Pipa, Skanky Hoes and a Sandy Panda

After Porto, we had another 'short bus journey' planned during the day which we weren't particularly looking forward to our trip to Pipa. Again we had to get off the bus early at Ipojuca which we had made damn well sure the bus went past. This was another random ghost town (where we were anyway) with just a few people lingering in the street, leering at us carrying around our lairy body bag. We'd been told by George 'Lonely Planet' Walker that we had to catch a local bus from behind a church which we thought might be hard to find but certainly wasnt when we saw it blazing in christmas lights at the end of the high street. As we walked to the back of the bus to load our kit, another cumbersome local woman came waddling around the bus shouting 'nao, nao, nao' which we took to mean that we couldn't put our stuff in the boot. So onto the bus went the body bag! I then worked out that I was being told that we would be charged for the seats which our bags were taking up, greaaat, but you cant really complain about an hour bus ride for £8 for the 3 of us.

Because we had been pretty lazy about booking the hostel we hadn't been able to pre book online so we were mighty relieved when we got to the hostel at 9pm and were told they had space for us. I then had a gand at their noticeboard and saw 'happy hour Caipirinhas till 9pm' - hell yeah. We trekked off to find a mercado, cooked up a hench sausage stir fry and crashed out in another non-AC dorm, not cool (no pun intended!)

The next day we had a little wonder around Pipa which is a small little surfer and holiday town, with multitudes of hippies who had obviously spent their life's earnings on the very nice board they're carrying around. After some research online we had found another river mouth to kite in so we jumped on a rammer jammer local bus to Tibau do Sul (which greatly confuses the locals if you say Sol by accident). Everytime we stopped to let someone on or off, half the bus would overspill out of the bus before compacting back in! We were greeted by a view of the huuuge river mouth and estuary kilometres wide in places, so I just started yomping off towards it but fortunately an old crusty told us otherwise with furious hand signals.



The wind wasn't quite playing ball when we got to the beach so we thought we would catch a few rays and chill with the rickety ferry going back across the river mouth to watch. After making some little yellow rock pools in the exposed reef we went in search of food from one of the little restaurants on the beach and were happy to see that churrascarinhos were on the menu (mini kebabs). The wind did kind of pick up but with bellies full and the prospect of drifting across the river and having to ferry back put us off pumping any kites up; so back on the sweatbox bus we got back to Pipa.



An uneventful day meant steak and chips was in order followed by beers in town. We met an interesting character that evening whilst doing the food shop; a skatty, scrawny ho stumbled up to Booley at the checkout and raised her hand ET style at his face. Booley promptly sketched out and stood fixated, eyes quickly widening, "Des, des, what the f*ck is she doing....make her go away!", so I led him away which seemed to confuse her enough to make her wonder off and harass another helpless shopper.



I had seen a battered old surfboard for absolute pennies whilst looking around and so picked myself up something to make lugging our body bag round that bit more awkward. The wind was also lighter the next day and we had to leave Pipa in the afternoon so we headed down to the local beach to check it out. When we got to the beach, George Panda Walker (he definitely has most attributes of a Panda) had decided we were going to just lie in the sand and did so, but Booley and myself thought that was going to be a little too sandy and wondered off the buy a coconut between us so we could sit on the chairs for a few hours. So a very sandy panda meandered into the shallows, turned round to face us and plonked his panda ass down to de-sand. At this point we knew he wasn't going to shift this name any time soon.



On leaving Pipa, the three of us became very excited ("J'AI EXCITE"), best saying ever) about not having to pack all our shit up every 3 days and actually settle in one place, Cumbuco, an 8hr overnight bus away from the nearby city of Natal (translated means Christmas!) and apparently a kitesurf paradise. And ohhh it is!



We've now been in Cumbuco nearly 2 weeks and a lot has been going on (next blog soon to come). The bus journeys here weren't too bad (only 5 buses!) apart from getting a bit lost in Fortaleza (the nearest city to Cumbuco) and taking a few too many local buses. When we arrived at the house, we were very, very happy, but you'll have to wait for the guest blog entry from Dengue Feverish Benoit...

Porto De Galinhas- Slaves? no no no... those crates are full of chickens...

Porto de Galinhas is a little seaside town with 3 main streets and a lively beach front. All the beaches along this stretch of coast are white sand and perfect blue seas with some breaks and a river mouth further down the coast. It resembles Newquay with its little souvenir shops, street vendors, loads of bars and restaurants and surf shops. It also has a fairly entertaining past as I questioned our official tour guide George "lonely planet" Walker. "Mate, why is this called Chicken port?"  Apparently it got its name as after slavery was abolished in South America the Slave traders used Porto as a landing point to bring in slaves form Angola and used to tell port officials- "Hi, Yeah just another bunch of chickens, see the crates of them on the deck.. Down below? Oh no they're just some mates who came along to help me unload them.."

So after a bus journey that morphed before our very eyes from a 5 hour walk in the park to a 12 hour slog we arrived in our little hostel in Porto. We decided to dump our stuff and walk straight into town to buy a beer. We then sat in the hostel with a freezing cold can of skol and then retired for the night, eagerly anticipating the "idyllic boca" as promised on various kite spot sites.

We rose early, roused by the sounds of 2 large black guys apparently teaching their mate to swim in the pond sized pool outside our room, cheers....We had some breakfast then hurriedly assembled our boards and got our kit together, then set off through town looking for the bus to the boca. After a bus to the start of the bay we walked for what seemed FOREVER along a tiny shore road with beach buggies full of portly brazillian tourists shooting past smiling as we sweated our way along yomping all our gear.  We arrived at the boca.  A beautiful myriad of shifting sand bars and soon to become strong tidal currents. The wind was a little light so des decided to have a go on the train (13m bularoo) untill it filled in. After a shortish session he reitred to the beach to sit and wait for the wind to fill out. After an hour or so G and des both decided to chance it in lightish off shore winds. (i thought better of that with my more ruggedised frame suited more to high wind days :p)  Des launched G and set about setting up. I was sorting out some more bridle issues that arose after the 13 decided to pop another steering bridle when des jogs past and says "ill be back in a minute, G looks like he needs a bit of a hand" I finished my lines and went to sit in the bath warm waist deep water and take in the views. Palm trees blowing in the wind, blue sky and 2 speed boats full of chonky gold chain wearing brazillian men with 2 or 3 girls dancing around on the boats to some horrendous "braz-pop" music.

About 20 minutes went by as i sat sunbathing, watching as one of the boats suddenly sprouted 2 camera men and 2 of the girls set about lap dancing the largest pedro and getting naked on the back of the sun deck of the furthest speed boat, "haha, porn shoot, ridiculous.." I thought. Then it dawned on me that des had nipped off to see if g was ok about 30 minutes ago and I could no longer see either of them. I got up, jogged up a dune and peered around the bend of the river.

From what i could see G had drifted right into the middle of the river, crashed his kite and was executing a deep water pack down underneath some power lines about 50 metres up river with des hurriedly pursuing his board down stream. I decided the kit would probably be ok and jogged round to see if I could assist. By this point des had disapeared from sight down stream. G was swimming his gear back across the stream. He landed his kit, looking shattered form his ordeal and said "des swam after my board, not sure where hes got to." I had visions of des clinging to some mangroves about 300mtrs down stream clinging to G's board so I ran over to 2 brazillian guys with a jet ski, used my considerable skills in sharades and my extensive 4 word library of portugese to explain the situation and get a lift downstream to search for des. After 10 minutes and about 500m of travel downstream I tapped him an decided des must have gone ashore or we missed him. He turned it at fill speed on a sixpence and started gunning ti back upstream. As we came flying round the corner I see des stood on the beach waving and smiling. The Guy landed the jet ski by throttling up onto the sand, i thanked him and went to get the full story from des.

After various long swims against the current, chasing the board and getting stung by  jellyfish he had gone ashore through the mangroves and jogged back round to G apparently arriving just as i had set off on my jet ski.

Me and G decided to call it a day but des had set up so was determined to have a quick session as the sun set.

We yomped all our gear back along the bay and just as we got to the bus stop i dropped my kit, "my bar has gone" I exclaimed.... "shit, it must have fallen out of my harness." I left the boys sititng in a beach bar, shed my vest and began running back to search the road. After reaching the beach and running the whole length and back of the road which yielded no results i decided i had done all i could. Some brazillian family is probably eating for several weeks after selling that back to a kite school.  After sulking the whole way back to the hostel and swearing profusely in the shower, i emerged a new man. After some digging around Des remembered Jamie had a bar he was looking to shift and after some frantic facebooking a budget bar was packed up and is flying out to me as we speak. So crisis averted with minimal monetry implications.



We decided that after such an eventful day we should get our beers on and go and have an all you can eat buffet to lift our spirits. After 4 Beers at the hostel we sat down in a buffet restaurant. An all you can eat "churrascaria" or BBQ. We domintaed the salad and rice buffet and awaited the meat. With a curt nod from our server, the meat man emerged time and time again with skewers of pink, juicy, dripping meat. We had bits of everything on offer, apart from when he brought over some gammon and was sent packing. "NAO, BIFE" des said. His redmeption was swift as he emerged with 3 fillet steaks on a skewer just for us... HELL YES.

The server then came and brought a checklist and mumbled something. We had no idea what this was; was it what we had eaten already or what? We thought we'd be conservative and mark off 2 or 3 items so if its what we'd had then we'd get under charged and if it was more it would be a bonus. 4 more meat dishes emerged and these were polished off with no issues, then dessert and then coffee and chocolates. Then the bill arrived...  It wasnt an all you can eat after all. The meat from the bbq was all included, but everything else was extra. Oh well. 20 quid for a meat banquet with 4 courses and a litre of beer each isnt too shabby... expecially as we've been averaging £4 a night each for dinner for the last 2 weeks.

We retired to a bar and then to bed, bellies full, semi inebriated, the trials of the day washed from our memories.

We rose again early and hot the main beach and decided to swim across to the famous "natural pools" formed by the reef. after negotiating a 2 minute swim and ripping it into all the Brazilians who came armed with flip flops we discovered what separated us form the natural pools were a maze of pitted reef rock with patches of sea urchins.upon reaching the pools des belly flopped in causing everyone in the pool to stop and look confused as we all fell abut laughing. We spent the next 30 minutes or so trying to catch swarms of fish that sit in the pools.  We then headed to the police station to get a crime incident number for my lost bar. After 40 minutes of using actions and what little Portuguese vocab we knew we managed to get a form and set off again headed to the boca, the wind was good to start, Des continued to work some tricks in the shallows whilst i sat and gave G some tips on unhooking and raileys. The session yeilded some hillarious and brilliant photos of Gs efforts and some good stylish shots of des. By the time i got on G's kite the wind dropped and i couldnt stay upwind, so after ditching the kite and drifting out into the river and being rescued by des we decided to call it a night.

We headed back to the hostel on the back of a beach buggy with a cool german guy called Nisa who we met on the beach, a fellow kiter who is a wind engineer. He recommended we head to Pipa, another cool spot with kiting and a bit more nightlife than ChickenPort. We booked our buses, stripped our gear and set off into the sun, on the road to Pipa....

A BBQ, Bus, Hot Salvador, Bus, Lost in Maceió and 2 more Buses!

We finished the blog last time after another idyllic kite session with what we later described as conditions and surroundings that probably couldn´t have gotten any better. In celebration of this and because we are pure red blooded men, a hearty BBQ was in order. So copious amounts of meat, many litros of beer and a smidgeon of veg was bought and with the kitesurfers cheat BBQ tool, the kite pump, we were soon feasting away...





After guzzling our litros of Skol (one of the beers here) we decided to immerse ourselves with the local alcoholics that had been sat in the bar next to our hostel all day long. Apparently this is what you do if a) you´re a guy and b) you live in coroa vermelha. With a good lively atmosphere and freely flowing beer all around, the locals soon saw our interest in their version of 5´s and came over to our table to teach us and play.

The idea behind their game was that you had 3 toothpicks which you held behind your back and selected between 0 - 3 of them to place in a closed hand in front of you. The winner is the person who correctly guesses how many toothpicks people have chosen in total. What helped us (the loser had to buy the next litro of beer) was the fact were obviously chatting english to each other and rigging it, SNEAKY! Even so booley still managed to lose a round.

We were also entertained and delighted by the skills and tales of christian the ´human dog´ who proceeded to snarl at us rip apart a coke can with his teeth whilst we worried that it was a bet and hoped we wouldnt have to pay for his medical expenses if it all went horrifically wrong. But alas everything was ok and maybe he just had a touch of mild rabies. As the evening went on, I found my portuguese progressing very quickly with some liquid enhancement; that or I was just chatting absolute bollocks and the locals were just humouring me!

After deciding that we weren´t going to enter into some furious betting against who we christened homen dinhero (money man) and receiving multiple invites to perve (and more) on the hotties on the beach with the human dog christian, we left in high spirits.

The next day we were holding out for some wind but unfortunately it didnt come. So we just tried our best to keep as sweat free as possible before the 2 days of travelling we had set out for ourselves: overnight bus to salvador, wonder around doing all the touristy stuff and then catch another overnight bus to maceió. No showers for 2 days, we knew it would be grim....and it was.



On getting to the bus station we remembered that there was a big Festival do Chopp (beer festival), so we sat listening to the music and watching all the scantily clad ´ladies´ walking around (either all ladies of the night or its acceptable to wear lingerie tops in the middle of the day in Brazil). The bus was only 11hours but none of us slept very well despite the bus being semi-leito (semi bed) and we arrived in salvador pissed off, sweaty and groggy.

Salvador was a cool place and is was fairly similar to Sao Paulo with the very old smashed together with the very new. We looked around all the old buidings and numerous churches, as well as watching a bit of capoeira (brazilian martial arts mixed with dance). We thought it would be a bit more impressive, especially seeing one of the fighters who looked like he spent all his proceeds from tourist donations on knocking back the litros de cerveja when not stumbling around like a new born foal with a pregnancy gut, pretending to capoeira it up. On the way back to the bus station we once again decided to immerse ourselves in typical brazilian culture and sit next to the freeway and chomp down some street kebabs with the locals, which was cooler than it sounds and made us think we were less likely to get mugged!




Booley finally posting all his collected postcards in the 'novelty' postbox


The next 10 hour bus was a lot better, especially after having another sink shower in the bus station toilets and we all slept like babies after a tiring day (wet the bed twice, woke up crying three times - lee evans!). Once in Maceio we worked out it would be easier to taxi to the hostel and just showed the address to the driver. What we didnt expect was turning up at a luxury 5 star hotel and thinking ´is this the hostel? i think not!´ and then driving round the houses for half an hour with the driver swearing profusely in portuguese. He was then annoyed when we finally found the little hostel, stating that it was ´esta pequeno, pequeno, nao grande´ (its small, small, not big), to which I replied, we have no money for hotel grandes!



My lovely feet after travelling for 2 days straight

Maceio is quite an upmarket city by the coast and so even the hostel felt quite luxury. Oh apart from the fact that the room had 6 guys in it and NO AIR CONDITIONING. Coupled with the fact that we were set back from the sea and so there was no breeze at night, it was an absolute hot house at night and you woke up greased down, ready for a shiatsu. I usually woke about 6am which was an absolute shitter. Enough complaining.


The sweatbox dorm and booley having just rediscovered his passport!

Wind was pretty light most days so we spent our time chilling in hammocks, on the beach or getting lost around the not-so-easy to navigate block system of roads in the blazing sun. I had a quick session on the second last day but when we rocked up to the beach, "shiiiiit", it happened to be a national holiday and it was rammed with Brazzers and had to trek a mile to find some space. Massive shore-dump and big rolling sea; better than nowt.

We left Maceio with the expectation of a quick 4 hour bus then an extra hour to get to Porto de Galinhas (Chicken Port). How wrong we were. We left the hostel a bit late but then rocked up at the bus station to realise the clocks had gone back an hour as we tried to get on the wrong bus. Once on the bus, it went a different route to the one we'd hoped and had to travel and extra hour into Recife. We then thought we'd missed the last bus to Porto and started to settle down for a night in the bus station after finding no space in any local hostels. Fortunately, after ringing the hostel in porto we found out there were later buses from the airport. So we took 2 metros and a taxi to the airport to hop on the final bus to Porto (over an hour of the worse roads yet). I was lying on the back seats and got 'air' a number of times! Finally got to Porto and then a last taxi to the hostel, jeeees. What started as a 5 hour jouney ended as a 12hr one, not cool. But an ice cold beer settled us nicely.

We're now in Paradise again (its a hard life), once again lying in hammocks waiting for wind. Stay tuned for our antics in Porto...

Coroa Vermelha - Kiting the Red Crown

So after our adventures in the bright lights of Rio we decided to head somewhere more sedate with a chance to get our kites out and blast across the water. A quick check on the internet and our destination was decided - Coroa Vermelha, Red Crown in English. The spot looked great from google maps so nursing our hangovers we jumped on the bus from Rio.

The bus itself was relatively uneventful, no screaming babies or scatty women and when we arrived in Porto Seguro the sun was shining and the wind was blowing. A great sign we'd come to the right place appeared in the form of two kiters riding around within the breakwater in front of the town. As our taxi took us up to the hostel several bays appeared before us, kept butter flat by the reefs just a little way out to sea.

We settled into the hostel tired from the journey but we were too excited to just let the opportunity for an awesome session go past, so we picked up our big kites and headed to the beach close to the hostel. Unfortunately for me and Booley the wind wasn't quite strong enough to make it worth us setting up, but Des had a fun little blast around on his 10.5 in the light wind. We realised the water close to the beach was dyed red from the river run off, presumably where the little beach got its name from. We also scoped out the spit that would be our launching point into the lagoon for the next few days. The lagoon was everything we'd been promised, waist deep, bath warm, flat water with enough room for 3 English kiters plus a few cowboy locals.


We woke up early excited for kiting but we soon realised that the thermal wind we were hoping for wouldn't kick in until the early afternoon so we relaxed in the reception of our hostel and set up our boards ready to go as soon as the wind kicked in. It did as expected and we walked to our new spot to rig our kites. The wind was perfect for big kites, and we were soon racing over the water weaving through some fishing boats when I failed to stay upwind. Des hugged the coral reef a bit further upwind. Booley's session ended prematurely when he misjudged the depth of the water he was jumping into, bailed, and gave himself a nasty scrape down his side and opened up a gash on his hand we christened his handgina. Des and I spent a bit longer playing around in the water with Des throwing down some stylish backrolls, roll to reverts and attempts at back to wrapped. We headed back absolutely knackered and cooked ourselves up a mean bolognaise. Anticipating another sweet session we headed to bed relatively early, but not before watching "In Bruges" before heading to sleep.

We woke up with ketamine fuelled dwarfs and Irish hitmen quotes still running through our heads from the night before. It was sunnier than the day before so we managed to get to spot earlier than yesterday after patching up Booley's handgina with a bit of guaze and some electrical tape. The wind was perfect again and the lagoon was full so we all managed to get a sweet session in, Booley and me pushing each other to improve as we both attempted hooked in backrolls. Des continued his progession attempting S-bends and continuing his back to wrapped attempts.



Some locals arrived a bit later and offered us some chilled coconuts while we attempted to chat kiting in broken portuguese. These locals were all about the oldschool with big floaty jumps, rotations and loops. After we came off the water they came up to chat to Des about his unhooked tricks, it seemed like they'd never seen anything like it before.

After 2 days of solid sessions here I know this is definitely a kiting paradise but from speaking to the locals it seems we got pretty lucky with the wind. It's certainly given us a taste of what's to come further up the coast and whet all our appetites for some progression in the bath warm waters of Northern Brazil.

Rio de Janiero- The copacabana, a huge jesus and the worst hangover known to man.

So after the most horrific Bus journey so far, where a mother and child made me their bitch for three quarters of their journey, we arrived sleep deprived and throughly knackered in the bus station. After getting some cash out, we made our way into the bustle of Rio's streets. After getting mobbed by dozens of taxi drivers we found our man and squeezed with all our baggage set off into the night.

The taxi driver could only be described as an absolute cowboy, weaving through crowded lanes, bumper hugging and beeping at everything. It felt like we had descended onto the streets of vice city.... This was a regular theme with all taxi drivers who seem to drive like theyve stolen their rides.

 We then arrived into our hostel and crashed..

 Day 1 consisted of chatting to the 2 english girls in our dorm (Alice and Kloe from london) and playing lots of an israeli millitary card game called yanif. Then we proceeded to walk the length of the copacabana in the pissing rain and had a beer in a beach bar whilst listening to a samba band. Lots of recovering from the horrific bus.... We all got chatting with the girls again before bed and aswell as swapping some travelling stories and a story involving ants swarming around their dirty knickers in a columbian hostel they earned the adage "Rotten Crotch Sisters." Then they proceeded to regail us with a story of the night befores drunken antics where they said they got partially raped by "a pervy pedro" that they were couch surfing with. I think what made us laugh the most was they they didnt seem bothered they almost got raped by a local... "he took my jeans off and dragged me towards the bedroom... i told him to &^£% off. HAHA.." and then as it got past 12 oclock suddenly an angry brazilian man storms into the room and shouts "HEY... SPEAK MORE SLOWLY PLEASE..." he was met with nothing but laughter...

Day 2, we got up feeling rested after another lie-in and decided to hit some of the sights that weren't viewpoints as it was still grey and raining. First we hit a "hippie market " in ipanema then we hopped on the metro and hit the streets. We headed to the cathedral purely on the whim that it looked cool on a postcard and we werent dissapointed. It looks like some kind of Sci-fi inspired alien structure dumped right in the middle of a bunch of sky scrapers. Inside it is hollow to the 60m ceiling. A seriously cool building and one of my favourite sights so far...

Then we walked down a few side streets and saw the famous "Arches of Lapa" which in actual fact are some fairly average arches holding a viaduct in a rundown carpark... Guess thats what happens when you grow up in a world heritage city...spoilt. Although there was some really cool graffiti spread around the arches which I enjoyed much more.

On the way back from the Hostel we decided we were going to get drunk at either the favela party or a boat cruise that the hostel advertised. On getting pre-lash from the supermarket which consisted of some 5 real Rum, the remainder of our cacacha (sugar cane rum) and gurana and lime mixers.Upon returning to descover that both parties were really more expensive than advertised and in actual fact had "free Drinks" for the first hour for girls and guys had a "Happy Hour" instead. So after questioning what we would actual be paying for we decided to hit the beach with the Alice and Kloe for some drinking games...

After some gentle drinking with some chilled music the stories and "i have never" rounds got more and more spirited untill about halfway through the 2nd bottle of lash my memory stops apart form the occasional flashback of des shouting "J'AI EXCITE"....

I wake up, eyes, ears, hair, feet and clothes all covered in sand in my hostel bunk, feeling HORRENDOUS. I rose very slowly, rammed all my stuff into my bags and cleared out of the room. Des did the same. We also swapped memories and apparently we had a beer on the beach after finishing our own booze and des picked up a pidgeon and started putting it in peoples faces, after which i must have gone on auto pilot and gone to bed where Des and G decided to walk about 5k to ipanema to see the big christmas tree. They couldnt find it, so got a taxi home and crashed out...Messy Messy Rio.

(All photos were lost from this night as the girls lost their camera in the antics...probably for the best)

On my way down for breakfast i thought upon passing the bathroom "IM DEFINATELY GOING TO BE SICK." I ducked into loo and emptied myself into the sink..... twice.

After wretching my way through a cheese toastie we moved the bags into the luggage room and me and des proceeded to nap to prepare for our trip to christ the redeemer.

G woke us up cheerfully saying we should make tracks if we wanted to do Christ before we had to catch our bus... The bus ride was horrific, the best way to describe mine and des' state was "somewhat in distress."

I perked up a bit after getting off the bus and gulping some water, des however proceeded to systematically vomit every 15 minutes for the next 3 hours. After the several steep flights of stairs me and g nipped off to take in the views and get some photos whilst des recovered form the climb sat back to christ panting and pale faced.

After grabbing some shots and taking in the epic views we returned to des bent over the wall to be asked " Can you see that wet stuff on that rock right down there... Yeah? thats my sick..." aswell as vomiting in a bin in the queue for the train to the disgust of pretty mucvh everyone he had vomitted of the side of one of the seven wonders of the world.. Christ the Redeemer no less. 

After posing for some quick group shots we took the quick easy way down via escalators and lifts and got back on the train.. jsut before we boarded des shot off and emerged a new man exclaiming " I think that was THE ONE!" "im empty now!"

We proceeded back to the hostel and then got a taxi to the bus station armed with copious amounts of water with bellies full of super noodles and boarded the next bus bound for Porto Seguro.