The Roadside Urutu

My wife spent part of her childhood on a farm near Cinco Lagos. She saw lots of poisonous snakes, including an especially aggressive type called the urutu that a farmworker dispatched with a machetes. Years later, she still knew her snakes. We decided one day to have lunch with our friend Sylvie at a German restaurant that was also in Cinco Lagos. The last stretch of the way to the restaurant was a narrow dirt road bordered by rain forest on both sides. Suddenly, Monica exclaimed, “Look. An urutu!” Sure enough, a huge one slithered across the shoulder of the road and disappeared into the brush. The urutu pitviper (bothrops alternatus) is a venomous species found in Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina. They are thick snakes that can reportedly exceed two meters in length. The color pattern is variable, from brown to tan to grey to slightly olive. The bite causes severe local tissue damage and can be fatal.

This photo is from the Internet and is not of the snake we saw.

Our Bullet Train

No matter what our three-year-old twins are doing, they stop and rush to the balcony when they hear the Trem Bala coming. And it comes down our road a few times every day or night. They jump up and down and joyfully yell “Eba! Eba!”

“Trem Bala” translates as “bullet train” or “hard candy train” (bala = bullet or hard candy in Portuguese). In actuality, it is a tram with two cars, like one you would ride in a zoo or amusement park, with a facsimile of a train engine welded on the front. The trem bala is brightly painted, and adorned with Christmas-like lights that flash around its perimeter. For a small fee, you can take a trip around Vasssouras that lasts about twenty minutes. You sit with screaming children and a video screen projects the latest in inappropriate Brazilian music videos, from Xuxa with her overwhelming commercialism to “technobrega” groups that feature lambada-ish groups with scantily clad female dancers shaking their booties and swinging their long hair around. The Trem Bala bounces along (no seatbelts, of course), careening down the cobblestones, and narrowly missing parked cars on the narrow streets. The music is deafeningly loud.

The kids wave and yell at pedestrians and they wave back. They wave at drivers and they wave back. They wave at shirtless men standing in doorways lit by a single hanging light bulb and they smile and wave back. The music is loud and the strangers are friendly. All very Brazilian.

The Big Move

Some seven months ago, I moved with my family to the small town of Vassouras, located in Brazil’s historic Vale do Café (Coffee Valley) region, about two hours from Rio de Janeiro by car or bus.

photos by J.C. McGowan