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Published: October 22nd 2011
first day
having a beer at our arrival, when this cute little girl came over and started bubbeling away in portuguese at us.. she would not believe us that we werent portuguese..lol21.09.2011
Our first day in Brazil..arrived in Salvador, bags here, we are here, happy days..until no banc machine would work with our card..we tried about 8 different ones and with no cash to change we were a bit stuck.. fortunately we found another atm outside the airport which finally gave us our first 50 Brazilien Rais..
We decided to couchsurf for the first few days in Salvador, so we had to jump onto a local bus that took us to Cabca D'Agua, some suburb in salvador (pretty ghetto we found out later.. lol) the bus journey was an adventure of its own, 2.5 hours on a rampacked bus..and with rampacked I mean it was so full that people who couldnt fit in the bus anymore would hang on to the bus from the outside at full speed (80km/hour). Arms trough the window, legs up, busride done!
Once arrived in Cabca D'Agua, we sat down for our first Brahma (Brazilien Beer) while waiting for Ludemar, our couch host. Very to the amusement of the girls behind the bar, we didnt speak any portuguese, neither did they speak english, so ordering food was quite a challenge..well we ended up with cheese
sticks and salami.. lol
Ludemar came and picked us up and we walked trough the dark alleyways of rio the first time.. pretty scary at night.. We called his appartment "the cellar", which is pretty much what it was.. lol.. we hit the pillow pretty soon that day because we were exhausted from a 10hour flight and a 2.5hour busride trough rio..
22.09.2011
5 am in the morning we get woken up by the English National Anthem playing full blast out of the speakers.. Ludemar, our host is a big fan of England and likes to show this..at anytime of the day..he already sang every English rock song known to man to us on the way to his house the night before, and now we get another dose…
After that great wake up service, Matt and I wanted to go get some breakfast at a little café or something, we were starving… but instead we were taken to a supermarket to buy breakfast for everyone..
oh well, after a few more hours of talking about English rock legends and looking at rock books we fled out of the house to go and explore..
We took a taxi
ghetto life
our neighbourhood in cabeca da agua down to Barra, the beachtown of Salvador.. we had a great, relaxing day down there, strolling around, lying on a beautiful beach and finally bumping into Manu, a friend of mine from Switzerland.. We had a few caipirinhas with Manu and her boyfriend Phil at the hostel before Michael (Manus friend from Salvador) picked us up for a few more Skols (brazilian beer) at a lovely bar with live music.. great night until we got a phone call of our host Ludemar, saying that he was going to bed and we would have to sleep somewhere else..we jumped into a taxi straight away, packed our bags when we got back to his place to get out of there straight away the next morning.
23.09.2011
Got woken up again by very very loud music very very early in the morning.. thank god we are leaving our host today.. after an emotional goodbye, which involved Ludemar dressing us up in hats for a picture, we were on our way to Barra again and checked into the Hostel Porto Salvador. (very nice hostel, recommend it to anyone)
Another relaxing day on the beach of Barra, we felt like we were in
heaven.. in the evening we went to a nightclub called San Salvador, well it’s a gay club but apparently the best place to go on a Friday night (hence Michael, our travelguide). I think Matt got more attention than ever before in his live and a few minutes in he came up to me with shock written all over his face,,, “I feel like a peace of meat, everyone is grabing my ass!” welcome to the world of girls when they go out dear darling!!
Great night out, lots of laughter, lots of grabs (on the boys side), only left the club at 6 in the morning.. Michael took us on a scenic drive around Salvador for the sunrise and after that for an amazing breakfast! 8am and finally we got to bed.. what a night..
24.09.2011
Hurting this morning.. and already we are having a Fan-fight with a guy in our room..its about 35 degrees in here and he switches off the fan constantly.. I get up, turn it on, he gets up, turns it off…and so it goes on and on…. Lol…
Michael picked us up at 1pm to go on a little trip.. so after
Barra Salvador
The beautiful beach in barra only 4 hours sleep, we went on to our next adventure.. he took us to a beautiful beach Praya de Forte with a turtle sanctuary and a pretty little town center.. After some nice pizza we got back home, just to get ready to go out again.. 1 hour nap and off we go.. or not.. since I set my alarm wrong, matt and I actually slept trough until the next morning..much needed sleep dou and we felt great after!
25.9.2011
Another day in Salvador, another trip with Michael, our tourguide who we call our brazilian Angel by now.. we went for a drive through Peligrino, the old city of Salvador and then to a view point outside the city to see the sunset.. (well we missed it but it was still very beautiful..lol) On our way back we drove into some kind of street party.. well first we passed a gas station, and there were hundreds of people dancing in the streets and around the cars.. the cars had speakers in the back and everybody was just having a boogie in the middle of the road.. obviously we had to stop and join the party! We found
out that it was the after party of a gay parade, Matt was loving it.. lol.. It was amazing to see all this people dancing in the streets, just having a good time!
Later on we had a little drinking session at our hostel which turned into a major drinking session after a massive game of circle of death, followed by spoons and buzz… headache guaranteed the next morning..
26.09.2011
Monday = Car hunting day! We fell in love with Kombi, a little white VW Van that is all over Salvador.. about every 3rd car you see is a Kombi and we really wanted to buy one for our trip! But like everything else in Brazil, they were very expensive, so unfortunately we couldn’t find a car that day.. Had a great evening at Michaels place dou, cooking some traditional swiss food, zueri gschnetztlets mit roesti.. just only the roesti turned into mashed potatoes cause we cooked them too long.. lol.. more vodka, more card games, more laughter, great night!
Hello as this is a double blog I thought it would be nice to to mention some great times that Brazil has already given to me.
As
you know number one was the first guy we meet in Brazil Ludemar, the one and only. Not going into too much detail but very strange guy, nice but very strange lol. Anyways Marcia has already laughed at me about how I write and that im 2 weeks late writing this blog so from now on only day to day stuff.
27.09.2011
Wow, booking a flight in Brasil is one of the hardest things we ever had to do.. So in brazil, to be able to book a flight online you have do have a CPF number, which only residents have.. I guess Brazilians never thought about foreign people maybe wanting to fly somewhere in brazil lol.. Well we booked a flight in the morning to Rio de Janeiro, just to receive an email in the evening that our Credit Card was denied because of the missing CPF.. We met up with Michael and went to a travelagency, but they just wanted to charge us ridiculous amount of money..so we had a drive to the bus station, but also the bus tickets were so expensive and it was a 27 hour non-stop journey from Salvador to Rio,,. Decisions
decisions.. so in the end we went back to the hostel and at 2am in the morning we finally managed to book a flight with Michaels CPF and his password and details…pffffff….. what a mission!
We also had a very interesting conversation with Michael about the salary in Brazil. As already mentioned, everything in brazil is really expensive, about the same as in Australia. So a cleaning lady in brazil earns 500 Rais a months, which is about 250 Australian Dollars, From that, the government takes 40% for tax, so that leaves a cleaning lady with about 150 AUD a month…but the prices for food and accommodation are still the same as in Australia.. we were dazzled…no wonder so many people live in Slums in Brazil.. Even if you go to University and have a very good education, the salary is still only about 1500 Rais a months, hence 750 AUD minus the 40% again.. crazy…
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