Morro de São Paulo

I made an accidental visit to Morro de São Paulo where the most famous resort island from Salvador de Bahia.

When I got to the town (I think it was Valença, but not sure) from Salvador, at the bus station I was told that there was neither bus nor boat any more on the day to Boipeba, but I still wanted to try to see, so went to the port. I asked a guy the direction to the port near the bus station. The guy was really nice, he started walking with me although that was the way he just came from and when he saw another lady walking the same direction, he asked her to take me to the port. The lady was really nice too. A lot of Brazilians are so nice. This is just one of those examples, I met so many kindness on my travelling way.

When I got to the port, I was only told the same thing and learned that there was really no way I could get to the island on the day. Then I saw the name of Morro on the time table of the boat. As it is touristic place, there are many more boats going there in a day. There was still time to catch the last boat to the island. I asked if I can go to the island that night and go to the Boipeba island directly from the Morro next day. While I was inquiring, a young Brazilian boy talked to me in English. He could answer to all my questions about cost and everything else and I decided to go to Morro on the night.

Actually the boy was going home to the island Morro, so we got the same bus to the ferry port.
On the bus and the ferry, he told me a lot about Morro de Sao Paulo. He was saying that it is a beautiful island and better than Boipeba, and recommended to stay in Morro instead, but I really needed quieter place at that time. When we moved to ferry from the bus, there were other travellars with their big backpacks. The boy and another local guy offered help to carry the bags and those travellars said they are ok. The boy said to them " it's just help no money". After staying long in Salvador where a lot of things were to do with money, his this comment sounded something very fresh to me.

He was also working as a promoter for this festival night at the island and gave me a free entry ticket for the party. The party was happening the next night, so I told him I can't go. He said I can give the ticket to someone else if I really go to the Boipeba island next day, but also I can stay one more night in Morro. When we got to the island I had to pay visitors' tax. I had 40 or some cents short, so when I tried to get my big money out, this boy paid the rest for me. Again, after Salvador this act was so sensational to me.

Then he walked with me to find an acomodation for the night. The third one we saw was very cheap and good. I think it was a vacant room of his friend's family. As soon as I settled in the room, he said "Do you like this? ok then, bye" I offered a beer, but he said it is ok and just gone. What a hero! No asking money nor asking going out, but only for help and that was a lot of help.
Just coming to this island, I got so many help and had already very good impression about this area.

I was hungry, so after the hero left, I went out to the beach front where a lots of restaurants are. It is a big resort island, I felt the place is very artificial, it looked like made-up village on the beach like movie shooting set. According to the hero boy, there are many beaches on the island and only two or so beaches are touristic and you can have nice quiet ones too. Actually Each beach was named with number like playa 1, playa 2, its easy to remember.
As soon as I came out to the resort beach I met a English guy and an Algentina girl who I knew from Salvador. They were going to eat, so invited me to join them. It was such a short stay on the island, but I felt a chain of good luck. I kept having good companies. I gave out the free party ticket to them. The English guy said "I knew it! I knew that I should hang around with you." coz in Salvador we were talking about our holiday and I was saying I normally get very good luck with my holiday. Meeting good people, getting good deal etc.. and he was joking he was gonna hang around with me then.
I am still believing I get good luck on my holiday. It can be nothing but just I am focusing on trivia of good luck, but at least I feel happy by thinking that way and I am expecting more luck in my holiday.

After the dinner with them I went to the internet (very very expensive on island) to check my e-mail, and I found out my friend also stuck in Valença. Also I found out to go to Boipeba from Morro directly by boat is faster, but cost a lot. So I decided to go back to Valença next morning and catch the same bus with my friend. When I got back to my accomodation, the guy of the house was on the hammock. Then we talked away about my holiday and the island. He said if I don't like Boipeba island, always come back to Morro and his place. When he saw me next morning at the port, he said the same as well. Full of really nice people on Morro de São Paulo!

By the way I forgot taking any photo on the island, so no photos from there, but yes, it was a beautiful place.

Illha Boipeba

After two weeks in Salvador de Bahia, I was getting tired of hassles and parties and wanted to get away somewhere nice tranquil and peaceful place. There was a famous resort island called Morro de São Paulo close to Salvador, but I wanted to go somewhere less touristic. Then the English girls I was hanging around in Salvador told me about this Boipeba island which is close to Morro de São Paulo and more desearted. I also met this Denish guy in Salvador and we were talking about catching up later. He went to Morro de São Paulo from Salvador at first and he was thinking of going to Boipeba afterwards too. Our dates for the island fitted just well so we decided to go to the island just before the carnaval.

Actually both of us missed the bus/boat on the day we were planning to go to the island in the same town and he stayed there for one night and I went to Morro de São Paulo for one night to see what it is like instead. I met really really good person on the way to Morro, but I will talk about him later. I got to know that my Denish friend also missed the boat/bus by e-mail when I got to Morro, so the next morning I went back to the town with the first boat and we caught up at the bus station and headed down to the Boipeba island together.

After two or more hours of bus ride, we took the boat and it went on in the great mangrove forest for more than 1 hour and Ta-dah! we got there, the island which looked like a paradise and was just what I needed after the Salvador! On the bus and the boat, we met a few people and the both of them said the beach called Morere is very nice so we decided to go there. It was kind of the behind the island so we had to walk about 1 hour on the burning beach with the big baggage of him ( I left my big one in Salvador) . On the way there was a river joining to ocean where we had to cross. Depending on the tides it gets quite deep. We followed the loclal family crossing there where must be the shallowest part and we found it was kind of fun to cross the river with all our bags.


We met very nice Brazilian couple and another guy who I met in Salvador at the camping site in Morere and hanging around a lot with them. When we got there at first, the Brazilian guy said "here, you have a lot of nothing to do." We laughed. It was true and I loved it. The island was just so beautiful. As a result of "nothing", it gets a pitch dark at night, so we could see so many stars. I even felt a bit dizzy by watcing those too many stars, so I said that I am getting star sick. The others were all laughing and kept talking about my sickness. One of the guys was writing down about my sickness on his diary, so i am writing that here too. We also saw fireflies on the beach too. There wasn't any special tourists atractions, but we had really good creative, productive and relaxed time there. We spent our time by exploring other beaches, lazing on hammocks, making fire at night, playing music and singing and juggling! The Denish friend is a juggler and he had been working in a circus in Rio to teach juggling to Favela kids for volunteer project. It was very nice to juggle in the beautiful water and now I can juggle a little bit with three balls! Also I had a pet for a short time. One morning when i went for a walk on the beach, a dog saw me and followed back to the camp site. I named this spotty dog Posh-Posh. She was our company for a while.


The our stay on the island was five days. It was such a fun and relaxed time and was a perfect rest and recharging energy before the crazy carnaval. One day my friend said that he could't stop smiling since we had got to the island. I was the same. My time in Boipeba had been such a merry time with happy tunes in my mind all the way.

Salvador de Bahia

Wow, I was there for about 3 weeks. I met sooooooooo many people in Salvador and had a great crazy carnaval too. I don't know how to start talking about this place.





As I said in the previous post -long time ago now, Salvador is the town of music and Capoera. In the histolical suburb called Pelorinho, you can hear the drumming sound all day and night. It is very hard to walk, because they are cobbled-stoned streets with a lot of up and down. Another town called Olinda also had cobbled stoned streets too, but Pelorinho´s one is more uneven and those steep hills made it even harder to walk. When I walked for half a day around the town, my legs got really tired.


There is Salvador famous food called Acarajé. The ladies with white traditional costumes are selling them on the street. It is a bun made of some kind of beans and they deep fry it with palm oil. When you buy it, they cut it and put some stuff called vatapa inside. I don´t know what they are, some are sticky and some of them are like paste and fried shrimps too. I liked it, especially loved those nice cruntchy shrimp bit. But as they use palm oil to deep fry the bean stuff, it can get a bit heavy. I also liked the one called abara which you can buy from those same ladies. Instead of deep frying it, they did cook it in the banana leaf somehow so it is not oily.


Well, I had two weeks before the carnaval in Salvador. I took the purcussion class combined both group and individual. This was so much fun. I really enjoyed, but I already forgot what I learned there after 1 month away from the class. well, next time I should bring my video camera or MD recorder, but the important bit for me is that I had so much fun there. Music and samaba in Salvador is a lot different from Rio. After 3 weeks being in Salvador, I was actually missing my Brazilian music from Rio in Brazil! Salvador got a lot of African rythm, afro raggae and Axé. With Axè, there is particular caliography for each song, so the local people know how to dance for each songs, but I wanted to dance samba!

During those two weeks while I was waiting for the carnaval, I met so many people at the hostel. We hang around together and had a lot of night out and had so much fun. One of those friends is a Fench girl who was there to play samba in the band for the carnaval. She had same big red streak on her hair and such a party girl. Actually at first she talked to me coz I had same hair colour as hers, but she had it for 15 years! I have mine for 5 years and was thinking maybe its time to change, but now I am thinking I can keep going with this. One night we went to favela with her other French friends, another Israeli friend from our hostel and the Brazilian guy she was hanging around with. We were sitting around a truck with the local Favela guys and talking and drinking. As I didn't understand what they were talking in Portuguse, I started tapping samba on the truck. Soon one of the Brazilian guys joined me tapping the truck with another rhythm and the others followed. We had a big tapping truck jam session. It was so much fun. In Brazil, even if I don't know much of their language, I can communicate with them by music and dance, that´s what I love so much about Brazil. We went to see the samba bateria she used to pla with in Paris too. She got me in for free! The samba bateria here has caliography too. I saw the tamborim player do that a lot in Rio, but in Salvador even surdo players has caliography. They sometimes put their big drums up in the air, or as you hitting the drums you get down together with other players. It looks so good and fun, but it will be really tiring to do that. She had a lots of connection. Her music directer in France knew this berimbau player in Salvador who had a berimbau concert there one night. Her friend left her name at the door from France! and I could manage to get same privillage (free entry) as her, lucky me. The concert was great. A lots of berimbau and percussions. One time he had this recording machine(my friend Ingrid has the same one) on the stage just on his own and started playing one berimbau to record the sound and played another one to add different tone on top of it and kept doing a few times. That was a great solo jam. The first time I heard so many varieties of berimbau sounds.

I met so many other people in Salvador too. At some points I was hanging around nearly every night with different people. I was pretty tired before the carnaval already. So I decided take a break from those party days and those hassles in Salvador. The hassles, I mean, there we have to constantly be very careful with our belongings and also people keep coming to you ask for money or trying to sell something. I wanted get away from all of those fuss before the crazy carnaval comes and recharge my energy.

to be continued.

Happy tia!

Its a niece! I became aunt today. Her name is Yuna. 31 Jan.

Rio de janeiro and Salvador de Bahia

I flew to Salvador from Rio after midnight of Monday and found that this is the spot! Music is everywhere here day and night from the street from the houses. The housed are colourful and a lots of art work are around. Samba, drums and capoera everywhere. Being here only two days and I love this place so much already.

Here is something I missed to write in the last post. In Rio every weekend there is street party at the place called Lapa. I went with people from my hostel both turistas and staffs. There was a group playing samba on the corner of the street and at some point they were letting turistas to hava a bush with them. I was close to them so a guy handed me a tamborim. I started playing with them and soon they realised I can play samba. After they let the other tourists go, they put me again to play with them. A lot of songs they were playing were the ones I used to play at Melsamba. So even though the arrangement was different, I could feel where the break comes and turn the tamborim. Everytime I got right with breaks, turning tamborim and changing rhythm, the other Brazilians gave me a lot of cheers. when I finish playing I got a lot of shaking hands and hugs with the other players. The staffs in my hostel kept telling me that they were very proud of me. After that I was dancing and singing along the songs I knew with other Brazilians. A guy was shouting out to his friend that I can't speak Portguese but I can play, dance and sing samba with a big excitement. I felt it is so great to be able to sing along with locals. You feel so together. Like at the Carnaval rehearsal, when the Beija Flor started playing Mangueira's old song, I was singing along with the whole crowd. that was great feel and the old ladies who were fans of mangueira and standing around me were so happy to see me singing their song with them.

Here in Salvador the Tuesdays are the day for the street party so I went out last night. At the moment I am hanging around with this Israeli girl who does capoera. Samba here is a bit different from Rio. No more familier songs for me, but very interesting to see different style. I am thinking to take a class or something. Only band I know from Salvador is Timbalada. They are very good and I have their CD at home. so I bought a ticket to walk in the block for Timbalada for the carnaval.

Chao for now.

Rio de Janeiro

I am leaving Rio tonight to Salvador de Bahia where I decided to spend my Carnaval time in.

The begining of my Rio time was shocking. I think I had food poisning from the seafood I had on the day before of my flight. As soon as I got to the hostel, I started feeling sick and spewed, had diarrhea and the whole night kept going to toilets. It was terrible being sick in the bank bed with shared bath room especially when you got to the new place without knowing anyone there, but the room mates were really good and they looked after me so well. It was also fortunate that it didn't happen during my flight. The toilet was very crowded then too, I can't imagine how I could survive if it occured. Anyway I couldn't eat anything and stayed in the bed for the first two days in Rio.

Now I am totally fine and had a good time. With the people who were staying hostel, we visited the favela(shanty houses area) for the community project for youth. (by the way there are some Aussie travellars staying in the hostel and twin boys from melbourne band De jah groove are here too. I saw the band earlier last year at Night cat, they are good band. )
According to the staff from our hostel, there happened a very bad and sad incident between gangs in favela and polices in 1993 in Favela. As a result of drug war a few of policemen got shot dead and the next day a group of armed officers came to the favela for revenge. As a result so many people including inocent and unarmed ones were indjured and killed in the favela. The impact of this incident was huge not only on the favela comunity but on the whole nation. Then the few young men who was publishing free papers called Afro reggae dealing with Afro Brazilian music and black issue thought they have to start something to lead the young people in favela to engage in something productive and start positive life. They formed many different workshops like recycle, dance and drumming and this band "Afro reggae" came out of the workshop. There are many other band came out afterwards too, but this is the most famous one. They now even go overseas to perform. Every week they have a gig inviting a lot of children for audience so it can also encouredge little children to follow the good positive path of life. We saw this biggist band of the project "Afro Raggae" and that was sooooo fantastic!! I even wanted to invite them to Womad in Adelaide. They play as they dance and therir performance is full of energy. Especially I liked three drummers in front of the band dancing together and playing crazy good.
Here is the footage I updated on you tube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avzUYs6gck4
This is just a part of it and they went even more crazy and fantastic.


When we were waiting for taxi, the children came to me with bog smile on their face and danced around as saying that they saw me dancing like that during the gig. So I danced with them. The taxi didn't come for a while so we walked down the very very steep hill with a band member and a organiser -otherwise we were not sure how safe it would be to walk down the favela. It was good to see the life in favela though. We saw the hairdresser in favela and people were everywhere just hanging around outside their house to socialise other people. I also found that the favela has got the best view in Rio! as they are high up on the hill. That was amaging view.


As I decided going to Salvador for the carnaval, I went to the rehearsal of Carnaval yesterday. Since this past weekend each samba school started the rehearsal. They do exactly same except for the costumes, mobile stage and big things to carry with them. There were one mobile stage for each school and one big statue was there and some were dressed up with costumes but not everyone in full on. but still that was enough to see the whole thing how it will happen. It took place in Sambodrome where actual carnaval happens. Studium was full of people and so hard to get in, but we were lucky to get in and kept pretty good spot too. that was most expensive seat area for the carnaval!, but it is free for the rehearsal. Even though it was a rehearsal, there were food wagons and drink bars happening. It was a very big event. Yesterday was a day for Mangueira and Beja flor. I like the both schoos, so it was really good. I had been wondering how the judges can give score for such a big parade, but when I actually saw tha parade, you can tell which school is good. As for the rehearsal, Beja flor was much better. each group was very well organised and had more variety and interesting caliography. It would be so good with all the full on costumes and more mobile stages and statues. Mangeuira finished first, and when Beija Flor's turn came, they started playing Mangueira's old song which I used to play in melsamba before they started their parade for the friendship. There were so many Mangueira's fun in the studium and it was really nice to see the whole studium singing the song together. Each school's parade can last about 1 and a half hour. It is so hot and humid here. So hard for both dancers and audience, but everybody was enjoying so much of the good time forgetting baout the heat. i thought the hardedst worker is the people who were selling the drinks. It was so crowded and it is so hard to walk around the crowd, plus just by standing there you sweat so much but these people were carrying such a big heavy box of drinks with ice on their head and selling around in the studium. Their shirts were soaked with sweat and you can see their face with running sweat as well. Anyway I had a really good time here and tonight I am flying to Salvador.

Santiago in Chile 2

Before I left Melbourne, my friend Pancho gave me the phone numbers of his brother and family friend who I met last time when I went to Chile 3 years ago, but I left the numbers at home in Australia!!

The second day in Santiago, I decided to find Daniela -Pancho´s family friend. A lots of "looking for people" in this trip. Pancho told me that she works in a mobile library near the station called Centro. I first asked someone where the station called Centro is, but the person said there is the area of Centro, but not the station. So I went to the center area of the Santiago city and find the police men and asked where the mobile library will be. The word I found in the dictionery for the mobile library is the "biblobus", but the polices didn´t get it, so I said " el bus con mucho libros -the bus with many books" and that made them even more confused. Anyway thinking all of this now, even if they know the word, they wouldn´t know where the bus would be as it is 'mobile'. At the end of long conversation they show me the nearest big book shop and told me to ask there.

Then I went to the book shop. The people there were very nice and try to think of possible places the bus would be, but the places were far to each other and looked hard to visit all of them, so I asked where the nearest big library is. I thought the mobile library must belong to some of those non-mobile libraries.

Fortunately the biggest library in the city, La biblotica National, was very close to the book shop. So I walked up there. When I got there, I realised that was the library Daniela was working three years ago!! Coz she brought me there and show me around. So I thought it could be the same library the library bus is belonging to!

I walked into one of the room and said " I am looking for my friend who is working in the mobile library. Do you know where it is?" (That´s the only things I could ask in Spanish) . They had no idea about the bus or what I am talking about. Then told me to go to other section of library. As I didn´t understand which department he was meaning, I looked for the reception, but in the reception there wasn't anyone. When I was waiting for somebody to come, the security guy came. So I asked him same question. He was listening to me very patiently and I said the girl was working here as a sudent worker three year ago. Then he called the other security guy who was working there longer and the guy said taht he might know the girl. When I was describing her to them, I realized I still had her photo in my camera, so I showed them. Yes, he rememberd her! He took me to the place where he might be able to find out her number, but looked like he wasn't allowed to get number, so he took me to another room for the guy who knows her better. In the room, one of the workers knew where she works now. Then they looked up the number and the station of the library for me. Such a nice people. The station was "Estacion Central"!!!! not 'Centro'. I remembered it wrong at first place.
I took the metro to the station and kept asking people the way to get the library till I got there but the reception girl said Daniela is working in bus and won´t come back that day and gave me her number. As they didn´t have a phone, I walked back to the station and called. She was there at the library then!!!! I just missed her in 5 min. I walked back and ta-dah!! finally met her! It was a long day, but kind of fun especially when you have the happy ending.

We hung around together and decided to go to Valparaiso together for the weekend so I changed my flight to extend my stay in Chile. Valparaiso is 1 and a half hours away from Santiago and good holiday spot. It was so busy as it was a weekend of summer. We had big feast of sea food and fun there.
We had return tickets of bus, but at the night of Sunday, when we got the bus station, the guy said there was no more bus available that day as all the bus are full already on Sunday evening. I had to leave Santiago next day to Brazil so I wanted get back to Santiago that night. Daniela said to me there is two options. -Stay another night here and go home with the first bus in the morning or hitch hiking! Without thinking I chose the hitch-hiking. This is my third time hitch-hiking but the 1st time in Latino America. I asked her if she has ever done it, she said No, but we decided to do so. Very fortunately after about 15-20min wait, we got a lift from very nice couple of Chileno and Algentina. We had a few other accidents during the trip as well, but all solved fine. It was good very memorable trip.
She doesn´t speak English and my Spanish is very very limited, but somehow we are good friends. Now I want to learn more Spanish.