The land of sand

  Jericoacoara, Brazil
Friday, March 23, 2007

After splitting up with Rona, I continued my travels to the largest country in South America- Brazil. I am traveling with Arnon, Tal, Michael and Tomer, 4 Israeli guys.
The long way to Brazil started with a bus ride from Puerto Iguazu to Sao Paulo. From Sao Paulo we flew to Salvador and already in the airport we understood that we weren't in Argentina anymore, we were in Brazil. Guess how we knew- Portuguese! Portuguese sounded to me like Chinese all of the sudden after almost 3 months of Spanish. I would even say that it sounds like Spanish with a Russian accent. Crazy.
We spent the night in Salvador trying to figure out what we are supposed to do it Brazil... The problem with Brazil is that its such a huge country that most of it isn't exactly tourist attractions, so you have to really plan out your trip. We decided to head to the northern beaches which are supposed to be the nicest and then head south.
The next day we got on a bus to a place called Fortaleza. For some reason we assumed that this is an 18 hour bus ride. After about 17 and a half hours I saw a sign that Fortaleza is another 400 km from where we were and I realized that there is NO WAY that we will be there in half an hour. Turns out that the bus ride was 23 hours. Oh well.
After one of the longest bus rides I have ever taken, we discovered that the bus to Jericoacoara, our final destination, leaves in 30 min and it is a 7 hour ride. We took a deep breath and bought tickets for the bus which will complete a long 30 hour bus ride.
Our last part of the journey to Jericoacoara (Jeri, in short) was on a 4 wheel drive bus that took us through the sand dunes. At that point we realized that Jeri was in the middle of nowhere.
Since we arrived at night, we didn't get to see how beautiful the place we arrived at was. After a good night sleep (finally in a bed and not a bus), I woke up anxious to see what was outside. I was definitely not disappointed.
Jeri is a small beach town with no roads, only sand streets. The people here ride around in dune buggies and walk around barefoot. It looked like paradise.
Another thing that we discovered in Brazil is the SUCO. Suco means juice in Portuguese and we discovered that you can get juice from any fruit you want and even from fruits that you don't even recognize. At that point I decided that I will try to get by in Brazil knowing only how to say- šI don't speak Portugueseš, and the names of the fruits.
Basically Brazil is my beach time on the trip, so I wasted no time and hung out on the beach all day. In the evening, everyone goes up to the main sand dune and watches the sunset. After that, there is a Capoeira circle on the beach. The Capoeira circle was a highlight of Jeri. The Capoeira fighters were so good and it was so much fun to watch them.
After about 5 days in Jeri we decided that it was time to move on to the next beach, so once again we were in transit.