Beautiful Bahia

Left Rio a couple of weeks ago and headed up to the sunshine state of Bahia. To give you an idea of how big Brazil is, it´s a near 30hr coach ride from Rio to Salvador which in itself only represents one quarter of the length of the country! Luckily there are loads of fantastic oceanside village resorts to break it up a bit. I spent time in Arrial d´Ajuda, Trancoso & Itacaré.. one of the Aussie guys i was travelling with liked Itacaré so much he scrapped his Sth Am travel itinerary & is staying there for two months to "learn Portuguese!" Nearly every night in Itacaré they had demonstrations of the Brazilian martial art Capoeira, which is sort of a cross between martial art & dancing.. The story goes that when slaves were first brought over to Brazil from Africa, they wanted to continue with their martial art training, but were forbidden by the Portuguese (for obvious reasons) So they modified it to look like harmless dancing. After a few hundred years what you´re left with is this truly amazing spectacle of lethal kicking, jumping & flips with perfect poise! You really do not want to pick a fight with even the weediest looking kid in Brazil!! It could be embarrassing!! I´m sure there was an O2 advert on TV last year with a couple on a remote beach practising exactly this type of martial art.. speed it up a tad & you can imagine what we witnessed. I´m now at an island resort called Morro do Sao Paulo, STILL shy of Salvador! They got so bored of naming beaches here in Morro, that you´ve got First Beach, Second Beach, Third Beach, Forth Beach etc!! I ended up staying there for over a week, went to a full moon party that ended up actually being a Lunar Eclipse party!.. the full moon party being two days later & then a Brazilian national holiday (and hence ANOTHER party!) for Day of the Dead the day after that!! Anyway, I made my escape to Salvador, battered & bruised! Liked Salvador as a whole, but thought the place was a bit edgy, which I later found out was probably because the historical district that the hostel was located in just happened to be surrounded on most sides by Favelas (slums)! So a lot of people (looking like they could give you a disease or two) walking around asking for money etc. As they didn't easily take "No" for an answer I got into the habit of doing what the Latinos do themselves, which is to wave your finger whilst saying "No," a bit like you see the Italian & Spanish footballers doing when they don't like the ref's decision. Not just your finger, but your whole hand from your wrist (try it!)... this works!! (and is addictive!) After Salvador I went 6 hours inland by bus to do a trek in Lencois with a lovely Australian girl, a German girl & this great English guy who amongst other things lived in Indonesia for 6 years & has lived in Munich for the past 3 years. Says he loves Germany & it's much better than London (we nearly came to blows over this!!) But a really interesting, down to earth guy. The trek itself was 2day/1night through the huge Chapada Diamantina National Park. Luckily for me (lazy) it wasn't very mountainous but instead required loads of scrabbling over massive rocks (which is great fun!) through gorges & climbing up the sides of waterfalls! Also our guide was this smooooth Argentinian guy called Augusta who cooked up a storm on a campfire, better than I saw in 10yrs as a Cub-Scout!!