Dec 2006

Life is a beach right now as I am making my way up north towards Salvador. I have lost track of exactly how often I have been swimming, sometimes it is more than five times a day. Beaches worth mentioning are Itaúnas with its sand dunes (still in the state of Espirito Santo); Arraial da Ajuda over the stateline in Bahia (loads of tourists here, and red cliffs) and, definitely the best beach of these three, the beach at Olivença, the little village where I have been staying for the last couple of days.

No, the sea is straight. It is the lifeguard's seat that's crooked.

Olivença is a tiny village just south of Ilhéus (which is a great little city I will write more about later.) A large part of the population of Olivença are Tupinambá Indians, or descendants of the Tupinambá. Hence the traditional woodcarving on the lifeguard's seat in the picture, but there are cultural references to the Tupinambá everywhere - the internet café I am in now is called Tupi.net.

The beach at Olivença is mainly used by surfers (wave surfing, not wind surfing) as the waves are good, but pretty dangerous. You can swim there, and even body surf (which the Brazilians call fazer jacaré, which means 'playing crocodile'.) Fazer jacaré is what I do, but the real good waves are only reachable if you have a surfboard, which I don't, and I am not going to buy one (even if they only cost about 100 euro here) because I would have to carry it with me everywhere... So I will just keep pretending I am a crocodile.

I got a little sunburnt for the first time yesterday, which is a miracle as I have been in Brazil for 4 weeks now. The reason was that I had to buy cheap sunscreen lotion in an emergency... I have since bought a better one. The sunburn however is already gone, because I went swimming in the Tororomba river, which the Tupinambá believe has healing powers. Well, all I can say is, it worked... the water of the Tororomba is very clean and very soft on the skin. Beats Galway tap water!

Did you know close to 100 people worldwide are logging on to this blog daily? I'm amazed, and it's time for me to say thank you for showing such an interest!

If you only found about about this blog recently, this is what happened earlier:

You can use the zoom and move tool in the top right hand corner (in Siberia!) to zoom in and to move the map.

It has only been just over three weeks since I started my big Brazilian adventure, but it feels like I have been on the road for a year. If you want to know why this blog is called You Must Try The New Ice-Cream Flavour, read the first entry, Baby Baby. Then you will also know why I am in Brazil in the first place. If you want to know what I am getting out of this trip, read the entry Dust. If you want to know what I am liking best about my trip so far, read the entry Couchsurfing (which I have updated today.) The last five entries are listed on the right hand side, but you can find more entries by clicking on categories and selecting Brazil, or by looking at the archives.

Do you like my tan?

Comments

By the way, did you know you can leave comments on this site about the pieces I wrote on the blog? I know you have to register as a member on travellerspoint, but I would like to hear from you, and travellerspoint is a cool site.

Voor de Nederlandse lezers:

Ik ben lui, ik weet het, maar dit blog is in het Engels zodat iedereen het kan lezen. Ik hou voor Foinse ook al een blog in het Iers bij, dus anders zou het bloggen me véél te veel tijd (en geld) kosten! Maar ik neem aan dat het Engels geen probleem is, en anders vraag je het maar!

Blog Foinse

Má tá Gaeilge agat, tá blog difriúil agam ag http://naceithrehairde.travellerspoint.com le píosaí atá rud beag níos dáiríre (agus le grianghrafanna difriúla) ná na cinn atá ar an mblog seo.