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Maragogi

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Twas with a heavy heart that I left Salvador, a fantastic town. Defo worth another look should I ever find myself in this neck of the woods again. We picked the town of Maceio as our next stop, its 12 hours north going by bus – I’ve said enough about buses already so I will fast forward to bus station Maceio where we decided that we had enough energy and will to jump on a more localesque type of transport to the tiny fishing village of Maragogi 100 or so miles north of Maceio, the reason being that Maceio is a rather sizeable town with merits aplenty I am sure but we wanted a few days of countriness, get down, get real with the local red necks (says the boy from County Cavan).

Anyways the bus journey up there was very enjoyable – we got to see alot of countryside go by. Lush green fields, coconut trees, people going about their daily business etc in the 4 hours or so we spent on that bus we saw more than all the night buses put together since I arrived in Buenos aires all the way back in may.

Maragogi is as tiny as we hoped, it has seen its fair share of tourists but even still it was just what we wanted. Just off the main highway that runs up the Brazilian coast its about 5 blocks wide and 20 long which stretch out on sandy dirt tracks adjacent to what seems like an endless beach. Dropped off in the centre of town I abandoned Marilyn and the bags at the edge of the beach and went in search for some digs. Not a town with hostels or hotels we had to make do with a pousada which is in essence a mix between a bnb and a motel. You get a room a meagre breakfast and not a whole lot more, still it more than did the trick for a couple of days.

On our second day there we took off on a bit of an adventure, the previous day I encountered an outspoken norweigan guy who was closer to 50 than he liked to let on, the conversation seemed to last about 10 seconds but when I met up with Marilyn later on I seemed to have garnered the entire history of the town along with places to eat and where to find the best beaches along with a hole host of facts about the strange norweigan guy. It strikes me now that maybe this guy is some sort of communicational genius, maybe he has cracked some sort of code where we can say so much by saying so little, anyways I better not think about this too much, beer to be drank blog to be erm, blogged?

Anyways with his golden nuggets of info safely planted somewhere within the recess of my cranium we took off north along the strand. We stopped every now and again for some snacks and beers, the endless beach it seems only interrupted by the odd river or rocky outcrop. The river we had to traverse was about knee deep so at that time it didn’t present much of an obstacle! Just before we got to this juncture actually I must recite an encounter I had with a funny little kid.

We were walking along taking in the sun, the sea, the sands – a light breeze ensured the temperature didn’t get too much for pasty mcpasty himself. It was pretty much perfect, families of fishermen were trawling in their catch which contained all kinds of fish, crustaceans and plain ole junk. After the second family of fishermen and women from a group of kids the smallest one noticed something about me and ran over at full pelt. ‘Corinthianos!! Corinthianos!! Usted jugador Corinthiano? Argentinos!!’ is the best of what I could make of what he was saying to me, Corinthians is a famous football team from sao Paulo, the legendary (and proper) Ronaldo now plays for them. I figured the kid thought I played for them – I dunno how to be honest, I ain’t in no shape to confuse even a blind person that I was a pro footballer but this lad seemed to be convinced. I tried my best to talk to him, he rattled on an unbelievable amount about soccer,  I told him I wasn’t argentinian, but irish – un poco pais en europa! At which point he proceeded to recite entire team lists of real Madrid, Barcelona, Ac Milan I had to stop him there… Esso Esso Esso he screamed with a laughter and summoned me to greet him with the traditional local ‘cool’ handshake, looking as far removed from a local than is possible I can only have looked like a bit of a plank but sure feck it isn’t it our differences which make this whole jaunt as enjoyable as it has been.

Anyways we crossed the unbridged river which sounds alot more dramatic and difficult than it actually was but casual arm chair followers of this adventure don’t know that so I will emphasise the sheer width depth and power of the emense torrent that was the river we somehow crossed, erm, okay enough of that. We walked onwards for 3 hours until it got to a stage where near 4pm twas only a matter of time before the sun would drop and all sorts of nasty creatures come out to play – some of them of the human variety you have to consider.

Off back we walked and the sun set quick, before we knew it twas dark and Marilyn was wary of crossing the river at such a time where you could make out the street lights of the distant maragogi and not an awful lot more so just before the river (we thought) we headed inland to find the road that ran to maragogi. We found ourselves on a Tuesday evening in a tiny village which does not get tourists walking around come 7 o’clock or so. Twas really nice to walk around a brazillian beached version of mountnugent, it really was a joy to see the utter puzzlement on the faces of the old ladies when they saw us traipse through the town no doubt during the ad break of the local coronation street. Anyways we walked out of that town and its illuminated streets into a fleet of fire flies and some rather large toads we walked for what seemed like a solid half an hour till we came to a cross roads and a sign that pointed to maragogi or at least what I thought was a sign to maragogi. We followed it along until it got us back to something resembling civilisation, back onto the beach we turned right to find the river, not just the river though, a deeper, stronger, wider version of the veritable trickle we encountered before.

Marilyn is not the most comfortable in water so she was a little more than wary when it comes to threading through a rushing gusht of a river a couple of hours too many after twilight. In an attempt to placate her fears, to show that crossing would be as facile as it was before I took a few steps in and to my own shock I was up to well past my waist in a torrent that was hammering my balance. I made it back to shore alot wetter and wiser about tidal rivers, we walked back to the road and to the sign and following the road out to the main highway which we followed for a mile or so until we saw the big ass sign which couldn’t be mistaken for anywhere but maragogi.

On our way we came across a peculiar and fairly grounding sight. Off in the distance as we walked we saw a pair of people silhouetted by the head lights of a passing car it seemed walking towards us. Again it was dark and we were in country brazil, any bandit worth their salt would have had their way with us no bother at all. We walked on, no other option! Closer we got we saw that the people were standing still and what more there were more across the road, crouched as if ready to pounce on any passing bounty (paranoid)(paranoid)(paranoid). Far too quickly, nervously we walked past them and they passed us no remarks. Behind them on either side were some crude make shift huts made out of scrap wood and bin liner black plastic, at least 50 homes gathered at close quarters with some women out front over tiny stoves cooking what I reckon, assume was rice. I guess they are migrant workers, the homes don’t look like they have been there that long. Onwards we walked and I have to say under a perfectly starry Brazilian night I felt sad, almost guilty that I can no problem at all check myself into a hostel or pousada to have a good nights kip having worked so little to earn such a right while people probably with 10 times more brains that I have to struggle so bad purely by the chance of where they were born.

We got to the welcoming lights of maragogi, out little detour afforded us the opportunity of exploring a side of the town which you don’t see when you stick to the sea front as I would imagine most visitors do. It had been quite a while since we had imbibed in something sustainable so the guts were rumbling something fierce. We traced along the streets searching for a brazillian mammy to answer her own maternal instinct and feed two stray cubs such as ourselves. In our quest we heard some shouting , some amplified shouting. It itched a curiousness in us, we could put of our hunger to go see what was making such a racket of a Tuesday night. So we followed the noise until we found ourselves on a street with some bored kids circling around on battered bicycles, some others just glumly looked into space not paying us any attention. We walked passed as if we were walking that road anyways, to the left was the source of the racket. A congregation of people sat rapt listening to a fulsome figure roar into a microphone ‘Jesus’, ‘Christo’…. Halleluiah they roared, some stood and raised their hands. Evangelical Christians! Up until recently Catholicism was the main religion in Brazilian society, that was the case until people started to question why being so devout as they were so many bad things were still happening to them. Its really boggling to imagine the amount of gun crime, drug and sex abuse that happens in brazil, anyways it happens and people looked for another answer to their questions and evangelicalism was a fit for many many people in brazil. To me these people are crazy to the point where it is entertaining but even still it gives you some idea of the mindset of people who’s lives are less than comfortable…

We walked on and into the welcoming (metaphorical) arms of our brazillian mammy. Some of the days finest catch cooked in coconut milk served with rice and lashings of the local brew….

We left the following day for the wonderfully titled Olinda.

 

 

Salvador

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

Salvador:

When I started this jaunt around the rock commonly known as planet earth I made the pledge to try and do as much of it overland as was possible, so I racked up the miles on the subcontinent and south east asia using planes, trains, automobiles and the odd boat thrown in here and there. In south east asia and especially india this is a really good approach if you have the time because the journey as a wiser man than myself once said is a destination in itself, interacting with locals, seeing the country side drift by either by boat or a train is pure magic is what travelling is all about.

In south America though this is not so much the case, the distances between towns are massive, huge!! Unless you had 12 months where you could take local buses and spend 5 hours out of every 3 days on a bus of some description then its just not practical. You never sleep well on overnight buses so you end up spending most of the day when you arrived too knackered to do anything other than sleep or drink. So with this justification in mind it was with the clearest of consciousness that we booked a flight from rio to Salvador cutting what would have been a 20 hour bus trip down to a 2 hour flight and at 1/3rd the price it really was a bit of a no brainer. (Mathematical geniuses note the mistake in the last sentence – seriously libs hand back that phd if you don’t spot it) 😉

We arrived into salvador at 6 in the evening, it felt like a different world immediately, the warm air greets you like a big warm hug when you exit the arrivals hall door. The second thing that struck us about the place was a strike in itself. Some upheaval by the masses had cut off the regular bus service from the airport into the barrio (neighbourhood) where we had intended pitching ourselves for a few days. After a bit of messing, chasing tales getting translations from Portuguese to  French and from French to English we found ourselves in the back of a minivan crawling through chronic Thursday evening rush hour traffic. It took us 3 hours to get to the centre of town, it was awful. Gimme 6 hours, 12 hours going at full pelt – twould have been better than sitting in the middle of nowhere and going nowhere.

The bus dropped us off in an eerily quiet and quite daunting centre of Salvador, darkness seemed to shroud everything, I dunno whether it was just my imagination but shadows seemed to be lurking everywhere that wasn’t under the feeble street lighting. We got directions from the bus driver to a taxi rank where this auld fella summoned us into his taxi cab. I was glad to get inside the cab, so much so I didn’t take a whole lot of notice of what he was saying or the fact that he was saying anything. Marilyn was steering the ship at this stage. Eventually I tuned in and he yapped away, we showed him the address of our intended hostel and he tore around furiously looking for it.  We stopped to ask other taxi drivers, they pointed us on. A security guard pointed us back which in a one way street sent us around a block or two. Eventually Marilyn bailed out and up a street which matched our address to a number on a door which matched our scratching on notebook but attached next to it a For Sale sign. Bugger!

Our taxi driver was not to be beaten, like a true great he stood up against adversity and twice as quickly as before he tore around the streets, tearing up the rules of the road in the name of getting us a bed. Brakes screeched, rubber burned, curtains drawn fearing the inevitable shoot out. We pulled up outside a large yellow building with the lights on and the letters Albergue (Portuguese for hostel) etched into the side of the wall. We thanked our driver profusely to which he just nonchantly passed us his number and walked off in slow motion into the Salvadorian night safe in the knowledge than another two gringos have been safely housed – all in a nights work!

The hostel was nice, very nice. Situated less than 50 metres from the historical and lovely beach along with restaurants, bars and other historical stuff – Salvador was one of the first cities established by the portugese and also the landing spot for so many black slaves from Africa back in the day a fact that cannot be lost on even the most unobservant of travellers as 80% of the towns population have dark African skin. Our first port of call though was food, and lots off it. Hugo our friend from Rio gave us a few recommended dishes to check out while we were here. Due to the strong African influence the local cuisine also was rather unique compared to the rest of the country. First port of call was the moqueca which is a sumptuous feed of prawns, rice, beans and fish. Man it was superb, it more than fed the pair of us and sent us back to the hostel for a well earned kip.

The next day we took in the great breakfast that was on offer, lots of fruit and then took to the local area. We walked around and found our bearings amongst the most important of our discoveries was the local fish monger who sorted us out with a massive fish which we cooked much to the envy of the pasta and sauce brigade back in the hostel. We hung out with a couple of the guys there, many many of them were superbly cool people. So many hostels can be just full of people who drone on endlessly about DOING countries, seriously how do you DO a country!! I have been hangin around backpackers too long I think, they are on my list of pet peeves. Anyways these guys were cool, we discussed all things musical, alcoholic and onwards we found ourselves having a few beers with a couple of brazillian art students who promised to take us out for a few beers later that night a proposal I was never gonna say no to so we ended up in a barrio close by sitting in a town square drinking bottles of beer while the sea lapped up against the wall a couple of yards away.

We got up the next morning we thought was early enough to get the beach empty enough for a swim, alarm was set for 7 and we made the 50 yard mammoth journey that it was to find a been full to the bring with scantily clad brazillians making the most of the weekends sunshine. So we pitched up and went for a swim. In the afternoon we headed into the old town to stroll around and take in the atmosphere. It really is a lovely town to walk around, much more so than Rio and Sao Paulo. It just seems so much more relaxed and laid back. And there is plenty to see we wound the day down in a central square drinking coffee and walking the other tourists get hassled to buy all sorts of nick nacks.  

During a wander around Salvador it is impossible not to notice the large black women dressed entirely in white with small stalls selling just one make of a snack. The snack is called acaraje. It is basically very bad for you, some sort of bread that is deep fried, sliced then filled with spiciness shrimp onion, tomato, peppers and such things – you then eat it like a kebab. I thought it was okay but my lovely lady friend was not partial to it. Acquired taste me thinks.

The plan for the evening was to hit the local modern arts museum for what was described as a Jazz Jam. Not the biggest jazz fan in the world but we made it regardless. First off all the museum itself is fantastic. Set on the side of the oceans bank it incorporates several buildings and several mind boggling displays, we made our way after an impromptu game of hide and seek to the location of the jazz jam. It was perfect, set off the side of the main building open aired and open to the ocean we sat along the oceans wall, drank some sweaty beer and ate some dodgy food while the jazz played away in the background. We called it a night early enough

The next day we fled Salvador, headed north to the town of macaeio.

 

Montevideo

Monday, August 10th, 2009

The typical route north out of BA is to follow on up to recoleta before heading to the falls of iguazu. Its a route I was interested in but one which Marilyn was not, I was happy enough to go ... [Continue reading this entry]

Rio de Janiero

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Now Rio is a place that has alot of fame, people think of brazil they think of Football at the Maracana, they think of Beaches – name one beach in the world more famous than the Copacobana! They think of ... [Continue reading this entry]

Sao Paulo

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Another overnight bus, another metrosystem to negotiate at the morning rush hour. We had a recommendation for a good hostel from a girl from the last hostel we were in in Floripa. The metro system in sao Paulo is excellent ... [Continue reading this entry]

Florinanopolis

Monday, August 10th, 2009

The town of Chui sits on the border between brazil and Uruguay, its a weird feeling to be able to cross a street to use a bank link and actually traverse cultures, languages and international boundaries. A strange strange town ... [Continue reading this entry]

Punta del Diablo

Monday, August 10th, 2009

The name conjures all sorts of fantastical images, what could make a port so diabolic. Luckily enough given the size of Uruguay we didn’t have too long to wait. A change of bus was necessary in a town I didn’t ... [Continue reading this entry]

Mendoza and Buenos Aires, AGAIN

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Mendoza and Buenos Aries

The weather had turned down south so a trip to Patagonia on a boat would have been next to madness. So in order so save time at the end we decided to cut straight across to Buenos ... [Continue reading this entry]

Santiago, Valparaiso + Vina de la Mar

Monday, August 10th, 2009

I met Marilyn in san Sebastian 2 years ago, I annoyed her at first due she knows now a misunderstanding or a misinterpretation of something I said while in the company of others. To cut a long story short we ... [Continue reading this entry]

Pucon

Monday, August 10th, 2009
There is an early morning bus to Pucon which was my alternative to the boat for traversing the international frontier, it was my only choice. At 6 am I boarded a bus in complete darkness. The Border crossing was funny ... [Continue reading this entry]