Braziliaiaia

By Joao

We steamed through northern brazil a bit- one night each in manaus, belem and fortaleza before decellerating in salvador. Belem seemed nice but we were happy to push on after just a few hours. We were a little sad to skip some of the north coast beaches but will reserve this sort of lounging for the end of the trip, and hopefully cheaper places in Columbia. Fortaleza was a happy little place where hes discovered a taste for street caipirinhas, a taste which became lust by the time we hit salvador. three glasses of the stuff saw me in a reggae bar and her in bed the whole next day; she missed several splendid examples of baroque and rococo architecture and sculpture in the historic centre. She was gutted. I also wandered around the pelourinho area quite a lot which was pretty touristy but had some incredible paintings, too, pretty inspiring. Salvador is a lovely city, all in all.

We are now in morro de st Paulo, a beautiful town on an idyllic island to the south. This is our third night and I am feeling very relaxed. It is touristy, a bit clubby, even Balearic, but I think we needed that and I love it. Even though the whole town is like a seaside theme park it is clearly home to lots of natives too, whose kids kick footballs around in the town square or go for a swim of an evening. It reminded me of summer-holiday-evenings down the playing fields and made me think that we Brits would be a slightly less grumpy lot if we had grown up with such activities all year round.

This is just one of the trivial and hardly-ground-breaking musings which this little pause in backpackerdom has allowed. Here are some more (without apologies, I am not making you read this):

The 'backpack' in 'backpacking' is really a style thing, not a necessity. After all, the first thing you do is dump your stuff in a hostel before exploring or trekking*. The next time I go 'backpacking' I am doing it with an executive wheeley suitcase.

* this is not just laziness; a backpack is like a sign saying 'pester me, I am a moneyed European with little grasp of your currency or language'

People Drink Loads Everywhere. South America appears to be on a permanent stag do. They start on the 600ml bottles at 10am, like it is some kind of challenge, then carry on through the day. You can't get a coffee for all the beer. I can't do it. The mistake of the British is to think it is uncouth to drink before the evening, and hence pack it all in to a few hours. We should get on it earlier. I recommend a strong caipirinha at 4pm.

Lager is acceptable and even pleasant in hot countries.

Banana-flavoured things do really taste of banana. I had thought that all the nesquick stuff tasted of something yellow and nice but which didn't really correspond to the taste of an actual banana. In the past few weeks I have eaten bananas that do in fact taste like nesquick banana milkshake.

More nuggets coming soon.