Morro De Sao Paulo

This is the place.

I am not sure if you get a nicer place than Morro de Sao Paulo. It is seriously nice. The scenary is amazing, soft white sand, VERY clear warm water, no crustations, no litter, warm sunshine and plenty of shade. I love this place. As we walked in it was like the scene off of ´The Beach´when Leo walks into the village, everyone is busy but stops to look at the new arrivals. There are various shops and resturants all lining a little sandy street. 3,000 people live here and support the tourist trade. We have spent our days getting up late, lying on the beach reading and swimming (when the water is warm how do you know when to get out?) and then showering and going out to a resturant for a plesant dinner. I would recommend that everyone come here. You can get direct flights from the UK to Salvador, then its a 2 hour boat ride away!

Our room complete with two levels and hammock. Also all you can eat breakfast with fruit (Pineapple, Papaya, Banana, Mango, Melon), cake, bread, freshly squeezed juice and a nice man who smiled a lot but spoke no english running it. Monkeys run past every now and again on the power line.

´Second Beach´ complete with sunbeds, bars playing music and beach volleyball courts.

´Fourth Beach´ virtually uninhabitted all day.

In a shady cove.

The views were nice here too.

Salvador!

We have arrived in Salvador and i am suprised to say (yes i am very ignorant!) that it is significantly different to the state the farm is in, ´Minas Gerais´(means general mines- guess what their main industry is there!)

The architexture here is colonial and looks very grand outside, this square was particularly good for buying local street food off big African looking women dressed in white. The best was a fried bean curd burger, cut in half and filled with VERY HOT spice, (in fact after she put some in she wiped it off again as we were obviosuly Gringos and it still burnt like crazy), salad, and prawns still in their shells. Which brought back great memories of going out for dinner one night in Peckham (!) to an all you can eat Chinese with this bubbly African lady from church who crunched her way through millions of prawns with shells and tails and chastised me for being wastful when i carefully pealed them. I dont believe that the rough shells clense your body on the way through.

Upon uploading these pictures i realised that we dont take many, and they are often on random things. We stayed in Pelourinho, which is a lovely old town area. Our Rough Guide told us not to go out of sight of the policemen at night, which made for a fun game the first night as the police wander around a lot and it ends up almost like you are watching and stalking a policeman. Luckily we chilled out the second night, ignored the guide and had a great evening watching a samba band with the locals. Did you know that people play music that has no words and is all on percusion? If so, did you know that people who are not primary school teachers also own ´rain sticks´(you know the poles that you turn upside down and the beads run down and sound like the rain) and think it is ok to use them in public. I did not really enjoy the ´music´.

Pelorinho was easy to get around on foot and a good base to explore all the architecture and museums with no hassle. The most unique feature was ´the elevator´which is simply an elevator which costs 60 cents to ride and goes vertically down to the bottom of the hill. Its a very quick way as the cliff is shear and takes a long winding road to go by car. At the bottom was a nice market.

An old burnt out church that Xss particularly liked, however someone ruined the photo by sitting in the way. I think they are pretending not to itch a mosquito bite on their leg, but really have probably rubbed it raw.

Below is a picture of Xss enjoying the lovely hostel we stayed in in Pelourinho. It had hamocks hanging in doors, lots of little balcony´s and quirks, and tiles that look like comic books. It made me wonder if i wanted to be a hostel or boutique hotel manager one day? Seriously.

Last Live Action Hero.....

Xss and i have arrived in Salvador, and within the last hour already tried to save street child´s life! We have thus far (in Brazil) not managed to meet any street children, and i admit i was looking forward to it. I am a fool. Within a very short period of time of having stepped off the bus a child approached us, i could understand he was saying he was hungry and wanted food, and tried to take us to a shop to buy it, not asking for money. Well being British and not good at spontaneity we said no and walked on.

On the third encounter of this same boy, whilst we were buying street food none the less ( a sausage of tapioca covered in sugar and cinamon- 9/10 according to Xss) we thought, well, its food, he´s hungry and you know what, its directly what the bible says we should do. I gave the lady R$4 (155p) and explained that he could have the R$2 extra......... to spend on food. However, although this was a complete sentence said fluidly, she gave him the money before the word food could come out, and he was off! So much for the food. Not sure what to make of this, should we have given chase! Perhaps he spent it on food for his starving brother around the corner, well really it was probably chewing gum and a go on a video game. But at least if i see him again we will have grounds not to feed him.

We have now been on the road for over two months, and my most notable achievement so far has been to not brush my hair for this whole time! Think of the time i have saved! Incidentally i am forever confused as to why people think girls with Blonde hair are pretty, who doesn´t know about hair dye!?! Jeff has also reliably informed me that unibrows and a squint are sexy here and a quailty looked for in a potential partner, well he didnt say a squint was, but i havent asked him yet, so lets assume it to be true.

We are staying in Salvador for two days before going on to yet another idyllic, sandy island, where cars are banned and you have to sunbathe- new Brazillian law passed last week. Salvador is very different to the down south that we know. Here they have lots of cats walking around, and they are not as friendly as their cainaine counter parts; they don´t have tic´s here apart from the three Xss and I have liberated since arriving (look out for a later enchanting game called ´spot, tic or mole´) and street children take the 77p you offer them and run off leaving you annoyed.

Who doesn´t like playing with Machetes?

There are increasingly moments in my life when i am mistaken for an adult and i get a little baffled/smug feeling inside that someone has made this mistake and given me much more responsibility or power than they should, and that it is going to be fun. Can people not tell how irresponsible i am from looking at me? A feeling not disimilar to getting an adults portion of food when you are a kid, its great that you get to eat more, but also you know its going to be someone else´s fault when you can´t eat it all. On Friday Ailton gave me a Machete.

He then took one for himself and we went up in the woods and hit things and cut things. I never really worked out what we were doing since Ailton sent me one way and he went the other. However, hitting things with a machete is really fun. i cut vines, trees, the ground, roots, and once, copying Ailton, i dropped it blade first into the ground so that it stayed thereupright, whilst i did something else. I am so cool. It took me a lot longer to ´do´myside than it did for Ailton........

Me practicing my smug look whilst perched on our windowsil.

Whilst i am doing this, Xss is moving earth on the building site. This is monotonous in itself, but becomes more than that when after moving it by wheelbarrow and spade for days on end for only a week later, them to move it again. You can see the beginings of the 3 houses below Xss, and then beyond the rubble is the football field (is desperate need of water), the volleyball pitch, and the sheds.

Does it look like Xss is in old fashioned pjjama´s? We only have a few clean clothes each for relaxing in. we are heading up the hill to enjoy the view and a beer after a long day. Well, actually days are the same length everywhere, work just starts earlier than when we are in London.

I also got my first experince of playing Risk in Brazil, which has been much discussed and long awaited. It seemed like a great idea as we gathered around the war table (the pool table, with several white plastic chairs stacked into piles to make us tall enough to see), everyone was laughing and joking, music played in the background and the rules were amicably explained (they have aircraft that can bomb countries!!). However, the moment the dice were first rolled, the laughing stopped and silence followed. I immediately regretted agreeing to play (it was already 1030 at night, i had to work at 8.15 the next day), this was not going to be fun. I now know that Brazilians take Risk very seriously. It was a matter of great concern when Marcus(19, scotish, very intelligent) gave me an aircraft because i had most of Africa and explained that there was a large famine and humanitarian aid was needed. The plane was confiscated and put out of play; and thus the game began mirroring real life.

Happily for me, and mostly due to his good luck, Marcus got out of the game first, having taken one begruding turn after finding out that Great Britian had been labelled England on the board, like he didnt even exist. So that left me, the one foreigner. I was initially VERY smug about this as my mission card had stated that i needed to destroy the greens - Marcus´team. I smiled a lot, asked what to do when i had fullfilled my objective and even passed it over to my most senior colleague to validify, before Marcus agreed to check it for me and pointed out that Verhmelo is red, not green!!! So i deflatedly set about trying to kill the red men. However, as i already stated, this is not a happy game but a serious one, and people do not like you when you try to kill them. Hafa (16, Brazilian) took particular offence to my 15 plane attack and shouted a lot, got moody, went silent and then gave me evils for 20 minutes. As luck would have it someone else got me out before he could reap his revenge. I am honsetly not sure if we are still friends or not, i might avoid his house for a few days and i´ve given up Risk for good.

The view from the hill on the farm. Nice huh.