8 days in and sailing life suits me well --

I rode on the Grimaldi cargo ship The Grande Buenos Aires from August 13 to September 18, 2012. I embarked in Zarate, Argentina and disembarked in Antwerp, Belgium. The ship called on the ports of Santos, Brazil; Vitoria, Brazil; Dakar, Senegal; Tilbury/London, the U.K.; Emden, Germany; and Hamburg, Germany. This post was written on August 21, 2012.

The view from the bridge of the ship, making our way down the tiny river from Zarate.

Passing under the bridge I routinely gazed at from Zarate's waterfront.

I've been enjoying the white wine that accompanies all meals on the ship, the ship is rocking its way up the coast of Brazil, and I've finally got my sea legs. Ship travel embodies a unique time/space coordinate in the human psyche. The majority of the past week can be likened to a drug-induced trip. Days, hours, and minutes no longer mark the majority of life's quantifying; instead, the ship's meal schedule, day-light, and night-time measure the distance to our next destination, all with a sprinkling of patient reserve. We slowly pull abreast of another vessel making its way north; the horizon of land in the distance gradually undulates as we pass new peaks and valleys of Brazil's coast. Occasionally a white edifice wedged within a cliff's plateau shines like a beacon of life existing outside of sea travel.

My first week on the ship passed in some sort of time warp I can only liken to the time warp of hallucinogens (I remember my date, Federico, in Buenos Aires describing his recent acid trip: So much time had passed yet the man was no closer to approaching me on the street). For a few days it was my self-appointed task of moving the marker on the calendar in the mess room, yet days compressed into each other and the week emerged as a composite of one whole day: wake up, eat at 2 or 3 designated times, nap, write in a notebook or on a computing device, behold the horizon outdoors of the cabins, flow with the rhythms of sea and wind; repeat.

At night, when the sky permitted clearness to observe, the stars of the southern hemisphere glowed something bright, Cancer's crab and the stretch of the Milky Way spreading the light of their energy into the swarthy water, which, in return, threw up tiny sparks of white surf, broken and frothing by the bow of my cargo ship. Land and sky engaged in a dance of light and darkness for my poetic enjoyment.

In the day, away from the overcast sky of Argentina, the Atlantic undulated into the texture and iridescence of onyx. I spoke it to myself while beholding the scene on the deck outside the cabin area: texture and iridescence of onyx. Onyx... onyx... onyx... my voice sounding bizarre and foreign in the wind and spray. Yet I recalled a poem I had written years before, about the onyx-thick coal ribbon perpetually aflame in Pennsylvania, a poem that no one in my first year MFA workshop could get a grip on. No onyx-thick coal ribbon to dive.

On the morning of my 8th day on the ship, I awoke in Brazil. I exited the indoors cabin area on the left side of the ship instead of my normal right side. The East-rising sun was shining and reflecting a bright white off the bay water marking space between the various hills rising out of the Santos port area. My bloodshot eyes strained to adjust to this new atmosphere yet a smile crept into my core: our first destination since Argentina. I am in Brazil, this is sea travel: a slow, timeless progress towards new lands.

Panorama of the Port of Santos, Brazil

Yours truly with the Port of Santos Brazil as a backdrop.
This was taken from the deck outside the passenger's messroom on the ship.

After breakfast I ventured onshore with my two fellow passengers, an older couple from Germany who were wrapping up their one-year adventure of traveling South American in their RV. I had said to them, upon making their acquaintance my first day on the ship: Your year is ending and mine is beginning. It occurs to me now that I can no longer say my year begins; I'm 5 weeks in. 46 weeks to go. But this entry isn't about tracking time; it's about time becoming irrelevant in the sense that industrialized countries employ it: their inhabitants' work weeks parceled by the progress of labor: tasks completed, busy-work assuaged, yearly self-evaluations written. Slowly I am sloughing off this stupid skin; never before has it occurred to me as so dangerously inorganic. As a passenger on a cargo ship at sea, I am able to listen to my own biorhythms and no one gives me much trouble if my biorhythms put me out of sync with the schedule of meal time and sleep time on the ship. The mess room staff have ceased calling my cabin when I miss lunch at 11. They might ask the Germans if I am sick or if I am OK, but once I emerge I am met with offerings of cappuccinos and fresh rolls with salami.

Exiting the ship for the first time since Argentina.

Gate 4, from where we got a taxi into the old city center.

So here we are in Santos. The Germans and I are waiting for a taxi to take us from Gate 4 of the Santos Port to the old city center. I drag on my cigarette, nicotine rustling a stomach filled only with Nescafe, and it hits me: I feel like I'm still on the boat; the solid ground undulates like the water. And it continues, in the taxi, in the Coffee Museum, in the city square, in the internet cafe, in the wine and snack shop, on the terrace outside our lunch-time cafe. My body’s equilibrium devices are out of sync; all of Santos rises and falls like the Atlantic. Sure I only got a few hours of shut eye the night before, excited about coming to land, which is adding to my general cracked-out state, but at this moment I am pretty sure the feeling of sea-rocking while on land is as good as the effects of any drug folks pedal on Haight Street. I oscillate between euphoria at the bizarreness of the experience and resigned irritation, waiting to get back on the ship and set sail, where the feeling will be warranted.

View from outside the Coffee Museum.

Lunch time with the Germans. 

Stained glass detail of the Santos Cathedral.

Christ figure with stigmata in the Cathedral. Pretty freaky!

The Germans and I wander Santos old town some more. The sidewalk tiles disintegrate into sand here, like Buenos Aires, yet the half derelict buildings have a charm I did not absorb in Buenos Aires (I do attribute this partially to the summery weather of Brazil, which contrasts with the very overcast winter of Argentina). And Brazil is a country of color: not just some neighborhood painted with blocks of random paint hues (i.e., Boca barrio in BA), but facades consistently sport invigorating colors that set off the tropical green flora exploding out of city squares, hill sides, and sidewalk planters. The buildings aren't the only color in Santos: the inhabitants' skin ranges from dark to light, an absence of which I found disturbing in Buenos Aires. The gene pool in Santos seems to produce a uniform amount of wide, full-bodied noses and thick, sturdy hips in woman and robust mid-sections in men. I have no doubt these people genuinely know how to enjoy their cuisine which is refreshing compared to the appearance-obsessed Argentine who simultaneously yearns for thinness while boasting of the steak and other cow parts routinely roasted in their county's famous parrillas.

Standing in front of a monument in Praça José Bonifácio, Santos, Brazil.

We return a few hours ahead of schedule to our ship; its towering silhouette in the port sparks a unique pride, excitement, and relief in my heart: I remark that it is good to leave the ship but even better to return to it. After observing the crew loading some Caterpillar construction equipment into the vast belly of the ship, we take the service elevator up to the 12th floor. No one is home, all the crew are busy unloading/loading and stocking up on supplies for our next spell of sailing. It's ok because I am comforted to be on the ship, what with my sea legs insisting we are still vying for equilibrium within the waves of the sea, even if the water in the harbor is still.

Loading the construction equipment onto the ship.

View from the deck of the Port and city of Santos.

Panorama of the bay side of the Port of Santos.

Panorama half port, half bay. Santos, Brazil.

3rd floor cargo deck, the floor of the hatch.

3rd floor cargo deck. 

Returning to the ship after sight seeing in Santos, Brazil.

Later that night, after a dinner or tortellini soup, salad, hot dogs, steak, and my post-dinner nightly cappuccino, I watch the crew finish loading the cargo of the stop; the road outside the ship progressively becomes more empty as the construction equipment and cargo containers are charged and stowed. Finally, around 11 p.m., the ramp of our ro/ro ship begins to close, and the large greased cables pull the yellow hatch towards the ship's rear top deck. A Santos tug boat assumes its position on the East side of the ship; port workers untether the ship's ropes from the docking ties and throw them into the bay, from where they are sucked back into the ship, dripping with water; we slowly inch away from the dock and the nose of the ship points out toward the river that will take us to the Atlantic. The air is thick with a foggy mist warmer and more aromatic than I've encountered in San Francisco; the smell on the left side of the ship alternates between the sweet yeastiness of a beer brewery and the fragrant assault of a dump of garbage.

The closing of the ro/ro hatch: the sure sign we were about to leave a port.

Ro/ro hatch almost closed and sealed.

Brazilian port workers waiting to untie us.

Tug boat in position.

Port workers taking a break in Santos, Brazil.

Same view of the bay, at night. Beyond the center hill, there must have been an oil refinery.
Besides the glow evident in this picture, I occasionally caught a glimpse of a flame burning atop a long pipeline.

As we pull out of port, we pass cargo ships from Germany, Singapore, and China, all receiving and emptying containers with Santos' movable cranes that twist and lift tons of goods to and from the ships. The sky-line glows orange from the sodium lights caught in the foggy mist. My body and the rails of the ship are coated in sea salt and humidity; my hands become so sticky I no longer want to carry my camera, yet I can't will myself from the top of the ship, from where I behold glowing Santos passing, passing, passing, and finally receding in the dark horizon. Soon, the familiar rolling of the ship going head to head with the whipped waves of open water, which lulls me into a sound slumber. 

Panorama of Santos, Brazil at night.

Sodium lights getting caught in misty haze and reflecting off the black water.

Trusty tug boat pacing us.

Bye, bye Santos.