I am always one for itchy feet. I crave new environments, new people, new experiences. So when my boyfriend and two of my male friends invited me along on a seven week backpacking trip across South America, I couldn’t resist. Being only 19 and female, I had my concerns but I thought I would feel safe with the three big blokes taking care of me.
But, not even three days after touching down in Sao Paulo, due to a combination of a bad breakup and complex social politics, the situation demanded that I return home.
After gathering my thoughts and my possessions I organised a lift to the airport to catch the next available flight back to London. Knowing the next half hour would be the last I would see of Brazil, my eyes were opened to all the details of my surroundings: the unfamiliar sounds and smells of the city. Sitting in the courtyard of the hostel waiting for the car, my mind became drowned by birdsong and the distant hum traffic. Tiny, brightly coloured tanagers were going about their breakfast routine in the garden trees below the great, soaring black vultures catching the thermals overhead.
Once on the road – the car window slightly ajar – I was embraced by the flutter of the warm, semi-tropical breeze, laced with dusty city smells. Stopping at a red light, I was approached by a painted man selling his wares: brass whistles for a dollar and multi coloured umbrellas in the hazy morning heat. Even in the winter the tarmac radiates warmth from the equatorial sun.
The driver, George, broke the silence with the radio and I was greeted by Andrea Bocelli’s “Time to Say Goodbye”. It seemed so perfectly fitting, it was all I could do not to shed a tear in the company of the dry-humoured Argentinian. I continued to absorb my surroundings as we made it onto the highway at the edge of the city. Suddenly the skyscrapers disappeared behind us and the road opened out onto what seemed to be a vast expanse of scrubland. The perimeter appeared to be lined with miles and miles of shanty houses stretching out with their little makeshift washing lines clutching garments against the breeze, now heavier without the shelter of the urban architecture. Passing close by the favelas we caught the attention of a group of young boys flying homemade kites and kicking around an old football by the side of the highway, now so worn it no longer boasted the leather upper, and the frayed stitching seemed to struggle to hold the fabric together. George grunted, muttering something sarcastic about “idiot kids…great idea…playing by the highway…get themselves killed…” I thought it was wonderful.
About ten minutes outside the city we began passing signs for the airport, and pulled round the corner of the slip road leading into Guarulhos International. We drove for a while alongside the Tiete Ecological Park. Beyond the fence, but close enough, was a pair of capybara sitting in the sun and taking a drink in the river, apparently oblivious to the metropolis and its highways looming only a few miles away. I was stunned. I would have considered myself blessed to catch but a glimpse of these creatures over the entire seven weeks, but here they had almost offered themselves to my eyes in a dream vision from behind the glass of George’s beat up old Honda.
It felt like it was all for me. I was leaving and so all the treasures of the landscape and its people were revealed. It was as if the whole city was saying a grand goodbye, and it was then that I knew I was not leaving. Not really. The city had done something special for me in that half hour on the road. One day I will return to thank it .
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