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...