This day looked like it had fang marks on it already due to Marcelo’s having to take somebody else and leaving us to our own and Sylvia’s devices. Sob. Jean and Pettus had investigated the ferries thoroughly, and had originally wanted to take the fast boat from the station that Oscar Niemeyer had designed. But it was closed. Oh really? Closed? You don’t say!

They found out that the big ferry leaves every twenty minutes from the station on the bay in downtown Niterói. From the station in Rio we could get a cab, or try the metro, or any number of things. Oh joy! It sounded so organized. Actually, I didn’t give a rip what happened as long as I didn’t have to plan it, and could just sit around with my churren and watch Brazilian music videos and rag on things and cut the fool together. It was so easy to make Patricia laugh, which doubled the fun. Dry, understated Daniel and rip-roarin’ cousin Ben would gang up on her for lengthy hilarity-fests. My favorite new imitation was the host of Brazilian Covernation’s “muthafuckkah!”

We had finally eaten all of the chocolate cake, so Maria had baked a scrumptious pound cake to take its place. She had also gotten a feel on our eating needs, and cooked the requisite amount of bacon, loaded Pettus with cheese ball things, especially with D & P on board, and had cooked the fried eggs to perfection. We didn’t see much of Robson. I think he sat out on the deck and sang most of the time.

After breakfast, Jean got on the phone with Sylvia to get us transportation to the ferry station.
We also didn’t realize how much we had it made with Marcelo, because we all fit in his car together. This time, we were gonna have to get two cabs. Sylvia assured us that they would know what to do: take us to the ferry station. That was fine, because each car would have the advantage of a slightly used Cerqueira Translating Device aboard. We thought.

Jean was still getting her stuff together, and given the size of her MawMaw purse and the stuff she puts in it, that can be a considerable amount of time. The first cab was already there, and before we knew it, Robo, Pettus, Daniel and Patricia had taken off in it. Holy shit! What were we gonna do?
Call Sylvia and ask if she was sure she got two cabs, and where was the other cab if that were so. She assured us that everything was fine. The “tax” would be there any minute. He had had a problem. Sure. Likely story, we thought.

We were standing by the door with all our stuff together, when we heard a honk outside. Well that’s good. Stage one is complete. We headed out to the car to greet a grizzled little Brazilian guy with a cigarette stub in his teeth and a mole the size of a cherry on his cheek. He graciously opened the door for Jean, and I got in the front. “We want to go to the ferry station,” I told him, feeling sure he didn’t speak English. He didn’t. He just looked at me, smiled and spewed Portuguese from around the cigarette stub, did a quickie three-point turn, honked at the guard, and roared off down the street.

“Sylvia called you for us?” Jean asked from the back seat.

“Sylvia,” he said. That was all.

He had no trouble finding his way back out, and we were on the main boulevard by the McDonald’s presently. He took a right. That was good. He was on roads I knew. That was good. Then he took a turn I wasn’t familiar with. And started whistling. Not just “whistling,” but making beautiful bird-like tones in a melody that wasn’t really a melody, but was beautiful nevertheless.

It began to have shadings of some kind of noir film, where the hideous kidnapper has the hidden depth to possess a talent such as singing or knitting, that will bring tears to the eyes. Naah. He knew where he was supposed to be going. Didn’t he? Jean and I looked at each other like, “WTF?”

“One of the kids is gonna be in each taxi from now on,” Jean said firmly from the back seat,  clutching that big purse like the grandmother in Flannery O’Connor’s chilling “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” I nodded dumbly. The beautiful whistling continued. Possibly the cigarette butt was acting as a reed of sorts. It was all so bizarre and unsettling enough for me to only glance at the beautiful downtown buildings before we rounded a corner and came to a halt at the curb of the ferry terminal.

Jean and I both exhaled with joy and began blurting our obrigadoes to the driver. He smiled broadly, shook my hand as I gave him the money Jean shoved at me, got in his cab and didn’t roar off like I expected. He kind of hunched off. The car lurched repeatedly as he made his way down the road and out of sight. Jean and I looked at each other quizzically, and both said, “Maybe Sylvia wasn’t kidding.”

We turned toward the ticket booth, still not seeing the others. There was nothing else to do but get tickets. Surely they hadn’t taken the ferry without us. Naaaah.  Naaaah???

Naaaah! There they were! We rushed up to them and Jean spouted her previous “last words” verbatim to everybody. “We were scared shitless!” we said in unison. “I thought we were gonna be fuckin’ KIDNAPPED!” I shouted quietly, loving to drop the F-bomb around D & P. The hyperbole was just an extra fun way to illustrate a point.

And here was the ferry! We all got on together, finding seats with no problem. It was a big, modern thing, with a refreshment counter in the center, airplane-like seats with way more leg room, and big, clean windows. I wondered at the food amenities aboard, knowing this was a short little hop. But after gradually getting the picture that just because we were on vacation didn’t mean everybody else was, I realized that if you did this
every day going to and from work, the snack counter may be just what you would need.

We got seated easily, me next to a cute Brazilian girl with sexy high heels on. In my relief at not being currently held for ransom, I began to gush to her about my standard topics: the beauty of Brazil, the beauty of Brazilian women, and the sexiness of her shoes. She was very nice, and spoke enough English, when combined with my Spaniguese, to have a brief exchange.

When the ferry landed (quickly, I thought), we headed up the gangplank with the masses like people coming onto Ellis Island. Once we were out there, what did we do?

Get two cabs.

Where were we going to go?

The art museum?

Okay.

So Patricia directed one, and Daniel the other cab driver to the art museum in downtown Rio.
Our driver was faster than the other one, because he let us off, took the money, and screeched off before we could catch our breath. We turned around to look at the big modern concrete structure. There wasn’t a soul in sight. If there had been tumbleweeds in Rio, they would have been blowing. Just then, the other cab pulled up.

The others got out, and paid their guy before we could stop them.

“This place may be closed,” we told them as they came over to join us.

“Great. Well, let’s go in here. There’s a guy in here,” somebody said.

We went through the double glass doors into a small lobby decorated with some great sculpture from the collection and a guard behind the desk. This was a real guard, with a uniform and everything. Patricia began the discourse, finding out quickly that the place was closed.

Since the museum was out, we decided to go on to the marina early. The afternoon’s activities were the only thing planned, as we had decided to take a bay cruise on one of the public boats at 30 bucks each. A private excursion would have cost the 6 of us over 1400 dollars, according to Sylvia, so a public cruise it was. We needed to get to the marina. “Ask him if we can walk to the marina,” Pettus said. “We can just go on there. Surely there’s stuff we can do. And we can find out about the boat.”

Patricia laid her delicious Portuguese on the guy, a large, dark man. He replied in emphatic tones, causing her to back up slightly as he spoke to her. She returned something shyly to him, then led us out the door. The guy half-smiled as I threw an obrigado over my shoulder.

When we got outside, Patricia said, “He told me that we would be unwise to try to walk to the marina. And I mean, he said it in terms like, in English would be ‘you guys would be F-in’ idiots to walk to the marina.’ I think he meant it.”

“Really?” Pettus was almost incredulous.

“He wasn’t kidding,” Patricia continued. “He said they’ll pull a knife on you.”

“Well I ain’t walkin’ to no marina anyway,” I stated. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna have to call Sylvia to get us a tax.”

“The guy said there were some down the street somewhere,” Patricia said.

I was loving the idea of wandering around looking for a gol-durned “tax”. Just loving it. I clutched my camera so tightly that I almost absorbed it. But fortunately, we saw a gaggle of cabs down the street a ways, and began a beeline toward them. I had the rotating head on high as we sped down the street. We passed some incredibly beautiful and exotic flowers growing from some trees, but I dared not take a picture. Besides, I was going to need surgery to remove the camera from my abdomen.

We were fortunate enough to find a cab van which accommodated Daniel in the very back with the propane tank. Nobody cared. We wanted to go to the marina. Before we all piled in the giant yellow cab/van, I took this shot of a cool tree. Things were looking up.