Porto Segura and Lencois

Porto Segura was the first place the Portuguese landed before they went on to colonise Brazil. The original buildings have been preserved and are now a living museum. It was the first place I came across the Brazilian tradition of tying ribbons onto railings usually near a church. The ribbons have religious significance. The ribbons you tie onto railings are to pray for your family and ancestors and then you tie a ribbon onto your wrist. You have to tie it with 3 knots and when the ribbon eventually falls off, your prayers will be answered.
Porto Segura was also the first place I came across capoeira. This is a martial art which disguises itself as a dance and acrobatics. It originated with the African slaves who incorporated dance and musical instruments to hide what they were doing. It is so impressive to watch with lots of high kicks and throwing yourself through the air.

Moving from Porto Segura on the coast, we went inland to the gorgeous town of Lencois. As we arrived, a festival was just beginning. This festival was due to last 5 days – after much conversation with the locals we worked out it had something to do with certain saints walking down to the river? Most locals knew less than we did. The participants all wore white and marched from the church waving brooms in the air. This could have had something to do with brushing away your past sins. The main stay of the festivities appeared to be a brass band which would appear in the tiny cobbled streets – the restaurants had to all pick up their chairs from the middle of the road, then when the band had marched past you could return your chair and table to its previous position. Fireworks were also let off frequently – most noisily at 5am. The third morning we were there, we were not awoken by the 5am fireworks – they must have run out – but by the incredibly loud speakers which were positioned outside the camp site and were blaring out music!

Despite the lack of sleep, I really enjoyed my time here. We spent a full day exploring the stunning countryside. We scrambled over rocks to get to waterfalls. I climbed one of the flat top mountains that are indicative to the region – the view from the top was breath taking. It was the cave system though that was staggering. It was called the smoking cave because the difference in temperature with the air in the cave compared to the air outside causes the smoking effect. It was a steep climb down but the stalactites and stalagmite formations made it worth it.

The Joys of Camping

For the majority of the trip we are camping. Sometimes we do stay at a hostel, but these have all been 10 bed hostels – so facilities are generally cramped and shared with many others. For someone like me who is a very light sleeper – it means sleep has been hard to come by so far. I was very lucky because at first I was allowed to have my own tent. When the truck is full, 24 people can be accommodated. For the first couple of weeks, there were only 12 people aboard which meant there were spare tents – and I grabbed one. Having your own tent however is not all plain sailing. Taking the tent down by yourself is very difficult especially in the torrential rain and at half 5 in the morning – more on this later!
The first few times we camped, we were at designated campsites. This means the grass is generally cut and quite short and there is usually a toilet and shower block with varying levels of mosquitoes living within them. Sometimes there are also covered areas where you can relax, have a drink or two – maybe play cards. A couple of the campsites even had pools! The Brazilians do love to camp so these campsites have been very busy. They bring everything with them though, including electrical fans, double beds – I even saw one tent complete with a microwave! These campsites are great and we generally spend a couple of nights there, so there is no frantic rush to leave the following morning.

Bush-camps are a completely different story. These happen when we are covering long distances between destinations. It usually involves a full day’s drive – leaving at half 7, driving till 6pm with a stop for lunch. We pitch the tents, cook on the camping stove, go to bed, eat breakfast the following day at half 6am and try to leave by 7-7.30am for another long drive. There are zero facilities so if you want to go to the toilet, you have to go for a walk and maybe take a shovel with you to dig a hole!
The above is a best case example of a bush-camp. The reality has been far worse. The last time I was in cook group, we were due to bush-camp. We arrived at the spot we were aiming for by half 5 – the trouble was, heavy rain had washed the bridge away so the truck could not get to the designated spot. Not to worry, we continued driving. Unfortunately, there is hardly anywhere to bush-camp in South America. Along the sides of the roads are towns, houses or miles upon miles of cultivated farmer’s fields growing various produce. By 7pm we were still driving (bear in mind setting up the kitchen and cooking usually takes a couple of hours) and it was now dark. Eventually a dirt road was found and we drove up it. It looked as if we had discovered a long abandoned track. We knew it was abandoned as the vegetation was so overgrown – it was waist high. Then the truck came to a grinding halt and juddered violently. The truck was stuck in the sand! It was not going anywhere!
Cook group (me) was ordered out of the truck and told to start setting up. The vegetation was still waist high so one of the chaps had to get a machete out and began to cut back the jungle until I was able to set up a table and camp stove. I quickly changed my original plan of making a squash thai curry (far too time consuming) and began to knock up some easy tomato veggie bolognaise with pasta. As I was doing this, some of the others, only a couple of meters away were digging the truck out and getting sand-mats under the wheels. By the time food was ready, all the tents had been put up and the truck was back on solid ground! And the food was tasty.
The trouble with being on cook group is that you also have to make breakfast. That means you have to start preparing at 6am – which means you have to get up by half 5 at the latest to take your tent down – which takes even longer when you are by yourself. The morning after the tomato pasta, I was preparing breakfast. Then halfway through, the heavens opened and the most torrential rain I have witnessed came down. I was instantly soaked – could not have been wetter if I had thrown myself into the sea! Like a drowned rat I ventured onto the truck and changed completely. The joys of bush-camp cooking!

The bush-camps we do find are usually abandoned quarries, a train grave-yard, random slag heaps and sometimes we have to settle for the concrete floor of a large service station with a lorry park round the back. I do not have many photos of the bush-camps due to the fact we have been arriving and departing in darkness. Our last service station camp turned out to be an experience (or nightmare depending on your point of view). The grainy photos were taken there – if you squint hard enough, you can see the tents underneath a shelter. That night a storm came in. Not a problem we thought, we are under shelter and the truck is on concrete so it won’t get bogged. (Oh yes, I forgot to mention that the truck also got bogged and needed digging out in the train grave-yard camp). Then the rain started coming down horizontally. We quickly made sure all the tents had their tarps on them and went back inside the truck for shelter. Then the wind picked up. Then the tents were moving. Then the rain was so heavy we had zero visibility. We ran out of the truck trying to catch the tents as they were blowing away. Desperately, we were hitting tent pegs into concrete trying to stabilise the tents. Some of the tents, including mine, were flooded – all my sleeping gear was wet. By this time I was also soaked to the skin again. The Brazilian truckers were all videoing the service station roof as it was close to being ripped off completely – when the truckers are surprised by the severity of a storm – you know its a bad one!
When the rain began to subside, the spare tents were erected and I was given some spare bedding and I attempted to get some sleep. Unfortunately, I was still very wet, so sleep was next to impossible. I was up at 5 the following morning, walking around, trying to keep warm and dry off.
I do hope the bush camps are going to improve!

Salvador

When hearing the name of the city of Salvador, most people take a sharp intake of breath as they know it as one of the most violent and crime-riddled places in South America. This however, is doing a huge disservice to this fascinating and amazing city. Salvador was one of the first places in Brazil to be settled by the Portuguese, in fact it used to be the capital. It was the first slave port in the Americas and because of this, it has a massive African culture. It is one of the liveliest, vibrant and most beautiful cities I have been to.
To get to Salvador, we had to take the ferry. The ferry only took 1 hour or so but we were queuing in the midday sun for hours. The truck was too big for the regular ferry and we had to wait for the biggest in the fleet to return to port. Salvador is massive – 3 million people live there. Strangely enough, it is built on two levels. The administration and richer people are on the top level and the poorer people on the lower levels. These levels are connected by a number of elevators. This is not a new idea. The first elevator was built in 1873. It did seem strange though, after leaving the truck in a on-street car park, having to get into a lift and going upwards to get to the ground level where our hostel was. There are many elevators in town but the main one is the large concrete tower on the left hand side of the photo below.

Alot of time and money has gone into trying to clean Salvador up especially before the football world cup of 2014. There is also a huge visible presence of tourist police in the tourist hotspots. I must admit I felt extremely safe. There was one member of the group who had their phone stolen but as they were very drunk at the time and staggering about alone at 1am, I am not going to take it as a reflection of a massive crime problem.

The beautiful historical centre of Pelourinho is full of brightly coloured buildings and cobbled streets. It has a dark history however, as it is named after the whipping post that was at its center. This is where the slaves were brought to be publically whipped. The whipping post is now back in Lisbon but a second whipping post still exists. It was originally inside a convent but that convent is now a 5 star hotel, so we were able to go inside to look at it. Pelourinho has another most recent claim to fame. It is where Michael Jackson filmed the video for “They don’t care about us.” The Brazilian authorities tried to stop the video as they thought it would show Salvador in a bad light. It did the opposite. It created a lot of interest in the city and in a drumming group he featured in the video. Olodum – the drumming group have gone on to international success and founded schools around the city. Drumming is an integral part of the city now.

Music is everywhere; blaring out of radios -people performing on the streets. We were sat at a street cafe having a drink when the chaps at the next table got out a guitar and started singing. They did the best rendition of Strawberry Fields I have heard. They were joined later by an elderly man who turned out to be a master of the tambourine. I never considered it a real instrument before but he did the most amazing things with it. At one point he was using the point of his elbow to play it. I was sat open-mouthed watching him! Then we were joined by Christina, a local lady who was in traditional dress. She had been drinking heavily by this point and thought we were the funniest people ever. Although we spoke no Portuguese and she spoke no English, we were still able to jabber away together for an hour or so. She also showed us the Paul Simon music video that was filmed in Salvador and pointed herself out in the video. It was a great afternoon spent in her company.

Our last night in town was on a Tuesday. This was lucky because every Tuesday Olodum perform on the streets along with other drumming groups. The atmosphere was electric, the streets were literally throbbing with the bass vibrations. I have never heard anything like it – it was truly spectacular. The crowds followed the groups through the streets – partying as they went. If you have to leave a city – leave it on an incredible high!

Beaches Beaches Beaches

After leaving the mountainous region of Ouro Preto, we headed for the coast and spent a week beach hopping - going from one idyllic beach to the next. These beaches are completely unknown to western tourists but are considered some of the best beaches in the world. The Brazilians are very happy to keep them a secret from the rest of the world. The sand is practically white and goes for miles. The water has quite a current to it, making it very difficult to swim in but it is excellent to wade into and ride the waves back to shore. It is so much fun sitting in the shallows trying to stay upright whilst the waves try and push you over. It is impossible to be in the water without continuously giggling! The beach week came as a welcome break for some of my fellow travellers. Not everybody started their trip at the beginning of January as I did. In fact some of them have been living on the truck since the 17th September. They joined in Quito, Ecuador and have gone all the way round South America, through Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina before I joined them in Rio. So relaxing on the beach, having a cocktail or two and watching the sunset revitalized everybody.