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