The Spiders of Southern Brazil

There she blows - the most venomous spider out there - are those red fangs?

It's actually not a bad name for a band of you think about it.  It reminds me of the time when a co-worker and myself wanted to start a J-Pop band in Japan called The Snakes of Chiba after we spotted a snake on the road in which we lived - in Chiba prefecture.  It doesn't matter that I can't sing or play a musical instrument - it's all about the band name.  We even had a first track - Momiagi kakui ne - "Sideburns are cool - yeah?".....it would have gone platinum.  We also planned to kick off a sideburns craze and sell plastic ones you could attach on a whim, plus all other kinds of sideburn memorabilia.....if only.....

All kinds of awesomeness

Brazil is a big country.  There’s no doubt about that.  The interior just goes on for ages (I was tempted to use goes on for “yonks” – but remembered just in time how much I hate that word.  It’s up there with my most loathed greeting – “hiya”.  Whenever anyone says that to me I just want to reply "Fuckya").  Chalks was clocking up some serious miles – and me some serious dozing time.  Obviously I wasn’t the one driving.  I’m pretty useless on a road trip.  I’m more like decorative rather than functional.  I can't help it, I'm a hopeless and gutless driver.  Ask anyone I know, I suck.  Here, it’s the over-taking that freaks me out.  It’s like there’s a cross-national death-wish policy going on.  I refuse to be involved.

It was 3 days of driving to get from the Iguazu Falls to Rio de Janeiro.  We spent one night in a featureless hotel in a featureless town – the one saving grace of the establishment as that they gave us breakfast the next morning after the breakfast hours were finished.  However, it was chocolate cake (plus coffee for us).  I don’t think the girls have ever had chocolate cake for breakfast before.  It was quite the highlight of their lives.  I wish I’d known that before I’d flown them all over the world and taken them to Disneyland etc.  I could have just gone down to Banjo’s every morning and purchased a slab of cake for $2.29.  They would have been heaps happier, and we would have been heaps richer.  Oh well, you live and learn.

Post milking - Cordi seems unimpressed

The good news was that the next day we arrived at our destination before dark.  This was an extremely fortunate stroke of luck as otherwise we would have got completely lost.  The hotel where we were spending the next three nights was a sort of quasi-ranch located inside a giant gated fantasy farmland where rich people from Sao Paulo had unbelievable holiday mansions and could thus play farms on the weekends.  It was pretty impressive.  Prancing white stallions trotting about the place, a giant golf course, a helipad, a miniature farm for kids  - where the girls “milked” a cow,  (in reality they held a cup near the udder and screamed).  I use the term "farm" pretty loosely here.  I reality there was a couple of stinky sawdust filled pens, some manky looking peacocks, 4 bunnies crammed in a cage and a couple of roosters that wouldn't shut the fuck up.  To avoid disappointment about the lack of farm creatures, I hauled the girls over to a nearby paddock to look at some grotty sheep, and attempted to feed grass to a Shetland with a manic look in it's eye.  It's the same the world over.  Mini farms and zoos are the worst.  A particular low point for me was Safari World in Bangkok.  Here I saw a baby tiger in a portable wheel-a-cage as big as it's body, and a dolphin show where they made a dolphin wear a small red cowboy hat and go around the pool several times.  At least make it a fedora or something.  Cowboy hats are so early 2000s.

Some old crap-heap on the estate

same estate - another crap-heap

You have to actually touch it Valli

You're going nowhere on that Cordi

There was also a Kids Club on the property that hotel guests could also use.   Upon discovery, I felt the excitement pulse through my veins.  However, you couldn’t exactly drop kick them in the door and piss off to have sex and swims though.  It was parents on the job.  I guess the rich people would bring their nannies to step up to the plate.  Instead it was me who put on the costumes, helped set up the “café” and “supermarket” and pushed the little buggers on the swings for an hour.  I guess I have to actually do something sometimes – there’s only so far I can take this newly acquired decorative role I’ve comfortably slipped into.

Valli and her customers

Cordi goes shopping

Push me Mumma (Fuck OFF I will)

It photographs well

The hotel itself was stunning.  Possibly the nicest ever.   It was part of a hotel group called Fasano which actually started as a restaurant run by an Italian family 100 years ago.  Unfortunately it also has a hefty price tag to go with it – but this is more the case with the branches in Rio and Sao Paulo.  Staying in this one – located off a busy highway located 100km inland from Sao Paulo - was our only chance, because nobody came here.  So we took it.  And it really was quite the experience.  Everything was immaculate – but with a slightly odd edge.  I think it was because the place was huge, practically empty, over-staffed, and the majority of the staff spoke no English.  This gave it an overall slightly uncomfortable vibe whenever we had to talk to anyone – particularly at mealtimes.  Dining in the restaurant became an awkward experience.  The waiters smiled too much and wouldn't stop filling up our waters.  I swear I did about 15 pisses the first night.  The following night I just didn't sip my drink at all until just as we were leaving.  Even when a large chunk of potato became wedged in my oesophagus no water was had- I held strong and waited the choking sensation out.  I couldn't go back to those toilets again.  Not after what I saw.

At sunset.....noice......

IT was first spotted upon that initial night in the restaurant.  When I was off for my 11th wee in a row that was the moment when I first laid eyes on IT.  The embodiment of all my fears.   A terrifying sight to behold.  I talk of nothing less than a chunky jet-black spider the size of my hand.  It also had yellow markings on its thick, bulbous, hairy abdomen.   I started whimpering but  had to control myself because  I had Cordi with me and I don’t want the girls to become infected with fear - like I was by my own poor terrified mother, who I witnessed having absolute meltdowns on any encounters with our eight legged chums.  One day she actually leaped out of the car she was supposed to be driving and let her children roll down the street trapped within, and accompanied by a large huntsman on the steering wheel.

Yes, yes, very pretty

I already knew that by being in Brazil, I was trespassing on lands inhabited by such terrifying beasts, but I was taken unawares on this particular instance.  Naturally I refused to do anymore toilet trips and promptly wet my own pants.  I told you the water waiter was relentless with his top ups.   Apparently Chalks was later trying to encourage the spider to get on a napkin to take it outside.  I can’t even let my mind wander towards such horrors. When he stroked the giant brown tarantula’s leg in Costa Rica some years ago – I should have realised what I was dealing with.  That night I typed “Spiders of Southern Brazil”  into Google.  What a mistake that was.  What should be all over the first page but the multiple headlines from 2 months ago “It’s Raining Spiders in Southern Brazil”  “Spiders Falling From the Sky” etc etc.  After more research I determined that this chapter straight out of a trip to hell happened in a town 3 hours from here.  It’s not that far – have you seen how fast spiders can run?  They could cover that distance in a day.

Would you swim in there?  I just don't think I would

Now I knew that they were out there it became hard to relax.  Who knew what chair base was a nest?  What shoe was a hideaway?  And what hole in the ground a haven?  The spiders had entered my tranquil world, and I knew they wouldn’t leave until I touched back down in NYC and fumigated my belongings.  Did you know that the world’s most venomous spider resides here in Brazil.  And also the largest.  As big as a dinner plate.  Thank Jesus we weren’t headed for the Amazon.  Not this time anyway – we hadn’t had any vaccinations and I wasn’t up for a spot of yellow fever.  Does it actually turn you yellow?

This is the kind of thing that leaves lasting mental scars

All this spider talk makes me remember the actions of a particularly unpleasant person about 20 years ago.  And I feel free to name her as I know she would never read this.  Plus I don’t care and I want her to know that she traumatised me when I was too stoned to move.  Her name is Bec Scales.  And she was what you would call a peer pressurer.  The kind of person who made you have 8 buckets in a row to "catch up" if you happened to turn up to her house mid session on any given  evening.  Well this is what happened to me one unfortunate Tasmanian winter’s night before I had the good sense to learn how to say “No”  (Actually this took another 15 years – but whatevs I got there eventually……).  Following this assault on my lungs, Bec then proceeded to put on a documentary that has forever visited my nightmares.  It was on the giant dinner plate-sized spiders of the Amazon.  And it was just to fuck us all up.  I watched with horror at the spider hiding in it’s hole waiting for the python who came down for a look.  A fight broke out – the spider won and then paralysed the python and sucked out it’s insides.  There was close ups of the munching, and also the sound effects (it sounded like when they have the head-job scenes on Game of Thrones – are the sucking sounds necessary? – we all know what’s going on, the facial expressions suffice).  After eating the whole giant thing, the spider dragged the empty snake skin out of it’s hole and dumped it in the forest.  Then there were the scenes of the tribe that worshipped the spider.  They did rituals wearing spider hats and using spider poison as a hallucinogenic.  Then they stalked them in the jungle.  Finally they caught one and proceeded to eat it.

It was a terrified drive home in the dark.  I don’t know how many times I checked the sun visors.

Anyway, despite my anxious visits back to the toilets on subsequent mornings and evenings (armed with a camera this time)  I failed to see my furry little friend again.  I wasn’t sure if I felt better or worse.  It could have been loose anywhere else in the entire establishment.  And it could have had a family.  A large family.  As you can tell, I had a hard time getting over it.  What can I say here except I’m a big pussy when it comes to arachnids.  I’d do an anti spider-fear course, but I know that they end these things by making you handle them.  I’d rather stay in a world of natural mortal terror.

After 3 days of checking my shoes and shaking my clothes out thoroughly, it was time to go.  Off to Rio de Janeiro - where the caipirinhas are potent, the bikinis are up bums, and the samba never stops...