This place is like heaven on earth! It is so beautiful and so many of you would love it. Dan, Ness, Mum, Matt in particular - you´d love the beaches. Each day the biggest decisions we have to make are which beach to go to, and what time to leave....
The water temp is so high here too, an incredible difference to Buzios. It feels like it must be 26 or something in the water. And yesterday I successfully gained some new tan lines - a little too much red though for the desired effect. I think we spent about 6 hours on the beach - reading, swimming, sleeping with a nice coconut palm breeze cooling things down. Oh so nice!
This town reminds me of a little Byron Bay but better. It´s filled with a mix of hippie, rasta, surfers and tourists scattered in between trying to blend in somewhere. There actually aren´t that many tourists which is good too. Small streets with clothes, jewellery shops, and cafes spilling out. I just wish I could buy all the sarongs and hippie skirts and shirts and dresses for back home, but then have to remind myself that won´t fit our "business casual" policy at work! At night cars back up and open the hatch and load out market stalls on the streets. Music invariably blares out from stereos here and there, from local reggae to Brazilian grunge. I heard some Jack Johnson the other day and just wanted to sit and stay there!
Oh, the funniest thing though, was yesterday afternoon at one beach, this vw equivalen of a polo had pulled up to one end of the beach and 3 very white and funny looking Europeans were standing outside with their esky, speedos and hairy chests with the music absolutely blarring out of the car, standing together and waving at some girls on the beach - for about an hour! They were so funny, it was like something out of a mister bean episode. Lucky we were far enough away to laugh because we just couldn´t help it. We were just hoping and praying they weren´t Aussies and giving our country a bad name!
Oh - and happy Australia Day to all of you back home! I hope you enjoyed the time off work and had a chance to wind down for just a little while.
The other night we met up with the Danish and Slovenien guys who were on our bus from Campos and ended up going to a bit of a local reggae/fohore (no idea of spelling - folk kind of music which is pretty much reggae-ish) club which was just like a big backyard party. Tanya and I embarrassingly were persuaded by two local guys to dance - local style though - those partner dancing steps, man I never learnt those at school! I don´t think our dancing skills impressed them very much though cause we were quickly handed back at the end of the song! It felt like the longest song ever!! Ahh, so funny! The only thing is that nothing starts here until 2am, and goes until morning. So if you´re tired around 10, you have to either have a nap for an hour or two or push through. I don´t know how they all get back up the next morning and work in the heat.
Last night there was another party on the beach here with a big stage set up on the sand where the tide had drifted out, for the town´s birthday celebration. That´s our second one in 4 days - pretty good. But we were pretty tired last night so we skipped out at about 12:30 and went to bed - only to jump up this morning at about 5am to the sound of fireworks - just before sunrise. These places never sleep! Even the little kids are out eating dinner with their families at midnight.
Speaking of food, it´s great! We had our first proper meal last night at a restaurant with the two travellers - I know the Danish guy´s name is Jacob but can never remember, yet alone repeat, the Slovenien guy´s name. They are our link between English and Portuguese at the moment! So we had this great meal - unfortunatley I´d worked out what the fish dish was only to find they were out of that, so we had chicken and it came with rice, a beans mix, potato and salad and was so filling.
The hosts at our pousada are really nice too. Breakfast is included and this morning it was like a feast (laid out for us as soon as we walked down at 11am:) we thought we´d missed it but pretty soon there were plates of cake, toasted fresh rolls with melted cheese (beautiful with our vegemite), watermelon, papaya and bananas, this other sweet stuff (??? your guess is as good as mine!) but it tasted kind of like croissants with sugar and cinnamon, coconut and pineapple juice and fresh coffee. If only I could eat it all!
We´re going to head back to Ilhčus today so we can get an early bus in the morning to Salvador. Would love to stay here on the beach for a few more months though. Ahhhh, this is the life....
Posted by Haley at January 26, 2005 04:30 PM