Three Wise Men !!

11 am. The sun is so hot. The breeze is also hot. Can´t leave the house. Can´t keep moving after all I ate at the Christmas Eve supper. I wake up with the crow of a rooster and a breakfast with corn cuzcuz, bottled butter, halloumi, corned beef, fresh organic eggs and milk directly from the cow. I ate so much again and the only possible activity was to lay down like a lizard on the fresh red cement floor, so typical of the houses in the region. This is a Caatinga* day. The Caatinga sun is unmerciful!

My mother was born in the interior of Sergipe, the smallest state of Brazil in the norhteast, and migrated to Rio de Janeiro where she met my father, from Ceará, also a northeastern state of Brazil. Most of my cousins, uncles and aunts stayed at their little farms and ranches around Itabaiana, the biggest state city after the capital, Aracaju, where 10 years ago my mother came back to live. I decided that this Christmas would be spent with her and I believe we would enjoy the Christmas Eve together, with friends and family.

How innocent! After all we are talking about my mother – the apple did not fall far from the tree – all is kind of surprising and sudden. That´s when the adventure begins!

On Christmas Eve, shortly after 3 pm, she told me that we would spend the weekend on a little farm in the county of Carira, beside the tax post in the border between Sergipe and Bahia, a place so remote that had been closed for lack of traffic in the road.

In the middle of nowhere!

But my mother information were not over, the next thing is that the car was that would take us there was crowded – there was only one place. For her – and the last bus to Carira had already left, so I was by myself!

Ok! The interior of Sergipe should be no challenge for someone who´s been to the interior of Tibet without Chinese authorization on a little bus where only Tibetan was spoken, but the problem was the date, December, 24th, Christmas Eve!

First I took a bus from my mother´s house to the bus terminal. Then I took a van – here they call it Minibuses – to Itabaiana, 80 km away where I need to make a connection because there was no direct transportation to Carira.

One and half hour later I arrived at Itabaiana to find out, after meeting two other lost souls that were already waiting hours for the bus, that there was no transportation left and the possibilities were to take a cab or hitchhike.

For those who know me it´s not so hard to imagine my choice!

A ten minutes walk later we were the three of us stand in the city roundabout, thumbs up, 8 PM, trying to find a good Samaritan to take us for the next 60 km left to arrive to Carira, from where I will need to take a cab or a motorbike cab, if any, to the farm.

After half an hour no one had passed!

After one hour, when we begin thinking about calling a cab driver to take us there, suddenly a GM Corsa, a very small car, stopped 50 m ahead. I ran to talk to the driver and for my surprise, who was in the car?

There was my mother and a friend with her husband and two daughters

The car was crowded but of course they couldn´t leave me there. We squeezed ourselves into the small car and left.

My luck was that they saw me there, otherwise I would have spent Christmas sitting on the roadside, in the middle of the Caatinga, with two other traveler´s that I just met.

* Caatinga is an almost desert region in the center or northeastern Brazil