detector, we could come back up here
an hunt for gold!”

There were vistas breaking through of groups of the Pau d’Arco tree,
covered in brilliant pink flowers, a medicinal wonder whose bark is the
strongest detoxifier known, and used for thousands of years as an
anti oxidant, anti bacterial, fungal and virus cleanse.

Valleys and hillsides covered with a very special, now protected tree,
because it had been so ravaged by cutting and burning…
the Parana Pine, the Brasilian Pine… stately, elegant, beautiful,
and spreading plentifully across the vistas before them.

How to describe driving for hours through places that
No human, or anything related to Human, is visible, and then
suddenly coming upon the most incredible mansion, farm,
villa or vineyard, just there all by itself in the glory of
wide open varietal rain forest hillsides.

Passing by little villages, she saw  a cart being pulled
by a donkey,  people relaxing amongst the bundles.
Brown skinned families walked peacefully along the grassy paths,
and it could be that they had time traveled into another century.

One night they stayed in a small town, Santa Clara,  that had a
hoppin’ bar and some simple street life, an art gallery, although it
was probably all of a few hundred people total who lived there.
Little street vendor spots, where she bought herself a beaded
bracelet, in opalescent blues and lavenders.
They were like cute little hippies, young and smiling, loving
to say the two or three English words they knew, always looking
as though they were having the most wondrous time of their life.

The two of them got so Toasted….and notice that’s with a capital T….
Oh, Good Lord as he would say, beyond belief…
…so much so that when they’d had their fill of dancing and kissing and
running hilariously hand in hand, they jumped into the Gervel, and
suddenly realized they Couldn’t remember if the motel they’d found
was up the hill, or back down.

Taking the gamble, they headed up.  The little backroads went on
forever, it seemed…  and remembering all the little dirt roads, all the
turns… and it was all very spinny for her, and she wondered just how
on earth he was driving these little dirt roads to what seemed like
nowhere, with so many turns and so many choices to make….
back and forth, and it was crazy shit…and she would began to slightly
panic, as much as she could maintain any continuous state of mind,
with such an inebriated brain, whose thoughts changed every five
seconds, with all the laughter and singing going on.

He just trudged on, and wait….There….around the turn, Lights….!
Turning into the driveway now, where that beloved bed awaited, all
soft and inviting, their exhausted and confused bodies.
Hello…..!!!!!

“How did you Do that?” she wondered at him, completely
Beyond Belief, over How the heck he’d they’d even landed …

“I have no idea…!”  he laughed….

His internal gyroscopic compass was working just fine somehow…..
Out they tumbled … quite literally… and fell upstairs to deep sleeps.

The next morning …..she realized she couldn’t find her shoes……..
And now….. where the heck was her bra…!
Very strange… what the what?…. where…?
They turned the room upside down, under the bed, along the walkway.
At last,  she trudged downstairs to the car, and …..
There they were!!!…in the car….!!!

Apparently she’d taken them off in all that hilarity, and had no
recollection whatsoever of having done such, with the top down and
their oblivious semi consciousnesses, trundling along blindly.

“It’s a wonder,” she thought, “that I didn’t throw them overboard,
the state I was in… !  That would have been interesting, cruising the
roads, trying to find my bra!”
“Excuse me sir, have you seen a green lace bra on your walk?”
….and they laughed all the way into their next delight….