Arraial d´Ajuda

1. Festa Juninha

2.Gabriella being cute


With Gabriella feeling better, we decide to go out and see the town on Saturday night. We got some incredibly delicious pizza, and talked with our friendly waiter. That night was one of the Festas Juninas, or June festivals. I think it was the feast day of São João, or St. John. They had a big party that night, and everyone was dressed up in the traditional costume, the guys in jeans with colorful patches and plaid shirts. The ladies had plaid dresses and striped socks, all with different colors. They all danced forro and it was cool. But Gabi was getting tired, so we all went home to bed.
The next day we decided it would be a beach day. We walked down this really built up street, with tons of little boutiques and restaurants. As we walked along the beach there were four restaurants that all had tables on the beach and each restaurant had a guy who would meet us at the beginning of his place’s table and talk with us all the way to the end of the table, trying to get us to eat there. So we had to walk by four of them, off to a less crowded area of the beach, where we spread out our blanket and relaxed for a while. The walk back was a killer though, because Arraial d’Ajuda is on a bluff above the ocean, so walking down to the beach was no big deal, but walking back up seemed to take forever. When we got back to the pousada, we went into the pool, because Gabi doesn’t really like to go in the ocean all that much.
Monday we spent all day at the pool, playing with Gabi and talking to two people, a guy from New Zealand and a girl from Australia, who were staying at the pousada as well. They had been traveling around South America and then were going to work in Ireland for a year. We’ve also met two Swede’s and a German here at the pousada. We went out for Sushi and Yakissoba(lo mein with veggies) that night. Gabriella has been really funny here about food, for the longest time she wouldn’t try new things, but when we went out for sushi at another place she picked it up and took a bite. Now don’t get me wrong when we talk about sushi the only stuff Nate and I eat are rolls made of veggies, so all it was was cucumber with rice and seaweed wrapped around it. But still she just picked it up dipped it in the soy sauce and took a bite. She didn’t really like it but she swallowed it and on Monday when we got some more she ate a lot of the cucumber out of them. We have finally gotten her to eat jelly and she is trying things that she has never seen before, but only if it is her idea.
On Tuesday we tried to figure out where we are going to go from here, and talked to a travel agent about the cheapness of flights versus buses. The flights can sometimes be the same price as buses, but unfortunately we’d have to pay for Gabriella on a plane, where we don’t on a bus. We didn’t actually figure anything out, but got some good ideas on the prices. The next day was fun, because we went into Porto Seguro, and saw the first Portuguese settlement in Brazil. They had the first church, the first prison, the second and third churches and a bunch of other buildings. They also had a really insistent guide who wouldn’t leave us when we said we didn’t want a tour, and who we eventually gave R$15, he really wanted R$30, but he didn’t even give us the full tour, and had told him a couple times that we didn’t want any tour, so we were okay with only giving him R$15. The buildings were really pretty, and it’s on a cliff, so you can see the coast stretching away north and south.
Thursday was a little exciting, because I went to get bus tickets in Porto Seguro, which involved a bus, a ferry and a bus there, and the same thing back. It took 2 ½ hours, and freaked Shelley out because I was gone so long. She was on her way out of the Pousada to look for me when I got back. We had our delicious pizza again that night and they were quite happy to see Gabi again. They talked and played with her the whole time. Today was a laundry day. There is a sink with a built in washboard, so we washed a bunch of clothes by hand, taking turns between Shelley and I. While one was washing, the other would play in the pool with Gabriella, who enjoyed that very much. So now all of our clothes are spread out on chairs around the pool, drying.
So we had all these great plans of where we were going to go and how everything would look, so we mapped it all out and went to a little travel agent here and saw about getting some plane tickets. We ended up talking to two or three different places and realized our dreams were not reality. We have since then, become more realistic as to how things are going to look here in Brazil and we have changed our flight to leave from Sao Paulo on August 14th. That puts us in Brazil a total of two and a half months, not the four we originally planned for. We could have stayed four months but we would not have been able to really do anything. We have decided to make it more fun, but just cut it short. So our journey north is coming to an end in Salvador around the fifth of July. We plan on heading back to Sao Paulo then and from there we are going to head to Iguaçu falls, which is on the border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. It is larger than Niagara Falls and said to be amazingly beautiful. While we are there we plan on putting one more stamp in our passports, and heading into Argentina. If it is really easy we might just cross the second border so we can say we have been to Paraguay, why not, right? We are still having a great trip but just made some changes to make it even better. We love hearing from everyone so keep posting and anyone wants us to call them please let us know.