People love to speak about travelling being ‘like a drug’, and honestly, I can’t disagree. It is expensive, it is endlessly thrilling, incredibly addictive, seemingly endless in pleasure, and always demands something new, harder, and more intense. I feel like that is something people often don’t talk about due to not being away too long, having their fill, or just because they’re too deep in it already.

Harder or Rehab

I had become numb and relatively quickly, I think. The thrill was faded, and constantly bouncing from ‘most dangerous Latin American city’ to ‘most stunning beach on the Caribbean’ just wasn’t feeling like it used to. I needed something more, or I needed to revisit the UK and remind myself just how bleak it all could be as some sort of grounding. Like any drug, my tolerance was too high, and I had become emotionally numb. I partially blame this for how much of Colombia’s wonderful exports I enjoyed in a search to find something that was decidedly absent.

However, I found Brazil. Whether I would call it rehab or heroin, I don’t know.

Either way, Brazil reawakened in me something I had forgotten for some time, and that was how to love. It was how to love myself and how to love anything else, either. You can’t have one without the other. I think I had certainly lost it somewhere recently, but this country has rekindled it. I find it easy to live without love until it comes back, and then I realise how beige living is without it.

Whether Brazil is simply the harder drug in the shotta text of travel or if it is the oasis of beauty and culture it takes to refresh the tired mind. I don’t know. What I am sure of is that I will never leave Brazil; I will only go on trips away from it.

Where 9’s become 3’s

Brazil is beautiful, and they know it too. It’s just one of the reasons their national pride is so deservedly strong. They are beautiful in body, culture, and mind. Despite Brazil getting a rather bad rap from the international media and their own, I have rarely met such accommodating and social people during my journey from the north. Of course, a running theme through this whole trip has been an Englishman marvelling at the hospitality of Latinos, but Brazil is up there with the Mexicans.

First, living in Salvador, I stayed with an older lady who had a large apartment to herself between the two main beaches in the City. Despite the two of us not getting on at all and her being fully aware that I speak barely a lick of Portuguese, it didn’t stop her talking to me constantly and yapping away in Portuguese.

Due to my grasp of Spanish, I was able to pick up the odd piece here and there, but honestly, it didn’t matter if I did or not; she just loved to talk. This was indicative of what the rest of Brazil has turned out to be. Even in Rio, a city full of annoying tourists, capitalist colonials, and crime, folks are still endlessly keen to spark up a conversation and see what’s good.

It isn’t like Mexico, where you’re invited to someone’s house within five minutes of meeting, or even like El Salvador, where they have been so starved of foreign influence you feel like it’s first contact. The people of Brazil are simply genuinely interested in what you have to say. I watch Brazilians often stopping to chat with anyone who happens to brush within their space; there is always a conversation to have and pleasantries to exchange. They are friendly people from the wealthy elite all the way down to the lady selling grilled cheese on the beach.

But what really struck me, as a visceral, red-blooded, straight, cis male, was how fucking sexy everyone was. From the first day I took myself to the beach, five minutes from my house in Salvador, I knew I was in another league. I immediately resigned from going to the gym that month because it was worthless. I could never be comparable to the hoards of tanned, glistening, immaculately toned black and brown bodies around me. I was reduced to nothing but a porridge white, freckled, dumpy Anglo-Saxon, and that was totally fine by me; I was living in a lingerie magazine.

As soon as you get close to any beach in Brazil, be it Salvador, Rio, or Florinopolis, where I am now, body positivity is king. It doesn’t matter what you’re packing; you wear as little as you can. You may be a dedicated beer drinking man in his mid 60s or a 19 year old fitness influencer, you’re wearing the smallest gear you can, and fuck the rest. It was wonderfully refreshing to go to a beach and see so little shame or self-consciousness from people dedicated to being as close to naked as they possibly can. I had also never seen Tanlines as a fashion statement until I visited Brazil. It’s definitely a thing for me now.

This can probably be explained by the proximity of not only the beach but also the vast and accessible jungle to almost all big cities in Brazil. Around vast metropolises exist the most stunning and vibrant jungle mountains I have seen outside Guatemala.

It feels like a whole new world when you have the convenience of a busy international city like Rio at your doorstep, and then, just half an hour’s taxi from the centre, you can find yourself tracking through a deep, monkey-ridden jungle absolved of the fumes and sound of a multi-million person city.

As you make your way from a boiling hot beach, full of food, life, and party, to an air-conditioned taxi and blast through a bustling city to a dense, moist, and cool jungle for a swim in a waterfall, all within 45 minutes and 7$ of taxi, you have to ask yourself a very serious question. “How can I ever leave?”

Part 1

As a prelude to what I have to say about this wonderful country, this barely scratches the surface, but over the next few weeks, I plan to try my best to bring to my fingers just what this country has been to me. Combining the experience I have had over the past few months would take me far too long for any sane 21st-century mind to concentrate under blue light screens to read.

I want to cover the people in more detail. As always, I have plenty to say about the food. Brazil’s culture has surprised me deeply in its variation, not only from the rest of Latin America but also from north to south. Music and art here is a whole new post. There is a lot to cover, and as long as I can stay suitably buzzed and not too busy, I hope to get this dusty old blog back off the ground.