Saturday 7th Feb- what involves us

I'm sorry, I haven't written in a while, we've found some hippies!

We decided to have a little scoot around some of the coastal towns near Salvador before going to Capao, to Arembepe since it's only a relatively short bus ride from Salvador.

When we chatted to the helpful folk at the Nega Maluca it turned out Diego and Maheus were going for the day as well, so we could travel down with them. Lovely to be able to just follow, instead of figuring out Portuguese bus logistics again! (they helped with our snail sahells too which is always good :) )

Our last night in Salvador was a good one. There was a massive party on the streets of Pelourinho . It was really exciting, loads of people and yes yes! 2 really really funky Samba bands parading, with plenty of dancing to be done of course ;)

We paraded around for a while, dancing in the pounding brilliant Samba, woo! Found our absolutely lovely Canadian friends Ashley and Orion in the crowd with their beaming smiles and jiggled with them for a bit, met some nice Brazilian boys who were a bit less forward than most, which was refreshing!

We danced to some jazz, we danced to some salsa, but always went back to the street parade and bounced around to the beat of the drums. I love it!

A funny little man with a smiley face did some crazy dancing with Ash and told us about a Praça do Musica which was supposed to be good, as soon as we set off the leader of the Samba dancers who we saw dfoingf the Capoeira display in Praça do Jesus when we first got to Salvador, came and introduced himself as Schokolatsh and whisked me off. He was a verey crazy man, told me he would teach me to dance, the rest of the evening was a little bit scary and very intense but i may well be a little better at dancing and it was fun overall. I did need a cup of tea when we got home to the Nega though.

Now though we're in Arembepe, in a lovely little hippie hangout called the Janis Joplin ranch (because she came here once) And it's blissful! The first day we spent with Diego and Maheus which was fun, (we went to a turtle sanctuary which was a bit sad but amazing. i never realised how BIG they are!) but now there's 2 of us so we have been meeting the many lovely people here.

The setting is amazing, just set back from the long white beach behing a windbreak of coconut palms, with a warm river to swim in, and a shady camp site too which is only costing us $R5 a night.
Our various friends here live in beautiful houses built from driftwood and palm leaves, with hammocks and windchimes and lovely stuff made of old stuff everywhere.

Last night we were invited for a night swim in the rio, which was gorgeous in the bright light of the almost full moon (Lua cheia) and we saw a really huge toad, the size of a small rabbit! It was hard to get very close,we were cracking up´about the name of it - toad inPortuguese is huh :) really not sure if the others could appreciate why we were laughing so much.
I saw another one when I was pumping some water.
Later we went to Luis's house where there was a jamming session to celebrate everything and nothing in particular, and that was really nice. My new favourite thing is people who don't speak englisah singing english songs- it's brilliant, it sounds more like the original because they don't even try to say the words properly, just hopw they sound!

I overheard a girl from Norway who I had been chatting to, who had ended up here not knowing what to expect, say to her friend-
"It's so surreal here
like a paradise, almost
in the silver light"
I liked that.

So today it's chilling out in the shade (sombre) chatting and learning Portuguese, with the occasional dip in the mar or rio, until it's cool enough to walk into town and maybe use an internet to figure out how to get to the next place (and maybe even write this up!) It's less than a week till my birthday now so it would be good to be settled in somewhere lovely then.