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...
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