Brazil Part 1!

Here is part one of Brazil, our final international port:
We arrived in Brazil to cloudy skies and what appeared to be imminent rain. I did not and still do not own a rain jacket nor an umbrella on the ship, so I decided to pretend like it wouldn’t happen. Six of us, myself, Jay, Lindsay, Jose, Melinda, and Eric set off to check out Old Town Salvador. We found the elevador, a giant elevator that took us up the 15 stories or so to the top of the cliff which is where old town started. We started wandering with a vague idea of finding food and ended up running into a guy who seemed to think he could take us to a restaurant. We followed him for what seemed like forever until we ended up in some back alley at a restaurant that was closed. He got the owners to open it somehow and we sat down to eat. The food was a meat and bean dish that you mixed with rice and some delicious but extremely hot sauce. It was so good compared to Ghanaian and ship food. We ate for quite a while and by the time we were done, it was full out raining. We walked outside in the rain for a while before stopping at a music store to get out of it. No one bought anything and we felt uncomfortable so we left again, this time stopping at a Crepe place to grab even more food. I was still full so I didn’t bother, but they were really delicious.
At this point it was nearing noon and we wanted to head in the general direction of the elevator and perhaps shop a bit. We found that pretty much all of the shops were closed due to a federal holiday so instead we took out money from the ATM and decided as a group that a city tour would be a good idea. At this point we had already heard stories of people getting mugged in plain daylight in the exact area we were in, so we were a bit worried anyway and wanted to get safely inside of a car and out of the rain. We took the elevator down and walked back to the ship where there was a line of cabs waiting. We found one that could comfortably fit six people and agreed on about $15 US a person, which in hindsight was way too much. It turned out to be a relaxing cab ride, but it was pretty much a two hour cab ride that we paid for. We stopped at an old Catholic church, a lighthouse, a pretty famous fort I guess, and drove through old town which we had already been to at that point. Salvador is beautiful though and it was still fun to see it all from the relaxation of a car.
JulieAnne was going to go to Sao Paulo to meet up with one of Deirdre’s friends from back home, but wasn’t able to get a plane ticket. She tried at the airport that day and still couldn’t get one so she headed back to the ship and met up with us to go to dinner. We also picked up Ben, Alex, Mike, Max, Nick and set off in search of a Beef Bonanza restaurant as Ben put it. These restaurants are somewhat unique to Brazil and were fantastic. What happens is you get this little coaster thing that has a green side and a red side. If you leave it green side up, they come in waves and offer you meat. They bring it out on giant skewers cooked to perfection and cut off slices that you grab and put on your plate. It was mostly pork and beef and it was all pretty delicious. You got all you could eat so we all stuffed our faces pretty full. There was a salad buffet and dessert cart too, but none of us got much use out of it. By the time it was all said and done, our bill was about $1000 Real for the table of 13 or so, which was $600 US. Definitely the most expensive meal I had on SAS but it was fun. Afterwards we had a massive disagreement with the shuttle van who thought that we had not paid for our return trip. We thought we had and so obviously there was a bit of a conflict. The main problem in our case was that most of us literally were out of money because we spent way more on food than we thought we would. Eventually they comped our ride back because they understood that it was the first night and if they didn’t take us back they would have a hard time getting business for the next 4 days. We got back to the ship shortly and I at least went to bed in a food coma.
The next morning the plan was to hit the road fairly early and try and make it to a resort 75 km away, Costa de Sauipe. The resort had 5 hotels and a golf course, and four of us were planning on playing there. Our group was myself, Nick, Ben, Alex, and JulieAnne. We found a bus headed in roughly the right direction so we hopped on. I had a phone interview for an internship at 10:30 and realized soon after getting on the bus that I would still be on the bus when the time arrived. The ride was pretty loud and bumpy, but when the time came I went to the back away from the engine and did the interview which went as well as could be expected given the circumstances. I’m sure it didn’t hurt my chances that I was on Semester at Sea calling from Brazil, not a whole lot of people can say that. Midway through the call we had to change busses so I wandered around aimlessly while the others pretty much held my arm and dragged me in the right direction. We ended up on a much smaller, more comfortable and more importantly quieter bus and from then on it was way easier. I’m really thankful that the people I was with were understanding of my situation too, they were a big help.
So we road in this van for about an hour and eventually got out at the gate of Costa De Sauipe. We walked to the reception desk and found out that for the all inclusive part it would be more than $200 a person and that did not include golf (All Inclusive my rear). We found out that they had a more reasonably priced facility that was not all inclusive so we headed there to check in and had about an hour argument with the guy at the desk over what we were going to pay. They had a “3 person” room with ironically four beds, one of which was easily big enough to fit two people. We told him we would take the room and thought we shouldn’t have to pay too much more than the quoted cost of 330 real. Eventually we settled on like 550 real, 110 a person, which is like $60 US. It was more than we would have preferred, especially given that we were going to have to share rooms, but we just wanted to get going.
After that the last tee time at the golf course was approaching so we (the guys) headed off to get that settled while JulieAnne stuck behind at the pool. We got to the golf course and paid for 18 holes. It was a very poorly run course, they had no snack bar, no drinks, and the only golf balls they sold were used ones for something like $4 US a ball. We eventually got everything all set for about $120 a person and set off to play. Our first nine holes took about 3 hours, we were in no hurry, and as we were going to start the second we realized that it was getting dark and was about to rain. On the bright side there was a cool rainbow we saw. Anyway, we managed to get a rain check for the second nine and headed back to shower up and get ready for dinner. We ended up eating at a Mexican restaurant which was DELICIOUS. It might be because I hadn’t had Mexican food in forever, but they had really amazing food. We left there and walked to the beach where we hung out for a while in the dark. We then went back and watched some music for a bit and then swam in one of the pools we weren’t allowed in. Ended up calling it a night before midnight and prepared to wake up at about 8 am for breakfast.
The sun rose super early so I was wide awake far before I needed to be, but when breakfast time came everyone else was up and ready to go. The breakfast was not that great, we all pretty much had bread and juice, but that’s okay, it was included. The other guys went off to play golf, but I felt bad that JulieAnne was stuck alone the day before and I wanted to try windsurfing, so I decided to hang back. We went and tried to find windsurfing on the beach and because of the language barrier it didn’t work out. Actually I haven’t mentioned so far, but Spanish is doable in Brazil. They speak Portuguese, but Spanish is close enough that they kind of understand it. By the end of the port, my Spanish had improved 10 fold and I was doing a pretty darn good job of communicating. The one time I went to Mexico I was intimidated to try Spanish, but now I really want to go back to a Spanish speaking country and use it. It was seriously so much fun to speak a different language passably.
Okay so back on track, we are at the beach and I have no idea how to say windsurfing, so when I asked about it they were confused. They seemed to think it existed, but then suddenly it didn’t. Instead they offered us surfing, so we said okay. Surfing turned into swimming lessons, which turned into Capoeira lessons (Dance/Martial Arts), which turned into non-permanent tattoos. Realizing that it wasn’t working, we laughed it off and bailed. We headed to the tennis courts in the middle of the resort and played tennis for 30-45 minutes. It was so much fun and we would have played longer but a guy came out and was not happy about us wearing flip-flops, and then mine broke so we called it quits. We walked back in the direction of the beach and pools and one of the resort staff came and told us to come play volleyball. It ended up being JulieAnne and I playing for about an hour of 6 on 6 volleyball with a constantly rotating crowd of Brazilian men, most of which were probably 50+. Neither of us was any good, but we had a ton of fun and improved throughout the time we played. Someone eventually got hit in their groin by the ball and we used it as an excuse to leave, I think our team won.
At that point it was about 11 and we had told the others that we would meet them at noon. We decided to go pool hopping at the pools for the more expensive hotels until we got kicked out. We had clear wrist bands on, and all of the rich place people had orange and pink ones, so we kept our wrists covered with our towels and hung out by one pool for a while even talking with some of the staff guys. Water aerobics was starting and we wanted to swim, so we hopped to an even bigger and more awesome pool down the way. The pool was a series of like 9 pools, mostly connected, with palm trees between them and bridges and yeah, it was completely a stereotypical resort paradise thing. We got into the pool as quickly as we could to hide our wrists and stayed there for a little over an hour. In the process I learned how to do both front and back flips like a pro in the water from JA. Apparently I was terrible at them, probably because I never took swimming lessons, but I’m legit now. At that point it was just after noon but I was convinced that the guys would be late coming back from golfing so I made the executive decision not to hurry back. We went to the snack bar by the pool and stole the all inclusive drinks, snacks, and ice cream. They had really exceptional ice cream and cheese popper things. Feeling quite proud of ourselves and full of free food, we made our way back to our side of the resort where the others had of course been waiting since noon like they said they would. They didn’t really make it clear to us that we were meeting people back at the ship at 2:00, so we were on different pages, but regardless we had to get a cab back for $30 US a person and didn’t make it back until just before 3:00.