I had a long bus to Ilheus, it took a good 12 hours from salvador, including several delays along the way. We finally made it, dropped our bags off, and foraged for some food. We found a delicious italian restaurant, had some italian food.
Ilheus was fairly charming. It was calm, and it was evident that many tourists pass through. We took a morning tour of Ilheus. We walked around the area for a while, seeing the sites. Our bus driver stopped our rickety but lovable bus on top of a vista, and we each had the chance to model for the photoshoot, and as much fun as that was, I went exploring to a nearby church.
Jorge Amado, a brazilian author, hailed from this area, and he kept coming up in the conversations of the tour guide. We went to his summer house in Ilheus, which was decked out with different tile work and all his different books. I was actually coincidentally reading one of his books at the time. Reading a book in Portuguese is certainly challenging, but with looking up words as I don't know them, I have gained a significant amount of vocabulary.
We went to a famous sorveteria, which is essentially an icecream shop, and I had peanut ice cream (I am having peanut butter withdrawals). We then toured more, meandered through some cobbled streets, and found a church quite close to a cabaret. The tour guide told us how in the past, the clerics and some of the more "holy" parishioners would go through the underground passageway connecting the church and the cabaret. The church would have a bell to notify the patrons when their wives were a-calling. I had some crepes for lunch, and we relaxed in the afternoon off.
The next day, we headed to a cacau plantation and factory. We learned the various steps of production. The most exciting step, the step that got everyone clamoring, was when they brought out the samples of the finished product. They sold quite a bit of chocolate at the end.
We had an exciting detour on the way back. While it was a planned stop, I had forgotten about it, so it was a bit of surprise to me. We were greeted by a woman with two sloths wrapped around her neck, and we quickly appended to her the moniker, Sloth mother. The sloths were really quite cute, smiling with silly grins, but sloth mother was greedy, and wouldn't let us touch the sloths. We went to a little exhibit of sloths, and sat in the rain, just watching the sloths crawl around.
I overshowered the next morning, by which I mean that when I emerged, all I saw was the director, and apparently, the rest of the group had already departed. The director looked at me, and said in a thick portuguese accent, "this is very bad". Apologizing profusely along the way, we eventually took a taxi, and ended up at a community health post. We didn't really do very much and just observed the working of the physiotherapist. In the afternoon, we came back, but this time I learned a lot more. We had a presentation about Dengue and I stayed after to ask a few questions. I learned that this area was especially prone to dengue, registering one of the highest rates of dengue in Brazil. They are fully aware of the transmission through mosquitos and have actually organized initiatives for professionals to enter homes and remove as much still water as possible. Hospitals even have wards dedicated to those with dengue, and all this information was courtesy of two young medical students. They gave our class a presentation on the basic area in portuguese, and interceded in the middle of their presentation in English that " our teacher can't understand this, but there is a party tonight, and you guys should come". While I wanted a chill night so I wasn't really tempted, it was still comic.
Ray is one of the four men on the program, and we found out he had never had sushi before (he is from Indiana). As such, with a sushi restaurant nearby, we felt obligated to take him out (plus, I had a bit of a sushi craving too).
I got to use chopsticks, that alone accounts for the grin
Community health agents serve an important role in the Brazilian public health. They teach about the different issues to the people in their ward, they measure different issues, and check on the people with hypertension and diabetes, and they also ensure that people are taking their pills as needed. They are the people that really makes the Brazilian health care system work. We walked around with them through some impoverished areas, impoverished to the degree that it was bordering on favela status as it did not have a system of sanitation and the roads were dirt. The absence of sanitation meant that in the rainy seasons, the sewage would rise into the houses, causing obvious problems. We saw some of the advantages and disadvantages of SUS on this walk, as the community health agent was obviously passionate, and knew everyone by name, but at the same time, not all of the needs could be taken care of due to funding. The diabetes patient who needed an insulin measurement system could not obtain one.
We went to Iticare on the free day, and this is essentially a series of beautiful beaches. We had only a few hours; we got there at 11 and were told to be back at the bus by 330 and we would leave at 4. At a quick pace, we walked to the collection of beaches, going through the very much beach town of Iticare. I lounged hardcore on the beach, and played one of my favorite water games from childhood, wave jumping. Getting sun, relaxing, and the time just seemed to fly by. I saw a few of my friends at a table, and decided to join them. They were talking with a waitress who was apparently an MMA fighter, and both man and woman alike were enamored of her. One girl really wanted the shirt Jill (the mma girl) was wearing, so she literally bought it of her back. We had a tough time of getting back on time, and we arrived at 405 pm, really hoping the bus hadn't left yet. Knowing brazilian time, it hadn't.
We had a bus to chapada next, and that lasted the good majority of the day
The next day was pretty awesome, I have to say. We started it off with a hike to a waterfall, which was quite scenic in its' own right. We hiked around, rather jovially, taking pictures and jumping from rock to rock (which is probably one of my favorite types of hiking). We spent an hour at the waterfall, and there was a monkey on a tree to keep us company.
Then we went hiking to wet felt like a more wet version of grand canyon geography, a place called pie do ignacio. The mountains were gorgeous, providing beautiful views at every turn. It was an awesome hike, and it was funny to note how much facebook has pervaded our lives. We all talked about how this or that would make a good cover pic or profile pic. We continued on, up the steep hills till we had finally summited. Then the story of the pie do ignacio actually came out. It was named after a slave who had a forbidden love, and had run here, with the colonel chasing him. He pretended to dive off the mountain (and the colonel thought he had jumped to his death), but actually just jumped to a lower rock, and ran off with the colonels daughter and money. It was an exciting moment when the tour guide, at that point in the story, jumped off the cliff as well, and we were like ..... What just happened? There was also a heart, that was seen to signify the love between the colonels daughter and ignacio.
Just beautiful
This was the heart of ignacio
Pratinha was awesome. First we went to this cave that is illuminated by rays of light during a small window of time, turning it blue. Then, we went snorkeling deep into a cave, and swimming in total darkness was fun and mysterious. We had several people in the group with relatively weak swimming skills, myself included, so there was some panic at some points of the swim. There were also these mini fish that as we were waiting, started to nip at us, biting my feet. On my return, the transition from darkness to light made the lake seem illuminated in comparison. I swam through reeds and around the lake, and we posed for the camera on slippery rocks. I had had enough of this when I got bit two separate times on each of my nipples. They weren't serious bites, but def enough to get me to leave the water in a hurry.
This is the cave we snorkeled into
I looked into my pocket, and my ziplining ticket had disintegrated. They still accepted it, hooked me up, and told me to run. I expected a little more guidance, so I looked in askance for a little, but nothing more came, so I sprinted for the edge and jumped off. It was a flash, I spun a little as I was going, and crashed into the water, with my pants coming down a little. I backfloated my way back, stubbing my toe on the slippery rocks as I scrabbled up.
me ziplining
me ziplining
I will let the pictures speak for themselves on the caves. They were awesome and mysterious though, with an often heavy silence accompanying us as we went descended into the depths.
And that concluded a very successful day.
I love me some stalagtites and stalagmites
