I woke up momentarily disoriented, not quite sure where I was and where I was supposed to go.

Happens.

This looks like… Aracaju. And I’m going to Salvador. Right. Taxi coming at 10:45 a.m., bus at 11:50 a.m., hopefully arriving in Salvador at 5 p.m. Thank you brain, now it makes sense.

I was kind of excited to complete the last leg of my “hey, let’s follow north-east Brazil’s coast” road trip. I felt a sense of accomplishment. It took me four weeks to bus the 1,090 kilometres from Natal to Salvador, stopping in six cities along the way for only… let me get my calculator… wow, I only spent $77.32 on bus tickets. That’s cheap. Travel by bus, people, it’s fun and surprisingly comfortable.

Or maybe don’t take advice from me because I’m the idiot stuck in Brazil.

I was a bit early at the rodoviária and the bus was late because it was coming from Maceió. Not a good combination, turned out Aracaju’s bus terminal isn’t a great place to wait. There’s almost nowhere to sit and it’s basically a giant open concrete structure without air con so it’s hot, very hot.

My 11:50 a.m. bus finally showed up at 12:30 p.m. Once again, I had no seatmate. Perfect. I closed my eyes and started to relax. Should be a smooth ride…

Or not. Thirty minutes later, the bus stopped for the usual lunch break. Damn it. I like to step out for a smoke and a coffee too but we were barely out of Aracaju!

Back into the bus. I slept for a bit, watched a few episodes of my favourite series, slept again… By then, I knew I’d arrive later than planned in Salvador—the bus had left late and we were delayed further by roadwork.

It was just past 6 p.m. when the bus pulled into Salvador’s bus terminal. Sure, 6 p.m. isn’t super late in the day but it means it’s dark and I still had a lot to do—get to the Airbnb, shop for groceries and water, grab take-out for dinner, unpack, take a shower, do the laundry (apparently I had my own washing machine and I hadn’t done laundry since Maceió)… and Salvador isn’t exactly the safest city in the world, plus potential COVID restrictions like shorter business hours.

I knew the neighbourhood at least—I was only a couple of blocks down the street last year. It’s funny, I remember my week in Salvador very well. It was early February and I had started to watch French news on my computer at night because everybody was talking about a weird virus in Wuhan. Apparently, many French were stuck in Wuhan and China had issued a stay-at-home order.

And here we are, a year later, I’m stuck in Brazil and pretty much the entire world is issuing stay-at-home orders. Oh, the irony…