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Published: January 15th 2009
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Our 2 year old guidebook describes Caraiva as "without electricity, cars, banks and phonelines...remote and beautiful". Since publication electricity has arrived but thankfully nothing else has changed. The bus from Trancoso leaves paved road quickly and then bounces down mud tracks that would be totally impassable after rain. Driving past fields of buffalo and plantations for 2 hours before being dropped off at the river to complete the journey in a canoe.
Like Barra Grande, it feels like an island with the river on one side and the ocean on the other. The riverside has a few restaurants an almost stockless shop and a couple of forro places with small dancefloors that haven't yet opened for the season. There's almost no other tourists here...it's wonderful!
As all the pousadas are empty we know we should be able to negotiate a good deal; it's a week before we will return to Arrial for our Christmas week and we know that no Brazilian holiday-makers will arrive in Caraiva much before that. With only small day packs to carry it's easy to walk around the sand "streets" hunting out the best deal. Some places, well out our league in their honeymoon perfection
won't budge at all, happy to stay empty til their rich reservations turn up next week, but it was worth a try! Others drop their prices more than at first bidding rather than sit there empty, so we are spoiled for choice.
We opt for a lovely yellow and blue house set in a large tropical garden of palms and hibiscus which attract butterflies and hummingbirds (and us!) The owner of the place Lenny, is happy to give us the best discount on the best digs we've had yet. We cannot believe it when he shows us to our very own little house! Bright yellow with 2 hammoks waiting for us on our private porch which leads into a lounge, kitchen and bathroom. Upstairs on a mezzanine set in the eaves with a window facing the sea, is a big bed dressed with mosquito nets so you can sleep with the windows wide open to catch what Lenny calls God's airconditioning. All this for less than a third of our NYE hostel. We are sold...in fact he may have trouble evicting us.
Lenny's an excitable kind of guy...rocking the "balding but keeping his hair defiantly long" look, he
peppers his speech with "wahoos!", he makes us laugh and we click from the offing. But later that evening it gets a bit weird. He pops by the chalet to invite us to his veranda for a drink. All's good at first...he's ridiculously talkative and it's impossible to get a word in, bit he runs the place alone and I guess he's just a bit loney and we're his first guests of the season. But after another drink he starts getting even more manic...his conversation (actually, it's now a monologue...we've given up trying to join in) becomes a series of unfinished random tangents. When he talks about a friend's dog, he actually becomes the dog...walking on all fours and barking...it's worse than George Galloway being the cat on Big Brother. He makes scary gangster type references to being "in the game", which worry us as we've heard that this part of the coastline is home to a fair few retired Goodfellas. By the time he starts impersonating a demon I'm more than a little scared...my imagination starts to run wild...he's a deranged ex-gangster and we'll never get off this terrace alive!
At last there's a long enough pause in
the unfolding madness to do the old "yawn...my goodness is that the time" thing and we almost run back to our little house making double sure we've locked the door and closed all the windows. We kick ourselves for paying the week up front because as it stand right now, we're freaked enough to sneak out in the dark!
In the morning we still agree that last night was weird, and we're curious to see if Lenny is going to be scary at breakfast. But it's fine...he's back to being just eccentric and we decide it's going to be ok...I no longer feel like a character in a horror movie. His place seems to be at the very heart of the Caraiva community; he's got alot of friends who are constantly dropping by and Lenny is always a bit out there, but totally likeable and not scary at all. In fact, by the end of the week he's probably our favorite Brazilian. I'm still not sure if I believe that "the game" that he played was the stock market as he claims. When we find out that his real name is the very Italian, Paulo Cesar, and with his
constant use of phrases like "you fucking guys" it just adds fuel to the fire of my suspicion. Whoever he really is or was, it's clear that he's a bit damaged, but he's so much fun and so full of love that we really do miss him now we're no longer there.
When we're not hanging out at Lenny's place, we spend the week exploring the area. An hours walk northwards up the beach takes you to Satu, a beach with shallow calm waters due to the reef that keeps the powerful Atlantic waves at bay. An old dude and his wife are the only residents, selling coconut water and mangos from their trees. It's a lovely spot to sit in the shade or in the shallow pools of water.
If you carry on north from Satu you pass 3 fresh water lagoons slightly inland before reaching pinky coloured cliffs that mark the end of the beach. But it's not the end of the road. If you've got the energy, you climb a path up the cliffs and over the headland for a mile or so at which point you're rewarded with your first glimpse of Praia do
Espelho...it's another Top 10 beach that stops you in your tracks. Thick with palms and thin of people it's totally gorgeous. The southern end has strong waves but as you head north another reef close to the shore means the waters are shallow and perfectly calm. The return walk here from Caraiva is 18kms but it's worth every step. We are totally knackered afterwards, but that's ok, there's not much in the way of nightlife to wear us out anyway.
The season here is really short; just 3 or 4 months from Christmas til Carnaval, and thousands will descend on this wonderful place. You can tell that the business owners see the invasion as a necessary evil. I'm so glad we discovered Caraiva when we did and as it really is.
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Cassie
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You look like mum in that shot on the balcony. Loving your updates, your Christmas sounds like it was chillaxing compared to my in law hell! xxx