By Brazzil Magazine

"The King of Portugal had given the region, with its savages and brazilwood trees, to one Jorge de Figueiredo Correia. This gentleman however, preferred the pleasures of the court at Lisbon to the hardships of the wilderness. In his stead he sent his Spanish brother-in-law, who, at his suggestion, placed the region under the protection of the donee's namesake, St George. Thus it was that the holy killer of dragons astride his horse on the moon had been following the history of this land for more than four hundred years. He saw the Indians massacre the first colonists and in turn be slaughtered and enslaved. He saw the building of sugar mills and a little planting of coffee. And for many years he saw his land unprosperous and stagnant. Then came the first cacao seedlings, and the saint, seeing them, ordered the kinkajous to undertake the large-scale propagation of cacao trees. Perhaps he was tired of looking in the same landscape for so long and had no purpose in mind other than to change it a little. Quite possibly it never occurred to him that cacao would bring wealth and a new era in the history of the land".

Jorge Amado giving a remarkably succinct history of his hometown, in his celebrated novel Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon.

I don't know what I expected of Ilhéus; perhaps a stroll around the placenames that roll off Amado's novel; maybe a visit to the master's childhood home so that the vibes could permeate my mind and bless it with inspiration.

But then, true adventure presumes an uncertain outcome.

Ilhéus was shutting down shop when I arrived in early April. The restaurants facing Pontal had drawn their curtains and the crafts market in front of Praça Dom Eduardo was running out of stalls. The town beaches—which I can never imagine to be clean like Maceió's, popular like Rio's or majestic like Fortaleza's—were home to a few downtrodden surfers; I bet they wished they were somewhere else rather than the Cocoa Coast. I just HAD to put that tongue-twister in: Cocoa Coast. That's how Ilhéus markets itself nowadays—they should change their image consultants forthwith. For Ilhéus, despite my fears of being stuck in a 1920s backwater for the sake of Jorge Amado, is pretty and rather fetching in a subtle, non-invasive way.

Excuse me. Did I say non-invasive? Whatever possessed me? The famous character from the book—Amado's sertaneja protofeminist beauty with the wide heart and even wider leg span—is as conspicuous as a politician kissing babies during an election. There are Gabriela fashions, Gabriela beauty contests, Gabriela foodstuffs and liqueurs, a Gabriela lottery, Gabriela pousadas and T -shirts even a Gabriela petrol station 2 kms out of town on the road to Olivença (free showers offered). That excludes secondary personalities. Let's not beat about the bush. Ilhéus has been made famous from Brazilian literature's best internationally known novel and as Jorge Amado's hometown. The inhabitants know it, which is why Vesúvio, Nacib's bar, was having a blue paint over and inner modernization facelift. The whole town had a regenerative feel: streets were being asphalted choking down the Guarani market place where all roads seemed to be converging; the cocoa museum was shut for refurbishment; the church of São Jorge appeared to be permanently locked and—and I was the only tourist in town. This hasn't happened to me since I had to spend a night in Campo Grande. Pity, because I'd really, really like to know if travelers come to Ilhéus for its beaches rated one- and two-star by the Guia Brasil Quatro Rodas: I could point them to several three-stars a little further north.

Ofenísia took out her mother's shawl, an old heirloom which, as heirlooms go had seen better days, (heirlooms are fine if they are rings and bracelets made out of gold and silver and diamonds for they look unseemly in the older generation, but when they are garments made in Olivença by Dona Quinquina, God-bless-her-soul, in her younger, less skilful, pre-war days they become like their original owners: wrinkled, torn and scraggy), lay it on the grassy ground and sat herself on top of it expectantly. At least this heirloom could be put to good use, if Ramiro decided to act like a man—at last—and not like a teenage mummy's boy which he was. Mind you, if you had met Dona Armanda and heard her blood-curdling scream, midway between the cadences of a ululating howler monkey and the cry of a mating sow, you might have felt some sympathy for both her offspring. The older son, Jacinto, had been swallowed whole by that devil of a town, Salvador, and the younger one, Ramiro was the biggest wimp between Malhado and Canavieiras.

Ofenísia sighed for she felt more than sympathy for the young timid Ramiro, obligingly on her beck-and-call 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week, skipping the morning vestibular courses on Wednesdays and Fridays—he was very good both on Redação and Physics so he could afford to miss both. She wondered what she'd have to do to get him to snog her at last. The only time they had kissed was at Malvina's birthday party after he had drunk two rare glasses of caipirinha and even then he had hardly used his tongue. That was a whole three weeks ago and since then, Ramiro had all but disappeared. Malvina, her best friend, was excited and kept asking her what happened next—she wanted to know dates, places and details, but Ofenísia was so embarrassed she could provide none, she'd hung up on Malvina annoyed last weekend. Now that Ofenísia thought about it, she would call and make up. Perhaps Malvina might help her if she learned the truth. She might procure from her aunt Dona Glória some of these love potions one hears about so often. Perhaps Malvina had used such tricks herself, for how else could she have trapped Aristóteles, whose father was an estate agent and had the biggest yacht in Ilhéus, moored prominently in the Iate Clube at the end of the Rua do Barão de Rio Branco?

Footsteps interrupted her thoughts. The figure of Ramiro, his zimmerframe glasses sitting queerly on the small protuberance that passed as nose on his inoffensive, caramel-colored face, appeared from behind the big statue of Christ The Redeemer and walked towards her. At least he was there.

She waved at him with relief and pointed at the empty space on the shawl to her right. Ramiro took his time sitting down, murmuring things like: "This looks expensive Ofé, do you think it will get dirty?" YOU get dirty, thought Ofenísia as she replied: "No, don't worry Ramiro, it is so old it's hardly worth it".

He sat down and remained seated in silence. They looked out towards Pontal, pretty and calm in the distance—not close enough to show up the details of the piles of muddy garbage, worn streets and cracking houses, but not far either for its characteristic, cutesy little beachfront to merge indistinguishably with the background.

Ofenísia sighed again. This was so romantic. She stole a glance at Ramiro and—now, this was heaven-sent, she must remember to light a candle to São Jorge—he caught him steal a glance at her. He looked away. But Ofenísia, emboldened by the sudden breathlessness in her breasts and the fire smouldering in her loins, continued to look and look and did not turn away, until his eyes were fished towards her by the nets of her insistence. Then she looked away.

"About the party", she heard Ramiro say.

Ofenísia's heart stopped. She closed her eyes. At last!

"I wanted to say how sorry I am", he continued. "I never drink, and I downed all this cachaça, I didn't know what I was doing".

What?

"I, I told my mother afterwards, and she was very disappointed with me. She said that I should apologise to you and concentrate on my studies. And so…"

Ofenísia had heard enough. She turned over and brought her face closer and closer to his until Ramiro's head receded so much he fell over. She immediately jumped on top of him, kissed him edaciously in the mouth and this time she made sure her tongue was properly ensconced in his palate. And guess what? She felt his body stiffen in all the right places.

That first afternoon in Ilhéus, which provided my first Bahian sun since the Recôncavo, I walked around the Avenida 2 de Julho which wraps itself around the southern tip, offering glimpses of the harbor and its distinctive twin long warehouses, the Ponte Lomanto Jr—another baptized bridge—and eventually, Pontal. It is there, where the strange geography of Ilhéus is revealed; for the town was built on a large, alluvial island at the confluence of the Rio Almada, the Rio Itacanpeira, the Rio Fundão, the Rio Cachoeira and the Rio Santana. However Recife it ain't, for Ilhéus and its surroundings are hillier, sturdier and less man-made than the capital of Pernambuco. There is also a sense of small-town-ness about it, which is strange given the fact that it's the most important commercial center in the South of Bahia; maybe it's because its heart is clear, distinct and well-preserved, maybe it is because of its winding nature, which gives you glimpses of the city from a variety of vista points, or maybe it's because unlike other urban successes, it has a mentality steeped in the 1950s, all probity disguised as coquettishness.

I was rather curious by the sign on my map for a Christ Redeemer statue at the curve of the Avenida 2 de Julho. I just had to go. It was rather disappointing; life-size and crude miles away (literally, I suppose) from its godlike namesake on the Corcovado. Still, the view across the sandbank to Pontal was eye-catching. I took out my Minolta SLR with the 200mm Sigma zoom lens. Hey, is that the most famous sandbank on the world? But wasn't it dredged? What happened at the end of Gabriela? I forgot.

I noticed a movement in the grass below. Suddenly two teenage bodies emerged. The guy wore glasses and was rather handsome in his Nike sportswear. The girl, who although could be called pretty, was already on the way to being a fat, bossy matron seemed very upset at the clumsiness of her boyfriend who had torn off the middle of—was that a tablecloth spread on the ground? The boy looked dejected and ashamed. The girl was staring at me with murderous hostility and a look that cried out "PERVERT".

I followed her gaze which was fixed at my camera.

Oh.

I walked away towards the Centro Histórico again not looking back. I think I messed up over there.

The sky loomed menacingly in the distance.

"Will it rain?" I asked Euclides, my driver.

He looked at the sky and shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, it is the rainy season", he replied. He might have added to remind me: "And we are going to a rainforest after all", but he did not, for Euclides was glad for having a tourist, any tourist at all, out-of-season.

Brazil is famous for its other rainforest in the Amazon basin, which has attracted all the media attention. But not many have cared much about its other huge ecosystem along the Atlantic seafront. When Cabral arrived and later, when the Portuguese carved the land for their various aristocrat capitalists, the coast of Brazil, certainly in this area of Ilhéus where we were driving, was covered by the Mata Atlântica, the Atlantic rainforest. It's a perfect reminder of what can happen to the Amazon, as very little remains of it, and what remains is kept museum-like in ecological reserves. We were heading towards the ecoparque of Una, one of the few pockets of virgin rainforest in Bahia.

Here, amongst the hilly, unpassable terrain, the 16th century Ilhéus grant to Jorge de Figueiredo Correia faced a group of Tupiniquins who revolted in the late 1550s and destroyed the sugar plantations. But they faced the iron governor of Brazil, Mem de Sá, who had been successful in decimating the Tupinambás of Northern Bahia. His campaign against the Tupiniquins of Ilhéus was terminal. He used on one occasion eight black slaves as decoys to attract the Tupiniquins who attacked and killed them—and found themselves surrounded and annihilated as a result. He ambushed them in the woods in the dead of night, slaughtering men, women and children as they were asleep. He chased them into the swamps and the sea—in today's beautiful beach of Cururupe—and sent his Tupinambá allies, their mortal enemies, to swim after the Tupiniquins and kill them. When the massacre had finished, 'the beaches [were] covered with bodies without souls and the ocean surf that washed them turned to the color of blood', as the 17th century historian Simão de Vasconcellos informs us. This was one of the crowning achievements of the Iron Governor: he prayed in a thanksgiving ceremony in Ilhéus and was carried on the shoulders of the colonists in gratitude. As John Hemming, an expert in native American history calculates, by 1570 Ilhéus had 400-500 settler families and eight sugar mills.

Vasconcellos makes the mistake of mixing up Mem de Sá's campaign against the Tupiniquins as one against the Gê-speaking (Tapuia) Aimorés. The reason is clear: the Aimorés almost completely obliterated the captaincy of Ilhéus within 30 years of the Tupiniquim defeat. Aimoré is, by the way, a Tupi derogatory word meaning 'monkeys' (and as monkeys steal things, this eventually came to mean 'thieves'). The Aimoré called each other many tribal names such as Cariri or, around Ilhéus, Camacan. In the 19th century, they came to be known as the dreaded Botocudos, from the decorative disks they inserted into their lower lips.

Whatever their name, these natives who migrated from the interior were taller, more ferocious, and more skilled in guerrilla warfare, crawling on the ground from the dense trees to attack isolated workers in the forest clearings devoted to sugar-cane cultivation. They were nomadic, so they had no village to be attacked in. They were cannibals who ate human meat as wild game rather than as a ritual like the coastal Tupi.

As the Jesuit João Navarro writes of the fate of an Indian guide during an expedition in the interior of Bahia from Porto Seguro: "One Indian… went a gunshot's distance ahead of the whites. Suddenly a herd of Tapuias came and tore him to pieces and carried him off in quarters. After that fright, neither whites nor Indians dared stray from the path from then onwards". The Aimorés succeeded in keeping the Europeans well out of Southern Bahia and Espírito Santo until the beginning of the 19th century. In fact, so feared were they that when peace broke out with our Potiguars in the Rio Grande do Norte, the Portuguese crown resettled over 2,000 as a buffer against the Aimorés. But in the end, the colonists of Southern Bahia fled their farms and barricaded themselves in the few coastal towns like Ilhéus. They had finally met their killer match.

The Aimorés would keep the upper hand until some unrelated events unfolded further away, in France. A short, ambitious general-cum-emperor in far-out Europe would seal their fate, although he had no idea at any point of the wave of consequences his battle victories would unleash.

When Napoleon invaded Portugal in November 1807, prompting Wellington's Peninsular Wars, Britain provided a naval convoy to bring the Portuguese court to Brazil. And what a court that was: Queen Maria was certifiably mad (what, with George the III and all, there must have been a royal lunacy virus going on) and the country was being ruled by her son, Dom João, later João VI of Portugal, Prince of Brazil. His wife Carlota Joaquina de Bourbon, who married him when she was ten years old, was epileptic and her marriage was a sham: both she and the King looked to men for sexual pleasure: Dom João is #62 in the list of famous Brazilian homosexuals of the Grupo Gay da Bahia. Of course Dom João would hardly call himself Brazilian, as he had never set foot on that backward colony of his, until forced to by circumstances.

Once in Bahia, in January 1808, after a stormy trip which played havoc with their alimentary system, they were shocked by the grubbiness and uncouthness of the locals; they took over, nevertheless, the best mansions in Salvador, and later Rio, without paying a cent. They were planning a long sojourn; Napoleon seemed undefeatable, so they started founding Universities, and a state bank (Banco do Brasil), dished out titles and medals to the rich landowners and most importantly allowed direct trade to third countries—previously everything had to pass through Portugal. One of the lasting achievements of the first European court on American soil was the annihilation of hostile Indians, such as the Aimorés. A decree by Dom João declaring full-scale war, was nothing less than state-sponsored genocide, a precursor of what would happen to the Plains Indians of North America and to the tribes of Patagonia and the Amazon. By then, the primitive ways of the Aimorés had started lagging behind European kill technology, and they were doomed.

Euclides stopped my rambling thoughts by turning sharply right.

"The ecoparque", he announced as he parked in a makeshift awning. And then almost immediately: "What's this?"

In front of us, a tall, white-haired, sunburnt American in his sixties was facing a Brazilian TV crew complete with boom mike, camera, director and presenter. They were from the ComAm organization (Comunicação para o Meio Ambiente, best translated as "Environmental Communication") based in São Paulo with a web site at http//www.meioambiente.org.br. And the elderly American?

"Hi, I'm Ian—Ian Green", he said to me in that confident, genial American way. "I represent Anheuser/Busch and, oh boy, I'm so excited".

I did not catch it immediately. Anheuser/Busch?

"Budweiser", he said. "We are the company behind Budweiser. Have you heard of that?", he asked in all sincerity.

Errm.. yes.

"This is so exciting", he repeated.

What was exciting? What was he doing there?

"Mr Green we are starting", said the director.

"Oh boy", said Ian and took his seat. Americans are such naturals behind TV cameras, as if they've been taking lessons in Media Communications since kindergarten. It's THOSE genes that made America.

"I come from St Louis, Missouri", started Ian in response to a question. "and I work for Anheuser-Busch. We at Anheuser-Busch care a lot about environmental issues and in particular the disappearing rainforest. We have a dedicated Ecology Department, where I work, and we turned our attention here when we discovered that the Atlantic rainforest had shrunk to about 8% of its former size. One of the pockets of the rainforest is here, in Una".

A hotel bus with Brazilian tourists stopped behind us.

"When I arrived here with my team in 1997, my grasp of the Portuguese language was nil. I was holding a tool and was asking its name. I had made a list of words and expressions I needed. You know: 'What's this?', 'Water', 'Rain', 'Dig here', 'Get inside the truck'. Phrases like that. When we arrived we had to face the rains, so we built a portable bridge made out of lumber to move our truck. Whenever there was an unpassable part, we unfolded the bridge, forded the path, then folded the bridge back to our truck and continued."

The Ecoparque bus arrived.

"We brought battery-operated tools, surveyed the ground, gave lectures and started the project. I was the manager until the local Bahians were able to finish the project themselves, but this was the highlight of my working life".

"Have you seen the finished work?" asked the presenter.

Ian grinned cheerfully.

"No, I haven't. I have only seen the plans and built the first foundations. And oh, boy, I am so excited. Today, I will see the end result for the first time".

"What is he talking about?", I asked Euclides.

"In the ecoparque", he explained, "you will walk on a canopy walkway. It's the main attraction".

I looked at Ian.

"And this guy built it?", I asked.

"It looks that way", Euclides confirmed.

Dona Gloria sat down and looked at the big clock on the wall. It was nearly time for lunch, but was she hungry? No, she was alone in the house on União hill, and had been since well, four o'clock yesterday, when her cunhado Amâncio popped in to ask her if she wanted anything brought back from the ecoparque. He was driving some tourists tomorrow—today. In the absence of other distractions, she played back last night's scene in her mind's eye one more time.

Ah, Amâncio knew how difficult it was for her to obtain some of her herbs. There was a time when she could roam in the forest and pick them out as she wanted: freshly sprouted, in bloom, next to a brook, in the shade of a tree—for even the location, the time of year, the time of day and the age of the plant was important. But back then, you could go to Arataca and be surrounded by virgin forest. Now, there's only a tiny reserve which they have fenced it off and keep the folk away. She left a small cry lamenting the passing of the forest. Why, even when the generals moved in back in the sixties, there had been thick forest from Buerarema to Santa Luzia and Chico, the barber had claimed that he had once been chased by a jaguar, although hardly anyone believed him. Who had ever heard of a jaguar hunting in daylight? Everyone agreed that the marks were those of a lion-monkey.

"Amâncio", she had said, "don't bother. If they catch you, you won't work there again".

"Dona Gloria", he had replied in that squeaky voice of his—such a big man and a voice like chalk grazing the blackboard—"Dona Gloria, they'll never search me and they can't check me. The tourists go on the trail to that new canopy bridge and the drivers are left behind to wander alone".

Dona Gloria had taken her thick glasses off; she always did that when she thought deeply, because it's easier to concentrate when you can retire from the images of this world and contemplate the world of the Orixás. The bitter truth was that she was running down on her plants. She had long accepted that she had to buy the ritualistic ones from Salvador at an inflated price: cana-de-macaco, Ogum's special, required for the new initiates; powdered canjerana to fight the negative waves in ceremonies; sangue-de-dragão for ablutions of the head; white flor-de-São José for Oxalá; catinga-de-mulata for Obá; mãe-boa and orriri for Oxum. She shook her head. No, what she was craving for were the medicinal herbs which she now needed for herself: erva-de-Santa-Maria for her bronchitis; jabuticaba for her asthma; japecanga for her rheumatism and dormideira-sensitiva to make her sleep. Ever since her beloved Josué passed away five years ago, Dona Gloria's bed was cold and her sleep disturbed. Perhaps she could have saved him, had the doctor diagnosed him correctly: she gave him ivitinga for ulcers, whereas he needed tanchagem for angina. Now that she thought about it, she was running low on those, too. This is impossible, she must take count and check.

"Come over tonight and I'll give you a list", she had replied.

She was indebted to Amâncio, although the herbal fumes of calêndula she had prescribed many years ago, certainly helped his wife's heavy periods. Who was more grateful is hard to judge: his wife or Amâncio himself who had to endure her nerves when that time of the month arrived.

Dona Gloria gazed at the ocean below; this was another uninterrupted reverie, one of a string of uninterrupted, lonely reveries, day-in, day-out, month-in, month-out…

She heard a knock. Who could that be?

"It's me Dona Gloria. It's Ofenísia", a voice shouted below the balcony.

Ofenísia? The friend of her niece Malvina? Should she not be at school? Oh, no, she finished last year. Or was it the year before last?

Long before the time Ofenísia asked for the favour, Dona Gloria had guessed and had decided on the price, for there's not many things young girls request from older women dabbling in herbal potions. When Ofenísia stopped, embarassed and out of breath, Dona Gloria spoke gravely:

"Your wish shall be granted Ofé, but first we have some business in the cemetery tomorrow".

Linde was another good gringo—this time from Germany. Tall, gaunt and attractive in her jungle gear she directed the proceedings with authority and gave us a short, but unforgettable introductory lecture. She was a biologist, adventure backpacker and safari guide in one.

"This is not the Una reserve", she informed us in faultless Portuguese. "This is the Una Ecopark. Only scientists are allowed in the reserve. There are several animals that only exist in this region and are endangered."

She stood in front of a tableau of pictures.

"This is the most famous of all", she pointed, "the golden-headed tamarin monkey, more commonly known as lion monkey—mico-leão-capa-dourada. It is a beautiful creature, with a very distinctive golden mane, the symbol of the biodiversity of the Mata Atlântica. But we also have the yellow-breasted capuchin monkey, the maned sloth and the thin-spined porcupine, the rarest of all American porcupines. There are also margays—or Brazilian jungle cats, gatos-do-mato, several rare frogs and tree-hoppers. Any questions?"

A Brazilian raised his hand.

"Yes?", she asked.

"Where did you learn Portuguese?"

She laughed. "I am a biologist working in Bahia. I had to learn Portuguese. After three years in Una, I learned. Anyone here does not speak Portuguese?"

Ironically, Ian was the only one. Linde repeated it all for him.

"You have heard about the Amazon, you have heard about the Pantanal. But the biodiversity of the rainforest in Southern Bahia—the number of species per hectare—is astonishing. For tree biodiversity Southern Bahia holds the world record: 456 species/hectare".

Sadly this means nothing to the local landowners. During the 1980s, half of the population of the golden-headed tamarin monkeys was exported for pets and two thirds did not survive the trip. As the rainforest shrinks, and as a family of 6-7 individuals (interestingly enough, only one female in a group ever breeds) requires about 40 hectares to live in, the population necessarily drops.

The capuchins—and the yellow-breasted variety was only recently recognized as a species—exhibit great curiosity and are considered highly intelligent—although, I'm told that unlike other monkeys they don't recognize themselves in the mirror, but we'll pass on that. By the way, they raise their eyebrows when they want sex: I will never watch a Joan Crawford film with the same concentration again.

The maned sloths, masters of camouflage, are slow and solitary—only the mother with her kid make up a lasting pair—although after about six months, the mother abandons her young rather abruptly. One unique characteristic of a maned sloth—which like all other sloths moves in slow motion—is its ability to swim. Having spent many happy hours watching the tree sloths of the main square in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, move about one yard, I can't figure out how they managed to master such an effort-consuming sport.

Linde was in full flood. It is rare to have a fully-fledged biologist guiding you in this, one of the newest Brazilian UNESCO Heritage sites, for the Mata Atlântica reserves have now become such a rarity they need protection like Machu Picchu and Pelourinho.

"What is the most common animal here?", asked one of the Brazilians from the Transamérica Hotel in Una—which, of course, doesn't mean 'One' in Portuguese (this would be 'Uma') but 'Dark' in Tupi. The Forest of Una means 'Dark Forest'.

Linde waved and one of the drivers passed around a bottle.

"The mosquito", she replied. "That's why we're giving you free protective lotion".

We obeyed quietly before we marched off to the trail. As I plastered mine on, I saw one of the drivers—the one with that squeaky voice—pick some twigs from a tiny bush and tie them clandestinely in a bundle.

Was that allowed?—but there was something else I wanted to ask instead:

"Are there any jaguars here?"

"Yes, there are", Linde replied. "But they are nocturnal and they don't normally attack if outnumbered."

I counted. There were about a dozen of us marching in single file behind her lofty, commanding figure.

"This means that in a convoy the last one is the one most in danger", she added. "If a jaguar attacks, it attacks the laggard".

We all turned around. Ian was huffing and puffing several yards behind. He looked up and he saw us stopped, our faces turned at his direction. Oh dear, I was the one-before-last.

"What?", he asked.

We all turned our faces away and continued walking.

"What?", he repeated. He looked at me. "What?"

"Nothing important", I replied, in case he speeded up his canter and overtook me.

"Biodiversity", Linde went on, as she sapped a rubber tree and collected the white fluid to show us the process. "Biodiversity. Nature has been there: from the cloves which cure toothache to aspirin to quinine, Nature has provided us with a big laboratory which we are only now learning how to study. Look at this old pau-copaiba tree which produces excellent anti-inflammatory oil. Look at this natural rubber".

I touched the sap. She shook her head.

"It's going to stink now", she said.

I smelled my fingers with a sense of déjà-vu: as if I had just wiped myself clean after a bout of asparagus diarrhea.

Did I not do the same thing in the Amazon?

I must have spoken loudly, because Linde turned around with curiosity.

"The Amazon? You've been to the Amazon?", she asked.

I thought of the canoeing, the hallucinogenics and Martin.

"Yes—seven years ago", I remembered. "Everybody wants to go there, don't they?"

"Did you see any animals?"

"No".

She smiled knowingly.

"You don't in the rainforest, do you?"

"No".

"But was it interesting?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

She nodded, like a biologist would and showed us around. "There are so many species around you—so many", she said "full of interesting stories".

She pointed at a line of leaf-cutter ants,

"Take these ants for instance. Do you know what they're doing?"

"They are carrying leaves to their nest", replied a boy.

"And why are they carrying leaves to their nest?", asked Linde.

"To eat them?"

She shook her head.

"No, they don't eat them. They breed a kind of underground fungus which feeds on these leaves and they don't even eat the fungus. They eat the fruit of the fungus. Believe it or not, they are farmers, just like us. "

She pointed at their anthill.

"You only see a third of it. The other two thirds are below ground extending into the earth. There is a whole farm underneath and the farm feeds not only the ants and the fungus, but many more species who in turn feed more species, all forming an intricate, very delicate ecosystem. And what do we do? We are irreversibly destroying their habitat and we lose the information Nature has struggled to create for billions of years."

She stopped and showed us a plant with wide leaves.

"This is called tiririca", she said. "Rub on it".

I rubbed my T-shirt against the plant. One of its long leaves attached itself to my sleeve and fell off.

"Natural Velcro", she pronounced triumphantly and turned the leaf over.

Its underside was sharp and rough like sandpaper.

"It is like sandpaper", she explained. "It's aluminum silicate. The leaves are hollow, stacked as if in concentric tubes and stick out. The silicate makes them uneatable, and then animals rub off the leaves, take them along on their fur and shake them off elsewhere. It will be no surprise to learn that this is how tiririca multiplies: by auto-cloning itself. It's an ancient plant, a grass, preceding all the later ecologically advanced plants with flowers and pollen and what-have-you. It has survived much longer than we have as a race".

I wonder who was worth more according to the Darwinian mores of our society: me or tiririca?

She stopped in front of a nest built on a tree.

"Now ants like humidity, so they build ant-hills in the soil. Termites", she announced, "like it dry, so they nest on trees".

She waited for us to congregate around.

"Termites may be a disaster in São Paulo, but in the rainforest they are the refuse collection service. They rid the forest of all dead wood. Keep it clean."

What looked like a wasp flew out of a small hose-like protrusion at the top. We stepped back.

"A wasp nest", a kid cried.

"It's not a wasp", Linde explained. "It's the homeless bee, abelha-sem-terra. It can't build its own nest and has to invade others' ".

And what about the termites inside?

Linde pointed at a few termites leaving the nest from the opposite side of the bee entrance.

"They are still there. They are engaged in a permanent territorial war. I have been here three years and I know for a fact that it's been going on for two years".

Wow! It's like Starship Troopers: a fight to the death between two species.

"So far", continued Linde, "there hasn't been a winner".

"I would have thought the bees would win hands down", I commented.

"These termites", she said, "have a natural antibiotic which fights off bee venom. Nature has again been there first".

You had to hand it to Linde: she was mighty impressive.

She stopped when we reached the canopy walkway.

"Before we climb up", she said, "just observe the leaves round you in the bottom of the rainforest".

We looked around.

"They are big, are they not?"

They were huge.

"In the jungle, the plants have to fight for two things: sun and water. They need to pick out the sun and to collect water to their roots. Some plants invest in height and their canopy is composed of small leaves, for the sun up there is strong and plentiful. Others invest in leaf width. In the forest, the rain will fall over a longer period of time as it will drip slowly from the leaves above to the leaves below. The function rainforests perform for our planet is that of storage tanks; storage tanks of fresh water. You destroy the rainforest, you bring in the desert and the drought, as Brazil itself has discovered".

"What about the oxygen?", someone asked.

"Rainforests do not in general contribute to the oxygen supply", Linde replied. "Most oxygen produced during the day is consumed during the night. What generates oxygen is swamps; mangrove swamps. These are the major oxygen-producers on our planet".

She paused.

"No, the destruction of the rainforests will bring desertification and the annihilation of our supplies of water. The biggest problem of the 21st century will be water. In twenty five years' time drinkable water will be a most precious commodity. In fifty years' time, we will see wars. And do you know how you can save the planet?"

"How?"

"Eat chocolate".

What?

"Eat more chocolate. Cocoa trees need the shade and the wetness of the rainforest. The Mata Atlântica survived for as long as there could be made profits from the cocoa plantations. It was afterwards, when the price of cocoa collapsed that the farmers started logging".

The thought of eating chocolate for our planet brought tears to my eyes. Protest never is so enjoyable.

I heard Ian cry behind me.

"Oh, boy!"

I turned licking my lips. A jaguar?

No. We had reached the entrance to the passarela na copa das árvores Ian had built—Ian with Anheuser-Busch, he would have corrected me.

He ran to the front next to Linde with his sixty years suddenly shrunk to sixteen.

"So, there it is", he said.

The walkway starts on a small hilltop—you don't have to climb a tree to enter; and it hovers over 20-25 meters over the jungle floor for a good 100 meters. In the entrance there is a small wooden cabin for rest.

"That's when I left", said Ian proudly. After we finished this cabin. Built with a local palm tree."

"Piassava", popped in Linde.

"Yes, piassava", he said. "Rather sturdy. I remember putting the foundations for this cabin".

He ran on the side and a family of bats flew out from below the cabin.

"We had to dig those holes on the side by hand", he said excitedly. "And they had to be deep enough for stability. In the US we'd have automatic nailers, pneumatic drills, motorized diggers—here we only had machetes".

He was gesticulating like a South American.

"I tell you what", Ian continued. "They say Bahians are lazy. Gee—believe you me, they're not. The Bahians love to work. They lack knowledge and infrastructure—but you show them how something is done and they never say 'that's too much for me', no sir. These guys can do wonders with their machetes. They dug these holes in 30 minutes. "

The Brazilians were watching mesmerized.

"Those poles—those 36-foot poles. I had no idea how we could raise them; in the States we would simply order a helicopter. We ended up clamming heavy three-in-one pulleys. Twelve people started pulling like a crane and one had to go down and risk his life, while he guided the tip into the hole by hand."

He breathed in proudly.

"I've done things in my life, but this tops it all".

We sat around silently.

"Go ahead", we offered. "You go first".

"No", he replied. "I want to stay behind a little".

The walk from tree to tree on this aerial bridge was fun; the rainforest lay below us, its leaves thick and impenetrable like a deep green marsh. The top branches were full of small yellow, red and green leaves and …

"Bromeliads", said Linde following my gaze. "There are twelve species of bromeliads just on the canopy. Birds bring the seeds and they sprout wherever they can.

"I have only seen them on the floor", I replied.

"They are actually a canopy plant", said Linde. "They can grow anywhere—in the poorest of soils like their relative, the pineapple, as long as there's a lot of rain. The reason they can is because their leaves are bunched up at the stem storing water and mud and dead leaves: an organic soup which serves as nutrient to them and many other species. Look".

I looked down and saw a giant web with many small spiders crawling over.

"Social spiders", said Linde. "Normally spiders are solitary and they're cannibals. But this species of spider build a huge web together and live socially like ants".

She gave me a sideways glance.

"Do you think that rainforests are more interesting now?"

"Fascinating", I said. "If you are with someone who knows their stuff".

We looked at Ian who was enjoying his slow canopy walk.

"You are lucky", she said. "Having Ian here".

He stopped in the middle and looked down, up, left and right. He took another step and looked left, and then right and then behind, like Tweety checking out for Silvester.

"Do you like your job?", I asked Linde.

She breathed out still looking at Ian who was enjoying every inch of the walkway like a Gucci model on a catwalk.

"I wouldn't do anything else. My work is my life and I enjoy it".

"You don't miss Germany?"

"Europe! " she scoffed. "We have forgotten how to live. We are spoiled."

Ian wasn't walking; he was dancing in slow motion.

"Stuck in our offices. Playing with our computers. Dehumanizing ourselves with factory farming. Bleeding our planet to death. All for the sake of comfort. We are even losing the power to communicate face-to-face, to socialize, now with the advent of the Internet. We have lost touch with reality."

"What is reality?", I asked.

"Reality", she said, "is hard physical work".

I see what she meant: Ian was elated, because he had tamed Nature with his brain and his own hands and with the help of other people. That is what our species is designed to do: triumph over adversity in a group and there's not much left to triumph over in the West any more.

We reached the end of the walkway all too quickly, every single visitor in deep thought. Even the small kids seemed taken in by Ian's elation.

A Brazilian came up to us.

"All this without the help of the Brazilian government or the state of Bahia?" he asked.

"Entirely private capital", said Linde.

I remembered something I'd read at the entrance.

Anheuser-Busch. Hotel Transamérica.

"Who built this again?", I asked.

"A Consortium called Conservation International".

"Who are they?"

"Anheuser-Busch, Hotel Transamérica / Grupo Alfa de Investimentos/(US-AID) and Ford Motors. There are two more such canopy bridges they have built. One in Ghana and one in Indonesia".

"There is a Hotel Transamerica in Una", I said. "These people.."

It all clicked. I spoke slowly intoning every word.

"These.People.Have.Come.From.Hotel.Transamerica.On.A.Visit.To.A.Canopy.Walkway.The. Hotel.Has.Built".

I turned to Linde.

"Do you use the walkway for scientific purposes?"

"Oh no", said Linde, "But there are plans to".

"So, so, this is all a tourist attraction!".

"It's mostly for tourists, yes".

I felt betrayed. Ian had only just finished. I shook my head but said nothing.

His great achievement was a friggin' gimmick!

Malvina put the phone down tired. She had been talking for a good hour or so and she had been constantly on her guard not to upset Ofenísia like she had last weekend. Since then, the twice-daily phone calls had stopped, and she had not seen her best friend. She missed Ofé twice as much as they spent weekends lying on the beach in the Jardim Atlântico and without her, her parents refused to let her out on her own.

"Not as long as you live under my roof!", her father had said.

"But daddy, Aristóteles and his posse will be there."

"And he likes you because you are unavailable. If you were a little trollop, he wouldn't even look at you with all his father's money."

That was always his argument: that Aristóteles would lose interest in her if her morals were looser. It was a winning argument because Malvina could not divulge—to her father of all people—that she had had sex with her boyfriend—although, ah, forget it…

She started preparing the moqueca. The fish was almost ready. Two juicy kilos of fresh, top-notch Atlantic sea-bream. She arranged it in the saucepan and juiced the zest of four limes over it. She had to let it marinate for at least half an hour.

She chopped finely several sprigs of cilantro and onion while she waited. Aristóteles would be coming over any time now with his friend, Tuísca to have dinner with her family. She looked at the two glasses in front of her. This was going to be tricky. She could not afford to make a mistake. Damn Tuísca!

So Ramiro had finally been slain and her friend was on cloud nine.7

She chopped off the tomatoes and the pepper. And then she added a little bit of témpero baiano. She checked the fish. Ten minutes more.

Ofenísia had told her everything: how she had French-kissed Ramiro in the party, how she had lured him by the statue of Christ, how they had lain on her mother's shawl and how that pervert had started taking pictures when she found herself on top of him like a kinkajou on heat. Ramiro had been so shaken, he had torn a hole the size of Ofenísia's cleavage on the shawl.

She laughed on her own when she imagined the scene.

But Ofenísia had gone on and told her about their subsequent escape to her house on the União hill looking down on the center of Ilhéus; how they quickly ended up in her room with the narrow bed and the Daniela Mercury posters on the wall; and how she felt during that tingling, scary, pleasurable moment when she walked through the threshold of womanhood to the subsequent worry of conception. She already knew before she heard from Ofenísia that she had visited her aunt for those herbs girls procure when their relationship with a boy goes beyond the purely platonic. Ofenísia still had to perform that sacrifice to Oxum later today in the cemetery.

The fish was ready. She poured the rest of the ingredients on top and put them all in a low fire. Another ten minutes.

Ofenísia had told her everything, like a best friend should.

And yet, she, Malvina had kept concealed the most important parts of her relationship with Aristóteles.

She nearly forgot. The boys would be here any time now.

She had to climb up a chair to reach that special bottle of dark rum she had been hiding—she could not afford to buy many herself, and her father was fond of white rum.

But white rum would not do.

She poured the liquor into the two glasses. Aristóteles would have the lesser amount so that she could tell which is which.

She opened the cellar door and looked at herself in the mirror as she passed. Although thin, handsome and bronzed, she still could do with a few centimetres around her bosom. Ofenísia might be on the fat side, but she had breasts to nest the whole termite population of Southern Bahia.

She walked down the cool cellar—she could hardly use the fridge, could she?—and from a dusty corner she picked up the small vial she had filled last night: a vial full of a dark red fluid.

When she returned to the kitchen, the moqueca had cooked. As always she had not turned over the fish in the big earthenware pot. She added a generous dose of dendê oil for flavour.

Then she opened the vial and added a few drops of her own menstrual blood to the glass containing Aristóteles's rum, before she was unexpectedly confronted by Gabriela.

Give me seafood and you can have my soul. Give me, hot fresh fish with lime and cilantro in a deep-pan cataplana with the aromatic dendê oil, which constitutes a moqueca and I'll be your sex slave for eternity.

The most impressive construct in Ilhéus is not a church—the centrally located church of São Sebastião (with its three-dimensional temple which pretends it's 2D) is far too recent (1968) to attract the eye; nor any of the Amado locations: Nacib's bar had its twin floors demolished and the result is a hangar-like Bierstuben only suitable for long Oktoberfest tables; and the mildest that can be said about the Bataclã night club is that it is not quite its namesake, the Parisian Bataclan in boulevard Voltaire. The fin-de-siécle Palace of Paranaguá, built on the foundations of an old Jesuit College which serves as the Town Hall, is neo-classical, austere and restricted in the confines of the Praça Seabra; not even the eccentric statue of Sappho (what?) in the square outside saves it.

As for Amado's patrimonial house, which has become Casa de Cultura Jorge Amado—it is an unassuming two-floor colonial house with a grand central staircase, period floors and not much more. Yes, it's full of memorabilia by the author—including some sculptures, pictures, posters and videos, but loses out architecturally and in terms of exhibit appeal to the grander Casa Amado in Salvador's Pelourinho. Yes, this is where the author spent his youth from 1920 onwards, before becoming a University student; here is where he first put pen on paper and wrote his first novel, País do Carnaval, but there's no redeeming household touch, no sofa, bed or even chamber pot to liven up the place.

No, by far the most striking and distinct building in the whole of Ilhéus is a school. I had noticed it on my first day, as I was walking down the sloping circuit of the Avenida 2 de Julho. It stood opposite, on the Alto da Piedade, its neo-gothic spires dominating the landscape, sharp as if drawn like a film backdrop, clean and shiny as if it had been built yesterday. It is the old convent of Nossa Senhora da Piedade which now houses a Catholic school run by Ursuline nuns.

Today I stood in front of it gasping for air. The hill was steep and my legs had run out of steam. I had an hour to kill and had decided to go for the view-by-sunset. The school was still open and the porter let me in after I gave him a tip. I didn't quite understand how it was open at that advanced hour, but didn't complain either, as the views towards the old city center, the ocean and the river mouth calmed my breathing softly. This is a large complex housing also a chapel and a museum of Sacred Art; it was the work of a French nun, Mother Thaís, who founded the convent back in 1916. Nuns seem to go a long way in Brazil; and this one had the whole street named after her.

It was getting dark. I started walking slowly in the direction of my hotel. I passed the open space of a cemetery seemingly built at the edge of a cliff. I could not resist a final view. I jumped the low colonnade wall and got in.

I wasn't alone. A kid was playing leapfrog with the crosses, and two women, both dressed in white, an old mulatto woman thin as they come and a young fat girl who looked familiar were tending a grave. I walked towards them to take a picture of the landscape. The young one raised her head and saw me holding my camera. She was kneeling, lit white candles and plates of food scattered pell-mell around her. I had seen that look before. Was it …?

I knew at once what was in store.

"Be careful gringo. This is a dangerous area after dark ", shouted the old woman.

Was that a threat?

I looked around. The kid had stopped running and was watching me with curiosity. I smiled, bowed respectfully, turned around and left.

Perhaps I can make up a story out of this.

As I walked down the road round the cemetery, I looked up. The boy was still watching me silently. I smiled. He took this small gesture of friendship and magnified it like only a poor Brazilian boy could: he jumped up and down and beckoned back. I took out my camera and asked with my eyes. The boy's face beamed as he waved. I snapped.

That's how I want to remember Brazil.

Back in my hotel room, I came out of the shower and turned on the TV.

Oh dear, oh dear. Not many TV programs make me wish I were a cultural dictator with powers to shut down, banish and eliminate unworthy formats but this one did it. This is screen violence pornography for REAL. There is no robbery, shootout or car crash where the show's cameras don't intrude and expose the human pain to voyeuristic eyes. I watched with my mouth open as the camera helicopter filmed the arrival of an ambulance to a heavily wounded motorcyclist; the artificial respiration; the cardiac massage. At some point during this, the crash victim died—on camera, his death more famous than his life. Obscene!

My stomach started rumbling. There was only one place to go for dinner in Ilhéus. I had seen it by the sea-side: Os Velhos Marinheiros again straight out of a Jorge Amado book title.

That man again. And that book.

I've complained elsewhere that the greatest living Brazilian storyteller has not been granted the Nobel prize—unlike his two friends of old, the two famous writers of Spanish America Pablo Neruda and Miguel Ángel Asturias. The trio emerged as the continent's left-wing propagandists, who had joined the Communist party and had suffered as a result. Amado was born in 1912 in the fazenda Auricídia in the district of Ferradas in Itabuna son of coronel João Amado de Faria and Eulália Leal Amado, the oldest of several children, but moved to Ilhéus in January 1914.

In 1922 he went to Salvador, where a Jesuit College teacher spotted his literary talent and introduced him to the Portuguese classics. He became a journalist in several papers, until he moved to a small pensão in Rio off the Avenida Copacabana (he later shared a flat in Ipanema). There, in 1931, he enrolled in the Law School to satisfy his father, but simultaneously published O País do Carnaval, in a small publishing house owned by Augusto Frederico Schmidt who became his lifelong friend. It was in Rio he networked himself—and shared apartments with many big names in Brazilian literature such as Oswald de Andrade Filho or Alberto Passos Guimarães.

In 1934 he joined the Communist party. When the dictatorship of the Estado Novo was established in the following year, he went into exile; Cacau, his story of the bad landowners and good cocoa workers was first published in Argentina. He returned clandestinely in Brazil, but was arrested in Manaus and spent two months in jail; his books were publicly burnt in Salvador. Eventually he fled the country again. All of his early novels are seeped in the social realism so beloved—some would say dictated—by the Stalinist Communist party.

Luís Carlos Prestes, the secretary of the Brazilian Communist Party in the 1930s became the subject of an Amado hagiography which was banned in Brazil. Even the books that were published were brushed over: there is, for instance, a passage in Suor (Sweat) where one of the characters says 'This appears like a subversive party cell" instead of "This appears like a Communist Party cell" which he wrote originally. So much had his novels changed that he has spent many of his later years—and he is now in his late 80s with a 1997 heart surgery in Paris behind him—revising his books against his manuscripts to restore the original text for eventual re-publishing: the Author's Cut one would say. He was so loyal and disciplined, he was put forward by the party as a candidate for the Constitutional Assembly in 1946—and elected. His crowning achievement as a Communist Party member must surely be his winning of the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951.

Then Stalin died. Khrushchev told the world about the tyranny, the secret police, the show trials, the gulags and Jorge Amado in his own words, became sick of being told what to think. He abandoned the party, but not the political philosophy: "The socialist countries gained freedom indeed, but their people did not have the material capacity to enjoy that freedom". And something remarkable happened when that author with a talent to draw multi-dimensional portraits of Bahian society threw away the restraining chains of discipline and wrote from the heart and head for the first time, for the heart had room for the whole world and the head had wizened up from disillusion.

Amado published Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon in 1958, his first work after he left the Party. 20,000 copies were sold in a fortnight. By 1962 there had been 20 editions and 160,000 copies sold just in Brazil. It had also been published in France, Argentina, USA, Germany, the USSR, Hungary, Holland, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Portugal, Italy and Czechoslovakia. It is the best-known Brazilian novel ever, turned into a movie with Sônia Braga in the lead, and gained Amado international recognition and fame. Why? Not just because it is a novel steeped in optimism, but also—as if to shake off the cardboard characterization of his early revolutionary work—because it is a novel in which no character is fully good or fully evil, for flaws and redemption are twin aspects of the human character and Amado loves all of them like a benign Almighty.

And the sweep of his vision was grand: no less than 250 characters—some of them silent or passing—are mentioned in the novel and the protagonist, Gabriela doesn't appear until a quarter of the way through. What the novel is about is even grander: the breakdown of the old patriarchal morality whose destruction is brought about by Gabriela's twin weapons: clove which represents her scent for she is the most beautiful woman in Ilhéus and cinnamon which represents her culinary ability, her métier, for she's the best cook in town.

Coinciding as it was with the rise of women power after the mass production of contraceptive pills and the fight for legalization of abortions, Gabriela looks now like a feminist novel which captured the Zeitgeist. The transformation of the morality of Ilhéus, Brazil and the world as such came about not because of the Nazi defeat, the Cold War, the demise of Imperialism or the student revolutions—it came about whenever women refused to play ball and took their lives in their hands. It is no coincidence that the four parts of that book are called "The Languor of Ofenísia", "The Loneliness of Gloria", "The Secret of Malvina" and "The Moonlight of Gabriela".

I think I'll change that last one. My style.

"You what?" shouted Gabriela.

Ofenísia cringed for the outburst was directed at her.

"You WHAT?"

Malvina looked at her oldest sister sheepishly.

Gabriela's beautiful features were distorted. Her smooth olive skin was wrinkled with spasms of irritation; her hazel almond eyes had become two black horizontal slits peering down with contempt; and her rich, red lips were pouting in anger.

"You what?", she repeated.

It had been confession time amongst the trio and Gabriela was incandescent with rage. She walked up to her cupboard opened the drawer, took out something and threw it in the face of Ofenísia.

"Now, you use THAT", she shouted. "Haven't you heard the news? The middle ages are over".

Ofenísia looked at the green packaged condom in front of her. So that's what they look like. Not that she understood any better how to use it.

"This is the only way Ofé", said Gabriela. "The only way. Learn before it's too late".

"But Dona Gloria is an expert", Ofenísia mumbled. "My mother, my aunts.."

Gabriela nearly hit her.

"How many kids does your aunt Jerusa have?"

Ofenísia shrugged her shoulders.

"Three".

"And what's the age difference between the last two?"

Ofenísia felt strangely out-debated.

"Fifteen years".

"Right. FIFTEEN YEARS. Your cousin Miquelina is in her thirties and the Lalú is your age. Do you think that Lalú was planned? Does that look as if Dona Gloria succeeded? "

Ofenísia looked at Malvina for encouragement.

"But Malvina here swears.."

Gabriela turned sharply to Malvina and spoke through clenched teeth.

"TELL HER! TELL HER NOW!", she bellowed with a voice several decibels above unseemly.

Malvina looked at Ofenísia.

We haven't really done it", she said slowly.

Ofenísia jumped up. "But you said…"

"I SAID WE'VE HAD SEX! We've had sex many times. But, but I haven't let him...you know"

"That does it", shouted Ofenísia and got up. "I'm going".

Gabriela pushed her down.

"No. I haven't finished".

She turned to Malvina who squirmed in her seat uncomfortably.

"Have you ever heard of AIDS?"

Malvina looked up.

"What does that have to do with the potion?"

Gabriela squatted in front of her and put her hands on Malvina's thighs.

"Listen little sister", she said calmly but resolutely. "Sex is fun. Sex is fantastic. But sex nowadays can be dangerous. It can be dangerous because there is a deadly disease out there which is transmitted by a virus. That virus lives in the blood and semen. By giving your disgusting potion to Aristóteles, you help spread the virus.

"It's a gay disease", Malvina replied. "And I am a virgin—how can I have it?"

Ofenísia sprang up again. "That's why you wanted to know all the details. Because YOU HADN'T DONE IT!"

She fell back on her chair: "What a fool I've been—what a fool", she kept repeating.

Gabriela stood up and leaned against the window to calm herself down. The ocean was turbulent. The tide was coming in. She looked up. It might rain tonight.

"One", she said. "AIDS is not a gay disease. It used to be back in the 80s in the US and Europe and São Paulo. But it isn't any more—not in Brazil. Two: Yes, Malvina you probably don't have AIDS, although if you had any other type of sex—I don't want to know", she interrupted with her gestures a distraught Malvina, " you still might catch the virus. If you don't fuck Aristóteles, how do you know he doesn't fuck someone else? "

Malvina stood up with a jolt. "He WOULDN'T. I KNOW him!"

Gabriela laughed. "Men. You think you know men. Hell, their fathers encourage them to lose their virginity in a brothel so that they can say they have done their duty and wash their hands off the rest of their upbringing! Everyone in that surfer lot go to prostitutes. Can you vouch that no one has caught anything?"

The two girls were silent. Malvina lowered herself slowly and fell back lifelessly on the sofa. Gabriela's tone turned soft.

"Prevention is a state of mind", she said slowly. "You don't let blood be exchanged. If you don't know for sure, you assume that the virus is present. You don't give Aristóteles any potions. You use condoms."

There was a long, long pause. Ofenísia felt her eyes water. She saw that Malvina was weeping.

"Not only do you use condoms, but you force your men to buy them and wear them. They won't like it; they will insist they dislike the feeling. But remember one thing: your life—and THEIR life, because men have two brains, one up here and one down there— is in your hands. If you love them you'll protect them".

Ofenísia's sight had blurred from the tears. Something somewhere had gone astray. With the corner of her eye she observed Malvina who was lifting her face. Their eyes met. It felt comfortable.

Gabriela picked on the vibes and held both the girls' hands.

"Ofenísia?", she asked.

Ofenísia nodded affirmatively.

"No more Dona Gloria? No more sacrifices to Oxum?"

"No", she whispered.

Gabriela turned to Malvina.

"No more blood potions?", she asked.

Malvina didn't answer.

"No more blood potions?", she repeated.

Malvina's gaze upwards was desperate.

"The blood binds him to me", she said. "It's a spell. Without the spell…"

"Malvina", said Gabriela, "he loves you with or without the spell".

Malvina looked at her friends. Could it be true?

Gabriela guessed her thoughts.

"You'll never find out until you give up", she said.

Malvina's eyes crossed Ofenísia's. She squeezed Gabriela's hand.

As if rehearsing for a threnody, they all fell into each other's arms in an exculpatory embrace. It seemed ages before Gabriela stood up and cleared her throat.

"I have to go to the restaurant", she said. "Anyone for karaoke?"

Before any of the two could answer, she continued.

"I feel like a duet tonight".

If location, location, location is the secret of a successful establishment, the restaurant Os Velhos Marinheiros has won the lottery; no, it's not a particularly scenic spot it occupies, but one of convenience. It's on and off the beach; close to the center but not too far; large enough to have the numbers but small enough to have good atmosphere. Like most places in the Northeast, it's outdoors, but thankfully protected by thatch against the downpour which started as soon as I arrived.

When I sat down, I froze. Tonight was videoke night. Oh, the spread of the Japanese curse; Latin America has been highly prone to its influence: stand up there, open your mouth, shake your booty and you are a star for the night. I remember someone proudly boasting in Santa Cruz (funny how memories of that city have come back twice in a chapter) that it was the karaoke capital of the world with no less than 50-odd bars offering non-stop entertainment. Now there's a city I will never return to.

Thankfully, there were only about seven or eight tables full on this Thursday night; and as far as entertainment goes, it was rather educational. In Brazilian videoke, they show the videos on a back screen, and as the lyrics appear simultaneously, the whole set-up was rather instructive for my Portuguese, so I sat it out. In fact, I recommend it for learning any language deeper. Many a Brazilian youngster can mouth "I will always love you to the Dark Side of The Moon Scaramouche, Scaramouche do the fandango, Billy Jean is not my lover", by listening to pop songs. They might be mouthing nonsense, but at least it's nonsense in English. In the same way, Kerosene Jacaré might not be poetry of Marília de Dirceu quality, but every little phrase helps.

The waitress took a shine on me.

"Where are you from?", she asked as she took my order. She was very pretty, in her early twenties, with shoulder-length black hair and smooth copper skin; she wore her distinctive waitress uniform with innocent sensuality.

"I'm from Athens via London", I said ordering a moqueca de camarão.

"Oh", she jumped up. "What are you doing here?"

"Passing through. I've been traveling in Bahia for a few weeks. I'm off tomorrow".

"Where to?"

"The South. Curitiba".

Her wide almond eyes sparkled with admiration.

"What's your name?"

"I'm John", I said. "And yours?"

She giggled

"Gabriela".

I raised my eyebrows.

"Like…"

"Yes. Like the book. There are many of us in Ilhéus named after characters in the book. My friend there "she pointed at a girl sitting at a table amongst a gang of surfers—"is called Malvina".

I made a mock sniffing noise..

"No aroma of clove"

She laughed.

"And certainly no cinnamon. I don't like the taste. I don't like sweets".

"No clove, no cinnamon", I said. "As if you can find them anyway now with the disappearing rainforest".

She laughed.

"You get them in the market", she jested. "You have been to the ecoparque de Una then?"

I had.

"What did you think of our pasarela na copa das árvores?"

I grinned in disappointment.

"A gimmick", I said. "A mockery".

"Why?"

"It's just for the tourists. It serves no purpose. To hear some people make so much out of it as if it were a big achievement".

Gabriela had to go.

"I'll see you later".

She brought me several large Brahmas and my moqueca which could lead one to a spiritual experience, like the sourpuss Danes in Babette's Feast: fresh king prawns, thick tomato sauce, orange-yellow dendê oil and divine-smelling warm farofa. My skin positively glowed. Good food, a beautiful girl called Gabriela, and I am in Ilhéus. What's missing to make the Amado story complete?

I saw Gabriela get up with her friend Malvina—and they sang a song together; a song about boys and girls and love, their cheeks aglow as their bodies shook to the rhythm. We all clapped for ages.

But Gabriela stayed on the stage. She looked at me and she sang a song—in English. It was one of the few Caetano Veloso songs I knew: London London.

I'm wandering round and round nowhere to go
I'm lonely in London, London's lovely so
I cross the streets without fear
Everybody keeps the way clear

I know I know no one here to say hello
I know they keep the way clear
I'm lonely in London without fear
I'm wandering round and round here, nowhere to go.

I nearly hid my face in the cataplana for embarrassment. When she finished, she acknowledged the prolonged applause and came up to my table.

"Now it's your turn", she said.

I would have none of it.

"I know no Brazilian songs", I countered.

"We have some English pop songs, too".

"No way", I said curtly, and I know how to say no.

She didn't insist.

"How did you learn English?"

"I study tourism. I am finishing soon", she replied.

"You have a good voice. You should become a singer".

"No", she said. "I want to be better than that".

I was one of the last clients to go. By midnight everyone had had a go at the mike, bar me, and everyone had eventually gone home to sleep. Gabriela brought me my bill and I left her a large tip.

"That passarela", she started as I was leaving.

"What about it."

"I knew someone who built it. It was difficult. You shouldn't laugh about it".

"I'm sure it was difficult to build, but what purpose does it serve?"

"It brings in tourists".

"So?"

"So", she said with seriousness, "fewer trees get logged. The idea behind it was to show the landlords surrounding the area that it is to their advantage to keep the forest pristine, because there is money to be made out of eco-tourism. It may not seem much to you, but the farmers in this area would rather chop off the trees and make money and space for their farms. And if the government doesn't like it, then they burn the forest. But if we can attract enough tourists, and they can make money another way, then the forest is saved".

I looked at her speechless.

"It's true", she said. "This passarela is the best thing that happened to Ilhéus and the Mata Atlántica".

She was right of course. I did check out the conservation.org's site later. The most difficult part of saving the rainforest has been the change in mentality of the farmers in the region who used to see it as a commodity to be exchanged, not as an inherited heirloom to be passed on to the next generation. As the site says diplomatically: "By studying the options available to landowners in Southern Bahia, we were able to formulate a conservation strategy in tune with the prevailing economic political, and social realities". It is only when the locals start seeing that they can make money out of their heritage that they may change their attitude towards it.

Gabriela was right and I was wrong. The canopy walkway was not a eco-gimmick; it was not a Disney rollercoaster ride; it was a noble construction, a lifebuoy to the golden-faced lion tamarin and all the other unique rainforest species. Incidentally, I also found out why there is so much biodiversity in South American rainforests. It was the Indians with their nomadic lifestyle and their small cultivated gardens here and there who contributed to this marvel. The Tupiniquins and the dreaded Aimorés, now extinct, played their part in producing those 450 species per hectare which we, the civilized, are busy extinguishing.

"If you want to save the rainforest, tell your friends to come here and visit us", she said, as I departed.

"And eat chocolate", I added.

She laughed.

"And eat more chocolate", she agreed.

JohnM is a computer programmer and occasional journalist working in London, England using his earnings to travel between contracts. A fluent Portuguese speaker, he has traversed the whole of Brazil from Manaus to Porto Alegre and from Recife to the Pantanal sampling the life and history in the course of four separate journeys. The author can be contacted at john@scroll.demon.co.uk 

This is an extract from his extensive Brazilian travelogue, which will be published by Summersdale in June 2003 entitled Brazil: Life, Blood, Soul. Many pictures from the travelogue appear in http://www.scroll.demon.co.uk/brazil/index.htm

His personal site is in http://www.scroll.demon.co.uk/spaver.htm  

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