Salvador/Morro De Sao Paulo
25th February 2007

OK, well I write this update from the island of Morro De Sao Paulo. Much like when I visited Zanzibar in 2004 this place is an idealic paradise only 28km off the coast of Salvador. I am only here for 2 days but expect that most of the time I will be taking it easy on the beach. It is lovely here and some serious R&R is still being appreciated by my body after the carnage of Carnival in Rio!

Salvador was pretty cool. We stayed in the cute old town and pretty much just wandered the streets taking in the sights. Low key really. We did manage Saturday night to head out on a tour of a Condomble. Basically it is an Afro-Brazilian cult where people get possessed by the gods after chanting for long periods of time. It sounded fascinating so we had to give it a whirl but to be honest it was very underwhelming. We were driven off into the middle of no-where. It felt like being in the middle of another favela (shanty town) so we didn´t feel as safe as we could have. Anyway, we were safe and there was no problem but the ceremoy itself was crap. There were 30 tourists watching and only about 5 participants. Felt more like performance art than a serious look at their cult.

We did still manage to enjoy ourselves though. We drank beer with the locals and the other people on the tour group. Met 3 Italians who I could practice my Italian with so that was cool. All in all a 2 hour experience ended up being 5 hours as it started late and finished late. In fact we didn´t even wait for it to finish before we left - we were over it!

This morning we made our way from Salvador to Morro De Sao Paulo by boat which was a bit of chaos as Jen´s cab got lost so she missed the boat (so to speak!). Anyway, all is well. She made it here safe and there are now 7 of us just kicking back and taking it easy here. It´s ashame I am only here 2 days as it is so lovely 4-5 days would be better but that is fine. Seeing Coldplay in Sao Paulo this Wednesday night so can´t complain really.....

There is a dance party on the beach tonight from 10pm so we are all going to give that a whirl and who knows where the night will lead us.....not too far anyway as we are stuck on this island....

:-)