two nights in Pelourinho.

My apartment here in Salvador is on the edge of the old city, called Pelourinho. It’s the usual collection of gorgeous colonial architecture/churches, stone streets and picturesque storefronts and all. There’s a ton of nightlife here and it’s the most touristic part of the city, so there’s a constant strong police presence.

There’s also tons of vendors around, ranging from the useful (cold beer, bottled water and snacks) to the useless (all kinds of chintzy trinkets) to the illegal (everything). Plenty of people just looking for handouts too.

As much as I don’t like to throw up walls around myself, it’s pretty much necessary around here because I stand out so much as a foreigner and they zero in on me. It’s ok, either total ignoring or a shake of the head or finger generally puts them off pretty quick, and they move on to the next guy. I think with time it will ease up, since the same people are out hustling day in and out and they’ll recognize me after a bit.

My first day out I talked to a vendor, as I’ve been doing many other places in Brazil. He had come running up to me telling me in english not to go down a street I had no intention of going down, so I stopped to talk to him. He was a bit more than a little “off”  and I had to buy a necklace to get rid of him…I’ll spare the details but the guy was a bit unnerving.

I went out later that night and was listening to some good samba in an open air restaurant off one of the main plazas. I started talking to the guy drinking alone at the table next to me, who turned out to be an Italian fellow. Since we were both in town alone, I suggested we could pair up and go look around for some other good music.

Unfortunately, he seemed more bent on getting into trouble, engaging with every hustler and vendor that approached him, and there were many. He was just doing lots of dumb stuff, pulling out handfuls of cash in the streets, etc. Being around the guy for an hour was pretty exhausting. I quietly cut my ties with him and moved on.

I ended up at another samba club where a guy in an official-looking tourist office uniform was talking to me. After about 5 minutes it was pretty obvious he wasn’t legit, was looking to get money out of me, asking me to buy him cigarettes and drinks and such, so I gave him a few bucks to get rid of him after a while. It wasn’t a big deal but it was annoying and made it harder to enjoy myself there, feeling untrusting of those around me. I called it a night.

These are the kinds of things that make solo travel a bit harder in places like Salvador. A group insulates you from much of this stuff. Part of the rationale for staying as long as I am is that surely I’ll have the opportunity to meet people, locals and other travelers, and form groups with them.

On the other hand, I went out again last night and had an incredible time. A samba group was set up playing on a side street, which was full of locals young and old having fun, dancing and singing along with the music. This kind of musical experience is so great, because the line between the musicians and audience is blurred. The songs are known by everyone, they’ve been played in these streets for decades, and there’s a shared feeling that’s very powerful to be around. Everyone was having a blast, very few other foreigners were hanging around, and nobody seemed to be too interested in my presence, which was a great feeling after the previous night. Felt “safe as a bunny” (as JD might say), there were families with young kids around (probably due to Xmas time) and the good feeling around was very infectious.

Headed home that night with a bounce in my step for sure.

Every day’s a learning experience and some of the lessons may be counter-intuitive, but it always gets easier. One thing I’ve started to do which I’ve never done before is to sometimes not tell people I’m American, instead saying I’m Chilean or Argentine: Many people assume I am regardless due to my portunhol. (spanish/portuguese hybrid way of talking). I don’t do it all the time, but sometimes out on the town it makes things a bit simpler, avoids political discussions I’m not always up for. If I feel like someone is looking to hustle money out of me, I do it for sure.

I keep an eye on the composition and mood of the crowd, ready and willing to split if I feel like it’s changing.

Street smarts definitely need to be deployed in Salvador…I feel like I have some regardless of my rural background. To me, it’s worth it because there’s obviously so much to offer here musically and culturally.

Salvador

sunset on Bahia de Todos os Santos

The view from my Salvador apartment’s window is pretty great.

Salvador is different from every place I’ve been. I thought city and street life was vibrant in other parts of Brasil, but it’s nothing like here. There’s music going on everywhere, all the time. Big drum corps walking around day and night, Samba groups, Reggae groups, Choro and all kinds of styles I don’t know anything about yet. My first hour in the city I saw some very intense capoeira being practiced by a large cultural group in town for some event. Felt fortunate to see it, since they weren’t putting on a show, but doing it for their own benefit. For anyone who hasn’t heard of capoeira, it’s a kind of dance/martial arts hybrid that is like a stylized fight with unbelievable athletecism and grace. It has a deep cultural significance for the people who practice it here.

The capoeira I watched that first day was a lot more intense than the kind I’ve been seeing; the guys would end up sort of grappling and seeming to actually come to blows at times. Pretty neat.

I’ll have lots to say about salvador in the coming weeks, I’m sure, but now I’m mostly just taking it in and getting accustomed to the place.

Jericoacoara…

Now I’m in my apartment in Salvador, having arrived this morning. I’ll get to Salvador later, since I’ve covered some ground since last time. Also, I now have a fast internet connection in my apartment, so I’m going to be tracking back and uploading more photos to the previous posts.

In retrospect, I probably should have moved a little faster to get to the beach town of Jericoacoara. My priority was more on finding some less-discovered spots, but as soon as I got to Jeri (as they call it) I realized one night there wasn’t nearly enough. Incredible beach, the most movement and activity I’ve seen on this trip, and an excellent vibe.

I stayed at a hostel for the first time on this trip, and it was great. Right off the bat I met a group of really great folks and we went out on the town. There were three guys from Sao Paulo, three british guys, and a french girl…I may be forgetting someone or misplacing their nationality. We went to a place I never would have found on my own, it seemed like a little hole-in-the-wall snack bar type place. But they were serving us whole grilled fish, red snapper that was incredibly delicious and ridiculously cheap; maybe about 2 US dollars per fish! We feasted and drank for a couple hours and payed what seemed like almost nothing.

Great time. Only when I told people I had arrived that day and was leaving the next, they looked at me like I had two heads. Not the best planning, but live and learn. I had an early morning flight booked so I had to move on with a vow to return.

That’s the only picture I got of Jericoacoara’s beach…was having too much fun and was there too short to get many good shots.

Parnaíba.

Today I’m in Parnaíba in the state of Piaui. It’s a riverfront city with a very laid back atmosphere. Super friendly people. I think a lot of tourists just blow through from the Lençois to Jericoacoara or vice versa without stopping. Too bad because there are some interesting things to see around here.

Getting here was a wild ride in itself. I caught a 4×4 truck in Barreirinhas yesterday morning, which headed out on a rough sandy path to Paulino Neves. We probably were topping out at about 25 mph, bashing along through these ruts. The truck, like most of the ones used for tourism around here, was a Toyota Bandeirante, which was basically like a late 70’s style land cruiser with a flat bed set up for twelve passengers on benches. It wasn’t a tourist excursion though; I was the only non local along for the ride. We went through some spectacular and forbidding terrain. The driver was quite accomodating, even leaving the track to drive across an enormous cow pasture so one of the passengers could be left closer to home.

2 hours plus later, we stopped in Paulino Neves for a lunch break, then continued on to Tutoia for another hour’s worth of off-road travel. A paved road runs from Parnaíba to Tutoia, so I caught a regular bus for the remaining two hours of travel.

If I were to do the trip again with a little more time, I might stop in Tutoia to check it out, and possible arrange a boat to go up the river to Parnaiba…but I’ve only got a couple days here before flying down to Salvador.

Did a tour down the river delta today with one of the local tour companies.

mangrove

We went through narrow channels and mangroves out to the sea, where we stopped to swim and lounge at a very nice sandbar type beach with beautiful water.  Saw monkeys, iguanas and birds on the way there and back. The guide demonstrated crab hunting technique, which I have a good video of…I’ll try to put it up later.

On the tour with me were a couple from the state of Paraná, Cesar and Alessandra…very nice folks. They drove up here, which seemed pretty wild to me. They got  up here in just 3 days, which I couldn’t believe I heard right. They are fast movers, for sure.

After the tour I rode with them out to a nearby beach, Pedra da Sal, which was really nice.

A worthwhile stop.

Lençois Maranhenses, Caburé.

Hello everyone.

This area is really special; I’ve had a great time here. Arrived on Friday to the town of Barreirinas and went right out on a 4×4 tour out to the dunes themselves for which the park is named. (Lençois in portuguese means sheets, and the dunes look like sheets strewn about from the air.) A very surreal area, walking on the pure white sands and encountering these mirage-like lagoons with beautiful fresh water for swimming in. I’m told the park is far more gorgeous during the rainy season, when rainwater forms many more of these crystalline lagoons…still, it is pretty impressive now.

Have to give a specific shout-out to my pousada in Barreirinhas, Pousada d’Areia, for the above-and-beyond helpfulness and friendliness of the owners. They helped me tons with lining up transport and activities, and were just genuinely nice folks.

On Saturday I left my backpack at the pousada and headed down the River Preguiças with another tour to a small town called Caburé. Before arriving we stopped at another small community with a lighthouse that provided fine views, and at the docks we ate some of the best shrimp I’ve ever had, washed down with an unbelievable caipirinha de caju (I’ll explain later about caipirinha…)

I decided to spend the night in Caburé, and actually ended up staying two nights. The town is a little spit of sand at a bend in the river- from my pousada it was ten steps to the river and maybe two hundred steps to the Atlantic. Swim in the river, swim in the ocean, repeat as needed. Watch sun set over river, watch moon rise over sea, watch sun rise over sea, repeat. Generally not another soul in sight on the beach. Plenty of hammock time on the veranda.

In Caburé they shovel sand like we shovel snow at home…it’s always creeping in on them.

 

That photo isn’t Cabure, but it is sandy.

Walked towards the river mouth down the beach from Caburé today, and stumbled onto a huge estuary, or tidewater marsh or something, where I watched tons of cool birds. Wish I had bought a field guide at some point, though I did see several more guará.

blurry but brilliant

A very relaxing time, highly recommended.

Now I’m back in Barreirinhas, leaving tomorrow morning in the direction of Fortaleza to catch a flight Saturday morning. Tomorrow I hope to be in the town of Parnaiba in the state of Piaui, where I’ll either move on for a look at the famous beach town of Jericoacoara, or stick around for a tour of the Parnaiba river delta…taking it as it comes.

Maranhao.

Ah, now this is more like it.

Sao Luis, Maranhao is full of great colonial architecture, especially the beautiful tiles that cover many of the buildings. It´s hot, for sure, but a constant sea breeze eases the suffering quite a bit. Lots of great outdoor restaurants with music in the evenings…they like reggae a lot here, but I´ve also heard some killer choro and samba music. Every meal is fish or seafood of some kind so far…they have lots of crab, which is delicious.

I took a side trip across the bay to a town called Alcântara, which is full of ruins and crumbling colonial buildings.

Obviously lots of the tiles have been stripped off the buildings and sold elswhere. A sleepy town, at least on a tuesday, with a mellow and welcoming atmosphere. After coming in on a 90 minute catamaran ride, I stayed the night. On the second day I took a tour. Found a couple of really great tour guides. Started out by walking deep into the atlantic rain forest. The first tour guide, a 60 year old Alcântara native, showed me some very remote ruins of an old port, which now was in the middle of a mangrove swamp. There were processing areas for leather, cotton and sugar there. He also showed my the crumbling remains of the main estate house that overlooked the port. Again, a building with trees growing up out of it on the verge of basically melting into the landcape. There were peices of fancy portuguese marble laying around that hinted at how grand the house once was. We moved on through more forest, even slopping through the mud at the edge of a giant mangrove swamp.

We ended up down at what seemed like a dry stream bed where were to wait for the other guide. As the tide came in, the stream rose and eventually he showed up in a large canoe to take us back to the beach.  Getting in the canoe was an adventure in itself, as we had to head through thigh-deep clay-like muck for a few feet.  As we cruised out the inlet, fish were hopping out of the water all over the place, strange little four-eyed fish. Lots of kingfisher-type birds, sandpiper types, and most spectacularly, these brilliant red ibises called guarà.

Alcantara tour guides

Great tour, great guides. They were obviously excited to be able to show off what their place had to offer. It was especially humbling to have the opportunity to see these historic buildings which are totally hidden from normal view and that surely won´t be there much longer. And the wildlife, and the whole experience. Just unforgettable.

Got back to Sao Luis very tired, so I´m staying an extra day before moving on to the park called the lençois maranhenses. Got less than ten days to get to Salvador, which seems cruel at the moment, this area has so much to offer. But I think that´s true of the whole coast here. Anyway, I´d surely put
Maranhao on the itinerary of any future visit.

Sweltering hot in this internet cafe, so I´ll sign off. More later, and hopefully pictures too.

Brasilia, post-mortem.

Well, I´ve finally done it. Gone to a place where getting online is´nt the easiest thing in the world. It´s been a few days, so I´ll split up into a couple posts to cover my latest ground.

For me, Brasilia was an interesting and worthwhile stop. Doesn´t really have too much to offer in terms of tourist infrastructure though. Don´t think I´d recommend it to someone who had just a short time in the country, by any means. Especially travelling alone, not wanting to take 5 taxi rides a day. Saturday evening I went out looking for a spot for beer and supper on foot, and ended up walking a couple miles from my hotel, going through huge office complexes and banking districts. Brasilia is basically laid out in the shape of an airplane, the hotels and government bases are in the fuselage, and people live out on the wings. There are also blocks designated for local commercial use, bars, restaurants etc. It seems to be the only place in Brazil where there isn´t someone waiting to sell you a cold beer and a snack every few feet. The people and atmosphere were friendly enough, I didn´t find any good food though. Other than that one venture out to the wings, I stayed around the fuselage and even went to a giant shopping mall for air conditioning, chinese food and a movie (the new James Bond.)

On sunday I went to see a very beautiful modern cathedral, the Dom Bosco sanctuary. I actually attended mass there, it was going on so I just strolled on in. It´s a bit disconcerting, since everyone else knows when to stand, sit or kneel and ít´s all greek to me. Probably the coolest stained glass I´ve ever seen.

 Later on sunday I went to a big crafts fair in the fuselage where I actually got some killer street food and cold beer in the park. I had acarajé, a sort of shrimp and bean fritter, the specialty of Salvador da Bahia.

The highlight of the whole visit was my tour of the congress on saturday. It was great fun, since there was a elementary school class in our tour group. So the guide was speaking plainly and simply in language I could understand for the most part. Again, taking these tours in portuguese is the best kind of language lesson.

On monday morning, I was out of Brasilia and flying on to the coast- to the northern-most state of the Northeast region of Brazil, Maranhao.

Brasilia.

National Library

congress

 A lot of strange and beautiful things to see in Brasilia. It’s not exactly the most hospitable place, or maybe I mean the most pedestrian-friendly place. I walked down from my hotel to see the sights and there was very little relief from the sun and heat. Unlike most of the country, it was hard to find a place to sit in the shade and have a bite or a drink. The people are friendly, though.

I love the buildings. I think maybe a lot of brazilians are very cynical about their capital, but I think its great. The buildings are bold, and somehow to me they don’t seem dated, even though they are from a definite period. The buildings seem to aspire to something, or to symbolize aspiration and ambition in their boldness. Most of them were designed by the same architect, Oscar Neimeyer. The place was built in an astonishingly short period of time, in the 50’s behind the vision of president Juscelino Kubitschek (Diamantina’s favorite son).  I wonder how it will be perceived 100 years from now…I guess it sort of depends on where Brazil as a country goes from here.

National theater

cathedral

tons of great photos today, awesome light and clouds. I’ll get more up later

Another adventure…

Today I checked in on my pal Justin Ingolt’s web site and saw that he had given me the ultimate in internet props: A link! This is very exciting to me.

So of course, I have to return the shout-out: www.justinandsilveral.com

It’s mostly the account of an epic trip he made earlier this year, driving his VW from Maine to Tierra del Fuego. Actually, the envy I felt while reading about his trip last winter helped plant the seed for this journey of mine. So I’m excited to sing his praises.

Justin, as you will see, is currently getting Silver Al back on the road after a several month hiatus. It seems like he’s not going to get it as far as Brazil, but good luck to the good man regardless!

Also, if you haven’t checked in for a while, scroll down as I’ve been busy adding photos and accompanying anecdotes to previous posts.

Serro to Belo Horizonte: Rough Riding

Back in B.H. city…

Still no good laptop wireless connection today, so again I post without photos. Surely in ultra-modern Brasilia this weekend I´ll be able to upload to my hearts content. Until then, text only.

Serro proved to be a picturesque and friendly town, but without much happening. The logic in passing through there was, that it was basically on the way to Belo Horizonte, and would provide an alternate source of scenery for the bus ride back. According to the posted schedules, 4 buses a day. I hadn´t really given much thought to the effect of all the recent heavy rain on the condition of the road. When I went to buy a ticket early in the morning, I was told there would be only one bus, at noon. That was going to put a damper on plans for banker´s hours errands here in the city. Luckily I went and checked again an hour later at 8:30 am, and there was a bus idling, ready to go.

Mad scramble uphill to get bag, which was fortunately already packed, and caught the bus just in time. The first couple hours were super rough. Big deep ruts of orange mud. I was looking at the skies pretty nervously, because it seemed like one more good downpour was going to wash the road right out.

 

This one guy had a better vehicle for the conditions.

But after a couple nervous hours of hammering through those muddy ruts, we were treated to some unbelievable scenery. The bus took us along the perimiter of a national park, I believe called Serra do Cipo. Made the spine crunching 7 hour trip pretty much worth it all.

 

 I was a little blindsided by the hard traveling, since the rest of Minas Gerais has had such good roads. But it made for a memorable ride.

Approaching BH from the north instead of south, it doesn´t seem as Toronto-like. Most of the chaotic, uncontrolled sprawl seems to be in that direction.