Vila Velha and Arraial d´Ajuda

1. Gabriella and a monkey.

2. Convento Nossa Senhora da Penha

3. Gabi at the convent

4. The penitentiary walk we went up

The only reason we even decided to come to Vitoria, which is not really a huge tourist place, is because of a friend of Shelley’s family, Luiz, and his wife Angela. He and his family live in Vitoria, and when we talked to him before we came to Brazil, he said we should stop by. We met up with them one night and they drove us around Vitoria, and told us all about it. There has been a lot of stuff going on there, they reclaimed a bunch of land from the ocean, connected two islands to the city, built new bridges to the mainland, and there are a ton of new buildings going up. We also got some pizza with them, which was really good. Gabriella absolutely loved Luiz, he was really good with her, playing around all through dinner. She was really sad when he had to go, she wanted them both to come to the pousada and play.

Vila Velha is famous for the Covento da Nossa Senhora da Penha. It’s a really cool old convent at the top of a hill, built in the 1600’s. We walked over there from our pousada, and then climbed the Penitentiary trial, which is really steep and paved with stones. Apparently people sometimes climb it on there knees. I walked about 4 knee steps, and it really hurt. It was a really pretty walk, though, through dense forest up to the convent. When we got to the top, we saw a bunch of little monkeys climbing around some garbage cans. They were pretty cute, and there were a bunch of them. The convent itself was really pretty, and the little church attached to it was beautiful. There were also amazing views of Vitoria and Vila Velha. We got some food at the little restaurant/gift shop by the convent, saw some more monkeys and then walked back down. Gabriella wanted to be carried most of the way, and it was incredibly tiring. Gabriella wanted to be carried most of the way, and it was incredibly tiring. There was a sign that said the trail was about 500 meters long, and it went up 140 meters.

Vila Velha is also the home to Garoto, a famous chocolate company in Brasil. We were all excited to go there, but we found out that Gabriella couldn’t go because you have to be at least 7 years old to tour the factory. So that was disappointing. But she still had lots of fun going to the beach, so it wasn’t too bad. We ended up staying there for about 5 days, and decided that our next stop would be Porto Seguro, Bahia. So we looked at the bus times, and decided for another overnight bus for the 9 hour ride. Because our bus wouldn’t leave until late at night, Shelley thought we should go see the other huge mall in the area, Shopping Vitoria. Oh, the malls are all called Shopping, because they took the name from Shopping Mall in English. The only thing is that in Portuguese, Mall seems to modify Shopping, instead of the other way around, so they thought Shopping was the noun, and thus call all their malls “shoppings”. Shelley is just amazed by the hugeness of these shoppings, and they are pretty huge. These two in Vitoria and Vila Velha are about the size of Gurnee Mills, for those who know, just to give you an idea. The one in Sao Paulo was a bit bigger.

So we wandered around the Shopping, got more ice cream instead of milkshakes, and Gabi again got chicken nuggets, and we all had pizza. Then we decided to walk to Vitoria Centro, which we hadn’t seen yet. So we walked and walked and walked and walked, with Gabi asleep in the sling on me. There were some really pretty views, because Vitoria is kind of like Rio de Janeiro and kind of like New York. The part like Rio is that there are mountains coming down to the sea, and the city is built around and up these mountains, although they are smaller than those in Rio. It’s like New York, because Vitoria itself is on an Island, like Manhattan. So you have lots of water, and big rocky hills, and it’s really pretty. But we were much farther from the Centro than we though, so we ended up hopping on a bus. We got off right by the Palacio Ancheita, which is a big 18^th century mansion built in honor of a Jesuit missionary who had first Christianized the area. The only problem was that we had no camera for any of this, which was really disappointing. We had packed so well for our upcoming bus trip we forgot to bring the camera with us.

After all that walking we just stayed in downtown Vitoria for a bit and jumped on a bus back to our pousada. It was night time so we grabbed some food and headed back to rest a bit before catching a cab to the bus station. We arrived at the bus station all ready to by our tickets when we were told they were sold out. We never imagined this would happen because we were told so many times that Vitoria is not really touristy, it was a Wednesday night, and just the night before when we looked at tickets online there were 29 of 40 tickets still available. Plus we were 2 hours early for the bus, nonetheless the tickets were sold out. We were told we could travel on the executive bus which left in 40 minutes and cost R$30 more per person. We tried all the other bus lines in the station to see if any went to Porto Seguro, and none did, we then tried to see where we could go in the state of Bahia that night, that was costal. We had no luck so with 20 minutes to spare we went back to buy the executive tickets, used the restroom, jumped on the bus and were on our way.

In some ways we were grateful this happened because the bus was really a lot more comfortable. The seats lay down more, there is water and coffee provided free on the bus and we even got to see a movie with headphones also. A little side note about the movie, it was The(A) Nights Tale dubbed this time instead of with subtitles so I was a little disappointed because my Portuguese isn’t really that great still, but as the movie started I was so excited because I was understanding what was going on, it was awesome. I was just about to pat myself on the back and tell Nate that my Portuguese was getting better because I understand the movie, when he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “This is in Spanish.” Darn, no wonder I was following it so well, so I guess some people notified the driver and he pulled over and changed a setting on the player to have the movie be in Portuguese. Bummer, but I watched anyways.

We arrived in Porto Seguro around 7 in the morning and was it ever a whirlwind of a bus stop. We were immediately ushered over to the tourist information booth, and some guy who worked at the bus station carried half our stuff for us. Once there they guy who ran the booth talked Nate’s ear off about a place to stay, told us it was only R$50 a day, with a TV in the room (one English channel, with movies and CNN, one Portuguese channel), air conditioning, a pool with a shallow end for Gabi, breakfast included in the price and, oh yeah, it is across the street from a Capoiera academy (he noticed Nate and my Capoiera shirts). He told us it was across the river from Porto Seguro in a town called Arraial d’Ajuda, he lived there and said it was so nice. He then arranged for us to take a cab there and Nate asked if we should call to see if there were any openings, he said “I know there are don’t worry.” We got here and it was really nice so we stayed. And it turns out the helpful tourist information guy owns the Pousada. We have now been here 3 days and two nights, we think we are going to be here for a whole week because we have yet to see anything in town. Now don’t worry we are great parents and everything is going fine, but you will all want to know, Gabriella has gotten her first sickness since starting the trip, so we have spent the past two days in the room. She had a fever and was acting crabby so we took to the doctor thinking she had an ear infection, he looked her over said she sounded great in the lungs and her ears looked great. He said to control the fever with water and not to use meds unless she seemed to be in pain. We gave in and gave her motrin then went to the pharmacy to see what they thought because she didn’t really want to eat or drink. The pharmacist told us to get antibiotics because it looked like it was her throat so we did and she has been talking them and seem a whole lot better today. Her fever is way down and she is eating up a storm again so we think we are the clear. That will teach us to go on a bus without having her take airborne first. This is the first bus we forgot to do that with.