Why, oh why the last evening before moving on to the next stop is never straightforward and relaxing?
I’m not a woman of mystery, I’m just a woman who loves mysteries.
I really do. In fact, I like to think that in an alternate world, I’m a best-selling mystery author (I wouldn’t be a detective, I hate driving and I don’t want to carry a gun).
But I don’t necessarily feel like tackling real-life mysteries at midnight, just a few hours before taking yet another long-distance bus. I have to pack! I have to dry the last batch of laundry! (It does involve a bit of manual work, the key is to position the fan just right…) I have to send back a translation due tomorrow, and I’m not at the digital nomad stage of nonchalantly hitting “send” from a bus terminal!
Yet here I am, investigating my latest Brazilian mystery.
Or just a mystery, really. This one may not be that Brazilian in nature.
There’s a weird, loud sound coming from the kitchen in my Airbnb.
I first heard it when I came back from the beach around 5 p.m. It wasn’t coming from the old-style air-con unit. It wasn’t coming from the fan. It wasn’t coming from outside either.
It was right there, in the kitchen.
What did it sound like? Hard to describe. A high-pitch sound, like a continuous chirp.
I cooked and inspected the kitchen at the same time. Everything looked normal.
That’s what I like about João Pessoa—most of the time, it’s a lovely, normal city with busy beaches and a long promenade along the waterfront where everybody hangs out at night. It’s a great base to explore the tropical coastline of Paraíba. It’s popular with Brazilian tourists but it’s still friendly and it has a small-town feel.
I had a great week in João Pessoa. Good weather, everything worked out fine, plenty of time spent in the water. The only issue is my camera—most of the time, the lens refuses to focus, and I have to fix it somehow. Other than that, I’m all good.
Oh yeah, the fucking noise.
It wasn’t stopping. Feng called me as usual around 10:30 p.m. and even he heard it. “Wow, it’s actually pretty loud!” he said.
At 11:30 p.m., I decided to ask the reception desk/doorman/nightwatchman for help. This is one of the Brazilian things I love—most buildings have someone—the job description varies—on site for security and to solve minor issues.
Like a gringa complaining about a weird noise.
The nightwatchman, a very serious-looking fiftysomething behind a desk, put his phone down and looked at me.
“Inside or outside the apartment?”
“Inside.”
“Did you check the gas?”
“That’s the thing, I don’t know! I don’t actually live here,” I explained. “I’m not scared of the noise, I’m just afraid I’m missing something important.”
You know how it is, every apartment has quirks. Okay, the leak in Natal was a bug, not a feature. But if you come to Ottawa and hear birds in the bathroom, don’t worry—every spring, they nest in the vent, it used to scare Mark a lot when he was a toddler.
“Okay, let’s check this out.”
He stood up, stretched, slowly turned off the TV—binge-watching soap operas comes with the job—, grabbed a set of keys, and walked around the front desk.
I almost burst out laughing. The nightwatchman, in full uniform, was wearing pink Havaianas flip-flops. The contrast with the neatly pressed black pants was… unique.
“It’s probably going to stop as soon as you step inside,” I joked in the elevator.
We heard it from the hallway.
I opened the door.
It stopped.
The nightwatchman checked the gas and looked around but he couldn’t figure it out either. Long story short, we teamed up to investigate and we ended up guessing it was a big cricket stuck in the elevator… which was right on the other side of the wall in the kitchen.
And now I have to finish packing.
I’m going to Recife tomorrow—short ride, but complicated city. Wish me luck!
[…] two-hour bus ride from João Pessoa was pretty eventless. I think so, anyway—I slept through […]