Back to writing

So...the happy ending was that the butch Slovenian, Natasha; the victim, an ex-air traffic controller of the Israeli army; and I - with the help of a couple of armed Brazilian policemen - managed to intimidate, shame and bully (tactics allowed by the US military in the course of questioning, as we know) the little Japanese woman into confessing to the theft. The stolen goods were found, she was taken to the police, and I left to the airport with Angela. The policemen, apparently very satisfied that they have managed to solve an important crime, kept grinning and patting us on the back, and they were so impressed by Natasha that she had to accompany them to the station! God knows, they might have enlisted her to work for them...

Fernando de Noronha is possibly the most beautiful place that I have ever been to and diving was wonderful. My teacher was a Korean-Brazilian woman from Sao Paolo, who spoke English and was very patient...She had a long Korean name, that I forget now, but I could call her Sandra. I saw some really cool fish, sea turtles and sharks too! Many of the underwater creatures seem so prehistoric, it feels like nothing has changed down there in hundreds of thousands of years. I can really understand why my father sometimes says that he feels much more comfortable down there than up here. Since I started travelling to exotic places, I have become such a fan of wildlife, both above and below sea level, which is strange because I am such a city person otherwise. On the other hand, when I was a little girl I used to be a great fan of all of David Attenborough´s books, so the nature lover must have been in me somehow...

Traveling to the island is pretty expensive, you have to pay US$10 per day as an eco-tax alone and everything is at least double the price compared with the mainland. This is a good thing, similarly to Botswana, in the Okavango Delta for example, they are keeping the place purposefully expensive so that the it is not ruined by hordes of backpackers. Accordingly, most tourists are well-to-do Brazilians and other South Americans (I hung out with a big group of middle-aged Uruguayan doctors, lawyers, business people, all really experienced and avid divers), and Europeans (I did not meet many). Of course, it also meant much more alone time than usual, which is good for self-reflection, although, especially when alone, beautiful places often make me very content, and then really sad or, at least, very melancholic. I am not sure why this is: mostly I think it has to do with the realization that there are so many beautiful places that you will never get to see (or never get to see again), and that they have been there and will be there for this unimaginable length of time, so somehow your time there, and also elsewhere seems so ridiculously short and unimportant. Another element is that I always wish all the people that I really care for would be able to see the things that I see. And the people I really care for includes dead people, like my mother for example, who did not get to see nearly as many things as I have seen...

Anyway, now I am back in Rio, I have rented a cool flat, you are all welcome in Copacabana for the next two weeks.

Website to check out: