March 30, 2007
Day 548

Francisco is going to school for his master's degree, and today I met him there for lunch. I paid a fixed price and got to load my plate with food. It was a great deal. Francisco also showed me the robotics and computer labs. The facilities were really nice, like an American university would have. It was a private school, though, so most kids couldn't afford to go there.

In the afternoon I walked to the Leblon beach (three blocks from Francisco's apartment). It seemed very busy, especially considering how many completely empty beaches I've seen in Brazil, but I was told that it was much less busy than normal. Next, I grabbed a bus to the tourism information office. The helpful lady working there gave me some maps (always a good thing in a city as big as Rio) and a book of things to do in the city. She even called some hotels for me to get prices for me.

My next task was to go hotel shopping for my parents. I took another bus to Flamengo, a district that's away from the beaches (ergo cheaper) but still nice with a lot of stuff for tourists to to nearby. I found what are probably some of the cheapest hotels in town, but they were still far more expensive than the rest of Brazil. I guess I'll have to get used to the higher prices here.

Francisco and I went out again tonight, this time to a club with one room playing forro and one playing samba. There are way too many styles of dance in Brazil to keep track of, and I don't even know how to dance any of them.

March 29, 2007
Day 547

A plane awaiting departure.

I know Salvador and Rio look far apart on the map, but when I heard that the bus for that leg of my journey would take twenty-six hours, the lifeforce got sucked right out of me. When I inquired and found out that a $100 price tag would accompany said bus ride, things got even worse. I bit the bullet and asked about flying. $85, that the? How could it be cheaper to fly than to take the bus? You gotta love Brazil.

Not all of the buses from Praia do Forte pass through the airport on their way to Salvador, but I got lucky and found one that did. The bus was quicker than expected, so I got to the airport with a full two hours to spare. Everything was going great for me.

Nobody was waiting to check in, so I instantly went to the counter. Perfect. Then, a punch to the gut: "Sorry sir, your flight has been delayed."

"You mean by like ten minutes?"

"Ha, ha, more like two hours."

Suddenly I wished I had slept in.

I killed some time walking through the shops selling overpriced fake authentic Afro-Brazilian handicrafts and by watching the planes take off and land.

I looked at the flight boards again and noticed that A: My flight was delayed by another hour, and B: its destination had been changed from Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo. How could the delay get delayed? I found an airline employee who changed my flight to one that was leaving earlier and hoped my luggage would make the transfer as well. Only two-and-a-half hours till boarding time.

I walked past the shops some more, but one can only handle so much airport window shopping in one day. I noticed at least a dozen people working on laptops and wished mine were still working. Mine got cracked a few months ago, then the screen began working less and less until it quit altogether a few weeks ago. This had made blogging and photo editing painfully time-consuming and expensive. I don't understand why none of the people I talk to on the Internet think it's acceptable for a backpacker to carry a laptop. Really, $150 for a 3.5 pound computer that lets me blog and view photos whenever I want to doesn't sound so unreasonable to me, especially when you consider the Brazilian Internet cafes charge $1.50 per hour. If I use my computer for 150 hours, it's already paid for. That's one hour per day for a little more than three months, folks. Now I'm sitting in an airport wasting my time (and yours) writing this by hand instead of getting some real work done on a computer.

Later...

My flight was delayed another half hour. That's right, my delayed delayed flight got delayed. I made it to Rio three hours later than expected at dusk.

I was relieved to see my backpack at the luggage pickup. I thought for sure the airline would screw it up due to getting my flight switched. A guy even compared the tag on my backpack to my luggage ticket to make sure I wasn't stealing. And I thought there was never any security for luggage pickup.

I had two options for getting into town: a taxi or a bus. I saw a sign for an official airport taxi to Leblon (the neighborhood I was going to) for nearly $40. No thanks! A lot of rogue drivers also tried to get me to go with them to the point where I practically had to beat them off with a stick. One guy even offered to carry my backpack for me. That would make a good story for home: "How did your backpack get stolen?" "I gave it to a nice man who wanted to carry it for me." I avoided all that pandemonium and took the bus for $3. The bus went along the famous Copacabana and Ipanema beaches but it was too dark and I was too busy looking at my map trying to get oriented to notice.

I found Francisco's (from couchsurfing) apartment with ease. He has a degree in computer engineering and loves Linux, so we had something in common right off the bat. We went to a salsa club later and met Astrid, a couchsurfing girl last year I met in Buenos Aires. It's crazy all the people you run into when you travel.

The photo album for this entry is here.

March 25-28, 2007
Day 543-546

A turtle head.

I decided I'd had enough of Salvador and headed to Praia do Forte, yet another cookie cutter-beach resort town on Brazil's NE coast. Accommodation was supposed to be expensive, so I headed for the campground. The only problems with this were that I was the only camper and would have to walk twenty minutes every time I wanted to see the town or the beach.

The campground owner's friend was heading to Praia do Forte and offered to show me around. Almost as soon as we entered the place, I ran into Matias, the Argentine from my Chapada Diamantina trek. I knew he was living somewhere near Salvador but I didn't remember where. He invited me to stay in his place, so for the rest of my stay I was living for free and in the middle of town, a great combination.

Praia do Forte was a pleasant place to visit because it only had three roads, the main one being for pedestrians only, and miles of practically deserted beaches. The downsides were putting up with the hundreds of hippies trying to sell me their jewelery (Why don't they get a real job? Oh wait, nevermind.) and the constant bombardment of solar rays.

Eggs being hatched.

The main attraction in Praia do Forte is the turtle reserve, part of the TAMAR project. TAMAR stands for "TArtaruga MARinha," which is the Portuguese phrase for "sea turtle." The project's main purpose is to repopulate Brazil with its five species of sea turtle, all of which have been brought almost to extinction by hunting and pollution: loggerhead, hawksbill, olive ridley, green, and leatherback. This is accomplished by getting the turtles to reproduce in captivity and enter the sea, where only one in one thousand will survive into adulthood. Adults of all five species were on display in aquariums at the reserve. The biggest and most impressive species was the leatherback, whose shell can grow to over two meters (that's taller than me) and can weigh up to 700 KG (that's ten times what I weigh). Also on display were a wide variety of other sea life and a mountain of information about the project. Life in Praia do Forte clearly revolves around the TAMAR project, so it was good to see how well it appeared to be going.

The other area attraction was the Castelo do Garcia d' Avila. Garcia became one of the luckiest men in Brazil in 1552 when the Brazilian government chose to give him a huge piece of land for apparently no reason at all. This generous offering propelled him from poor farmer to castle owner extraordinaire. The walk through the blazing sun took forever, but the half-crumbling-half-restored castle was somewhat interesting. And after all, I just couldn't skip out on seeing Brazil's oldest standing edifice.

The beach near Praia do Forte.

Most of Brazil has more beaches that you can shake a fio dental at, and Praia do Forte is no exception. The coastline stretched forever and for the most part I only had to share it with the turtle hatchlings. This part of Brazil is getting old quickly, though. One can only do so much relaxing while clinging to his sanity.

The photo album for this entry is here.

March 24, 2007
Day 542

The center of Salvador is a pretty crazy place. You have prostitutes right outside of fine dining establishments, women in pretty white dresses selling fatteningly delicious traditional African food in plazas surrounded by at least three cathedrals, hippies selling hand-made hemp necklaces and bracelets in front of high-end jewelry stores, hordes of tourists fresh off the cruise ship in frantic search of anything tacky that says "Salvador" and they can proudly display in their homes, and no matter what time it is or what else is happening in the area, the constant sounds of drums and berimbaus, used during performances of capoeira, are always in the background. My recovery from my stomach illness today involved soaking in this atmosphere while the city's life force continued all around me.

March 23, 2007
Day 541

I had been drinking river water the last few days in Chapada Diamantina. It looked like a dirty red color to me, but the guides drank it and said it was clean. I'm not saying they were necessarily wrong, but today a nasty stomach illness gradually developed inside me. By the end of the day I was on the toilet every hour and every bone in my body was aching.

About the only thing I had the energy to do was walk to my backpack where I still had a few magical pills left over from my last bout with giardia a few months ago. It wouldn't be a real trip if I ever went more than three months without a major illness, would it?

March 22, 2007
Day 540

The last few days were nice and cool, but that was bound to change. The clouds that had been covering the area suddenly disappeared this morning and Lencois became an oven. Just standing outside left me covered in a ball of sweat.

I was thinking of visiting some caves in the area, but someone who was just there said it wasn't worth it because the water was too high. I was also pretty sore form the last few days of excitement, so I decided to take it easy today. Lencois is a nice little town but it's quite sleepy indeed. I had a few beers with the Germans tonight and hopped on the bus back to Salvador at 11:30.

March 21, 2007
Day 539

Another area waterfall.

This morning, Ano, Oliver, and Rico (a Swiss guy from my hotel who has been living in Lencois for three weeks), and I decided to walk to Cachoeira do Sossego, another waterfall on the Riberao River, upstream from where I went to the water slide when I first got to Lencois. We picked up some food for lunch, water to drink along the way, and walked down the same track I had already been down twice before. When we got to the river, we found a path that took us upstream and followed it. The path eventually ended but that's where the fun began because we had to scale a series of rocks to continue upstream. At one point, we had to shimmy through some caves caused by falling boulders.

The walk itself was fun, but the reward at the end was even better. There was another large waterfall flowing into a large pool of water with lots of natural platforms for jumping into the water from as high as fifteen meters. There were a lot of other people also enjoying the place, but eventually that all left and we had it to ourselves. We made the two-hour return trip late in the afternoon and I was thoroughly exhausted when I arrived back in Lencois.

Almost everyone from our trek was out on the town tonight. Everybody seemed to have their favorite "secret" restaurant that served the cheapest food and biggest portions. This tour is becoming a second home for a lot of foreigners because the streets are safe, the beer is always ice cold, and it's next to a beautiful national park called Chapada Diamantina.