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We've arranged to take Linda Sobell to the nearby supermarket where we buy coffee and more booze to take home. We've bought a barrel aged Pitu Pinga for a song. Gosh it's cheap. But the next day we find it even cheaper at a supermarket in Pina.
We're walking along the street to/from the market and a couple in a car yell at us to watch the camera — yeah, yeah. Yet again.
Kate and I bike down the beach to a glass place she had noticed from one of our cab rides. It's open, but they have to unlock the door to let us in. This is all too common, there's a security guard on the door to make sure they're not robbed. We changed $100US to $300R at an money exchange around the corner and it's likewise locked and barred. There's a doorman, an armed security guard, inside to let us in. I suppose others he would refuse entry. The are two windows inside on the wall for the money exchange. They are darkened, you can't see anything through them, until the clerk behind presses a switch of some sort to make the windows suddenly transparent. There's a tiny slot below the window to shove your money over and for them to return the exchange back. This experience speaks volumes about the country.
Kate doesn't buy any glass at the glass store. We return to the hotel and Kate is off to the conference. Reg walks up the busy street by the supermarket and passes lots of stores including the Boa Viagem Mercado. Vendors include shoe repair, appliance repair, and the usual fruits, vegetable and meat stands you would expect at a "market". The meats are really sad affairs — they are dried out from too much time hanging there without refrigeration. In the parking lot Reg notices live crabs strung up and wriggling on a post. They're teeny tiny, not much meat there.
Reg has given up on carrying his 35mm Canon SLR camera and relies instead on a pocket sized APS Canon ELPH we've brought with us. It's more discrete and avoids the issue of people approaching us to caution we naive tourists about the snatch and grab pirates. Nevertheless, he gets some of the same even with this camera! We're obviously tourists and obvious targets .. but we've been safe so far! Wandering around in daylight is much safer than at night.
An aside: we are robbed later, when we're home, with a fountain pen not a gun. See the PostScript on this trip.
It rains off and on all day. From the hotel roof top you have that experience where you can look out and see it's sunny here but pouring rain over there. The roof top is easy access — a staff member shows us that you can go there via the fire exit/stair well. It's a little known secret. We offer him a tip for this insider's secret but he declines.
We met Linda after the conference with an intention of going down to the beach together. But it's raining and we end up parking ourselves at the hotel lobby bar for more caipirinhas. A colleague, Raquel from Uruguay, joins us. For some reason she's really keen about Kate's work (the Safer Bars project) but doesn't know Linda Sobell.
An aside: "The "Sobell drinking papers" refer to the ground breaking and highly controversial early 1970s research by psychologists Mark and Linda Sobell. Their studies challenged the long-held addiction treatment dogma that total abstinence was the only successful outcome for people dependent on alcohol." Google AI from Society for the Study of Addictions.
With Raquel's rough English and Linda's rough Spanish we determine that the conference has some very interesting under currents that we weren't aware of:
- that "alcohol" is just the latest boon doggle,
- that the "Jimmy Swaggart" drug advisor has done nothing beyond a needle exchange,
- that AIDS/HIV is the real issue,
- and, that underlying everything, is an exploitation of the poor.
Raquel tells us the poor are seen as just a resource, they don't count as real "people" (there are nasty class structures here and throughout South America). Illiteracy is a big issue. Raquel is almost in tears by times and very frustrated that the same folks are getting more money under different "programs" and doing nothing. Nothing changes.
The extreme poverty in Uruguay has happened because of a recent economic collapse. She tells us there are men begging on the street in shame who only recently were employed in good white collar jobs.
It's a bleak sad conversation the girls are having this night around the bar.
But there's a dance party down at Mile Marker Zero arranged for the conference. We ride a bus and have to call Linda in her room so she can join us — she had got to working on her computer.
That night drinks flowed like water — "we started out on whisky but soon hit the harder stuff". There's another Folk dance/Bale troupe with a band. Tons of costume changes and really high energy. They would have lost pounds and pounds in sweat. They do their thing and then engage all of the audience in some line dances. It was great fun.
There were some actors, unbeknown to us, who did a drunk scene in the audience — it ended up with a player taking away the car keys of the drunk. This scene scared the shit out of us — we thought it was a real event. We didn't know until after that it was all actors!
Kate did some dancing even though her knees are bad. Raquel, from Uruguay, was a passionate dancing fool. Robin is the worst dancer in the world. Although Bill, also from Australia, runs a close second.
Robin, Oya (Nigeria), Linda, Kate and Reg share a cab back to the hotel and then a bottle of wine on the sand of the sea shore for an hour or so. Robin asked everyone to tell the story about how they got started in the Alcohol field. There are some interesting stories there, but none recorded here.
We're in bed at 2:00am. A long day, the sun will be up in a few hours.
These notes are from a densely detailed travel log we kept at the time. Kate recently discovered it in August of 2026 and I have transcribed with minor edits, corrections and redactions so as to not embarrass the living ....
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