08. The loading of coffee

Santos, it’s coffee. The old buildings of the colonial epoch overflow with coffee sacks, the warehouses are full of coffee and everywhere we breathe this smell of green coffee, smell of dust from the red soil of the fazendas¹, smell of sacks, smell of heat. It’s the smell of Santos, now spoiled by the smoke of diesel trucks.

When we lived in Santos, more than twenty years ago, it was still in carioles that coffee was transported, small two-wheeled carioles pulled by a mule, or others four-wheeled and hitched up. As soon as a ship arrived to port, it was a joyful parade of these carioles, painted in vivid colors, which at a trot, headed toward the docks, accompanied by a fanfare of bells and the cracking of whips brandished by the drivers, strong mustached Portuguese men, wearing enormous straw hats and donning jute aprons. Reins in hand, legs apart, they would stand at the front of the carioles, straight and proud like roman charioteers.
1. Very big ranches.