Hitchhiking in Brazil -What Not to Do!

Freedom's Just Another Word...​

I returned to Brazil in 1977 with my best friend Jan Kalmusky. We flew from Toronto to a city located at the mouth of the Amazon River, Belem. After landing in this humid, equatorial old Brazilian port we set out to explore its beautiful colonial Portuguese architecture. Running along the dock by the river we found a vast open-air street market that sold all kinds of jungle fruits and Amazonian fish we had never seen before. Also for sale were indigenous handicrafts, a large array of young monkeys, colorful parrots and other rainforest animals I could not even name.

Squirrel Monkey - Photo by Garten-gg

There was one adorable, baby squirrel monkey that we could not resist.  We impulsively bought it and took it home to our hotel where we soon began to realize owning a monkey was a huge responsibility. After it pooped all over our hotel room the poor creature's charm began to fade. We couldn't possibly travel with this baby monkey so we took it to a local park knowing that someone there would take it in. I still feel immensely guilty for buying it. At the time I didn't understand that its mother had certainly been killed to capture it. Poor baby.
​
Soon after abandoning our little orphan we left Belem and started hitchhiking south east singing  "Freedoms just another word ...". You see we heard that Janis Joplin had hitchhiked around Brazil so we thought if she could do it, we would too. Why not? We were two foolish, young, 23 year old blonde girls on the road to Rio. It seemed like a great plan.

Alycin and Jan in front of a snow bank just before they left Canada for Brazil.

Our hitchhiking adventure started out well...

Jan hitchhiking surrounded by fascinated Brazilian children.

Our hitchhiking adventure started out well until we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere on a lonely dirt road bordered by dense jungle on either side with nothing else in sight. For the best part of a day we were forced to wait for a ride by the side of this road as we melted in the burning hot sun. Jan sat on her blue suitcase and I rested against my orange backpack. There was no traffic at all, not a single vehicle. Bored and dusty we wondered if we would be there forever. Eventually as the sun moved toward the west a big truck came along and stopped for us. We joyfully jumped into the cab of the truck, thankful to finally have a ride.

As we traveled down the dusty dirt road in this old truck I began to smell something really terrible. Did the truck driver have a serious problem with body odor? I turned my head to see what was in the back of his truck and noticed a rifle on the rack above our heads. This was concerning. Why hadn’t we had enough sense to check the truck before we got into it?

Looking further back into the cargo bed of the truck I discovered with horror the source of the terrible smell. The back of this truck was open and full of dead bodies covered with millions of swarming, buzzing tropical flies. Deceased cows, unrecognizable roadkill and who knows what else were behind us in various stages of decomposition. I recognized the skeletal remains of a horse. Its unseeing eyes stared directly at me. I had to look away.

​The smell was overwhelming. I opened my window wider to be able to breathe and not vomit. Thank goodness I had the seat next to the window. Poor Jan was stuck in the middle. We exchanged frightened glances, regretting ever entering this truck of horrors. It roared on as we both stared straight ahead through the dirty windshield trying to figure out a way to exit, without offending our truck driver. He had a rifle! There was nowhere for us to legitimately ask to get out on this stretch of lonely road because we were still surrounded on both sides by dense rainforest.
​
Worried that he would angrily shoot us if we asked to get out of his truck without good reason we remained silent. Perhaps his plan was to kill us anyway. I imagined him roughly throwing our murdered bodies into the back of his truck with the rest of the rotting beasts. Our poor families back home would never find out what happened to us.

Terrified we rode along silently for miles, powerless to escape the appalling stench of his disgusting cargo. Eventually we arrived in a small town. Here our truck driver explained to us that he was an “homen matadouro”. It was his job to pick up dead and dying animals from ranches and roadkill from along the side of the road to be rendered into fat. He had to drop off his load in this town. He apologized that he could not take us any further. We sighed with relief. This man was not a mass murderer after all, but a decent fellow with a ghastly job. We thanked him for the ride as he let us off at a bus stop in the middle of town. Grateful to still be alive, and away from the horrible smell we watched him drive away with his horrendous cargo. 

Before we could decide what to do next we were approached by two friendly young Brazilian men. They explained that the next bus would not arrive until the following morning.  I asked,
“Onde é um hotel ?”
They replied that there were no hotels in this small town and kindly offered us a room for the night at their house. Filthy and exhausted we accepted their kind hospitality, took very long showers to wash off the stench of decomposing animals and went to bed.

It seemed we had not been asleep for long when we heard something above us crawling on the rafters. Rats! Dozens of rats made their way above our beds threatening at any moment to slip and drop onto us.
Jan was terrified and began to scream hysterically. I had to slap her face to get her to calm her down. She insisted we leave this rat haven and spend the night instead at the bus stop. I reluctantly agreed. I didn't like rats either, but thought a bed in a house would still be safer and more comfortable than a bus stop on the side of the road. We packed our bags to go only to discover that our new “friends” had locked us in the room! We could not get out. We were trapped inside. Why had they locked us in? Were they going to sell us as white slaves or to a prostitution ring?

Rats were crawling above us in the rafters

At this point I knew we had to try to find a way to leave as soon as possible or who knows what might happen to us. Desperately looking around I noticed a small window above the dresser. It might be just big enough to enable our escape if we could get it open. I climbed up on the dresser and pulled on the window latch. It was stuck. My heart fell.
I looked down at Jan,
“ It won’t open.”
She encouraged me by saying,
“Try it again. You can do it. ”
Pushing with all my strength it finally moved. The window flew open. Overjoyed, I climbed down to get our bags. Jan crawled out first. I passed her our luggage and followed as quickly and quietly as I could. It was just a small drop from the window to the ground so we made it out safely without awakening our dubious hosts.  We hurried away as quickly and as silently as possible.

The rest of the night we took turns sleeping on a cold concrete bench at the bus stop while one of us kept an eye out for our captors. At dawn a bus arrived and we climbed into it without even asking where it was headed. All we wanted to do was escape that town before the men who had locked us in discovered we were gone. Luckily our sanctuary bus was heading south east toward the beach which was exactly where we wanted to go. 
​
From the safety of our bus we decided that even if Janis Joplin had hitchhiked around Brazil we had experienced enough Brazilian hitchhiking; for the time being at least.
​

Brazilian Beach - Photo by Leandro Verolli