Month Ten of Remote Year: Brazil
The most difficult month. Full stop.
To be entirely honest, I’m not quite sure how to start this one. But I guess it should be by prefacing that I deviated from the rest of my group who went to Córdoba, Argentina from Peru. Instead I chose to spend March in Brazil; two weeks in Rio de Janeiro and two weeks in São Paulo. I’d be traveling with a previous Remote Year member and meeting up with her in Rio as she was flying from Colombia. Let’s name her Beth.
Perhaps the next thing that makes sense to say is that this post is being written the day after the Event as my way of processing and beginning to recover. I capitalize “event” because it’ll be shorthand for how I speak about what happened on March 16th in Rio de Janeiro. Also you, the reader, should know that this is being written from a place of raw emotion and shock, which will take quite some time to work through. I wish this were a work of fiction; it easily sounds like it could be. I seriously contemplated ending my year early after this and immediately flying back to NYC. I knew no one would fault me for that. But at the same time, I’m stubborn as hell and didn’t want to give in.
Third, I’m a confident traveler. I’m also a smart traveler. I do my research, I’m conscious of my surroundings, I respect the culture of the place I’m in, and I do my best to blend in with the locals as much as possible. I’ve traveled solo to South America before, navigated the chaotic medinas of Morocco, explored the Middle East alone, been interrogated and detained by military guards at the Israel Jordan border for hours, navigated Abu Dhabi in conservative Muslim clothing, traveled through airports in Istanbul after terrorist attacks, and defended myself against the homeless on the streets of Manila. I’ve learned, I’ve grown and I’ve found ways to keep safe while still enjoying the world.
Fourthly, and probably most importantly, you should know that the story below won’t be an easy read. For those that know me, it’ll be worrisome and uncomfortable. For that I’m sorry. Please reach out if you feel the need to. The content beyond the divider of this paragraph is uncomfortable to read at its best, and a trigger for some at its worst. This story is about needing to fight for my life in a foreign country, fighting within a language I don’t understand, and knowing that I was going to have this battle in the middle of the jungle on a mountain. It involves the most primal of animal instincts: fight or flight.
There are no photos for this post. The dividers between sections are a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese sentences or commands that were said to Beth and I during the Event over and over. I never want to hear the word “tranquilo” again. Additionally, I want to explain why I’m sharing this story so publicly. I’ve been very honest about my personal experience throughout Remote Year over the past 9 months, in both the ups and downs. I haven’t divulged everything that’s occurred, but I’ve shared the important and relevant things. And as unfortunate as it is, this is part of my Remote Year. This isn’t the full story with every detail because there are things that happened on that mountain that I’m not ready to talk about. I might never be ready. But this is most of it. The world is filled with both good and bad, safe and unsafe, the beautiful and the ugly. This year isn’t all wonderfully edited and composed Instagram photos, hilarious Snap Stories or gushy Facebook posts that talk about how much we love our lives. And not everything ends well, despite our inherent need to put a positive spin on it all.
Sometimes shitty things happen and we need to live with them.
Beth and I knew Rio and São Paulo were moderately unsafe cities. We were aware of the poverty and disparity between class groups, we had researched the neighborhoods to avoid and those to frequent, and we knew about the crime. We had read and read and read as much as necessary and prepared ourselves to be on guard a majority of the month. But, we also knew from previous travels that despite a city or country’s reputation, it’s often not as bad as is talked about. So we came into Brazil with balanced expectations and explored as smartly as we possibly could.
On March 16th, a Thursday, Beth and I decided that we would explore some of the more touristy parts of Rio together. Specifically Christ the Redeemer and the Sugarloaf cable car. We wanted to get these in before the crowds of the weekend would form endless lines in the hot sun. Since Beth and I enjoy hiking, and it had been a few weeks since I had been on a mountain, we researched and prepared ourselves to hike to the top for Christ the Redeemer. It would take us about 2 hours, would be a beautiful ascent with steep sections and would have views for miles around on a clear day. Everything we read said to do this Corcovado Christ the Redeemer hike, every local we spoke to recommended it, all the reviews we found online encouraged it. With almost 51,000 mainly positive reviews on TripAdvisor, you don’t really have a choice but to believe what everyone says.
But thirty minutes into our hike up the mountain, Beth and I were attacked, robbed at knifepoint with butcher knives and long switchblades, then held hostage for more than 2 hours in the middle of the jungle.
Beth was attacked first. She was maybe 5 to 6 feet in front of me on the trail. It was hot and humid, so we were sweating and breathing heavy. I heard a sudden rustle in the trees and when I looked up a boy no older than 13 or 14 years old had her by the front of her shirt with a knife pointed straight up against the bottom of her jaw. In the soft spot between her chin and her throat. For whatever reason I didn’t think it was a mugging at first; I thought it was a mentally unstable kid that was being violent but that could be calmed down. I initially took a step back in surprise, and then immediately took steps forward to intervene. To physically put myself between Beth and this kid, and to diffuse the situation. I got some words out in English and only two steps forward before I was grabbed from behind by a man bigger than I, and had a butcher knife put to my throat.
He told me in English, in my left ear, “cash.”
I froze, nodded rapidly, and kept my hands in plain sight. All the while watching Beth in front of me and this very anxious, unstable 13 year old boy with a knife. These two moved Beth and I forward a little, pulled our backpacks off of us and then pushed us forwards on the trail even more. We rounded a corner of tree trunks thick and thin, moved beyond the leaves, and that’s when four more adult men came into view. Three were sitting on a fallen tree log, and one was standing. All were looking at us.
In that single moment, in that itty bitty slice of time that was no more than a couple milliseconds, that’s when Beth and I realized we were going to be fighting for our lives. And not only for our lives, but also for the safety and preservation of our bodies against six men. Alone. Where we were too deep into the jungle for anyone to hear us cry out for help. That kind of fear is all consuming and indescribable. It hits you to the core.
The man that was standing was aggressive. He was older than the two men we had already met, more weathered and worn than the three men sitting down, and very clearly on a power trip. Beth met him first, received instructions of how to get on the ground, and immediately put her back against a tree trunk as tightly and firmly as she could. The 13 year old boy put a knife to her face to induce fear, to keep her still, and that’s when this man turned to me. He gave me the same instructions that he had given Beth, but be it stupidity or anger or stubbornness or survivalist instincts or learnings from prior similar incidents, I refused to comply. I would not allow my free will to be taken away by one, two, four or six men in the middle of the jungle. Everything in me inwardly and outwardly fought every demand he had, every intimidation tactic he used, every use of force he applied. I honestly don’t remember much of what happened in those moments when I resisted. I don’t think I want to.
Flight wasn’t an option. There was nowhere to even flee to. So I had no choice but to fight.
After maybe 15 minutes, Beth and I realized that the three men sitting on the fallen tree trunk were victims just like us. The men with knives went through our bags, took everything of value and even things without clear monetary value, then threw the contents they didn’t want at us. Chapstick, a couple pens, my Airbnb keys, a bottle of water and my Antarctica pin are all I might walk out of the jungle with hours later. We weren’t allowed to talk to one another, stand up or move from where we had first gone down. Despite the large ants crawling everywhere, despite the bugs, despite the mud and despite the layer of damp leaves covering the trail floor.
We came to find out that we were in the company of an Argentinean, an Israeli and a Colombian. That was before these three men with knives took more and more people on the trail, one by one, forcing on them the same terror Beth and I had experienced. First it was a German that they would force to strip naked, just to take his clothes and shoes. Following him were two French women who spoke little English and a Belgian man who communicated in Spanish. With no concept of time aside from the sun gradually moving further and further down in the sky and casting different shadows along the leaves, it felt like hours on that jungle floor. We weren’t told anything other than something about the police over and over again in Portuguese. And that we had to stay, wait and watch them ambush more and more people until they were pleased with the amount of money and electronics they had collected. All of this information was interpreted quietly to us by the Argentinean, because Beth and I couldn’t understand anything that was said. When it would end, we had no idea. We didn’t even know if we’d make it out alive. These men had nothing to lose and everything to gain, so by default they had the upper hand.
The final person they ended up taking was a woman from Canada who tried to make a run for it. They went after her, dragged her back and went through her things while we watched in silence. After some time, and packing up on their part, they told us to stand one-by-one and go. To go quickly. But before we could leave, they searched our bodies one more time in case we had hid anything that they might’ve missed under our clothes. Or in the event they made a last minute decision to take more clothes or shoes, leaving people barefoot and humiliated.
Once cleared, we ran. Downhill and over large tree roots and under fallen trees and jumping across rocks and over streams as fast as possible without looking back. I feared they were right behind us, potentially giving us a head start just to come back and hunt us down. All the women were running ahead of the men who took up the rear, acting as human barriers between us and them.
At the start of the trail was a guard house that every hiker was required to sign into. Names, phone numbers and addresses of where we were staying. So when we got back down to the bottom and at the start of it all, I paused to catch my breath and wait for the others. Once Beth and others started showing up I went to the armed guards to tell them what had happened. A woman was standing in the entrance’s door frame with a clipboard and a gun at her hip. As I started speaking, Beth pulled me back abruptly.
“They paid off the guards. That’s what they were saying in Portuguese.”
These people that were supposed to keep the trail safe, supposed to be there for help, supposed to be decent human beings, had willingly and knowingly allowed for this torture to happen to us all. And worse, if Beth hadn’t caught me when she did after being told by one of the other women who spoke Portuguese and English, this Event could’ve ended in a very different way. We had seen the faces of the men who carried knives, had been around them for hours, and knew where they were operating.
Instead of now being able to feel safe, we had to continue to run. We made it to the large attached park, found an administrator who was caring for a heritage mansion on the grounds, and she called the police. While waiting for officers to show up, we learned that 100 people had been robbed in the same fashion last month on the same trail. There was no mention of this anywhere in our research. When the cops showed up, they refused to help or file a police report. Actually, they were on strike. All of them in Rio de Janeiro.
No one could, or would, help us.
The Argentinean and Israeli men on the fallen tree trunk were friends. The Israeli on the far left and the Argentinean on the far right. They were separated by an older Colombian man between them. When we were granted permission to leave, we each stood one-by-one, going from the furthest right to the furthest left. The furthest right set were the people closest to going back downhill where the trail had started. That’s where we wanted to go.
Halfway down the run out, the Argentinean asked if anyone in the back of the group had seen his Israeli friend with longer hair. Everyone kept moving quickly and breathing heavily, but someone responded that they had seen him leave ahead of us so he just must’ve been further along.
Once down at the bottom of the trail and back in the park we searched for the Israeli. None of us saw him. We looked back towards the trail thinking he might’ve been behind us and maybe just slow, but he wasn’t there either. When the police came, this was brought up. We received no help.
None of us know where he is, if he ever made it out, or if he’s alive.
Those that I spoke to within Remote Year before this post went live were well beyond amazing. The same can be said for the two incredible, loving, supportive men I reached out to outside of the group on the day of the Event. Without the Remote Year staff, my own network back home and the genuine concern from those I’ve traveled alongside for 10 months, I would be lost. I cannot, and will not, ever be able to truly express just how thankful I am.
An experience like this changes a person. It also has a funny way of unlocking every single similar memory and emotion that has happened in the past, then finding a way to entangle them all with the present. I’ve been in this moment before, but not in foreign land. It was in Brooklyn, my home, 10 years ago this spring. I fought back then to get away from being robbed and raped, same as I fought in the jungle on that Brazilian mountain almost 2 weeks ago. Experiences like these force a person to realize their own strength and their own will to live. It also makes a woman realize how deeply, and how often, she’ll be forced to fight in order to simply survive.
