Roberto and his bamboo sax

This is a story that I'd like to tell you that wasn't mentioned in the Rio post (because it hadn't happened yet):

I bought a saxophone here in Brasil. It's made of bamboo and it's already broken into three pieces. But that'll be easily remedied with super glue since it's all broken apart in easily fixable places. I'm really bad at using it so far, and now that it broke apart, I can't practice until I fix it. It broke by being in my bag in the luggage area of the bus. No biggie. I bought it for R$34 (roughly USD$19). That night was nuts. Let me explain. Lena and I were pretty down because we couldn't get a hold of my cousin, Leo, who lives in Rio de Janeiro (the city we were in) and said he could take us in for a couple nights. Note, we never actually met up with him when we were there. But anyway, we were sitting there with our bags, not knowing what to do or where to go and bummed about having to spend a shit load of money on a hotel since we weren't near any hostels we knew of.

This man walked by playing a bamboo sax. So we naturally followed him. He was playing it at people at various restaurants who weren't interested. He was excellent at it though! So we continued to follow. Eventually he noticed us and started playing it at us. We got talking to him. He then began trying to sell the thing to me since I was so interested in it. He proposed R$40. I got him down to R$35, but only had $R34 on me, which he accepted. There was a large group of "mendigos" (portuguese slang for young begger boys) around us, asking for money. I didn't want to do this deal right then and there so I asked Roberto (the name of the man with the bamboo sax) to walk down the street with me. We sat down at a outdoor bar and he got us a beer and I paid up. We talked for a while and he was incredibly interesting. He was Chilean and was a traveler to Brasil as well. He spoke a little English and a little Portuguese, so his spoken words were a garbled mess of Anglo-Porto-Spanish. He told us of this neighborhood called Lapa, which is known for being the artistic part of town. He said that there was a hotel there that we could stay at for only R$25 (USD$14) for the night. This is amazing consideration a super cheap hostel is still about R$25 per person per night, so R$50 for the two of us. Anyway, the three of us hailed a cab and went to Lapa.

We arrived at the "hotel"; a dump of a building in a dump neighborhood, but the price was right! Roberto said he'd wait outside for us and we walked in. On the board they had written R$60 as the cheapest available room. So I investigated and the man agreed that that was their cheapest. I continued proding and said, "I heard I could get a room here for R$25". He grinned and said, "it doesn't have a TV". I grinned back and replied, "I don't need a TV". So there we have it. And boy was it a piece of shit! Let me also explain that this place and another place we had been to early in Rio had rooms available for R$40. Sounds fine, but they were for only 4 hours at a time. Once you decode what that actually means, you realize how disgusting this place was. It was funny too, because in places like these, people even assumed I wanted a four hour room and Lena was my good time. Anyway, enough about the room. We went back out and met Roberto who lead us down the various streets of Lapa. We saw and met some really interesting characters and the street art was excellent here. Music, in the rhythm of samba, on every corner and the smell in the air was either delicious garlic or the vague scent of urine.

We were lead to this large staircase

that lead to a different part of Lapa. The entire thing was designed in tiles from all over the world and was slowly put together over 10 years by an artist from Chile named Selarón, who we met at that exact location the next day. But that night we sat there with Roberto and played with his djembe which I had been carrying most of the night. Two other street vendors and friends of his joined us and we were also joined by a group of 3 girls and a guy from New York City. A joint was rolled, passed around, and one of the street vendors and I provided the rhythm.

Later, Roberto, Lena and I went to a small restaurant to eat. Roberto had been drinking all night and continued to do so. He was gone at this point! We continued to talk and his speech became nearly impossible to understand with the slurring. At one point I was staring off and he asked if I was an architect (implying that I was staring in amazement at the buildings around me, which I partially was) and began laughing. I jokingly said, "yes, I am". Well, he didn't take kindly to this thinking that I was insulting him with a lie. Later in the conversation he asked Lena where we were from, a question that had been answered within our first 5 minutes of meeting him. "Boston", she answered. He didn't like this either. He didn't believe her for some reason. He stood up, grabbed his djembe and stormed off. Though, he was kind enough to leave money for the beer he had been drinking. It was so strange though. And we felt awful. Here, we had just met this man who showed us such an amazing night and it all ended so bittersweet.