Joao Pessoa to Porto Seguro
15 novembre 2000
Last night, Nov. 14th, we arrived in Porto Seguro, nearing the end of our time in the state of Bahia, more is the pity. We really love Bahia, the most African state of Brazil. We chose Pousada Sao Luiz, a lovely little air conditioned, swimming-pooled inn as a place to recover from 11 nights in campgrounds, the longest consecutive time any of us has spent in the vans.
After a period of recovery in the pool, we took a walk through town and found at least 6 live bands playing and an unbelievable number of shops selling all sorts of touristy stuff. Shay finally got his tee-shirts, 3 for 10 reals or about $5 US. We finally figured out that, if you want live music, you need to wait until at least 10 o'clock before you venture out for dinner. If you go early, you're sure to be disappointed as the music is always B-string. Porto Seguro, on a Tuesday night in the off-season, is as lively a place as we could want. Aside from the lambada club, which apparently moves around from one bar to another every night, we found O Beco, an open air collection of restaurants where a bossa nova singer accompanied by 2 very talented guitarists, serenaded the tourists with the best music we've heard in Brazil. I find most of the popular music very repetitious and always at 100 decibels. I'm hoping for more bossa nova as we move south.
I'll try to catch up with where we've been:
Nov. 1-3, we were in Natal and I was sick. I think Shay has given you his version of the events there.
Nov. 3-5: Joao Pessoa, our favorite place to this point. We really could have stayed a month. We stayed at Camping Clube do Brasil campground and met truly wonderful people, starting with Vitor, a vacationing tour guide whose usual touring area is Bolivia and Peru. Vitor taught us many valuable insights into traveling in Brasil and was such a fun guy.
One thing we learned from Vitor was the value of Coco Gelado. This is a green coconut, as cold as you can get it, with the top hacked off by machete and a straw stuck through a hole to drink the coconut water. It tastes pretty good but it also is incredibly re-hydrating. It quenches your thirst far better than Gator Ade without the cloying sweetness of soft drinks. We've taken to having one for breakfast, particularly when we're camping since coconuts are omnipresent. Some campgrounds, in fact, seem to cut them out of the trees so that they don't wind up bonking the campers on the head.
Our first morning in Joao Pessoa, we went in search of breakfast and found our favorite restaurant, Mangai, with delightful rustic decor belying itís gourmet quality food. (Another Vitor trick: When you go into a strange restaurant, ask to see the kitchen. If they say no, leave. At Mangai, someone came out with shower caps for all of us and treated us to a tour of a fabulous kitchen. There were many separate rooms in the kitchen, divided by the type of preparation being done. The salad rooms and meat and fish rooms were air-conditioned. There was an alcove with a mountain of fresh corn being shucked and grated for the most delicious breakfast dish I've ever had: the grated corn was mixed with liquid butter, wrapped in a corn husk and steamed. Awesome. The stoves were all in a separate room with a ceiling open to the outdoors for ventilation. One stove was wood-burning and the chef explained to me that feijoada, the typical Brasilian dish (which we haven't tried yet), had to be cooked over a wood fire.) We were terribly impressed by the kitchen tour but we really couldn't believe the quality of the food. In fact, we went back the next day to stuff ourselves on breakfast again.
Vitor also went down the beach and found a fisherman to take us out to the natural swimming pools a little way from shore. These are protected holes formed by the coral reef, teeming with sea critters at low tide. Shay finally got to do a little serious snorkeling. He said that he felt like he was in Disney's Little Mermaid because there were hundreds of brightly colored fish, of many different colors, which would duck into their little caves if he moved too quickly in their direction. Heís seen octopuses and conches and lobsters and lots of crabs, which he chases all over the beach. The crabs are unlike any I've seen before, with a sort of humped back, which gives them a very odd way of looking right at you when you find them walking on the beach, which they do all the time. Anyway, to get back to the campground, Shay had developed a fan club of 12 to 15 year old girls who actually had to be chased away from time to time. (It's the blue eyes. They're so rare here that they are absolutely mesmerized by them.) Vitor invited them to come along. In order for this to fly with the girls' parents, one of the adults and his little boy, as well as somebody's brother, had to come with us. We wound up with a very happy group of about 15 people on the fishing boat.
The next morning I discovered that my Paulchen rack, on which Iíve mounted a fairly heavy metal storage box, was bent and not looking so good. We unloaded the box and removed it from the rack and were standing there scratching our heads and muttering when one of our campground neighbors comes over and said "Let me fix this for you." He took the Paulchen rack off the van and proceeded to bang it back into shape with a brick. He did it perfectly, readjusted the supporting legs, and I've had no problems since. Really amazing. Alas, it was time to leave Joao Pessoa.
Nov. 6: We left Joao Pessoa, reluctantly, with instructions from our friends to spend the night at Porto de Galinhas. Oops, we missed it! It was getting dark and we were going along a paved, nearly deserted road along the beach. We pulled over next to an exit and had a conference. What to do? Well, I said, this exit must lead somewhere. Let's go look. Surprise! This perfectly paved exit lead to an undeveloped beach, Praia Guadalpe! There were 2 thatched roof huts and one barraca (the ever-present huts where drinks and sometimes food are sold). In the barraca was a woman and about 10 men who were drinking beer. We asked if it would be safe for us to spend the night there. The woman said "Certainly. Would you like to use my shower and bathroom?" We pulled the vans up to the edge of a 15 foot drop to the beach with a path leading down. It was a truly amazing place to spend the night. There was, of course, no electricity so it was very dark with a nearly full moon and millions of stars. Shay went down for a walk and chased crabs with a flashlight, but you really could see well enough to walk with the light of the moon. We could see lights on the more developed spots further up the coast but we felt very fortunate to have the opportunity to have such a spot all to ourselves. Tyler missed Stephanie very much.
Nov. 7: Maceio. We spent the night in a disappointing, very empty, very windy campground near Maceio with a very dirty beach. We went into town to look for an internet café and the only place we could find was very claustrophic with a brutally slow connection so we didn't stay long. On top of that, we left behind our 220v to 110v converter the next morning so we were then unable to plug our refrigerators in at night. (Incidentally, we've been unable to fill our propane tanks in Brasil at all. Apparently, the only gas available is propane.) Yikes. Let's go!
Nov 8: Aracaju, a really unimpressive town by Brazilian standards. We took advantage of our time here to do much-needed laundry, a little shopping and gave the vans the best carwash they've ever had.
Nov 9-12: Salvador do Bahia. We camped a few kilometers north of Salvador on Praia Flamengo near Itapua. We really liked it here and spent some time exploring the old city which is divided into a lower city on the coastal level and an upper city, which was heavily defended by the Portuguese. On the upper level, we visited a couple of the churches which have unbelievable altars covered with gold leaf and extraordinary artwork in every corner. Tyler tried to buy a CB antenna to replace his, which was stolen in Joao Pessoao, (OK, nobodyís perfect.) but wound up with something that doesn't work at all. I discovered the Bahian jewelry stores! I wasn't aware before that the state of Bahia produces many of Brasil's gemstones, including emeralds, which I thought were only available in Colombia. Beeeeauuutiful!
Nov 13: Ilheus. Camped at Olivenca, a spa town a few kilometers south of Ilheus. Since this is the off-season, and we arrived on Monday, when all Brazilians have gone home after partying at the beach for the weekend, we had a very lovely spot to ourselves. The campground is owned by a Japanese lady and is very nicely landscaped. A fresh water stream runs into a large cement tank and overflows into a sink where the laundry is done and then spread out on the grass to dry. In addition to the coconut palms, there are large mango trees. The compound includes about 8 cabanas for rent and the landlady opens one of them up so we can use the shower in it. Very pleasant stay with the coldest coco gelado I've ever had. Yumm.
I guess that's all for now, folks. Since the other caravan went inland to Minas Gerais state and we stuck with the beaches, we're hoping to find them around Rio de Janeiro.
Hasta la proxima.
Jeanne
