Salvador (Bahia)

The other day I chanced upon "Lavagem do Bon Fim", which begins early in the morning as a religous festival, but its not long before the Bahians have opened a few cans of beer and it turns into the second crazziest street festival outside of carnival. Apparently women carrying buckets of flowers walk 6km to the church in Bon Fim, and perform a church step washing ritual.I missed that part, it seemed to me, the general idea is to where white, drink a lot, make a lot of noise, and dance and party your head off, until the early hours of the morning.
It was nice to catch this festival since I dont think I will be in Brazil for carnival time, not that I know where I will be instead.
When not at festivals, the locals like to go to very crowded beaches in town. A short bus ride takes you to a nicer one!

And this is how they practise taking penalties. Jumpers for goalposts, er waterbottles for goal keepers and all that.

6 Months

Hola,

I emailed out a newsletter called 6months, which due to the unmarvelous internet cafe I used, you may have received several times or not at all. So email me if you didn´t receive it, but want to!

In other news.... I went to the beach. A lot.
I can report that learning to surf is much more difficult than learning to ride a bike. Its probably more difficult than learning Mandarin.

Apparently, the best way to learn to surf is to go to the beach everyday, for months. Sounds like a good plan to me.

Brasilia

In 1957, the founder of modern Brazil and lead singer of FunkPop combo Jamiroquai, Juscelino Kubitschek (known as JK to his friends) decided it was time to build a new capital city with the assistance of his architect buddy Oscar Niemeyer.

JK:"So Oscar, lets build a funky new capital"
ON:"Groovy where shall we build it, somewhere near Rio and Sao Paulo would be convenient for business, or perhaps we could put it on the coast"
JK:"Oh you visionless fool, we shall build it in the centre of the country, in the cemetrical astral-centre of the country, you cant run a futuristic Utopia from the beach"
ON:"er wont it be sweltingly hot and inconvieniently far from everywhere else? Well you are the Boss, so what shall we call it?"
JK:"Hows about Milton Keynes?"
ON:"Thats already taken."
JK:"Shame. Ok lets call it Brasilia"
ON:"Good idea, so for my part, can I lay out the shape of the city in the shape of a crashed aeroplane, and make the congress building out of 2 big domes (one upside down) with some inner-peace significance, oh and make really big wide highways and space everything a long way apart, so taxi drivers will make a killing. Can I give all the areas of the city wacky names like Urban-SuperQuadra-Resitendial-Zone-3, and make people feel like they are robotslaves and stuff."
JK:"Sure thing, do whatever you want, just make sure all the buildings are white, and it is so futuristic looking, that it will seem hilariously dated in 20 years time. Oh and make sure it goes billions over budget and you use my brothers contracting firm. Cheers"
ON:"Ok lets get started. Hey and JK, your last album was rubbish...."

So er that was Brasilia, most of the above is true. Time to leave this place and go back to the beach for a bit....

Brazil - Curitiba to Rio.

So I have been in Brazil for about a month. I know this because this morning I got taxed 67reals, to add another 30days in Brazil to my passport. Well thats only 50p a day, so good value I suppose to stay in fun-packed Brazil. So about time I posted some Brazil photos, since I have found a decent internet cafe. So lets start with last night and work backwards.

TIESTO
Yes, my favourite superstar DJ gave a free concert last night on Ipanema beach to a crowd of 80,000 people. Needless to say it was very cool! It seems he is on a Brazilian tour, so with luck I might be able to catch another show. But I dont think you can match a big concert on a beach like this. It was unforgetable! Actually I dont have any photos of this or my new year on Copacabana beach, because its supposedly a bit too dodgy in Rio to carry a camera and stuff around at night - or more likely I would have dropped it in the sea. But here is a cheesy poster of Tiesto against a backdrop of Sugarloaf mountain. Actually it is difficult to find an uncheesy photo of Tiesto anywhere.


SURFING!
Around Christmas I took my first surf lesson, which was great fun. I cant wait to go surfing again. Its all a bit hetic here around Rio at the moment, so Im going to find a more chilled out surf spot up north, to fine tune my surf skills. (By surf skills, I mean standing up and wobbling about a bit)
and as this grainy photo testifies, I really did make it up onto the board!
IGUAZU
Before Christmas I was firmly on the gringo trail and checking out Iguazu falls from both Brazil and the Argentina side. As you can see its er a huge waterfall. I think better than Niagra.

PANTANAL
When I first arrived in Brasil I headed to the Pantanal where you get to see all kinds of exotic animals and birds. Also you get to do a spot of Piranha fishing. You should have seen the size of the one that got away...
Despite being a swampy wetland with a few foresty bits, the Pantanal is equipped with all the mod cons you might need. Infact they have everything except for the kitchen sink...
...oh, they have that too.
and finally did I mention its a very beautiful place too, as my 8000 photos I took of this sunset will testify.

Ok, Im heading off to the capital city Brasila this afternoon on a luxurious 17hour bus journey, to check out some wacky architecture (it had better be worth it) then I will cut back to Salvador in search of some surf.