Arrived here on Tuesday after the briefest of stopovers in Ilheus, Brazil´s answer to Hastings! (We only went there to see a Tree Sloth rehabilitation centre, but were unable to go when we wanted and the town was so minging we couldn´t face an extra day there scuffing our heels waiting to see the sloths, cute as they might be!). As it was, we endured a night in a big old art deco hotel which the guidebook described as having faded grandeur. If that means pigeons nesting in the air conditioning unit (we wondered why it was having little effect!) and electric shocks from the shower taps, then it was right.
We are now a third of the way down the coast towards Rio, in Porto Seguro, Brazil´s answer to Skegness! It´s not so bad actually - it is a very popular place for Brazilians to come on holiday (and learn the latest dance moves for carnival at one of the hundreds of clubs and beach bars that line the coast) - but the new part of the town is rather souless with a grid system of roads, lots of traffic, hundreds of small hotels, and every other shop being either a chemist or bag shop (?). They have building restrictions here to limit the height of buildings to 2 storeys, which has avoided the tower blocks that would no doubt otherwise have sprung up here, but makes for a rather uniform, lifeless feel to the place.
As we are here in the low season we have got a ridiculously cheap hotel - 8 pounds a night for a double ensuite room with air conditioning, including breakfast and the use of a pool. But, it´s blighted by the mosquitoes - last night we had a full-on battle (we´re in an area known to be particularly bad for them). Our hotel room walls have mossies splatted all across them as darren killed about 15 with his flip-flop during our stay, wallop! We have now invested in a natty plug-in repellant which seems to keep them at bay.
Last night we discovered a delicious new drink called capeta - it´s guarana, vodka, cinammon and condensed milk. Porto Segura is the home of the Lambada (eighties flashback!) and has a variety of vast themed clubs including Alcatraz, Transylvania and one with an aquarium.
The last three days have been quite hectic and tiring and far removed from a ´holiday´ - lots of packing and unpacking, trying to find hostels, working out the bus times, buying tickets and enduring the sometimes scary and overcrowded bus journeys. The roads in the north are very rough and the drivers even rougher. They seemed to have made an artform out of swerving to avoid massive potholes and then swerving back to avoid the oncoming traffic, not to mention the additional hazards of kids, dogs, bikes, cows, horses, mules and suchlike wandering across the roads.
Travelling from town to town, we´ve seen a lot of poverty completely off the scale of what we know in the UK - much worse than in Salvador, even. Lining the roads, on scraps of squatted land, are rows of appallingly squalid shacks - no bigger than your average garden shed - the most basic made out of a bamboo frame and covered in plastic sheeting or with scraps of corrugated iron for a roof. Some are down in swampy areas below the road, others are perched on stilts on the edge of banks. It´s hard to comprehend how people can exist like that.
Porto Seguro does have an historic centre as it is the first landing place of the Portugese - the name translates as Safe Port. We visited it late one humid afternoon and struggled up the steep steps to be met at the top by grassy courtyards, a great view along the coast (white sand and palm trees as far as the eye can see), the oldest church in Brazil and our impromptu guide, Ruy, who had great English despite only learning for a year. The Portugese used to send their criminals and prostitutes to Brazil and we saw the prison where they were kept. The woman´s quarters (with wooden bars on the windows) faced the church and the men´s (with iron bars) faced the sea - mental torture for the men going on even then. Ruy also identified a Cacao tree for us (we´d seen them all over and hadn´t realised) and we saw the fruit that the seeds come from to make chocolate and tasted some unprocessed cocoa powder. Darren bought a big slab of chocolate and coconut flapjack for 25p, and was very pleased with himself (until he had to give a big chunk of it to a street kid who just came up and asked for some!)
The houses in the historic centre are owned by famous artists, politicians (Gilberto Gil) and rich americans. They are all painted different pastel colours - from the days when there were no numbers on the houses and people´s addresses were ´the blue house´ etc.
From Porto Seguro we crossed the river on the car ferry that pootles back and forth 24 hours a day, to arrive in the charming Arraial dÁjuda.
Porto Seguro Hotels
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