Tuesday, August 26, 2008

hostel in Salvador

Now I live on hostel in Pelorinho - historic place of Salvador.

The room has a view on the other building - on it's back =).
But I have hot water and sound of landing aircraft.

Breakfast is included but I haven't tried yet - had to go Coutos early in the morning.

buses

The buses are crazy here.

The cars are new and the drivers are really fast.

They rides 2-3 times faster than in Kiev.

sunday

Everything is closed on Sundays.
Only some pubs or restaurants - places for tourists.

No people on the streets.

The town is empty.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

twenty-four hours

The sun rises here at ~6 a.m. and sets at ~6 p.m.

It's completely dark at 6 p.m.

Almost everything is closed after the sunset.

And this happens everyday of the year.

I'm not used for such schedule. I feel the summer here because of the weather and sunrise but the sun sets like in winter in Ukraine. Weird.

Juices

Here you can try fresh juice from anything: from oranges, mamão, abacaxi, lemons, bananas, cacao, graviola, beetroot, mango, watermelon, melon and many other fruits and vegetables.

They can mix different fruits and vegetables and add milk.

Delicious.

This is really nice.

Valença

After the fest in Cachoeira we moved to Valença
M. Cobrinha has fazenda there.

The place is really nice. Cobrinha has a lot of land there.
We had an opportunity to train with mestre and to work in the field =)

We helped to plant different plants, gather manure and helped to do many other things.

Besides that we walked in jungles, eat fruits from the trees: cacao, bananas, coconuts, graviola, jaco, jambo, carambol, lemons and oranges. Tried sugar cane. Very sweet and has a lot of water.
We saw how is growing pineapple, black pepper, cinnamon and cloves. And more and more.

The most interesting thing was when we went to get beribas for vergas.
We went through deep(for me at least) jungles, looking for good beribas to cut them for vergas.
I cut one and looks like it's going to be gunga. Very interesting experience. The jungles are really dangerous - the forest protects itself. There is not a lot of animals, but plants are really dangerous - with thorns, sticky ant tricky.

People are really nice there. Always saying "Hello" and smiling.

We had trainings and a small roda there.
Sharon, girl from Israel joined the trainings and roda. The interesting thing that she fell in love with the guy from Brazil and decided to to stay here. They have some land there and building a house.
Although she didn't traing for some time she is a good capoerista.

Cachoeira

We went to Cachoeira to celebrate "O dia da Boa Morte"
The day of good death is a candoble festival.

FICA and Nzinga academies made a roda in honor of this day.
We had a good time during the roda. Everybody played really good and every game was very interesting.

I played also with M. Valmir and with girl from Nzinga. No comments. I should train, train and train.

The fest was really nice. Samba, capoeira, black people in white closes.

Cachoeira is a place of birth of capoeira and city of candoble.
Cachoeira is one of the oldest city here.

Really nice town on the river. In old days people used to sail on this river to Salvador.

People more calm here than in Salvador. I've been resting in Cachoeira. Salvador makes me nervous a bit - a lot of people you don't know what they can do with you.