Salvador, Fortaleza and being a vegetarian in Brazil !!

Episode 3: Montezuma and Mexican Waves in beach-side Fortaleza

Fortaleza is way up north of Brasil and is a good three hour flight from Sao Paulo. And of course, the next stop in our ‘as insightful as an ant’s view of an elephant’s posterior’ whirlwind tour of Brazil is this little beach town turned into a fast evolving economic hub. The economy of Fortaleza is fueled in large parts by tourism, given its long winding pristine beaches; but much to local disapproval, it has ended up attracting all the other add-ons of the beach bum economy (i.e. think Pattaya). Benny, a Mexican born American citizen is in the city to study Portuguese as part of an exchange program and his dissertation for the next six months is on  the effort to clean up the tourist trade in Fortaleza.

We are staying in a eighty year old Portuguese house tucked away in a quiet part of the town, with a sweet sixty five year old- Ana, her two daughters, six dogs and several Portuguese learning exchange students from the USA. Most of the students in this friendly bunch are of Mexican origin except one who is one third Croatian, half Argentinian and other percentages of Brazilian and French.  Gregor Mendel would have had some trouble figuring that out if his sweet pea plants had done this to him.

Anna’s house is this huge sprawling early 20^th century building, that one is sure to find in the streets of Altinho, home to any Fernando or Maria, in good old Goa, in India. Filled with antique furniture and cute porcelain. A garage full of curios and leftovers of some old magic.  A huge rosewood bed covered in mosquito netting with a sturdy writing desk by its side, that Garcia Marquez would deem fit to write on. Delicious fruit trees growing in the backyard.

Anna serves up a breakfast of cut papaya, mangoes, bananas and pineapples. Paired with eggs and toast. And delicious sponge cake which she bakes to welcome guests. Soon the table is filled with some ten people all wearing Mexican greens. Everything is quaffed down to the accompaniment of insightful discussion on the skills of Oribe Perralta and Santos. The star this time is the goalkeeper Ochoa and the coach Miguel Herrera, who the Mexicans say has put together a team from nothing, that for the first time in years, has the skills to make it way up to the top.

But the Mexicans are up against the Dutch- a formidable foe.

We are joined by ten other fans and so twenty Mexicans, two Indians and two Australians make their way to the bus-stand to catch a shuttle to the stadium and shout our hearts out for the Mexicans. Buses, packed to the gills with football fans pass us by- some decked in orange and the most in green. The Brazilians are out in numbers to support the Mexicans. “They love us here”, says a gold painted man from Tenochtitlan 1500 A.D. “Our cultures are quite similar- fun loving, laid back and obsessed with football.” We ignore all the idealization packed into that royal sentence and nod in agreement.

The key word of the Mexico-Netherlands match is an “untranslatable for family audience word”- Puto- pronounced exactly the way it is written, for once.  The rule for swear words everywhere in this world-keep it simple to say and write. Remember that the next time you want to win the world- coin-your-swear-word-championships.

Every time the Dutch goalkeeper takes a goal kick, the entire stadium (or at least the 98% of its which had turned up in green) starts off with a long hisssss and then time to perfection a loud and echoing “PUTO” at the exact moment of the kick. The hisssss is accompanied by outstretched hands and the shaking of all ten fingers to will in the nervous twitch into the poor Cillesen, the Dutch goalkeeper.  This is done at least seven times in the match. If you have a recording of that match by any chance watch it again and you’ll hear it loud and clear.

And then the Mexican wave starts and we proudly tell ourselves we are doing this one with the Mexicans at a World Cup! Hurrah and all that!

Anyways the Mexicans lose the match to a Robben dive and poor strategic decisions in the second 45 and we return home with forty thousand grieving fans. An hour later every one’s starving and decide to drown their sorrow in food.

For this late lunch we head towards a Churrascaria, seemingly Brazil’s second most favorite kind of restaurant. (We’ll deal with the first kind in our next episode). Churrascario,  according to our Brazilian/Mexican friends, roughly translates  to barbecue.  But if you start thinking of the many Wild-West themed steak joints of India or worse your neighborhood Barbecue Nation you are mistaken.

The regular Churrascaria menu runs like this. 

A huge buffet spread filled with salads and rice and beans and some vague pasta dishes and several proud waiters walking all around the restaurant carrying HUMONGOUS chunks of grilled meat of all imaginable varieties. For the sake of passing time while the grilled meat chunks arrive at your table, the customers make a scene of milling around the salad bar choosing some greens, thus assuaging any guilt that might make its unwanted appearance in the next sixty minutes or more. They settle down and the procession begins.  Pork, beef, lamb, chicken, duck, ham and the much vaunted picanha- which we learn is the bull’s rear. Great!

 After much sympathizing and insincere apologies from the table of twenty, two vegetarians make their trip to the salad bar to fill in their plates with lettuce and potatoes in various forms. We rejoice at the sight of rice and cooked beans and load it on our plates. The joy is easily killed when we realize that we are paying a thousand rupees for dal-chawal. Oh to be vegetarian in the wrong parts of the world!

The next day is spent loitering in two of Fortaleza’s beautiful beaches. Azure skies and deep blue waters meet golden sands littered with sun bathing bodies. Surfers do a few incredible warm up gymnastics. A hundred little football games play out along the sea. A tiny five year old Brazilian matches up to three twenty five year olds and teaches them a thing or two on what to do with a football.

We settle down at the Croco beach restaurant and order a huge bowl full of Acai  berry pulp.

 Acai, now a very hipster fruit sadly, is a wonderful palm variety that grows near the Amazon and produces a tiny dark violet berry that is served up with chopped nuts and fruits as a sweet and creamy bowl full. Pairs perfectly with a gigantic screen showing  a resurgent France pummel a bewildered Nigeria.

The rest of our stay in Fortaleza is quite sublimely unremarkable. Lounging around by the beach people watching. You can do that for hours and nothing else. After all you are in Brasil.

Feature by: Lalith Krishnan
                  Director- Aspirations Advertising