Adventures in Northeast Brazil

So much has happened in the past couple weeks, I hardly know where to start.
We left Salvador around the 12th of March and hit the road for the next leg of the tour - making our way up the East coast to the mouth of the Amazon river in Belem.

The first couple days involved a lot of time on the truck - Brazil is a huge country!  We camped on a beach the first night and had a good old fashioned campsite singalong (ie tipsy singing, bad ukulele and lots of laughs).  After my morning beachside hula hoop we went over to the turtle sanctuary nearby where they look after sick turtles and care for their eggs, important work because the fishing and pollution means turtle numbers have suffered though in recent years are on the rise again. 

In those first couple days we also stopped at the Inga monolith which has cool prehistoric rock carvings from thousands of years ago; briefly visited the colonial seaside town of Olinda where cats like to have conferences on the waterfront (there were so so many of them!); went to this gorgeous hillside with Devil´s-Marbles -like rock formations at sunset; and explored the Valley of the Dinosaurs where you can see footprints of velicoraptors, brontosaurus and stegasaurus.

After those inland adventures getting onto the beach again was awesome.  We stayed a couple nights at Canoa Quebrada, a lovely small town next to a long beach with red cliffs leading down to it.  After our camp dinner the whole lot of us (17 on the tour now) hit the town and much silliness ensued.  After dancing and pool at a bar in town we went to a reggae bar on the beach - the rest is kind of hazy although I do recall climbing a stack of whitegoods because I thought it was a shortcut...

The next morning involved laying on the sand, swimming, and an absolutely delightful horseride with my mates Kate and Julia.  Well it was mostly delightful, except for  the part where my horse wanted to swim in a lagoon, then roll in the sand with me still on him - kinda scary that, my feet slipped out of the stirrups and i thought I might fall off and then have him roll on me:/ but the guide got his naughty arse up again and the rest was lovely.  We stopped for a coconut and a swim at an oasis-like lagoon in the sandunes, then had a great canter on the beach on the way back - brilliant.

Next stop was Jericoacoara an abolutely awesome beachside town.  This was where I tried my hand at windsurfing (bloody tough but fun in the end and I think I want to do more!); watched the sunset and played with poi atop a sand-dune;  and ate really really well, the restaurants were terrific.  The second day in Jeri four of us hopped in the coolest little dune buggy and hooned around the dunes it was so so great.  We stopped in a river outlet and saw seahorses, made a party everywhere we went because our driver had the loudest sound system of anyone, slid down a dune on a sled, then lay in a hammock  in the lake drinking caiprinhas - a really great day! 

Theres so much more I could write about but I´m outta time ciao my loves

The great outdoors

For the past week I've been travelling through inland Brazil, taking in a few national parks the Chapada da Veadieros and Chapada da Diamantines.

Our first stop was a little town Alto Paraiso near the first national park.  It was quite cute with little hippy shops around the place. The first day there we did a massive hike down through the savanna scrubland to check out some waterfalls.  It was bloody hot which made the swimming that much more lovely when we arrived.  We stopped there and had lunch and sunbaked on the rocks before heading upstream to another swimming spot with a few little mini waterfalls and some rapids.  Of course the boys had to show off in the rapids and our tour leader Rudi scored a cut to his forehead, silly man.  No sympathy from nurse Erin!

After Alto Paraiso we went to a community in Kalunga.  The founding of the community was quite interesting, first forming several hundred years earlier from slaves who had escaped work in the mines and other labour.  The community kept themselves isolated and only in the past few decades have they been connecting with the rest of the country and getting government services etc.  I just had a chilled day there cos I had been a little sick, hanging in the hammock playing ukulele and resting up.

The next day we had a long drive to Lencois, gateway to the Chapada da Diamantines.  Its a gorgeous old colonial town with the brightly painted houses set on a river.  The first day a few of us from the group (Kate, Jarod, Sarah and Sarah, Chas and Tyler and I) went exploring upstream, traipsing across some strange pink marbely-rockyroady rocks then swimming in a few little interconnected pools.  After lunch we walked through the forest downstream to a natural waterslide - the river streaming down a flat rock at about a 40 degree angle - that was SO much fun.  A tad scary cos you do pick up some speed, plus its a little bumpy:) There were some guys at the waterhole who had strung up a slackrope across the water and very impressively walked across it.  They made it look so easy in fact that I thought I'd try my hand at it - totally hopeless!  One of the guys was holding my hand but before I could even let go I was shaking all over the place and promptly splashed in the water as soon as he let go.  That guy was crazy actually, kept singing really high pitched Bob Marley and ''you can get it if you really want" as people tried the slackrope.  On the way home we stopped for coconuts: they just chop the top off and stick a straw in, its great, the most refreshing hydration ever!

The following day was friggin brilliant.  We did a tour all around the national park.  We began with a huge cave which had tonnes stalactite and stalagmites plus all these drapey bits, it was so beautiful as we walked along shining our torches on more and more of these amazing formations.  We stopped halfway through the cave, turned off our torches, went silent and had a short little meditation.  Which was good once I got "Ïf you like pina coladas" (Which for some reason has become the tour theme song) out of my head!  Next stop was this amazing blue pool/river with crystal clear water - I jumped off the cliff on a zip-line and flew across and into it - that was awesome fun.  We walked upstream to another cave where the water was bright blue, then drove to another spot and hiked to a cool waterfall for more swimming.  The day finished with a hike up one of the mountains where we could see all around the park.  The views were just stunning, looking across the valleys to all these tabletop mountains as the sun set, it was lovely.  That night we found a weird party with some performance dancing and a couple bands and had a good dance, then a few of us went for a spontaneous moonlit trip up to the river pools again and swam and listened to music late into the night.  All in all a pretty awesome day.

Since then we've been in Salvador which is a big city where we've been walking the streets sightseeing, checking out markets, and last night watched this incredible dance performance with some amazingly athletic local dancers.  The culture here is much more African influenced, with Capoeira demonstrations in the street so this performance involved some amazing jumping and twisting to some intense percussion based music, it was great.  I cant wait to see what the next leg of the trip has in store, we're now on the coast and will be making our way up to Belem at the mouth of the amazon - no doubt even more swimming woohoo:)