FINALLY

Brazil: Day One

Alright. I am fully aware of the fact that I am an utter failure in keeping up with my blog posts. I would apologize profusely, but really, I’m not THAT sorry…I like to keep you guys on your toes ya know? That’s actually my lame excuse for not being on top of things, but hey…it’s all fine. Anyway…after observing how Team Bauer’s gigantic Brazil blog went over I have decided to write mine in increments. One blog per day in Brazil. This is officially the first one…I know you have been waiting so no need to fear, this is it for real…

Day One:

The new tradition is sleeping out on the deck the night before every port. That way, you can wake up at 4 30 when the crew has to clean the decks, and then stay awake and watch the sunrise over the city. I continued the tradition (naturally…would you expect anything else?) and it was good up until the crew decided to not inform us that they were cleaning the decks and we got full on water in the face as a wake up call. That was awesome. Ok…I’m being a little dramatic here…it was actually just a splash of sprinkles…but STILL…at 4 30 in the morning after nearly no sleep a little sprinkle can seem like the entire ocean is falling on you. Needless to say, we woke up and watched the sunrise. It was cool…I will have pictures later for you kids to salivate over. We went through the usual port routine (sunrise, breakfast, somebody special from country comes to talk to us, customs on the ship (stamp passport!), and then sit until we can get off). As soon as we got off the boat, we had a mission. Mission: Find tour guide Daniel and get on bus. Not so hard right? Well…not really, but we did have a few distractions. The second we got off there was a small drumming band thing there to greet us. We also all got bracelets and coconuts. It was pretty fantastic. My favorite was watching Roberto get his groove on with the bracelet ladies…(he is from Puerto Rico…and he knows how to shake it!)…once we had gathered everyone (which took kind of a while) we hopped on the nice air conditioned bus to leave for Lencois, which was about 6 hours away. Team Bauer and I sat at the front of the bus, right behind Daniel, our tour guide. This turned out to be the best place on the whole bus, as we talked to Daniel the whole way there. He is quite possibly one of the coolest people on earth. To put him in a nutshell, which I don’t particularly enjoy doing, but I will for your sake, you could call him a hippy-buddhist-vegetarian- tour guide. HE ROCKS. He has this view on life that we are all one global community (which is so true) and that we all need to be one with each other and with the earth. It was awesome just listening to him…he did most of the talking, which I really enjoyed. Aside from Daniel, the bus also offered a quick tour of Salvador and the Brazilian countryside. In Salvador, the only thing I could really see were the favellas. Talk about poverty…people living in poverty in America have it great compared to the favellas. They are teeny tiny houses stacked on top of each other with multiple families crammed into each house. I really don’t think that words can do the place justice…think of the worst poverty you have ever seen…and then multiply it by 100…then maybe you will have some sort of visual of these places. The police won’t go into the favellas to protect anyone, as they are too dangerous. The crime rate in the favellas actually isn’t that bad, as the people leave to go into the city to steal from people who actually have things. However, murder and other things are out of control…it’s truly a sad situation. When we got out of the city, we got a nice taste of the Brazilian country side. Well…when I wasn’t staring at the road fearing for my life that is. We were on this little two lane “highway” that led us into the heart of Brazil. There were horses tethered on the side of the road randomly…and people with coconut stands…it was nuts. Then…our driver would pass people up a hill when you couldn’t see anything….this was me:

Dear Baby Jesus,

Please don’t let our bus crash and explode into flames. Thanks

Love
Andrea

I’m still alive…thank you baby god. For lunch we stopped at this buffet, where you weigh you plate to pay for the food. I don’t know how I feel about that…I don’t think it gives you the right price…meat and rice vary substantially in cost, but oh well. It was only like 4 bucks or something, so I guess I can’t complain. Back on the bus I tried my best to read my book for history…yah that lasted about one paragraph…then I passed out. I woke up about 10 minutes before pulling into Lencois. The vegetation had certainly changed…there were a ton of trees and such outside…it was beautiful. Lencois was a cute little town with cobblestone streets everywhere. I loved it. As soon as we pulled in, we picked up Kikio, our other guide. Kikio was AWESOME! He had the most contagious laugh I have ever heard…and he laughed often. It was fantastic…whenever I have a negative thought, one thought of Kikio’s laugh and I get a smile on my face. Anyway, we picked him up and then drove up to our hotel, which ended up being a sort of house, turned hotel. It was cute…we got home made breakfast every morning with the most delicious mango you have ever put into your mouth. I feel as though I will not be able to eat mango in the States ever again…oh well…it was TOTALLY worth it. So we got to the hotel, dropped out stuff off and immediately turned around and went to a welcoming thing that a local NGO (non-government organization) was holding for us. The second we walked up, we were greeted by “MAMA AFRICA”…an amazing song that will forever remain in my heart. They were all singing and dancing…it was fantastic. We danced for a bit, and then we went into a room, took our shoes off, and they taught us some songs and dances. One of the dances included us crawling under the legs of everyone in the room…it reminded me of kindergarten or something, but I loved it. After the fun and dancing around we all sat in a circle and Daniel translated for us. The locals asked us about why we wanted to go to Brazil, and what we thought about it so far. It turned out to be a great conversation about how we are all one people, and we shouldn’t let country boundaries divide us. It was very moving…just seeing us all sitting there together, so different, yet so much the same. I feel like I am not giving my experience justice…it was just a beautiful thing. We ended up talking for about an hour ish, and it really could have continued, but we had to wake up early so we all circled up in two different circles and started to sway back and forth while this little tiny woman sang an amazingly beautiful song (which turned out to be the African national anthem…yes we were in brazil, but don’t forget about the African roots in brazil). It was beautiful…I absolutely loved it. Little did I know that is was just a taste of the amazing few days to come.