Finding Cubango... (part 1)

Last night was one of those extremely complicated Rio evenings where I was trying to do 3 different things at once: attend Monobloco rehearsal, attend the Odilon Costa workshop, and also attend the Cubango rehearsal over in Niteroi. In classic Rio style, I'd known about none of these 3 events twenty-four hours ago. Didn't even know about the Odilon workshop had been moved to this week (from next week) till I got an emergency call from the organizers while I was at Casa Turuna with a friend (we were trying on sequinned dance bikinis, goofy Rastafarian-dreadlocks hats, pricing out headdress frameworks, feather backpieces, Carmen Miranda fruit hats... I'd just found a shelf of Roman breastplates... and a stack of the cutest little tiaras.... you know, the usual).

So I executed the following series of rapid and expensive taxi trips: Taxi down to Copacabana to Monobloco. Hand off my goofy hat and my headdress frameworks to my friend Wendy (thanks Wendy!!!) Run up to the Monobloco rehearsal, grab my precious Monobloco t-shirt (and matching flip-flops! This year the entire Monobloco bateria is being kitted out with matching purple Monobloco flip-flops), sneak out of rehearsal (I'd already cleared this with Freddy, don't worry). Taxi to Laranjeiras to attend exactly 1 hour of the Odilon Costa workshop, during which I learn a whole new caixa hold and some very useful tamborim tips. Taxi back downtown. About to hop on the ferry to Niteroi when suddenly realize I am completely out of cash. I am worried about this because I think the likelihood is high that I am going to get stranded in a distant corner of Niteroi tonight at three in the morning, and might have to take a very expensive cab back home. Run to the Citibank. Discover my Citibank card is suddenly not working... oh, that's right, it's now been precisely 30 days since I arrived in Brazil, I knew that was going to happen... (It doesn't matter if you tell Citibank in advance that you'll be travelling for more than 30 days. They freeze it after 30 days anyway.) Dash back home to grab some actual cash. Catch ANOTHER taxi to Praça XV where the ferry terminal is. Taxi gets stuck in traffic within sight of the ferry terminal It's now 8:58pm - the ferry leaves at nine - taxi's stuck behind a double-parked minivan - uh oh - I tell the taxista "I've got to run to the boat!" toss some money at him, tumble out of the taxi, RUN RUN RUN across the huge plaza. Not quite sure where I'm going but I notice two other people also running, from slightly different directions around the huge plaza, and I notice that the two vectors of their running paths converge on a certain building, so I run toward that building too. Yes! It's the ferry terminal! YAH! I found it! All 3 of us pelt up simultaneously to a long line of turnstiles, I fling a twenty-real note at the ticket taker, she shoves change and a ticket at me, I charge through the turnstiles, sprint up the ramp just as the ferry is blowing its horn, WHEW! MADE IT with a whole 30 seconds to spare!

An eerily peaceful 20-minute ferry ride through the calm Guanabara Bay... a still moment of peace in a very hectice day...I hang my head out the window, watch the planes landing at the international airport, watch an extraordinarily beautiful Mystery Building gliding past on a tiny island. Someday I will find out what the Mystery Building is. We arrive at the terminal. A flood of people pours out of the ferry and disperses in all directions around a massive avenue running along the waterfront. After another long confusing cab ride to the Cubango quadra, I finally arrive.

I'd made it! And I had also burned through an entire week's worth of cab fares! But, oh well, c'est la vie, it was worth to finally get to Cubango. Jonas wasn't there yet. The bateria hadn't started; I was in plenty of time. (I could have actually caught the next ferry, but that wouldn't have been nearly so dramatic, would it?) All the tension I'd been carrying all evening, that foreign-city tension of "I hope I get there... I'm not sure how to get there... I'm not sure where it is... I don't know where I am... I don't know how to get home..." - all of that drained away. I had made it to Cubango, and that is where I wanted to be.