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 Peter
Boynton started a good thread about the Hotel Savanah and I've been thinking
about life there. I had a love-hate relationship with the hotel and would,
occasionally, go off in a huff and find another place to stay, like a cheap
boarding house right on the beach or a place to hang a rede downtown near
the bus station. But I'd always come back, the lure was too great: hot
showers, beds, phone, privacy ...and room service. Some folks were a lot
more civilized than I and would wait for the dining room to open and enjoy
white starched table cloths, silverware and good waiters. I usually couldn't
wait and would start thinking about dinner a couple hours outside Fortaleza
while still on the bus. Remember the heat? I don't remember if we ever had
to make reservations by telegraph from our towns to stay there, it seems now
that they always had rooms open for us--as Peter says--only on the second
and, very occasionally, the third floor if you were female. I'd unlock the
room, take a long shower and change into clean clothes. Then call room
service. The guy who answered always charmed me, you'd hear all kinds of
kitchen noises in the background and he'd sing out, "Coopaaaa!" He did it
with such enthusiasm and joy that I just knew dinner would be great and the
waiter would be up very shortly. My favorite was lobster termidor and a
Brahma Chopp - estupidamente gelada. After hanging up, there was a new Time
magazine to read until the waiter knocked. Later, perhaps a trip over to the
São Benedito cinema, half a block away on the praça, to see a movie. Peter
remembers the abrigo in the praça with saudade, I never got to see that
establishment. The municipio put up a bunch of planters and a really tall
mast with stadium lights hanging off the top: the place was pretty bright
and sterile and the planters made jagged dark shadows. I recall looking out
the hotel window late one night, maybe 1:00 or 2:00 AM, and being fascinated
to see a caped and masked figure, like Zorro without the hat, flitting from
shadow to shadow across the praça and down a side street, out of sight. It
was one of those magical moments, I could hardly believe what I'd seen.
 Someone
discovered that if we took the elevator to the top floor and went through a
door we could get to the roof, where the ladies did huge amounts of laundry
in open tubs. They didn't mind us being up there and it was a fine place to
see the skyline and watch a sunset, although without any comfort, we had to
kneel or sit on a corrugated metal roof well behind the sine wave-shaped
parapet wall that ran around the top of the hotel. I understood what vertigo
meant when I first looked over the side and realized how far it was to the
black-and-white pattern in the sidewalk below.
 And,
finally, the manager, Seu Lorenço. I met him one evening when Brian Horn and
I drove a Peace Corps Jeep Rural in from Santa Quiteria with 50 kilos of
Santa Rita tomatoes from Dickie Allred's garden that needed to be sold.
Brian knew Lorenço and when we saw him at reception, asked him to buy the
tomatoes for his kitchen. He came out to look, then sent out a couple of
kitchen guys to bring them in. I think he did it as a favor to us as he
specified it was a one-time deal. We'd always nod and say hello after that.
Go to Hotel Savanah I - Peter Boynton
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