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Published: January 17th 2007
Leaving Rio behind, we weren´t sad to say goodbye to the rain, but a little sad to leave Copacabana and the friends we had made here, however we know we will be back in 6 weeks for Carnaval - so not too sad!!
18 hours later and our first experience of Brazilian bus journeys, we were in the state of Bahia! The journey was an experience - quiet rough - not only was it pouring down most of the journey but the driver was a loon (quite the norm here in Brazil we heard) and was overtaking at ridiculous speeds on small winding roads the whole way!Not much sleep!
Anyway the bright sunshine gave Porto Seguro a warm feeling from the momenet we got there - hot hot hot! We found ourselves a little pousada on the main little street - where no house or building is higher than one storey and they are all painted bright jolly colours.
Porto Seguro was where the portugese first entered Brazil - and to this day it has stayed predominetely portugese - no one spoke a word of english, making it a bit complicated for us as yet non-portugese speakers! It´s
a small sweet liittle place - with many shops and restaurants - and is famous for its "Alcahol Walkway" on the main street which is literally full of stalls selling cocktails and drinks - bit crazy and colourful - each trying to lure you in to their stall with promises of the best cocktails in town - needless to say we tried a few - and they were on the strong side of cocktails - with the guys pouring in vodka from a smirnoff bottle till you say stop - which from the headaches the following day showing it clearly wasn´t smirnof - but still fun!!
Random carnivals passed through the streets, adding to the chaos with the millions of little stalls selling everything from cakes, to jewellery, to beach-boy dancers dancing on the beach to techno in skimpy shorts dvd´s, aswell as all the brazillion tourists that take their January vacations here, and finally the tribal dnacers complete with drums, chants and capoeira shows!!!
One day we went to neighbouring island Arraial d´Ajuda - with the guys we met in the Rio hostel, only 2 mins across the shore by ferry and it had lovely beaches and
big waves and great sand for volleyball!! We ate the nicest pineapples on the beach - so small and sweet! Now we´re a bit addicted to them and buy them oursleves everyday!
Another day we somehow negotiated ourselves on to a boat trip to a nearby reef to do some snorkeling - Recife do Forro - a pleasant 40 min boat trip to a fairly small reef - the guide gave some sort of demonstration and prep talk and showed some interesting marine life and sea urchines - however all in portugese - we stood there like lemons not understanding a foggy - so swam off on our own! As our first experience of snorkeling we had a great time and saw some nice fishes!! Nice yellow and black stripe ones like the ones in Finding Nemo and some big briught blue ones too - was good fun! On the boat back to mainland, enjoying a can opf skol as the locals were, we were befriended by a nice brazilian family from Rio! They invited us to join them fopr a BBQ later that night at their apartment - so off we went and had such a good evening
- eating endless supplies of delicious meat from the grill - Anselmo the chef for the night cooked us a treat and Christian enjoyed a few nice whiskeys with him! It was really good to chat to Marcia and her 3 sons about life in Rio!
Another day we went to Trancoso - another beach island famous for and popular with it´s hippy generation! A really lovely place with gorgeous beaches and a truly chilled out feel to it!
To sum up, Porto Seguro was a nice stop off on our way to Salvador - a brazillian holiday resort witha tradional cultural feel to it - which was for us was characterised by the local bike riders that drove old bikes round with big speakers on the back and front blurting out the local radio stations and advertising parties etc! We liked it a lot!!
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SUSIE
non-member comment
WOW
Wow guys, it all looks soo amazing, i am incredibly jealous and you've really spurred me on to thinking about travelling!!!it looks absolutely gorgeous but surely you must be missing rainy, cold, windy, gloomy manchester lol? i thought not! sorry i havent commented yet, iv only just realised how to so you will be hearing form me more often now!enjoy yourselves (as im sure you will anyway), take care and speak soon, lots of love susiex