Salvador

Salvador.  This city was, without a doubt, my favorite city on this trip and, to tell the truth, my favorite city in my 7 months in Brazil so far.  Salvador has a beautiful horizon line with the older houses and churches outlining the blue sky.  The houses are painted different colors that have faded over the years, but still leave it with a tropical, foreign feel.  Some of the streets are cobblestoned and the city is built on inclines and descents that adds a depth to the city.  

One of the most famous, and touristy, buildings in Salvador is the church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim.  That is the church where all of the tourists, and locals as well, get the ribbon bracelets and make wishes.  The tradition is that you make three knots as you tie them on your ankle, wrist, or the church itself and for each knot you get one wish.  If you tie them to your wrists or ankles, they stay on until they fall off naturally or you cut off your wishes.  There is still one on my ankle as I sit here and write this blog post.  But on the church itself, there must have been thousands.  They are tied to the fence around the church, tied to the windows of the church, and even tied to the pews inside.  Thousands of colors, thousands of ribbons, and thousands of people's wishing blowing in the wind.  It is such a beautiful site and holds such powerful symbolism.

Inside the church itself is also incredibly gorgeous, setting the stage and ambient for all of the prayers and wishes.

Later that day we all went to project TAMAR, a museum that donates most of its proceeds to the protection of sea turtles.  A couple friends and I took advantage of the spare time and had an incredible turtle photoshoot.

There was the yellow submarine...

And my friend the turtle...

And then Caro found some long lost relatives and showed the family resemblances...

This one is my personal favorite.

Salvador, I will be back.

Recife

In Recife, we stayed in a hotel that was right close to the beach.  I was able to see the sand from my hotel window.  However, we didn't go to that beach because there were also signs, clearly visible from my window, with pictures of sharks and attack warnings.  So we stayed away from there.  Instead, we went to the Porto de Galinhas, which was a nearby beach that apparently the sharks simply didn't go.  I accepted that.





The one-hour-drive there was a little depressing because as soon as we hit the road, it started to rain.  I can't really complain though because we had great, beautiful weather on almost all of the rest of our 31 days on the beaches.  But this day wasn't a really great beach day.

The picture below is a picture of me and two other exchange students, each of them from cities only 2 hours away from my town in the US.  It's a small world, folks.

Like I said, we went to "Porto de Galinhas," which literally means "The Chicken Port."  So there were some pretty deluxe carvings of chickens throughout the small, touristy city.  This was my favorite.

Next, we went to a part of Recife called Olinda.  Olinda is a very European part of Recife, similar to the south of Brazil, and highly influenced by the Dutch colonization.  The pick up line of the day (it seemed that every male habitant of Olinda knew and used it), used on my and several of my friends, was "Voce é mais linda do que a Olinda." This translated isn't quite as cool, but means "You are more beautiful than Olinda."  "Linda" in Portuguese means "beautiful."  And Olinda was very beautiful indeed.  

Olinda is popular for their Carnaval parades and parties and therefore, we prepared for our own premature and private, carnaval by learning the basic dance steps of the dance of their Carnaval.  While you can find hundreds of different kinds in Brazil, Olinda is famous for their dance called fervo.  This dance includes a lot of jumping up and down and kicking.  I tried my best.

 

Here are some pictures from my first Carnaval.  Basically, we had a band playing trumpets and other brass instruments marching down the street in the front, playing the rhythm of Frevo, and we followed then, dancing and laughing.  A few of the Brazilians in the street joined us on our dance around the city.

 

And then I'd like to end my sum up of Recife with this picture of a wall.  We were walking by and I saw John Lennon's 'Imagine' lyrics, in Portuguese, written on the wall.  I fell in love.

Fortaleza!

I am going to be perfectly honest.  I do not remember all that much about Forteleza.  It was one of those days when you are traveling that is a little blurred.  We had just had a thirteen hour bus ride the day before and I didn't sleep that well in the hotel, so the pictures are the really the only way that I remember what we did.  Thank you Lulu.  

The beaches were very lovely.  I made sure to take a jumping beach picture on every beach we went to.

We did more dune buggy rides and this part, I definitely remember!  This buggy ride was "with emotion" which meant that there were some steeeeeeep declines that we took at rapid rates.  I hung on to the roof of the jeep thinking, "Dear god, this would never happen in the US."

I fulfilled my dream of riding a horse on the beach!  I was expecting them to hold on to the reins the whole time on the beach or make me wear a helmet or something, but they just boosted my up there in my bikini and bare feet and said go for it! 

This is without a doubt the best trash can I have ever seen in my life.  Filled with just empty coconuts and nothing else.  That one on top was mine.

One of the activities that we did in Fortaleza was sand boarding.  Halfway through our buggy ride we stopped at a little shack that was renting these boards to the buggy riders.  Basically, it was sledding on the sand.  And instead of not wanting to fall off because the ground is so cold, you didn't want to fall off because it was so hot. I couldn't even walk more than 3 steps in my bare feet before jumping up and down with the burn.

And I would like to end my report of Forteleza with this picture of my fantastic American friend and this wonderful donkey. 

Jericoacoara

Bond… James Bond.

I felt like I was in the middle of a James Bond movie.  Palm trees, white sand, small bikinis, just missing the license to kill.  And the bloody guy washed up on the beach.  So I guess the picture was missing a lot, but that could be seen as a very good thing.

We spent the whole day at the beach, the morning part in a more popular, classic beach and then after lunch at a beach with beautiful, huge rocks that made a beautiful picture with the waves crashing up against them.  In the first beach, I walked with a good friend through the sand dunes that surrounded the beach, running/falling down them, taking fun pictures and watching a kite surfing lesson.  A little later I walked down to the shoreline by myself.  The beach descends at a very small decline, leaving a lot of the gray, textured sand with only a few inches of water running smoothly over it.  I lied in the shallow, warm beach water and soaked in the sun and amazingness of my situation.  Every few minutes the water would come in and trace my body with the silky, grey sand, support me for a moment, and then pull away back towards the ocean.  I could have stayed there all day.  With just the sound of the waves, a low mumble of Portuguese, and someone’s guitar playing a slightly familiar tune, I felt so recharged and re-centered.  The ocean is my recharge place, it’s my zen. 

Also, I sat on a cactus.  One of those things you just gotta do.  

Later that day, as I said, we went to the second beach, which also looked like it belonged to a movie, but maybe Indiana jones.  Waves crashed against large, jagged rocks, making white foam.  The hike down the cliff was adventurous, being that it was like a sand-slide.  

But the dune ride the next day was really what made me feel like Indiana Jones.  Sitting on top of the buggy and screaming as we took the steep dunes down!  I could hear the theme song playing in my head.  At the end of the ride my entire body was covered with a layer of sand and I was washing it out of my hair for days.

There was some Canada v.s. USA rivalry going on…

  I definitely won.

And the last night there was spent watching the sunset from the top of the dune.  

Natal

We spent a few days in another city similar to Lencois, but it also had the most beautiful beach I had seen yet in my life.  The sand was actually white and the water had patches of green/blue water that was warm in the strong sun.  That was actually the first impression that I had of this beach: the sun.  The sun was incredibly hot.  Before I went on this trip everyone warned me about Natal because it was so close to the Equator and therefore the sun was extremely strong there. Apparently the city is even known as “The City of the Sun.”  

When we got there in the morning I went on a run along the beach to enjoy the scenery, running through the rocks and sand and the last stretch of the waves.  Although I had literally just put sunscreen on every inch of my body, I could feel the sun burning me after 15 minutes.  On my way back to my bag for another layer of sunscreen I saw some friends doing some strange, birdlike movements on the beach.  Soon I realized that it was the beginning of a surf class, clearly more important than sunscreen.  I hopped in and finished up the stretching session with them.   Then we worked on the technical stuff, how to get up, how to get over little waves, all on the beach.

Then we each got a different guy to go out in the water with us and help us surf.  After several failed waves, a ton of water up my nose, and a lot of slightly embarrassed looks from my instructor I finally got up! Yay I was surfing! Although the first one didn’t last long, I soon turned into a real surfer dude (hahaha só que nao).  I finished up the day with lots of agua de coco and aloe vera.  Can you say sunburn?

I would also like to take a minute to talk about the coke cans here in Brasil.  Most of them have adorable little positive messages written on them.  As shown below, peace and love are popular ones, but I have also seen cans that say, "beijos" or "happiness."  I love this.