From Salvador to Morro de Sao Paulo, May 19-22

Hello all,

I´ve been experiencing some problems with uploading video to this blog.. in addition, Im using computers in Latin America that have particularly low bandwith, so they take extra long to upload.  I promise, however, that they will all be up before I head out from brazil.  Keep your eyes focused on Sunday.

In any event, a week ago SundaY marked a fairly rainy and ugly day in Salvador.  What better than to agree to drive with 3 other fellow backpackers (2 americans and 1 Danish guy) and 2 random Salvadoran girls (no, not my friends) to Morro de Sao Paulo? I couldn´t think of anything quite so tempting.

Morro de Sao Paulo is an island about 2 hours south of the city of Salvador by catamaran.. by car it was a little bit different.  We ended up taking a very indirect route to the pier where a larger ship would first take us to Iticare, another island first, because we listened to the “locals” give directions.  It was then we realized they were about as smart as a pile of rocks.  Finally, we made it to the pier by asking enough locals who werent as dumb as rocks where to drive our tiny Fiat.  And yes, fitting 6 people into a tiny fiat invariably makes it a “crazy clown car” i have been told.  So we take this boat first about an hour and a half to iticare, and then drove south to the town of valencia.  We left the clown car in valencia and headed by smaller boat to Morro de Sao Paulo. 

Morro itself is covered with 4 beautiful beaches and by locals who will not stop harassing you as their “friend” to either eat food or buy handicrafts.  Unfortunately, we arrived in low season, and in low season i think gringo radar is particularly effective.  That night we arrived, we were followed by locals all the way to a pousada abot 15 minutes away from the dock.  What was extremely annoying was the fact that an israeli guy was helping the locals to translate our english conversation.  I felt punching him would not have made things any better.  The night only got worse when we met the owner of our first night pousada, Marcos, who also made money crooning horribly at one of the beach front restaurants.  Marcos took us to the Pousada Tranquila, but it was far from tranquil.  I spent the whole night batting around mosquitoes, and even tried designing a fort to protect myself.  I finally tried reverse psychology “hey mosquito, try to eat me, see if i care!!” to no avail.  I ended up getting up at 6 am for a morning jog on the beach, accompanied by 2 of the islands many stray dogs all of the way.

Everynight after the first was better.  While the two Americans and their random aquaintances moved along, Jacob and I decided to stay on for a few more days.  Given that Morro can be considered a place for couples, we did suffer some jokes, but we made the best of it.  Everyday, we spent on the beach, and 1 day took a boat tour all around the island and the island of Boepiba with an assortment of slick italians and middle aged argentine women.  The highlight was definately Boepiba- never have i been on such an idyllic beach.

Nights were filled with full moon beach parties, 3/4 moon beach parties, and 1/2 moon parties.  Around 8-9, we would head down to the second beach, and run a gauntlet of restaurants and fresh fruit drink “barracas” or stands.  These barracas also made fine caipirinhas, and I was able to bargain down to 2.50 reales per caiparinha.  Around 12 AM, we would wait for beautiful mermaids to run or flop out from the water to join what became the beach party (all backpackers and some couples), but they never came.  The same music from an assortment of speakers would blast every night, my favorite being “Creu!” which is a hilarious “funkie music” of brazil.  On Thursday, we made our way back to Salvador by catamaran.