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Ok so here it is....THE BLOG, apologies for how long this has took but it's been a mixture of bad luck ( my MacBook stopping working), no time and laziness. You know the way when u stop going to the gym then you make s***e excuses for yourself trying to justify why you're not going like "oh my dinners out 5 minutes late I can't go now" or "I need to go to the fort later and I won't have enough time I'll just go to the gym the morra" well it's kinda been like that and now it's spiraled outta control to the amount of 9 -10 weeks since the last update so apologies. There's no way I can do it all in one go so first stage CRUZ THE COAST! So Rio was done and we had waited on our ten day Trip up the coast of Brazil to Salvador. The mini bus arrived and to our delight it was a peach....seats that reclined way back, TV and DVD player and a sound system that would rival anything you seen at "strathy cruise". Introductions were a little slow to start with most people opting to go for a kip rather than chat....that was most people all except Matt. Matt for those at home can only be described as the token Yankee. This guy talks 24/7 and like most yanks is so over enthusiastic about the most basic of things. Guy walking down the street with a can of beer...." wwwhhhoooo yeah beer dude f*** yeah!" < true story....so you catch my drift here, so Matt spoke and most slept and we headed for our first stop Buzios. Prior to Buzios was a little boat trip around some secluded beaches which was good. We got to dive off the boat and swim to shore where the sand was so fine it was like snow and made that sort of crunching noise that snow does when you walk on it. On the boat there was free caipirinhas (Brazilian cocktail very popular all over Brazil) and music, kind of like a mini booze cruise. So all was well on the boat until the first incident of the day....time to try out Hamills "waterproof" camera. Camera in hand, dive, splash, f***ed! First time the things in the water it just let's all the water in, not good. Apart from that the day went well with everyone getting to know each other. That night the three Danish girls Maria, Sara and Melinda taught us there version of the card game s***head, turns out they had kind of made up their own rules it it was fun anyways. We taught them how to play the classic scabby queen....Sara being the scabbiest of all :-). Our accents seemed to be the entertainment for that evening with everyone trying to master it....all failing miserably. The next day in Buzios myself, Hamill, Daniela the crazy Swiss chick who would come to be like a sister to us, and a guy called Brett who wasn't on our Cruz the coast trip but staying in the same hostel in Buzios, decided to rent a buggy. At only a tenner each it was a bargain, a good way of getting around the various beaches Buzios had to offer. We hit the road....the wrong side of the road most if the time but the road was hit anyway. We went to the first of 3 beautiful beaches occasionally taking off along the route when we hit one of Brazil 8 trillion speed bumps. Seriously what's with the speed bumps Brazil and more so what's with disguising them being the same colour as the road so the only way u know they are there is when your s***ting yourself mid jump, Starsky and Hutch style. My turn at the wheel and we were off to beach number 2. My navigation man Brett had got a bit bamboozled and we ended up a little lost so we headed back for the main road to find our way when the thing came to a slow chugging stop.....PETROL! We had been assured by the buggy rental mob that there was a full tank in it....was there f***, and petrol gauge was also goosed, what chance did we have. So I managed to flag a local down who gave me a lift to the petrol station where through terrible portuspanglish again I manged to get a 2 litre bottle of petrol. Filled up and bump started largely in part to Daniela we were on the move again. Done beach 2 and watched the sunset at beach 3, all in all a good day. That night the full team went out for grub at a Chilean restaurant, the first of many good restaurants recommended by our tour leader Jonathan. Jonathan was the co owner of Cruz the coast and usually didn't run the tours himself anymore but we were lucky enough to get him and being Irish we got on great and had more than a few bevys all the way up the coast, maybe more so than he would usually have had as he was let off his leash for a bit with his Missus Jane still being in Oz :-), party on. The group and a few other people from the hostel sat in a bar most of the night and ended up down the beach in the sea at silly hours of the morning. A couple hours kip and it was time to get up bound for the next stop Vitoria. Seven hours seemed to fly past. Road trips like this were easy when you had a good group and a TV with loads of AAAHHNNULLDD SCHWARZENEGGER movies to keep you occupied. We arrived around 5ish and were only staying the one evening here so we all went out for dinner then with st people still feeling a little delicate from the previous night we decided to go bowling. To my amazement some people had never played. s***e trips to the local bowling alley in your teenage years must not be the done thing on mainland Europe, still not an excuse for losing. Lucky I'm not bad at it cos Hamill was exceptionally pish, you'd think he'd never been to one either. The next stop was Itaunas. Not a lot to report from here, since it was low season it was kind of like a ghost town. We hit the beach where a small town once thrived. The locals had thought it'd be a good idea to cut down all the tree between them and the beach causing the sand to overwhelm the town over many years and bury the town. The cross on top of the church can still be seen peaking through the sand. In high season there is kayaking, horse riding and many other activities available but now was low season and not a lot to do really, so it was onwards and upwards to Arraial d'Ajuda. Arrived in the evening and the group went out to see the town. Quite similar looking to Buzios with little cobbled streets and many restaurants and bars. We were now in the state of Bahia where the culture and influence is very different to that of Rio. There is a heavy African influence here dating back to when so many African slaves were brought over. This means different foods and time to try a Bahian delicacy called Acaraje. This is a deep fried flour type bun then filled with prawns, some salad and topped off with some pimenta (hot sauce). Hamill was also brave.....he had a hot dog! The following day we went over to Porto Seguro the first place the Portuguese arrived when they came to Brazil. We walked around the old colonial colorful buildings and shops before heading back to our pousada (guest house) for a big BBQ and a few bevys in the local bars Next stop was Itacare where we were looking forward to most. Partly due to the fact that we could at last try our hand at surfing and partly because Jonathan had told us how good the place was as he lived there now. So the next few days we filled with much the same bevying at night with the group and beaches during the day. The first day we went a little trek to a secluded beach which was amazing. I say we that was all except Paul. It's worth noting at this point that Paul Hamill doesn't move for anybody. If things are happening outwith Paul's time ie he doesn't have time to have a shower, do his hair, do whatever the f*** takes him an hour then he simply doesn't do it, not even for the sake of the group, to be a team player, nothing. So when the group all feeling like one big family by this point ask where is Paul and I have the embarrassing job of telling them "oh he's not going now he's decided to stay at the hostel for the day to do his washing and other bits and bobs" you can imagine the looks and reaction I got. Anyways highlights here were the general atmosphere of the place, some good bars and great beaches. We went to a capoeira show. This is a Brazilian "martial art". I put that in inverted commas due to the fact that there is no physical contact in the sport and no points system, no winners or losers. It's kind of like break dancing with the two people entering into a circle of people and swinging kicks and spinning around. It originated from when slaves we not allowed to practice martial arts so they made this is up where they would disguise their martial art as a dance. Nonetheless it is pretty impressive at full speed. We also bumped into a few familiar faces from Rio, amazing how small the world is when your following the gringo trail. After 3 days in Itacare it was time to move onto our final stop Salvador. Usually Cruz the coast finishes at the port where you get the ferry to Salvador and everyone's left to their own devices however Jonathan had decide to come all the way up to Salvador with us quite simply because we're just that sound :-) and maybe a little bit to do with him still being off the leash with his missus still in oz :-P. The weather in Salvador was terrible it had already been raining for a week solid when we got there. Our first encounter with a Salvadorian :-S, if that's what they're called, wasn't too jolly. He was a taxi driver but his actually profession was just being a bell end. He had some sort of problem with Hamills bag he wasn't putting it in the boot or in the front or back seat and basically said it had to go in another taxi #awkwardc*** However karma was on our side and it really cheered us up when the guy thought it'd be a good idea to drive in torrential downpour with his window open, only for a car to be coming in the opposite direction, through a puddle sending a massive wave right through the window soaking the c*** :-) yyyaasss it was totally worth getting a little wet ourselves to laugh out loud at the guys misfortune. There was no holding back here it was fits of laughter all round. The next few days we seen the sights of Salvador mainly in the pissing rain. This included a square in Salvador where the Michael Jackson video for They don't really care about us was filmed. We also trekked around some markets and found a really freaky junk shop that had a box of peoples old pictures you could buy, one of which was a women giving birth haha. The Danish mob cooked us some pasta most of it getting stuck to the pot which took Hamill about 30 mins to scrub and then they taught us another one of their many games. We attended the famous Salvador street party on the Tuesday which the main part was called off for like the first tme in a hundred years due to rain :-( but was still ok. This is where a little street scoundrel tried bumping me and Hamill which we got into an argument about for about ten minutes before he comes out with " I have a gun" .....this didn't get the reaction he had hoped for when we both burst out laughing. " you've got a gun aye how come it's took you ten minutes into an argument to remember that...stop talkin pish and give me my money" OWNED! So that was basically our Cruz the coast trip, everyone was going there separate ways, all except us and Daniela who had decided to go to Chapada Diamantia a national park described as the Grand Canyon of South America. So it was time to say goodbye to our group :-(. The great Danes Sara, Maria and Melinda ( loser, loner, whiner, moaner, I don't care WHATEVER!) one of their catch phrases...don't ask. As a parting present for them we made them a Scottish dictionary with all the words you'd need to get by in Scotland such as aye, naw, bawbag and many other a swear word...we also left them a little drawing in their scrap book, a huge c*** and balls with the three of them sketched as little stickmen worshiping it :-) a nice one for their mums to see. It was also goodbye to Liz and Chris a couple friends who were very well spoken, not like us bams but don't let that fool you as Liz had a dark side that liked to party hard, maybe see her at Global Gathering some time. It was good bye to Tim from England, the kind of odd one out of the trip in more ways than one. I don't know what Tim, a 50+ posh banker from London, had been expecting when he signed up to Cruz the coast but what he got was bus full of mental 20 yr olds for ten days. He seemed to enjoy it enough anyways but it wasn't until after he'd left that I was informed about some of his peculiarities. Turns out that one night when we were watching a capoeira show Tim's camera, instead of being focused on the show, was zoomed right into my face taking fly pictures of me :-S...I had shared a room with this guy on a few occasions over the last ten days what the f*** was going on here. To further add I was then told about how Tim started to talk about his school when growing up, some boarding school, where it was common for teachers to touch the children :-o I don't even want to know where these pics of me have ended up or what he's doin with them! Matt the token yank had left us at the port in Salvador to have a trial run at being a tour leader for Cruz the coast. It was a simple enough task to escort two girls down the coast back to Itacare. This didn't go to well to say the least mainly due him not having that button we all have to adapt to our audience. He thought it would be acceptable to talk relentlessy to these two girls about sex for 3 hours solid. Turns out they didn't feel too comfortable about that and felt the need to email Jonathan to tell him. He didnt get the job, a shame because he is a top guy just better suited to other lines of work lol. So it was goodbye to all and myself, Daniela, Hamill a guy called Ed who worked in the hostel and his girlfriend Luna were about to set off for Chapada. Blog to follow soon....I promise :-S
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