Trippin

Grenada is a specially beautiful Caribbean island. If it wasn't an American military base I would recommend everyone to go. 
There we learned that one of its main export products is nutmeg. From it they extract macis, a red membrane that involves the nut, which is also used as a spice - with a different flavor and aroma. 
We also learned that if you eat a whole nutmeg , or 5 grams of its ground product, it can produce intoxication effects such as lack of control over movements, and auditive and visual hallucinations. It contains myristicin, which inhibits irreversibly the effect of an enzyme called monoamine oxidase, which on its turn catalyzes hormones such as noradrenaline, dopamine e serotonin. The former activate attentiveness and regulate humor states such as euphoria and depression. 
In Granada we also met the Captain of a tug who offered us quite a bit of cash to work aboard under full (meaning complete) regime. This man looked just like Kojak and also came from Borneo! So we declined... cause going on was necessary. 
Our participation in Act IV finished at Puerto La Cruz, in Venezuela, once more.
And that is how Iemanjá came about. She was a a 42 foot single made catamaran skippered by Avi, who took us in and sheltered from the insane life until we got to Saint Marteen.

Business World

At Majorca we quickly found a placement at a Canadian-built 114 footer called "Act IV".

She was just being bought by her new owner, too, who was such a smart businessman he decided to sail her off Spanish regulatory waters so he wouldn't pay any taxes on the purchase.

He also took all shotguns - quite a few - that were sold with the boat by its previous Arabic owner, and simply dumped them overboard right at the main harbor. 

Needless to say there were quite a few divers searching for them a couple of hours later.

This piece of exaggeration had a piano and a jacuzzi aboard it, and also two immense Caterpillar generators. I could literally run from one side to the other of the galley. She also had electric winches, so efficient, that on the sail towards Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Antigua, and Grenada, I hardly saw the sails. So we weren't very happy.

Our Captain was this George Bush-type with a sullen character, and our boss used to pay us counting bill by bill and saying: 'EASY COME, EASY GO'... Ah, and the typical business world deal - my pay as a hostess was half the amount Paul earned, even though that large ship was solely kept clean by me.

That's just some people's natures - and they've made the world turn, up until today, as it is. A world were many still starve and few have enough to keep all these people alive with just a quaint gesture into their pockets. You make your judgement.

The Passage

Even if you do have roots, you might wanna keep moving... that's me. There was no way I was going to stop at Portugal, my father-land.
At places where you find remarkable mountains such as Cape of Good Hope and the Straight of Gibraltar - both inhabited by baboons - nature is wild, and it shouts. At these millenarian capes, straights and points, you can smell history in the air. Agulhas divides the Atlantic Ocean from the Indian. Cape Horn is the start of austral land and separates the Atlantic from the Pacific. In Gibraltar, you can see Africa from Europe. Whenever you are in a place like this, breathe in and smell this strategic, and beautiful, and genuine watershed point. It is a way of appreciating nature.

So that's how we got to Cadiz. There I saw that Spanish people wake up at night - and I mean children, the elderly and youngsters. 
We disembarked from Alibi and embarked a French flagged yacht for a couple of days. Amongst the crew there was a French couple with a 6 month old baby. The boy would wake up laughing. His mother was a doctor, but she was also a backpacker. They used to walk him all over the boat on a harness. When the famous Gibraltar dolphins came to greet the boy wouldn't stop laughing. He seemed to understand their sounds. The dolphins also smiled. I saw it.
What an incredible, extraordinary and immense nature. She greets us with the gift of interacting with dolphins, the only animal - besides men - that keeps playing after reaching adulthood. 
I arrived in Majorca with this very strong impression upon me.

Back to Roots

So the circular winds went their way once more, and took us through Rio, Cape Town, Paris, Vinay... However, we had a choice, so we changed our destiny to Belgium, the land of 365 beer brands, and the most famous comics of the world. But our landmark was not Brussels, city of manons and chocolate smell on the streets, or the idyllic Bruges, but Niewpoort aan Zee. You can only find one thing there - The North Sea, with many many boats.
The brown North Sea is imposing. Aboard Alibi, a Jeanneau Melody, let by its owner  Jacques Quesnoit, we went to Brittany. The fog there is no legend - you can cut it with a knife. For a whole day, we weren't able to see the bow on the 10 meter yacht. Since we didn't have a radar, nor a GPS, or sight, we counted on our flair. It didn't work, though: once we had to go about in a hurry, after we saw waves breaking on some beach, and another time a HUGE ship horn buzzed my heart out of the chest cavity, and the fear of drowning in those waters was so strong, I had to swallow to send it back to its place. 
We stopped at awesome Brest, a land were you experience 5 meter tides and delicious oysters. It is very representative of the Brittany of resistance, the Celt's promised land.
It felt just like Uderzo's and Goscinny's Great Crossing.

So to end the great circle, we returned to our father land - Portugal. We fished a shark while towing a lure behind the boat, and she seemed quite drowned. With a great deal of caution, we removed both hooks she had on her mouth and returned her to sea.
Cause that's where its creatures belong: in their nature.

Moving in Circles

It was January 1989. Aboard Jaruschke, a South African 52 footer, with Zeca Martino as skipper, we did Natal-Vitoria-Rio-Cape Town, as if we moved in circles. On that trip we grew sprouts, made fresh bread, listened to music and had great interaction. Lovely passage.

However, on the first part of the trip, the boat almost sank because of a large hole in the anchor locker. We were a bit freaked (and sicked) out by all the pumping - and electrical pumps DO fail - but it all turned out fine: Zeca dived, found the hole and plugged it. The steering quadrant also cracked in the middle of the Atlantic, and that made the rudder very heavy. We were in 3, and I quickly got quite tired of the long shifts. Because we had very stable aft winds, Zeca simply pulled out his state-of-the-Art invention called "autopilot", which consists of a rubber band attached to one side of the rudder, and the large genoa halyard well trimmed attached to the other side, and we 3 decided to take our chances and have a couple of well-deserved nights of sleep. 

There was also amazing interaction with remarkable birds we called "ballerinas", cause they danced on top of the surf following us the whole way. So did the black-browed albatrosses. We say they are souls of sailors who lost their lives at sea.

Albatrosses are impressive cause they have the largest wingspans amongst birds, reaching up to 3,5 meters. Their beaks are really strong. These creatures take a long time to mature sexually, and they keep a single monogamist relationship for the rest of their lives. Albatrosses often return to their original colony to procreate, making their nests in isolated islands where there's no history of mammals. They take good and long care of their egg - one by nestling season - and their offspring must be at least one year old until they can fly. Albatrosses fly for very long distances - sometimes circumpolar - for they can plane easily without spending much energy. They can live up to 50 years.
Of the 21 Albatross species known to men, 19 are in extinction.

Nowadays, Zeca works chartering between Natal and Fernando de Noronha on his Borandá.

The Amazon

The Venezuelan military woulnd't grand us a break until we got to the Brazilian border. That's in the middle of nowhere, far from anything called civilization. Nature is wild in the Amazon, but the nature of Amazonian people is simply fierce.
The very curious architecture in Boavista shows a contrast between simple buy-and-sell gold shops and fancy tinted glass banks - Brazilian AND International. There are also a few large houses where mangoes and cashews cover the ground in abundance. After we got the information on how to extract cashew nuts from their shells, we bluntly followed instructions, and ended up voiceless and with peeling skin on our hands. The thing is, the oil around the shell contains urushiol, which is used to produce industrial products such as insecticides, resins, break pads and so on. Ouch!
We hitched a ride to the South, envisaging Natal or Recife. In one of those rides we jumped into the trunk of a 4 by 4 full of cashews. Our clothes were tinted with this curious stain, which you can only see in cashew picking time. We where also advised by this old native guy not to piss on the rivers, even if they look shallow. The reason for that is they either have piranhas or candirus. (Ouch! Ouch!) If you like fishing, click on the links bellow to appreciate data on them. After riding for 5 hours on those roads my internal parts seemed to have moved. We booked into the furthest dormitory I have ever been to, but we had to leave in the middle of the night because it was impossible to deal with the roaches. Ooooooooouch...
Sightseeing in the Amazon is not what you expect, at least from ground level. You see lots of open spaces, where people raise cattle. You also see foreigners - especially north Americans. The few trees that still stand and the majestic Brazil Nut trees. Cheers.
When you get to the border of the Ianomani Indian Territory after 6 p.m., the buses equipped with reinforced suspension stop, and no one will dare to go through until the next morning. On that road, you see such huge quagmires, cars and buses can only go through with the help of a large carabine. 
After loads of kilometers we got to Manaus, the capital of Amazon fruit sorbet, good river fishing and mosquitoes.
You can't be a drag in Manaus. 

The Amazon is like that - baffling. That's its nature.

For piranhas, see http://fish.mongabay.com/serrasalminae.htm

For candirus, see http://www.fishbase.org/summary/speciessummary.php?id=8811

South Bound

If you're hitching in the Caribbean there's no choice - so we took our chances and went down south aboard Claudia II, a Finish 62-footer made of ferrocement. She took us to Puerto La Cruz, in Venezuela, and we stayed there working aboard a dry docked yacht and enjoyed the particularities of that land.

Paul could climb a coconut tree like a monkey. We developed a special technique where he would throw the nuts down and I'd try to catch them, reduce the impact and save them from cracking.  Glad I'm still alive. 
I had a haircut at the best hairdresser ever. His salon was all covered in his International diplomas and its decoration was a chair, no wash basin. People would stand on a cue while he did his job in 10 minutes, gesturing as if he painted a Picasso. Amazing.

Venezuelan women are a mix of the South American charm and the Spanish elegance. Unfortunately, the men are not like that. Most of the population are descendants from South American natives. Puerto's main square's resident is a brown-throated sloth. 

That place has the greatest street falafels in the whole world, too.

By the way - at that time, it also had loads of inquisitive military soldiers, who would ask you now and then for your identification on the streets. It felt like something strange was happening, but we didn't know exactly what.

So we thought: what the hell, let's go down under to Brazil.

Fine Distance Tuning

So off we went sailing to Saint Lucia, but since there was some doubt about visiting Soufriére volcano or not, we followed on to Martinique where we went dining at a very chic restaurant by the waterfront - all expenses paid by our most generous boat owner. Delicious shrimp and oysters were on the menu.

Martinique also gets their baguettes daily by plane, coming straight from Paris. Uh-la-la!

When we where finished and back on our drunk way to the pontoon, I saw a guy at a distance swaying and getting into a dinghy, and rowing all the way to a nearby boat. Even though it was dark and far, I ran towards him. I knew it was Paul.

However, I waited sleepless until the first daylight to get on Blue Finn's dinghy, row up to the boat  and ask if they had a New Zealand crew member. The guy said yes, but he had rowed further down to another small yacht, over there.

My heart pounded and I rowed like crazy. There he was standing at that 27 foot boat owned by a couple we had met a year before in Recife. Fabiola saw me rowing and said, 'Mira, es Daniela!'

Paul just wouldn't believe it. I wouldn't either. Needless to make any romantic remarks.

We both stayed in Martinique and boarded another boat latter. It was January 1989.

It is wonderful indeed to understand things, but the unknown and the unexpected remain two very strong driving forces for life. Understanding everything is not for the human nature. 

Zazen

There's a positive side to everything - also to being around hard drinking people.

I found a job as a washer at a bar in Careenage. The bar had a pool table and its customers were almost all sailors. It also had a sign board where I immediately announced my sailing intentions - northbound! 

Waiting for the last customers to leave every night to get a chance of fighting for a corner to sleep on under the pool table was not always enjoyable. The bar also had two or three small apartments for rent right above the pool table area, and every now and then I saw myself climbing that wall and going in through the window to get a decent night of sleep.

I met a sweet Bavarian guy who gave me strong emotional support. He was staying inland and had little to do with traveling. That's why I never went to Bavaria as he proposed. But I still think of him as a dream savior.

Next person I met was Anderson Agra - skipper aboard Blue Finn of Hamble, a fancy 60 foot English yacht, crewed only by its very wealthy owner, who had a silicone business, and was married to a Spanish Royal Family lady, who was not very fond of sailing. They both were very fond of drinking, though. 

Anderson is this really gay person - always singing, always up. They agreed to take me north and this really changed my bleak point of view about the Caribbean.

Anderson still lives sailing around the globe in his 37 foot Vancouver, called Zazen. Perfect for him. He's one of those people who color the world with their joy. Thanks for being in the world Majjham. 

The Brits and The Rastafaris

Think Caribbean. It brings you to glamour, peace, beauty, wealth. Right?

Wrong.

There I was with not a penny more than 50 us dollars and my beautiful sailor knife. First person I ran into was a rastafari, who took me to a very simple pension, and yet, it cost me more than I could afford. Poor gentle willing man - if he expected to obtain some advantage from the European looking girl, he ended up buying my knife with a sorry look on his face.

There's no way to ignore the history of those islands: their fierce original people, the caribes, where totally decimated upon the arrival of the Europeans. Afterwards, they brought along slaves, whose descendants still remain there and have developed quite an oppressed culture. 

Their wooden houses are built to break down and cause only minor damage when a hurricane comes by desolating the islands once more, and making a point of reminding those people how hard life can be. 

This, right beside the wealthiest yachts... is embarrassing. And very familiar to a Brazilian.

The next day I returned to the pontoon in Bridgetown to try to embark on a new sailing boat. When 3 posh young Brits questioned my nationality, I was immediately asked 'do you know how to make caipirinhas!?'

So thanks to my expertise in that area, I got 3 days of sleep and food aboard in exchange for large amounts of drink, prepared in bucket proportion. The pestle used was the winch handle. And the cachaça was substituted by the famous Barbados rum.

After all, port hoppers are kind of water babies: sweet-water ones, salt-water ones and no-bird-will-drink-that-water ones.