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.