30 September

The last week has been a reminder that I am indeed residing in the tropics. In the city of Salvador itself, it can be very easy to forget that, as I've been in cities with high temperatures and a few palm trees before. Last week, a group of six of we students took a twenty-minute-to-half-hour bus ride to the Parque Metropolitano de Pituaçu. The entrance of the park features abstract sculptures, playgrounds and swan boats, but our objective was the renting of bicycles. The 15 km bike path stays next to a lake for its entirety, and in most places it is surrounded by thick forest on the other side. It seems amazingly natural for a park in the middle of the city, excepting the moments when one passes an abandoned football stadium or spies a favela on a nearby hill. We saw at least a dozen tiny little monkeys. The next day I saw the same species of primate walking along the power line directly outside my window.

This weekend I and slightly more than twenty others went to Morro de São Paulo, a tourist outpost on the corner of Ilha de Tinharé. Getting there required taking a ferry across the bay and taking a bus to Nazaré, from where another small passenger boat was taken to the island. Being so tourism-centered does some strange things to a place. Many of the people spoke with Spanish vocabulary and strange pronunciations. One Brazilian on the beach with a barely-identifiable occupation knew some Hebrew. We encountered some Norwegians who were studying law on the island, and some volleyball was played with them. The island itself was, of course, very nice, with trees, cliffs with incredible mud, beaches protected by strings of rock, sand bars sitting off the coast. Ice cream carts that can be floated out to swimmers. Unfortunately, in the short amount of time we had, I missed the opportunity to do any hiking, going on a group tour that mostly ended up going to various beaches instead. (I was also sunburned fairly harshly.) The drive from the ferry dock to Nazaré actually did a better job of establishing a sense of location. Green, green, green, green, distinctively clumped trees, richly red walls of soil, small groups of cattle around small lonely houses, donkeys, small roadside stands with the Nova Schin banners which seem to grow in any spot that has seen human currency. What do the people in these small towns do, and where are those power lines going? The water was an amazing green on the return ferry ride, and in combination with the storm clouds it gave the bay in the late afternoon a very primordial look.

I received my official capoeira nickname. (Apelido.) Picapau. 'Cause I sound like a woodpecker.

Next weekend is the all-group trip to Lençois in the interior. Volunteering may begin in the next week or two?