Filhos and Fitas - The Filhos de Ghandy drummers on their way to the Lavagem de Bonfim, and someone selling the ubiquitous fitas - souvenirs of the Lavagem that bring good luck and grant three wishes each. There are more fitas in Salvador than bicycles in Amsterdam.

I'm back in Salvador once again. I arrived just in time for the Lavagem do Bonfim, last Thursday, the biggest religious festival in Salvador's crazy calendar of religious (both Candomblé* and Catholic) events. The Lavagem de Bonfim is the ritual washing of the steps of the church of Bonfim by members of Bahia's Candomblé houses, a tradition which has been continuous since 1754, when black slaves were forced to wash the white people's church. With time, it they turned it into a religious event honouring Oxalá, one of the most important Orixás (deities) in Candomblé. In Candomblé the Orixás became syncretized (mixed) with Catholic saints, and Oxalá is O Senhor do Bonfim, The Lord of the Good End, in other words, Jesus.

On the way to the church of Bonfim the crowd passes some fabulous graffiti!

So I am back in Salvador. My 7,200km long trip to Brazil left out various parts of this enormous country: the states of the extreme south, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná, which I already know from previous trips to Brazil; the vast interior of Goiás and the Mato Grossos; the rainforests of Amazonas, Acre, Rondônia, Macapá and Pará, and the surprises Maranhão and Piauí would have had in store for me if I had not turned back to avoid the rainy season. But I already know, the soul of Brazil is here, in Salvador, and it could not be anywhere else, because this is where Brazil began.

No more rodoviárias (bus stations)! This concrete monstrosity is in Fortaleza.

All is well that ends well. This Thursday, I am flying back to Ireland. Time to say goodbye and to say thank you to all the readers of this blog. When I get back, I will probably post one more entry with travel tips and recommendations for those of you who would like to visit Brazil... I hope I inspired at least somebody!!!

*Candomblé is an Afro-Brazilian religion.

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Sand dunes in the ocean paradise called Icaraí. At the end of the world, turn left. Bring enough water.

Icaraí, like I described in the last blog entry, is so small that there is no internet café (and the shop does not have shaving foam.) There is meant to be a bus, but during my 5 days in Icaraí I haven't seen it once.
I arrived in Icaraí on New Year's Day in a pretty spectacular way, on the back of a motorcycle. A mototaxi was the only way to get from the "bus station" of Amontada, a fly-blown desert town way away from the ocean, to Icaraí. The trip over the red dust road took nearly an hour, and (I was looking over the mototaxista's shoulder) we were doing 60 - 80km/h most of the time, so it must have been at least 60km.

For the next four days, I just swam and sunbathed.

Then I decided to give myself a little challenge. I could find out the timetable for the ghost bus, but that would be easy. Why not take the hard way out and walk the beach to the next town, Baleia? I enquired with two locals, and, yes, they said, it was indeed possible to walk there, but it was 36km.

One of the sights on the way. Getting one of these jangadas would have been easier.

So I bought loads of water (2 1/2 liters) and set out at 8am. I walked until 12 noon and made myself take a three hour break because the sun was getting too hot. So I went swimming. I started walking again at 15.00 and surprisingly enough arrived in Baleia at 17.30, which means it only took 6 1/2 hours (remember I was doing this with a 17kg backpack on my back, in the tropics, and barefoot.) I suppose this is why my friends never want to come on holidays with me, because it always turns into an army expedition...

Rain on the way

If you looked at a map of Brazil (but you would need a pretty precise, large-scale one) you would notice that I have actually turned back, and that I am going eastwards, not westwards. I was planning to travel on to São Luis in the state of Maranhão and to return from there to São Paulo, but rain was on the way. A lot of rain. Maranhão has two seasons: a dry one and a wet one. And the dry one just ended. The wet one lasts from January until June. Icaraí is not that far from Maranhão, and indeed every day I could see the clouds moving in from the ocean, getting bigger, darker, and more foreboding. So I decided that, when I get back to Galway in two weeks time, there will be enough rain. For now, I am going to take advantage of Northeast Brazil's sunshine a little more...

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This morning I am going to Cumbuco, a nice beach about 30km away. Tonight, I am coming back to Iracema beach in the centre of Fortaleza, to watch the fireworks and to party a little!

Tonight, everybody in Brazil (literally everybody) will be dressed in white, and, at some point before midnight, must consume a plate of lentils. Otherwise, no good luck next year!

I have travelled over a thousand kilometres in the last week, this is why I haven't been posting much on the blog. Next week, I am off to the Lencóis Maranhenses, a national park of sand dunes, rivers, freshwater lakes and sea in the state of Maranhão.

Unless you are in Denver (Réjane!) or Ohio (Andrew!) you will be fast asleep by the time it is 2007 here in Brazil - we are four hours behind Amsterdam, three hours behind Dublin. So I will just wish you all a happy new year right now!

Feliz Ano Novo!
Alex

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What if Brazil had started off as a Dutch colony?

Forte Orange was built by the Dutch near Recife in 1631

Because it nearly did.

In 1624, the Dutch West Indies Company (WIC) conquered Salvador, then the biggest city in the Americas (north or south.) The Dutch freed the slaves (only to annoy the Portuguese slave owners, it didn't exactly stop the Dutch from trading slaves elsewhere) and put freedom of religion in place. Soon the economy started to grow, but it all ended after a year when the Portuguese, helped by the Spanish (Portugal was actually part of Spain at that time.)

In 1631, the Dutch tried again and this time it went better. They conquered the area known as Pernambuco, and started building a new city across the river from Recife, called Mauritsstad (now Mauritsstad and Recife Antigo form the centre of the modern day city of Recife.)

The Maurits Bridge was the first river crossing bridge in Brazil. (This is a rebuilt version, but it is still called Ponte do Príncipe Maurício.)

The Dutch occupation of Pernambuco ended in 1654 but it is amazing how 23 years at the beginning of Recife have given the city an unmistakeably different feel from, for example, Rio de Janeiro or Salvador. WIth its river, canals and bridges, the city actually feels and looks Dutch, because its basic layout was planned by the WIC.

Again, during the Dutch occupation of Pernambuco, freedom of religion was put in place (by force - Portuguese Catholic priests who did not co-operate with the new separation of church and state were locked up, in Forte Orange.) This meant that Recife / Mauritsstad became an attractive destination for Portuguese (Sefardim) Jews, who were being forceably converted to Christianity in Portugal. Many Portuguese Jews had already fled Portugal to Amsterdam, and now thew were more than willing to help build the Dutch version of Brazil in Pernambuco. Recife / Mauritsstad became the first city in the Americas (north or south) with a Synagogue, and many of the soldiers and sailors occupied with the city's defenze were Jewish.

The first Synagogue in the Americas, north or south, was founded in Recife during the Dutch occupation of Pernambuco.

But in 1654 everything ended when the Portuguese kicked the Dutch out of Pernambuco again. Freedom of religion ended, slavery returned. Just in time, two ships, especially sent from Amsterdam, rescued the majority of Recife's Jewish population from certain persecution. Some of Recife's Jews returned to Amsterdam, most went on to Nieuw Amsterdam (currently New York) and they became the first Jews to arrive in North America.

In Holland, the Dutch history in Brazil is almost forgotten. However, in Brazil, there is quite a little industry of what I call "What-If-Journalism". A Brazilian author, Aydano Roriz, has written a number of novels set during the Dutch occupation of Salvador in 1624, and a recently published book, "Outros Brasis" ("Other Versions of Brazil") examines what could have been if the Dutch, and not the Portuguese, had colonised Brazil.
In general, these books seem to idealize the Dutch period, because slavery was (more or less) abolished and because freedom of religion was imposed. Would Brazil be a more equal society today if it had started off Dutch?

I'm not even sure if it is worth asking that question, because you might as well ask what life would be like if the world was flat, or the sky yellow. What those Brazilians who idealize the period of Dutch occupation in Pernambuco don't seem to realize, is that a perfect example of what would have been a Dutch version of Brazil indeed exists - right next door. It is called Suriname. Of course you can't compare one to the other because one is a giant and the other one a fairly small country, but Suriname is not exactly utopia.

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Olinda, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is where I will be spending Christmas.

I arrived in Olinda at six o' clock yesterday evening, and suddenly realised it was Saturday... and that today was Sunday, and that all the shops would be closed! So I had two hours to get everything for my Christmas dinner before the local supermarket closed!
I am staying in the Albergue de Olinda, in an old colonial building near the historic centre of Olinda, a small city just north of Recife, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Christmas day I will be making pancakes! Cheap and cheerful. With lime and sugar. (They were a big success in Salvador.)

So what is Christmas like in Brazil? Well, thankfully, it only lasts for one day (the 25th.) People don't stay in with their families, but go to the city centre to celebrate and dance (I will probably go to the historic centre of Recife the night of the 25th.)

An ice-skating rink? But we're in Brazil!!! Christmas gone wrong in a shopping centre in Vila Velha, Espirito Santo.

Fake snow factories must be making lots of money in Brazil, because half the country seems to be covered in white fluff! Most of Christmas seems to be imported (from America.) A friend of mine in Salvador told me that there used to be Brazilian Christmas traditions, but that they disappeared long ago. He remembers his grandmother putting pitanga leaves (pitanga is a tropical fruit) on all the floors of the house at Christmas. If you walked on the leaves, they would release a Christmas-like scent, and the whole house would be perfumated. But he says nobody does this anymore... (In honour of this tradition I bought loads of pitanga juice in the supermarket yesterday!)

Well, a Merry Christmas from Olinda to everyone who has been reading this blog. And thank you, for showing an interest! It really means a lot to me that so many friends and family all over the world can follow my trip this way! And if you are bored during Christmas, check back!
Alex.

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Brazil closed down most of its intercity railways years ago (smart move! Of course Ireland did exactly the same.) Since an internal flight crashed near Manáus in October, air travel has been a complete chaos, as nearly half of all air trafic controllers in Brazil appear to have been suspended. When the airports can't handle the number of flights, they simply close down. So travelling by bus is the only alternative!

Thankfully, intercity bus travel in Brazil is generally of a very high standard. The intercity buses are bigger and better (but not faster) than we are used to in Europe. Still, all buses eventually fall into one of the following categories:

1. The Driving Refrigerator
Because of the long distances, most intercity buses run at night, so that passengers can sleep. There is usually plenty of legroom, but don't forget to bring warm clothes and a blanket! For some reason, Brazilian bus companies seem to think a fridge on wheels is a good idea. The airconditioning is usually turned on so high that condensation happens on the OUTSIDE of the bus windows, which makes it look like it is raining. Meanwhile, the passengers inside are freezing.

2. The Day-Old-Chick Bus
When you are travelling a medium distance during the day time, chances are you are going to be travelling on a day-old-chick bus. These buses carry everything - from people to pots and pans and birds in cages. If you do not get on at the very first stop, you will probably have to stand.

3. The Suspension-less Canonball (alternatively: The Human Sardine Can)
Brazilian intercity buses are fine. City buses are a mixed bag. First and foremost: the drivers are lunatics and the buses seem to have no suspension - prepare to be shaken, not stirred. Secondly, no maps with bus routes are available anywhere. Therefore you have about 1 millisecond to read the sign on the bus itself which displays the stops. Thankfully, the city bus systems usually make up for the confusion caused by the lack of maps with: loads of buses. It is not unusual to have 5 buses with the same destination pass by in one minute. However, when you are in a hurry, your bus will not pass by for another hour.
City buses drive at breakneck speed - but not during rush-hour. During rush-hour, the Suspension-less Canonball changes into the Human Sardine-Can. Fitting as many people as possible into a bus is a national sport. It's fun, there is always space for one more! I spent about half an hour pressed up against a middle-aged woman's bosom in a bus in Salvador and her hair was in my armpit. There was absolutely nothing we could do (except for sweat, which we did, profusely.)

Another fun thing about city buses is that whereas in Europe bus routes are usually lines, in Brazil they are often circles. Some cities (like Maceió) are enlightened and have a system where they have a blue sign in the front window if the bus is going one way, and a red one if it is going the other direction. Some cities (like Salvador) are less enlightened. In fact, Salvador's bus system is completely insane. For example, it is possible to spend an hour in a bus, pass the same lake twice, then pass the same supermarket twice, before arriving at your destination (which was only 4km away.) (This is not me being a tourist and taking the wrong bus - this is travelling with Nilton from town to his house - he has to take this bus every day!)

• If you read this article earlier today and read that I travelled around 3,000 kilometers: I estimated that without looking at a map. When I looked at my map I was shocked: as far as I can tell (without a ruler) I have travelled more like somewhere between 4,000 and 4,400 kilometers.

A Bumpy Ride! remains copyright of the author Alex-H, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I am writing this from Maceió, but my head is still about 600 kilometres south, in Salvador, where I spent over a week in the company of three fantastic people, all couchsurfers: Ksenia, from Russia, Mikael, from Sweden, and our host Nilton, from Salvador.

The Fabulous Foursome

Sometimes, by pure fluke, travel throws people together in what Mikael calls a 'bubble', a space and time in which friendships are formed faster than you think is possible, and where you feel induced to tell your entire life story, including things you would not even dream of telling your best friends, to a complete stranger - all over the course of a bus journey across town.
The best example I can give of the 'bubble' phenomenon is Alex Garland's book 'The Beach' (which was also made into a pretty mediocre film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.) Except for that our 'bubble' happened in a poor neighbourhood in Salvador, without a beach in sight.
What it reminded me of most was some weeks spent at Mary's Hostel in Gleann Cholm Cille in the early 1990s when I was learning Irish.

But all bubbles must burst. These periods of enlightened, sped-up reality don't last forever. Sunday night, I blew out of Salvador on a driving refrigerator (a Brazilian bus, more about Brazilian buses soon!) Tonight, Tuesday, Mikael is flying out of Salvador on his long trek home to Gothenburg. Before the end of the week, Ksenia will be in Belo Horizonte to spend Christmas with a friend there. Nilton and his family will have their house to themselves again.
The ads for Aero bars (or Bros bars in Holland!) are right: the bubbles taste better than the chocolate.

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It wasn't the first time I had gone to a Candomblé ceremony in Salvador, but this was the first time I went to a ceremony I had been invited to, rather than as part of a tour for tourists. Describing a Candomblé ceremony in words is nearly impossible. You need to be there to hear the beat of the drums, the bell-like sound of the agôgô, the rattle of the metal shakers used to call the Orixás. You need to be there to see the fantastic costumes made of metal and cloth, to see people become possessed, to see people dance the intricate steps of the dance of each Orixá. You need to be there to feel the heat and to smell the sweat of more than thirty people having a frantic religious ceremony in the tropical heat in a space smaller than the average European kitchen. But most of all, you need to eat the food that everybody shares after the ceremony. Food that is prepared with meat that comes from animals that were sacrificed. Everybody takes part, iniciates and visitors alike, to renew the energy of the house of Candomblé and the people in it. (Sacrificial meat tastes exactly the same as meat from the supermarket by the way.)

I always thought that it would be very hard to talk to people who practice Candomblé about their religion, because it was persecuted in Brazil for such a long time (it was in fact illegal until the 1970s) and because even today there are strong prejudices against the Afro-Brazilian religions in Brazil (Candomblé is not the only Afro-Brazilian religion.)
But the opposite appears to be true. Two days before the ceremony, Mickael and I spent an entire afternoon talking to Bruno, the Pai-de-Santo, about Candomblé, and today, one of Nilton's cousins, a girl of maybe 11 or 12, was explaining to us about the ritual scars on her upper arm.

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Antônio, the proud owner himself!

There are just four computers here, but they have everything you need from e-mail to skype to msn. Next to me two kids are playing computer games. Outside, there is a congregation of kids, teenagers and men in their twenties, just hanging around and talking. In 4 months time, Antônio's internet café has become a central point in the neighbourhood, like a proper café - even though there is no coffee here!

Funny to think how my mother in Holland, her friends Sister Beatrijs and Magda, and all my friends in Ireland and elsewhere are only a click away from this community on the other side of the world!

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I later killed this crab. Vegetarians: you are advised to stop reading now.

In Olivença, near Ilhéus in the south of Bahia where I stayed for a couple of days last week, it got so quiet (I was the only person staying in the youth hostel) that one day I had a conversation with a small yellow crab on the beach. I think the crab was afraid of me and was trying to be polite while I was talking to it. It only went away after I told it I was finished talking.

In Salvador, there is no need to talk to crabs, because I made a load of new friends through www.couchsurfing.com. Nilton Reis, a 24 year old couchsurfer from Salvador, started inviting couchsurfers to stay with him and his family last year so that he could practice his English, and in turn he is very good at teaching Portuguese. Perfect!

Nilton is also a very good teacher for killing crabs.

Tancredo Neves, the neighbourhood in which Nilton lives, is not one of the richer neighbourhoods in Salvador. He lives with his parents, his brother and his brother's wife and their baby, a dog and a puppy, but this week, there was still space for three (3!) couchsurfers, myself and a girl from Russia and a boy from Sweden. When we counted the languages that could be spoken fluently in Nilton's bedroom (which was just big enough for four matrasses on the floor) we came to a whopping 9: Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Dutch, English, Irish, Spanish, Esperanto, and Farsi.

But back to the crabs. Like I said, in Salvador, there was no need to talk to crabs (in any of the nine languages mentioned above.) Instead, we ate them. We bought two strings with ten crabs each for 14 reais (that is less than 5 euro.) They arrived at the door in a wheelbarrow with the mud from the mangrove in which they were caught still on them. They were also still alive, and trying to crawl out of the sink the whole time, where they had to be cleaned.

Some people boil the crabs alive, but Nilton's mother prefers to stab them first with a knife. Of course, I had to kill and clean one as well. This took a long time, obviously because I had never done it before, but also because the crabs are quite dangerous - they have large claws! In the end, I succeeded, killed the crab with a knife, and then cleaned it with a pink toothbrush.

One of the crabs wasn't killed properly though (not mine!!!) Just after Nilton and me sat down on the couch to relax, we heard a scream from the kitchen: an un-dead crab had crawled out of the enormous pot on the stove (which was already filled with onions, coriander, dendê oil and coconut milk) and bit Nilton's mother's finger.

A final note on carangueijo crabs: it takes just as long to eat them as it takes to kill and clean them.

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This is me drying my shirt on the beach in Ilhéus. It got wet, with sweat, because it is 35 degrees Celsius here.

Yes, I am in the land of the endless summer. Bahia does not have any seasons. It also doesn't have summer time (and for that reason, even though it is in the same time zone as Rio de Janeiro, it is still an hour earlier here... confusing!)
For someone who has grown up in north-western Europe (like me) it is difficult to imagine life without seasons. But here, it is always summer, the sun rises early (5am) and goes down early (6pm). No such thing as a long summer evening!

Yesterday I spent most of the day in Ilhéus, a nearly perfect little city on the coast, in Bahia's Cacaueira region. As you might be able to tell from the name, everything in Ilhéus and the area around it revolves around cocoa - and chocolate. (They have even invented chocolate that does not melt in 35 degrees heat - basically, it does not contain milk, and is rock hard, but very, very tasty.)

A church and a phone box. I can't think of a funny caption, but there has to be one.

Ilhéus, which also happens to be the birthplace of one of my favourite authors, Jorge Amado, was built in colonial style during the cocoa boom in the 19th Century. The buildings might be pretty, but the history is not. Even after slavery was abolished, the working conditions on the roças (plantations) were pretty grim. Jorge Amado paints a stark picture of this in his early books, Cacau and Terras do Sem Fim (both have been translated into English, and Dutch.)

Ilhéus is nearly perfect. It is Galway-sized, it has brightly painted colonial architecture, a good café called Barrakítika, beaches, a fairly good transport system... Nearly perfect, because it turns pale in comparison with the splendor of Salvador... more about which in the next update.

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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!

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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.

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After the 13,5 hour train journey from Belo Horizonte to Vitória I was also covered in glitter, from all the metal carried on this railway from the mines of Minas Gerais to the coast.

I like getting covered in dust, though. It reminds me of the fact that this time I am really seeing the country, not just hopping on and off sterile airplanes from one end of the country to the next. You also get to talk to loads of people.

On the same train journey, I met a lady who asked me to write my name in the cover of a little black book. I thought, oh, here we go. When I looked closer, I saw it was the Bible. I have no idea why she wanted me to write her name in it, but I put a smiley face underneath it.

But today I got covered in dust just a little bit too much, and I have to wait in the bus station for another bus that won't leave for another three hours (I arrived here three hours ago.) Thankfully, Brazil's bus stations have showers! (Which reminds me, stay tuned for a special report on Brazil's showers.)

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The beach has waves, and the sea is full of big tankers and freight ships waiting to dock at the steel works at Vitória, which makes the beach here look eerily like the beach in Heemskerk or Wijk aan Zee (except for the palm trees, of course, and the guys doing summersaults and other acrobatics, jumping from the rubbish bins.)

I am staying with Pedro, who I met on www.couchsurfing.com (I can't praise this site enough!) Yesterday, he and two friends picked me up at the hotel where I was staying and three minutes later we were on our way to a samba school rehearsal somewhere on the outskirts of Vila Velha.

Samba school rehearsals happen all over Brazil on Sunday nights from around this time of year until Carnaval; it is a way of getting the money together they need for the Carnaval parade.
Samba school rehearsals are great fun. You can go to rehearsals of famous samba schools like Mangueira in Rio de Janeiro, but somehow these things are more fun when you go to one somewhere off the beaten track. I went to one already a couple of years ago in Bagé, in Rio Grande do Sul, where my friend Raul's neighbourhood's band was practising. The rehearsal last night in Vila Velha was much the same, everybody, young, old, fat, thin, straight, gay, transvestite, everybody dances until they drop (and until they now the lyrics of this year's samba song by heart!)

The community spirit at samba school rehearsals is something else that has to be seen to be believed - and the same goes for the samba dancers themselves (and the musicians of course.) Unfortunately, the battery in my camera was empty - so no picture!

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A church for the pious, and a strange rock

Indeed, there was a gold rush here in the 18th century, and a whole lot of churches (resplendent with gold of course) were built to make sure the adventurers who came to Minas Gerais didn't stray off the straight and narrow.

Today gold fever still rules in the narrow, cobbled streets of Ouro Preto: I think there must be one jeweller's shop for every inhabitant.

The most beautiful thing about Ouro Preto, though, in my humble opinion, are the mountains that surround it. Check out the bizarre rock formation on top of the mountain behind the church in the picture!

Black Gold remains copyright of the author Alex-H, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Belo Horizonte has favelas (slums), but Savassi, especially the Pátio Savassi shopping mall, is becoming my experience of 'rich Brazil'. Pátio Savassi is a huge shopping centre which looks like an exact replica of a shopping mall I spent some hours in in Columbus, Ohio (Andrew, are you reading this?) Except for that every shop is a brand-name shop: there is a Tommy Hilfiger shop, a Calvin Klein shop, an ARMANI SHOP... Prices, I calculated, are near enough to the prices in Europe - so I won't be buying much!

Still, the shopping complex is a fun place to hang out if you don't have the energy for more strenuous sight-seeing. It's also interesting to see how the shopping centre functions as a kind of air-conditioned, ultra-clean bubble of decadence for middle-class and rich Brazilians - of which there are more than I imagined, the place is always packed!

Belo Horizonte's Bubble of Decadence remains copyright of the author Alex-H, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The answer to the question is: 'Yes, but you have to keep your eyes open.'

Brazil, and Rio and São Paulo especially, have a bit of a name for violence (remember Cidade de Deus / City of God?) But violence exists everywhere, and people get robbed all over the world. True, an Australian girl in the hotel where I am staying in Rio had her bag robbed yesterday morning. So it happens. But as long as I stick to my own set of rules, I feel just as safe as walking around Amsterdam or Dublin as I do in Rio or São Paulo. (In fact, if you want to go to a really unsafe city, go to Washington DC.)

Here's my list of tips and tricks for enjoying Brazil without being conscious of safety all the time:

1. Always look like you know where you are going (even if you don't.)
2. Don't carry too much money with you (but bring some, just in case somebody stops you - at least you have something to give them quickly so they will go away. (I haven't had to use this one yet.)
3. Try carrying money in your socks! You have to wear long pants to pull this trick off of course. But pickpockets can't get there.
4. Carry valuable items (cameras etc.) in a supermarket bag so it looks like you went buying groceries!
5. By the way, Brazilians have absolutely no qualms about bringing mobile phones and mp3 players to the beach. If you rent a beach chair, the people renting out the chairs will keep an eye on your stuff. (iPods are de rigueur in Brazil as well at this stage. You just wear the earphone wire under your shirt.)
6. The best thing to do of course is learn Portuguese so you can tell if people are talking about you, and if they are, you can understand what you are saying.
7. Leave the Lonely Planet at home, it will just scare you. (More about travelling without the Lonely Planet later.)

But Is It Safe? remains copyright of the author Alex-H, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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There is a Dutch saying that goes: "Nederlanders zie je ook overál!" ("You run into the Dutch everywhere".) Well, in the case of Bonete, an isolated fishing (and surfing) community on the island of Ilhabela, that is definitely the case.

Believe it or not, but less than three hours from the third largest city in the world, São Paulo, there is a village of just 250 souls living in what Edna O' Brien would call 'splendid isolation'. Bonete, on the island of Ilhabela (off the São Paulo coast) can only be reached by following a dangerous but fun path (I walked 12km in the sweltering heat (with my 18kg backpack on), crossed two reasonably deep waterfalls, saw one small snake) or by motor boat.

Bonete has no mobile phones, no electricity, no pollution, no stress, no nightlife. It only has traditional fishermen and (less traditional) surfers. There is a beach, there are hills covered in subtropical rainforest (the Mata Atlântica), there is a really nice waterfall to swim in, the pousada (a Brazilian concept somewhere between a hostel and a hotel) where I stayed was good. Basically, it's heaven on earth. But I found out that, after a day or two, heaven gets extremely boring: paradise is the same all day long.

So after two nights, I decided to hit the road, or rather, the waves. I took the easy way back, a motor boat. This is where I found out about Bonete's past. I asked Fernando, the fisherman who gave me a lift back to civilization, if he had ever met a Dutchman before.
"Of course," he said. "I've got plenty of Dutch blood myself!"
It turns out that the traditional fishermen of Bonete (not the surfers) are the descendents of Dutch pirates who married with the local Tupi-Guarani native tribe. In the 15th and 16th Centuries, the pirates used Ilhabela as a hiding place from which to launch their attacks on the Portuguese settlement of São Sebastião, on the mainland. The Dutch pirates must have liked paradise better than I did, because they stayed.

Dutch Pirates in Paradise remains copyright of the author Alex-H, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I did something yesterday that most people would probably advise against: I went home with a random stranger. The random stranger also did something most people would probably advise against: he invited another random stranger - me - into his house.

I first read about couchsurfing (www.couchsurfing.com) in The Irish Times about half a year ago. The idea appealed to me instantly: a website where travellers can find locals to stay with, nearly anywhere in the world. Of course it saves you having to spend money on a hotel (couchsurfing is per definition free), but it´s not all about that. It is a great way to get to know a country, and its people. Because most couchsurfers have extensive profiles, it´s easy to find people you have something in common with. My current couchsurfing host, Gonçalo, a young guy from Portugal, is doing media studies here in Santos.

From the moment he let me into his (stamp-sized) appartment he has been the perfect host (and I´m trying to be the perfect guest.) We went to meet his girlfriend, who is a journalist for a number of magazines in São Paulo, and her housemate who also works in media, and before long we were all comparing notes on media in Brazil and in Europe.

As it happens, www.couchsurfing.com is full of media people, travel agents, and, apparently, doctors. At least, that is what Cintia, who I met through couchsurfing in São Paulo (but just met for drinks as she is currently living at home again) says. Cintia (see Journalism, Brazilian Style) is an ambassador for couchsurfing in São Paulo.

Anyway, to cut a long story short... couchsurfing comes highly recommended!

UPDATE

This week, I couchsurfed with Pédro Malta in Vila Velha, in Espirito Santo for two days. It was great!

Tudo bem?

Minutes after Pédro and his friends showed up at the hotel in which I was staying before, we were on our way to a samba rehearsal on the outskirts of Vila Velha, where we danced until there was nobody left. Then we went for late night munchies and talked about, amongst other things, Afro-Brazilian religions. The next morning we went looking for crabs and other crustaceans on the rocks at the beach. Pédro showed me all of Vila Velha and Vitória, and even had time to make a chocolate cake at midnight. Couchsurfing is great!

Couchsurfing remains copyright of the author Alex-H, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Gazeta's TV Crew, my friend Cintia on the far left

Of course accosting innocent bystanders is what I do every day as a news reporter in Ireland, so I made Cintia do an interview. The reporter, a tough lady wearing suede pumps and dark sunglasses (I would love to see reporters dress like this in Europe!) thanked me profusely for helping her drag poor Cintia in front of the camera. Little did I know that Gazeta is a TV station aimed mostly at housewives and their news coverage consists mostly of recipes and horoscopes. In fact, they made Cintia ask a question rather than answer one, the question was going to be a lead-in to an advise session with a relationships expert. The question they made Cintia ask was: "I want to stay a virgin but my family is giving me trouble about this, what should I do?"
I'd love if reporting was just as easy in Ireland!

Journalism, Brazilian Style remains copyright of the author Alex-H, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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