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Unfortunate (but nearly inevitable) bouts of sickness

March 12th, 2006

After the carnaval party, I found Vanessa, who apparently had contracted something from the water and was throwing up…not good news. Many locals had gotten sick from swimming in the water due to all the rains washing the bacteria into the lake. I guess I didn’t get sick because I had been swimming a bit further away from town. This put a little bit of a damper on the rest of the stay…the next day I walked around the town a bit, but definitely didn’t jump in the water. The last thing I wanted was to be throwing up as we got on a boat for the next two days to Manaus. The good news was that it only lasted one night…many locals had been sick for a week or so. Continue reading this entry »

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Jungle beach

March 2nd, 2006

Three days on the boat passed rather quickly; comfort and boredom were not issues, though we were excited to get off and be somewhere.  We got into the waters of the city of Santarém, and, well, just when you think you’re there, you have to wait a while longer.  Such is the nature of traveling.  We had two men in uniform climbing up onto the boat (which was quite humorous to watch, them with their shiny black shoes on, in comparison to the barefoot, raggedy-clothed kids we had crawling up over the days previous); someone said they were looking for drugs, but I suppose they found nothing, as I’m sure the hour or so we waited would have been extended greatly if they had. Continue reading this entry »

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The Amazonian Love Boat

February 10th, 2006

It was supposed to take 12 hours to get to Belém.  I knew we would never make it in that amount of time when I woke up in the middle of the night to the bus rolling in and out of holes, the driver getting his money’s worth out of the transmission.  I looked out the window – it was pouring rain and the road was chock-full of mini pools.  Oh man, I thought.  Here we are, in the jungle.  It’s raining and it’s never going to stop.  The roads suck and they’re only gonna get worse.  And we’re gonna be here for a long, long time… Continue reading this entry »

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The ultimate Brazilian family vacation – Part III

February 7th, 2006

The next destination on our Brazilian family vacation (I call it that because we met mostly Brazilians along the way, all on vacation with their families, all visiting most of the same places as us), came highly recommended by many Brazilians we met along the way – it was a national park called Lençios Marenhenses, in the town of Barrerinhas. But, taking public transportation as we were (the one difference from your average Brazilian family, who was traveling by car), it was nearly impossible to get there in one day. Knowing that, we made no rush to get the early bus out, allowing us to enjoy the great free breakfast (eggs!) offered by our luxury hotel before heading out of town, making sure to get our money’s worth. We took the minibus to the main bus station (while, in the middle of the route we got rushed out of one minibus and shuffled around the corner to another, much more crowded minibus…whatever) and hopped onto the bus to our first stop – Tûtoia. Continue reading this entry »

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The ultimate Brazilian family vacation – Part II

February 7th, 2006

In Jericoacoara, we found a cute little house for ourselves – another killer deal. It had 2 bedrooms, a little kitchen (only with a fridge), a living room area (which I usurped as my bedroom, slinging up my hammock), and a bathroom, which we soon came to learn that the ceiling dripped on you while sitting on the toilet. But all for less than $5 each per person, and we loved it. The town itself, eh. It had its charms, but I found myself more excited about our little house. There was an amazing breeze – really a pretty fierce wind – at almost all times of the day, making this a huge windsurfing and kitesurfing spot. The beach wasn’t all that spectacular for laying on during the day due to a huge tide movement – maybe about 1/3 of a mile between high and low tide. This movement was really spectacular; not being all that in tune with tidal movements (as Lake Michigan really isn’t affected), it was pretty cool to walk at night all the way out to the shore. A few hours later, it would be right back up at the edge of town again. During the day, though, the tide was out just a bit, but the sand was wet, hard, and gray, not the nice fluffly stuff you like to lay in. Continue reading this entry »

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The ultimate Brazilian family vacation – Part I

February 7th, 2006

Quite satisfied with our awesome candomblé experience, we shoved off the next day, on a 24-hour, freezing cold bus, way to the north, to a town called Teresina, famed for being Brazil’s hottest city; we’re talking purely temperature here. The bus ride started out fairly empty, but a few hours later we stopped and piled the bus with hippies. (There are a lot of hippies in Brazil. Noticeably. And not just your normal, sort of laid back people, but either your trust-fund, well-dressed hippie or your dirtier, smellier type who think they’re saving the world by selling jewelry. You can find them in all your main tourist locations and any main plaza, square, or park in most major cities.) Continue reading this entry »

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The magic of Candomblé

February 7th, 2006

This post will be dedicated entirely to describing our experience at the Candomblé ceremony, as well as I can do. Unfortunately, cameras are not allowed, so as not to make a tourist spectacle out of a religious ceremony, which I can totally respect, so there aren’t any corresponding photos. I may have mentioned this before, but we waited specifically for this woman to take us to a ceremony, as there is word of a lot of tourist operators putting on phoney ceremonies, and I really wanted to witness the real thing. When the woman showed up, we piled into the van as she introduced us to the others inside, all by places of origin. I, therefore, became Chicago and Vanessa became Australia. With us we had Couple from France and Pair from Finland, and were soon joined by New York Lady and Group from Greece. As the lady shut the van door, going around to the drivers side, I noted, “I thought she would be black”, to which those who were not shy about it agreed. This was, afterall an Afro-Brazilian tradition, and this woman was very white with a hint of Latina blood. Continue reading this entry »

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Cactuses in Brazil?!

January 24th, 2006

We spent a few more days in Salvador after New Years, mostly awaiting the famed Tuesday night parties the city puts on every week. Every week, can you imagine, they set up stages and tear them back down, showcasing local musical acts. It was really great, and worth the wait of a few days of doing nothing in Salvador. Well, not exactly nothing…we did search out and buy some local music, tried to meet up with the 11-year old Lais from the ferry (but were stood up), took a crowded boat back and forth to some crap beach, and spent the nights watching “Stick Man” walk with his stick up and down the street below the hostel patio selling drugs and pimping prostitutes, at least that’s what we gathered he was doing… Continue reading this entry »

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New Years Eve in Salvador

January 23rd, 2006

The buses into Camamu (port entry town to Barra Grande) were packed, loaded with people and all their crap on their way to spend their holidays in Barra Grande. The buses out of Camamu were empty, and we liked it that way. We were now in the state of Bahia, which is where the majority of the Afro-Brazilians live (something like 80%), with Salvador the capitol. The bus dropped us off at the ferry port in Bom Despacio, where we got our tickets and boarded. While explaining to Vanessa how to say “I’m thirsty” in Portuguese, it seemed that we attracted a lot of attention on the boat, and soon were friends with nearly half of the starboard side of the upper deck. We met a mother and her two daughters (all who speak English) from São Paulo, an 11 year-old girl named Lais and her mother, and another man, his wife, and son (whose name was Sued, deus (god) backwards). The man thought I was a hippie (must have been the bandana on my head)…something about how he used to be a truck driver and drive up and down the coast, picking up hitchhiking hippies. The girl, Lais, was really shy at first, because she heard us talking English and wanted to talk, but was shy to use her English. She got some words out, and we taught her some more, while she taught Vanessa some Portuguese, and I thanked her for that (Vanessa is good at saying, I don’t speak Portuguese, but she does, and points at me; I have to admit that I’m getting pretty good at it now…never thought I could speak Portuguese, but I get along alright); she was so excited to be talking to us…we took photos and got her phone number so we could see her again while we were in Salvador. All this while, I thought we were still in the port, waiting to leave, and yet we were almost to Salvador…the smoothest ferry ride ever. Continue reading this entry »

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After Christmas rush in (and out) of Barra Grande

January 19th, 2006

The day after Christmas (which was just the same as Christmas and every other day), Vanessa and I had planned to take a boat to some nearby islands, which were highly recommended. Well, that never happened that day, or any other day…we had missed the boat after a slow morning, just like every other morning. We really were doing nothing. We decided, though, that we should do something, so we rented some kayaks from our pousada to go cruising around a bit. This kayak was the fanciest kayak I’ve ever been in – it had a steering rudder contraption thing. Well, after 15 minutes of going in circles and feeling like idiots as the owner of the pousada swam out to us to align the rudder (not our fault), we were off to explore whatever there was out there. We were recommended to go down the ‘river’, so we went to search it out. Continue reading this entry »

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