My calculations showed that kick off would happen at 8am local time. I had set my alarm for 5am. I made it out of bed at 6:45. Desperate for more sleep, I spent 10 minutes on the Internet rechecking my calculations in light of knowledge of time zones gained the day prior in Paraguay. It still came out as an 8am start.
I asked the front desk what time the Argentina World Cup match started. They told me buses would start leaving for Argentina at 7am. I decided to give up on seeking any more information and that we should leave as soon as we could.
I woke Sal: so happy to see me! We ate some bread, threw down black coffee and left. We crossed the road from our hotel, ‘Hotel Tres Frontieras’ in Foz do Igacu in Brazil, to catch a bus to Puerto Igacu across the border in Argentina. It was supposed to be a 10 minute bus ride. It was so close that I’d even fantasised about the idea of walking over the border, but that would never happen for such an early match.
We stood at the bus stop at about 7:45am hailing every bus that went past. Plenty of buses stopped, but none that would take us over the border. By 8am, I was standing in the middle of the road trying to hail anything that looked like a cab. By 8:10am, I was still on the road, waving my arms, cursing both Foz and Puerto Igacu. Sal stood on the road, eating a banana, while a man in a Brazil top replaced her as the chief hailer of buses. By 8:15am, he’s landed us as bus and we were at last on our way.
I wasn’t altogether displeased. I usually set myself up to be late. My cold was worse and I felt so tired and moody, that I didn’t care much about anything. If I missed half a match, then so be it, I sulked to myself.
Of course, I did care, and once we hit the border crossing, peaceful with trees and no motorbikes, I was delighted to see a television in Argentina’s immigration line. It looked like Argentina were still warming up! A guy from New Zealand in front of me in the line was hassling the immigration official about the game.
“So, you guys play soccer today?
“Yes, football, that’s right.
I carried on with the Antipodean theme.
“What time is the Argentina match?”
“10am.” he said.
Fantastic! Perhaps I’m getting lax in relying on good luck, but I really did not feel all that surprised. Sneaking a glance at another official’s watch, I surmised that it was probably now about 8:30am. We had plenty of time.
We reached the centre of the little town of Puerto Igacu and strolled the streets. Women sloshed buckets of soapy water on the footpath outside of their shops. Stray dogs wandered around the church and police station. A queue of perhaps twenty stood outside the bank. It was a sleepy sunny morning in Puerto Igacu.
We soon gained a sense of the town. We strolled to the supermarket and a sports store, comparing prices for Argentine tops and dodging children who appeared to have just been let out of school. We each bought tops to our liking and found a restaurant called Pizza del Campo with a sign out the front promoting a big screen for the match. They had made some efforts with balloons and decorations, so it seemed to be the place.
We sat at a table to the side, each ordered coffee and juice and settled back. I noticed a video camera from a local television station ‘CVI’ on another table and felt smug that we seemed to have so quickly found the right place to be. The television folks shared that same air. They slapped each other on the backs when an advertisement for their station appeared on the screen. Behind us, there was a group of angry women and men with cigarettes glued to their lips. In the booths, there were children sipping cokes. Up the back, young families, and more school kids positioned themselves, jostling for the few remaining chairs as the match was about to begin. Perhaps a hundred or so squeezed into the pizza place. But no-one cared to talk, or even look once, at us. It was a bit of a shock after all the attention we had received in Paraguay.
The anthems played and no-one stood up. The match started with Sal and I sitting in silence and it was not long at all before Argentina scored. While the crowd was leaping to their feet, I was busy feigning disappointment having confused the two teams on the screen. I thought Serbia and Montenegro had scored! I felt like a heel and all the more isolated from the room for not displaying the appropriate apparent affections.
The restaurant’s hard surfaces echoed with table slaps. A guy on the television table proudly ordered two Heineken long necks for his table (only to slip back to the local brew later on). Then came a second goal, and a third, and while the room celebrated each one, we were still denied eye contact from every person around.
At half time, we considered shifting locations, but we concluded this was about the only place in town because the guys selling Argentine hats and fake ties kept hanging around and then leaving only to keep coming back. It was not even midday, but I was feeling so uninspired by the one-sided game and the fans that I decided to order a drink: a 970 mL bottle of Quilmes. The biggest cerveza I have seen in this continent, with a blue and white label, it seems to be Argentina’s brew. It is impressive to look at, but nothing special to drink.
After half time, a fourth goal came along. The room was hungry for more. Goal five, and it started to feel like fishing to me.
“Here comes another one I think, start filming:
“Yep, I got it, would say Sal.
The children in the booths were leading the chants, but no song held up for long. As Argentina attacked again and again, everyone yelled for yet another goal, and they were granted their wish with a sixth. Finally, everyone joined in for a bit of a singalong led by children standing up front. Then, on the final whistle, everybody cleared out. Only the television people lingered, congratulating themselves.
I hadn’t particularly enjoyed watching that crowd watch that game. Sal and I left and started heading the main square to see what we could find. Motorbikes and cars passed us tooting all along the way. They streamed Argentina’s blue and white all over town. Children threw fire-crackers in the air and women on footpaths banged together tin lids.
We reached the edge of the main square to find men on motorbikes, facing inwards, revving their engines. One guy was doing burn outs, laying his back tyre all over the road. Hundreds, maybe thousands, gathered around to celebrate in the streets. Techno music blasted from a van, but the centre of focus was about a dozen hippies and children smashing their drums. One blue faced little boy leaned into his drum, half his height, and stood sweating, so intensely belting the thing. He looked so furrowed and cool, I wished I were him! An old man with two giant flags danced between the drummers while young girls and women wiggled hips all about. Ahhh: percussion, the master of mass movements.
People were yelling ‘Six, Zero! Six, Zero!’ Police, with hands ready at hostlers, had blocked off the roads, but allowed buses filled with tourists to pass. They banged on the windows like mad people with flat open hands and stirred up the crowd even more. We watched people dance on for an hour or two in the afternoon sun until the drummers had had enough and removed themselves and their inspiration. Some were intent to party all day, but feeling exhausted (and not particularly enamoured) we left to catch the bus back to Foz.
A two hour wait in the sun at last produced a bus. It stopped once on the Argentine side to stamp passports and once on the Brazilian side for us to all stamp our feet in disinfectant. Whatever it is in Argentina, Brazil clearly doesn’t want it on their side of the border.
We returned to our hotel in Foz to sleep away the afternoon. We were eager to rest and recharge for the big match: Brazil’s match against our country Australia!
Brazil v Australia from Foz do Igacu 18 June 2006
We were so excited in the morning! Oh, what to wear!? We still had our Brazil tops from Sao Paulo, but felt unsure about dressing up to support what, for the first time, would be the ‘other’ team. We decided to wear the tops anyway for the spirit of the day. We had an Australian flag so we could show our true allegiances when the time came.
My cold felt much better. My back didn’t hurt. Five hours sleep now seemed plenty enough! Marching down the street, we felt like emissaries sent to Brazil in times of international war. We would have felt like spies if not for the flag on my head.
We dropped into the supermarket on our way into town to buy batteries and bustle with the locals buying food and booze for the day. Outside the supermarket we could smell barbeque smoke coming from all over Foz.
It was about half an hour to match time when we paced up the hill to the centre of Foz where we had been told people had partied all night following Brazil’s victory over Croatia last week. We could here bass rumbling from restaurants as we approached.
There seemed to be three main centres of action in town. The first was a bar where they had blackened the walls and lined up chairs before a big screen. There was a percussion band playing inside which I liked, but little room to move about or show off. The second place was The International Disco bar with five areas, indoor and outdoor, a DJ and nine different screens. Nine! The third place was (yet another) pizza restaurant.
We decided to go for the International Disco Bar and claimed a table in the centre of the action. I was so nervous that I couldn’t sit in my seat. My pulse was racing so fast one would think I was about to play in the match, but I was getting ready to be in a bar surrounded by Brazilian football fans while I cheered as loudly as possible for the opposite team!
We ordered food, water for Sal and a cerveza for me. My excitement (or belly) must have showed my inclinations. They brought out a bucket for me with four cervezas on ice!
We had made it just in time. People were starting to line up at the door. The Brazilian anthem started to play. There were a few hundred Brazilians and only a handful were upstanding. I heard no-one sing. Then it was time for the Australian anthem. For me, it was the moment of truth.
While my mind was still debating how best to behave, I left it behind and ran on ahead. It felt like skydiving. One little step, and there was no turning back. I sung the anthem – Advance Australia Fair – loudly and badly! I waved my Australian flag like a madman. I attracted as much attention to myself as I could. I was told to sit down. Someone grabbed at my flag. I received such filthy looks. Yeah, that’s the good stuff! Now I was scared.
The crowed lulled a little. I was still bursting with nerves. I so wanted Australia to win, but if they did, I wanted for at least Sally to get out alive. Sal had very sensibly left me to my anthem singing alone. We consulted each other on exits and bouncers just to be safe.
Kick off came and, for the first time in our adventure, Sal and I swung against the crowd cheering and clapping for all the wrong bits. The internal battle continued to rage on inside me between wanting Australia to win and wanting to walk out in peace and one piece. My mind spat out an option: a nil-all draw? Perhaps that would suffice?
I was proud of Australia’s defence early – so aggressive, so attacking. Not being much of an athlete myself, defence was always my way into team sports. Defence, and thuggery of course.
About ten minutes into the match a gaggle of pretty young senioritas came and stood in front of my view of the crowd and the screen. I tired to move them along. I lit a cigarette and blew smoke on them, I nudged them and pushed them from behind, but they would not move. I was starting to console myself with the thought of their flesh providing some protection from knives when some young fellows on a table in front of us recognised the opportunity. They rearranged themselves and found chairs for the young women. My view was restored just in time to see a yellow card, for Ronaldo I think. I praised the Holy Father and Allah and all of the Gods with an interest in Foz and willed Ronaldo to make more mistakes and earn more wrath from his people. He just might be our best asset I thought to myself.
Just as I was enjoying my fantasy, another woman approached. She was an interviewer with a cameraman following behind and was doing a story for local TV. She had spied my flag and sought me out for an Australian voice on the game. It was all a little inane, but I obliged her of course.
“What do you think of Brazil? she asked.
I spoke loudly of the kind and generous and warm people we’d met. I said we were having a wonderful time.
“The football, she said. “What do you think of Brazil in the football?
Oh, the football! I tried to offer an intelligent and measured comment. I discussed Argentina’s form and Brazil’s need to lift. Then, I suggested what I thought to be an appropriate compromise for the matter at hand.
“If Australia beats Brazil today, then Brazil can beat Japan next week and everyone’s happy!
She did not see any funny side of my idea and closed the interview. I obliged her and her cameraman further with some idiotic flag waving and even an ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!’ for good measure. Then, I sought my desired quid pro quo.
“Alright, now its my turn to interview you! I said.
She looked shocked, like such a thing couldn’t possibly be so. I pointed at my microphone on my shirt and Sal’s camera in her face. Still, she baulked.
“What do you think of Australia? I asked.
“We will see: she said, offering me nothing.
“Okay, thank you, I said letting the squirming woman off my little insignificant hook.
It felt like a one-night stand where I’d done all of the work, had none of the pleasure, but later felt I had had all of the laughs. Another pretty media woman approached me later in the game. She confirmed I was from Australia and told me she’d be back in a moment. When she returned later to confirm I spoke no Portuguese, that was it, her dead shallow eyes revealed I was nothing to her. Odd media people.
Gawking at the television between media interruptions, I could see the game was going fantastically well! Brazil and Australia attacked and defended back and forth. The crowd was frustrated by this and grew tense for a goal. I watched out for Sal straying around with her camera. The room was feeling increasingly tense and unsafe.
Thirty-five minutes into the match, our food had still not arrived. I didn’t care. I felt too nervous to eat and was on my third beer. I nearly choked on the bottle when I saw an Australian head the ball back to our goalie for what could have so easily been an own goal.
“Oh no, you don’t want to do that, I said under what was left of my breath.
“One-Nil? said a nearby Brazilian smiling at me.
When an Australian player was injured, I sat down for the first time. I shook out my shoulders and rested my legs. Looking around, I could see lads standing near the road wearing t-shirts which announced them to be ‘Boys of Drink’. I feared there would be no easy exit should the best and worst come and Australia happen to win the day. Half time came, and that possibility still seemed to be very much there.
The DJ turned up his tunes and started throwing himself about. He seemed eager for the street party to come. The young lads from the table in front of ours stole my Brazilian flag (which I had stolen earlier from Hotel Tres Frontieras when we checked out). I let them have the flag without a fight. I hardly had any moral claim to the thing and was still clutching my Australian one in hope.
The new half started and, then, the unthinkable! A waiter took away my half-full cerveza! Then, even worse: bloody Brazil scored! Brazilians jumped to their feet and threw their arms in the air! They cheered while I whimpered. People threw food and cigarette packets at me. Television cameras trained on me awaiting the tears. I was given back my stolen Brazilian flag and made to wave it. It was a terrific release of tension for the crowd awaiting their goal. It felt a release for me too. I felt safer. The crowd seemed easier and noisier. They were happier now.
Not me. Our food finally arrived and it tasted like poison to me. It turned out I had ordered raw meat! I yelled and growled at the screen and the ref. I rubbed my bald-head and stroked my whiskers for comfort. I kept consoling myself that there was plenty of time left, but I felt on the back foot and on the screen Australia looked the same way. It was a long and intense half. Australia threatened quite a few times, but I never felt like it was ever going to happen. I never had a good come back for the crowd. And then came the last jab of the knife. With little time left, Brazil scored their second goal.
I felt ill and a little weak on my feet. I had been so geared up all day, standing up the whole game and with Australia now certain to lose, my footing felt washed away. Only my desire for dignity kept me upstanding to take my medicine once again from the crowd. At least with Brazil already in front they restrained themselves from throwing food. A decent sized piece of raw meat between the eyes might have just finished me off. I stood there taking the taunts and jibes for the three minutes left in the match.
When the final whistle arrived, the crowd allowed the cruelness to end. They didn’t care much about me or any Australian any more. I received a few pats on the shoulder and some sympathetic half hugs, but everyone was now off for the party!
I tried to be a good loser, a good representative of my country and noting television cameras on me, I even gave Brazil a few claps. Knowing that such a display would never make final newsroom cuts, I even feigned a few tears on my flag. I was pissed off and deflated waiting to pay my bill and get out of the place. My back pain returned. My cold reclaimed its place in my face. Only the sight of happy hip wiggling from the many fine sights in Brazil helped me to withstand both new and old pains.
I have some fascination with dance and it was beautiful to see how quickly it spilled around the bar and onto the streets. There was little apprehension from men or women as they moved and grooved with each other in the bright daylight. Watching them dance to infectious Brazilian beats lifted my spirits. I was happy to let this better team win, these better partiers party, and shift focus to Australia’s match with Croatia.
One final journalist came over and squeezed the last bit of concentration out of me with his broken English, long pauses and likeable manner. I dealt with him and his bored cameraman, paid the bill and staggered outside to join Sal who had started filming the party on the street. I met a friend she had made day dancing on the street ‘ another journalist it seems, but one quite sincere, who writes about local concerns about ‘terrorism’ coming out of the area.
We watched police block off the streets and allow access only to cars filled with women leaning from windows. These few cars still had to pass under giant green and gold flags stretched all the way across the street. Men without shirts and young boys with such style and talent swept around amongst curvaceous women. Green smoke bombs were dumped at our feet. At least they laid off the firecrackers for once.
The International Disco Bar’s DJ was working his hardest for the crowd. At 3:50pm, he switched from Brazilian beats to good funky house. At 4pm, he moved onto a Eurythmics sample with the fattest of beats. At 4:15, he blew his first speaker. When he went off to the toilet, probably to shed a tear, his techie turned him down just a notch.
Sally and I sat behind the DJ recharging our video camera batteries and ourselves, taking the odd snap and making notes. A couple of large bellied men teased me for my apparent dedication to scrawling. They made out I was a spy and signalled to me to get out there and live it, not just sit there and write it. ‘This is how I live it’ I tried to say back.
They must have understood something of what I said as when Sal and I went to leave they put a cold cerveza in my hand. Sal and I shared it as we wandered down the street, following the crowd as it moved away from our now one-speakered DJ.
To my delight, a little further along we found another ‘stage’ where some guys had pulled up in their fancy black trucks with big speakers and were putting on a show for the crowd. They even allowed their vehicles to become podiums. People climbed on the trays, but also on the roofs and bonnets, and bouncing up and around. I loved it! It was so stupid and so good to see these people allow their stuff to be trashed in the name of a party! These people with their once shiny black trucks were after my heart.
Further on, there were more DJs and people who had pulled up with eskies and great speakers booming from the backs of their cars. The party seemed to have no rules. There were police about wearing flak jackets, but they seemed to let almost anything fly.
We walked this street back and forth until it grew dark and we returned to our hostel to lament Australia’s loss. We were spacey and tired, but eager for more. At about 11pm, we ventured back to the street. We stopped at the service station to pick up a bottle of vodka on the way. We passed on the two-dollar Brazilian brand and settled on a still cheap fifteen dollar litre of Smirnoff.
I think we knew it was not the most sensible thing to do, but we had decided to bring the video camera along. I carried the bottle of vodka like a weapon and we walked, tentatively and slow. I think we felt it even before we arrived at the party. But we had come to get a shot and so, for just a few moments, Sal stood on the median strip and filmed the couple of hundred drunk happy people still milling about. Now, I didn’t see this myself, but I’m told what happened next is that about half a dozen youths on bicycles started swirling round Sal.
Sally says she saw them and that they had dark and out of place looks in their eyes. She put the camera away. At this moment, I, oblivious to all this, spied Sal’s new journalist friend on the other side of the street. We crossed over to say hello. We only wanted to shake hands and go, but his friends made us wait while they tried to communicate something to us through him. They had seen the guys on the bicycles as well. They could still see them actually and pointed them out, across the street, watching us and waiting for us to make our next move. They were lining us up.
This was the ugly side of Brazil at night. We were stranded now. We decided the best thing to do was to find a taxi to take us back the three blocks to our hostel. It was strange, bittersweet and somehow pleasant to be standing there with new friends on the footpath, listening to good music, enjoying a small dance, while our would be assailants watched in waiting and we planned for our safe exit. It did not take long before someone spotted a taxi and we were on our way (on a journey that took us far too long and through some strange and dark streets) and we were ‘home’.
We sat at the back of the hostel, drinking and sharing our vodka, tossing around a few crappy darts and trying to come down from a long and intense day.
I give my congratulations to Brazil and thanks to the Brazilians who helped us out on that night. I hope that Australia punishes Croatia next week to make it through to the next round. And I resolve that Sally and I will move with a little more caution so that we do not need to call on such luck once again.