Blogs from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, South America - page 7

03/12 - 04/12 For the first time on this trip, Team 897 made a trip/adventure and successfully completed a task. Got my stuff back at 2am this morning and got up at 6am to begin our getting the bus to Salvador challenge. We got a taxi and made it to the right bus station (much simpler) and found the Itapemirim window where we successfully bought tickets for the bus which departed from Rio de Janeiro an hour later - we filled in th forms, got our baggage weighed in and on we got. It was the most smooth of the Team 897 adventures to date. As soon as we got on the coach it was apparent that the air conditioning was not going to work - NIGHTMARE - panic ensued given that Amy is prone to ... read more

Ola! Just a quick update from the last few days! Rosies missing luggage finally arrived in the early hours of Friday morning so we got up at the crack of dawn and headed to the coach station (the right one this time). With our limited Portugese we booked three tickets to Salvador and hopped on the coach. From the offset we were the only non Brazilian travellers and for many this wasnt a problem. However, a certain rather scary Brazilian woman took a bit of interest in us. After many attempts of trying to talk to us, despite our faces showing complete confusion, a lovely Brazilian family we had befriended tried to explain to her that we were English and therefore didnt understand her. Cue a bit of casual racism from the lady, as she kept ... read more

so i have already completely lost all concept of time and date, but i know that i am offically rubbish at this and am determined not to be lazy and get into writing this thing- promise! i am currently in salvador made it here after a long and at times bizarre 29 hour bus journey from rio. Rio by the way was a bit of a blur and i didnt really get to see the city all that much apart from a excellent but useless trip to the city bus station, imagine those of you from sheffield a hybird of sheffield interchange and castle market and you will have a fairly good idea what it was like. After Rosie got her bag delievered as it didnt arrive with us (long story) we decided to wait to ... read more

Schools out for summer! I managed two weeks at the language school and as nice as it was, I got itchy feet and had to get out of the classroom, so my Portuguese is still terrible! I'm back dating a few blogs as I haven't written for a while... Two weeks into this trip and I hit my first brickwall, provoked for a number of reasons; upset tummy, it falling on a Sunday when I usually seeing my parents every week, and the reality hitting me about what I am actually doing. All I could think, was that ‘you are definitely not in Kansas anymore Dorothy’!. But I wasn’t daunted, compared to the mountain I had climbed to get here this obstacle in front of me now seemed pretty pathetic. There had been a fundamental shift ... read more

Sorry sir but, 'There's a first time for everything', is not going to convince me to participate in buggery Bloody deviants. This last week has been an eventful one but not so much in terms of having done anything out of the ordinary; asides from work I attended one Capoeira class, went to the beach and finished 'The Da Vinci Code' Portuguese edition, to the relief of my extremely well-thumbed diary. My near homosexual experiences tally however has increased fivefold. I can only think of one close-call before now, at a gay club in Leeds. Some friends from Arabic and I had made a poorly thought-out promise to a colleague (those that know him would agree that colleague is far more appropriate than friend) and accompanied him to a gay haunt in town. There, a once ... read more

which means that next week there will be some new people and to them it will seem like I know everything! Well that is how it seemed when I started, when all I knew was how to get to the shopping centre and to class. Now I know, erm well, how to get to the beach and how to ask for a coconut water! I am really enjoying learning Portuguese, the pronounciation is very difficult, and confusing for those of us who have learnt Spanish but it is a fun and expressive language. It is very frustrating not being able to communicate properly and I want to be fluent now. But that is just my nature and I have to be patient and not give myself a headache. There are just three of us on the ... read more

I can't believe only a week has gone by since I arrived in Brazil. The country and the people are just completely overwhelming, as a European and even more so being English, I have to take everything I think I know and disregard it. This comes easy to me as I have been doing that already for the past nine months, which is why I have quit my job, become a Yoga teacher and arrived here. The people are genuiningly so open and warm, the clothes are bright, the bikinis are tiny, the food is plentiful, the beaches are beautiful and the sun is hot hot hot! I have wanted to be here for so long that I have to constantly remind myself that I am lucky enough to call this beautiful place 'home' for a ... read more

Eu sou Brasileira! Well almost, once I can actually speak some Portuguese but I am being mistaken for a Brazilian so that is a good start. My flight to Rio seemed never ending (especially after they ran out of food half way through and I had left my sweeties on the kitchen side). Eight hours in and I was dreaming about dancing jelly babies, the situation was made worse by being sat next to two people who clearly hadn't left their goodies behind and they didn't even offer me a single 'revel'. 11 hours of thoughts whirring through my head, had I done the right thing? Was I wierd that I didn't actually mind being on my own? That I felt 'complete' as I person and didn't need someone to hold my hand along the way, ... read more