Bahia: the future

Part 3

The Italics are Wei Ling.

Leaving Salvador.

Our journey to Rio began today and already at the end of it I feel a long way from Salvador. I can see Salvador from where I am though, so I know exactly how far from Salvador I am.

We have wound up at Pousada Sambolé and our luck is running strong that we found our way here. It is way too nice for us, it´s gorgeous. Pousada often means cheap accommodation, a budget hotel kind of place, it can as well mean a boutique collection of rooms on a private section. That´s where we are now, in a character room that looks across a good space of grass and coconut trees to the beach, over the surf and over the waves of the Baía de Todos Os Santos is Salvador. With binoculars we would be able to see our hotel in Barra (a suburb of Salvador).

Our distance for the day is perhaps 20 to 30km, they included a ride through the streets of Salvador, which went quite well, a quick visit of Mercado Modelo (a craft and touristy knick-knack market of some size), a boat trip that threaded through the anchored cargo freighters of the bay, and a nice ride on the nice road that runs the length of Ilha de Itaparica. People are friendly and the weather, it didn´t rain on us, though it did rain on the hotel earlier today…

ACANNE are having their event on the island today as well. They arrived here around 9am, we got here around 2. We heard some loud drumming and berimbau as we cycled up out of Mar Grande, where the ferry disembarks. I think it was them.

It be da nexkt da’

It be the evening of the next day in truth. Today was more than twice yesterday but that´s just a round about way of saying we did bout’ 50km. Wei Ling asked if I wrote that the sun was shining and that that was the universe´s way of having a joke. I said I would.

It´s true too, it rained all day and stopped when we did.

We didn’t leave till late on account the weather bearing straight off the water and right to our room. It came like the waves with a rhythm pounded out on the tile roof. We didn’t wake till near seven neither on account of the bed so compfy. So, when I pushed past the door into the wind, tached past the window, held strong across the porch, then abandoning the reach to run straight down to the breakfast table, I was delighted by spread and a might embarrassed.

The evening before we had been long in talking with Nicole and her family, part of the conversation had been to organise breakfast for 6. The squall that swept me to the breakfast table was at 6 somewhere out over the bay of all saints, that being my translation of Baía de Todos Os Santos. It had most likely crossed the beach as I checked the time, it was then 6.42 and at 6.43 It caught me as I opened the door.

So it was that I was a might embarrassed, we had laid plans with our Swiss hostess and then were not punctual about meeting them. Luckily, Nicole is lovely, forgiving, and a 9 year veteran of the Brazilian war on punctuality.

Her parents were visiting from Switzerland and as we were the only guests the night before our time at the pousada was more like a homestay. Have I mentioned how nice the rooms were.

Well we then went to..

After pousada de Nicole we rode a rainy day to the charming little town of Nazare. There is no shortage of charming little towns in and along the coast south of Salvador. They are all non-uniformly cobbled with charming old blocky buildings and irregular streets.  Often there are beautiful old churches with broad steps leading steeply up to the arched door. Broad yet narrow steps just begging for you struggle up them on your knees, perhaps during some scared celebration or at the end of some long pilgrimage. I wish I had seen something of the like, but I only read about it in my guidebook.

The next day was to Ituberá which had a nice waterfall, then on to Ubaitaba which had a wealth of pousadas, and then to Buerarema which was a small town.

Hills and Overheard Conversation

Bits of conversation are often overheard, the ear catches some words easier than others, the word bicicleta is an example of a word often heard, what else was said, I have no idea.

Here is another from Ubaitaba: I was waiting with the bikes and WL had just headed up to scout out the pousada. 3 kids of mixed age and height walked past and hearing us speak were discussing our talking.

One say to another “fala ingles… “ the dots are the bits I didn´t pickup.

So I says “ Sim, ingles”, which got their attention, so I followed with, “Fala Ingles?”

The tallest one caught in the headlights of my question uttered “Nao”.

So I says “Fala Portuguese”

The tall one still reeling from the first question uttered “Nao”.

His uptake was a jab in the ribs slower than his companions, gathering his wits he managed “eu falo Portuguese” as his friends laughed. It was mighty funny that was.

That was the end of the day, 15km earlier we had been atop a hill at a pousada and restaurant combo place. They wanted 100R for a room and 70R without Café da Mananha, Ridiculous!

That hill was notable for its outrageous pousada but it was keeping company with a great many other hills that we had climbed over the day. Atop that hill our average was somewhere down in the 13s, that’s slow, 15km later we had brought it up into the mid 14s, that’s still slow.

The hills began when we turned at the cobble streeted town of Cumara and headed inland to meet the BR-101. It is a 44km stretch of forested hills, generally good road and very steep hills. We climbed to just over 400m at our highest but that was incidental to the number of times we climbed. Anyone who likes hills should immediately book passage and all others should take a moment to appreciate the wondrous lack of incline they currently enjoy.

I wish I had counted the rises, so as to furnish some fantastic statistic, to further impress upon you the hilliness.

At one point I thought I was going to pass out from hyperventilation riding and puffing up the steep steep hill.

We have been for the last number of days since Nazaré been riding the “Costa de Dendé” The junction with the BR-101 marks the end of that coast. I am mostly sure another coast begins promptly where that one ends.

Dendé is used in the cuisine of Bahia, food which is quite famous in Brazil and abroad. It is a local kind of Palm Oil and riding along its namesake coast you can see piles of those palm thingies that contain the palm nuts that go to make the oil. Some are empty of palm nuts and others hold their orange fruit and await collection. All across the Brazil that we have ridden you can find bottles of Dendé oil, it seperates out to form 2 layers in the bottle, a clearer orange on top and murky brown on the bottom.

The Trouble with Pizza

The trouble with pizza is mosquitoes. This, while not immediately obvious, is the last act of the drama which is pizza. We had left Nazaré tolerably early and rode well through green grassy hills all up and down without anything much that could pass as flat. Reaching Valenca (that c is a cedilla not your regular garden c) it was raining like cats and dogs but close enough to lunch that we decided to grab a bite. We were gathering our bearings from underneath a large umbrella beside the river as the rain came down. Had we been riding well the rain would have re-wetted our clothes but being that there was the umbrella handy we joined some dry others to shelter awhile. The umbrella was one of several placed evenly along the white cobbled terrace that boarders the river or estuary, hard to know which. Facing across a rain drenched cobbled street was a pizza place and some other stores. The Pizza caught my eye, it would be a delicious thin crusted austere change from the noodles and rice we had been eating, the beans having meat cut through and therefore cut from the menu.

Unfortunately, the place wasn´t open till evening and so rather than give up the dream I immediately spotted 2 other signs for pizza. The first didn’t have pizza, not half what their menu offered. The next was pricey but alongside was a more reasonable “por quilo” that served pizza. The menu looked good, the price was not too high, Wei Ling opted for the “por kilo” and I the pizza. Wei Ling was polishing her plate trying very hard to eat slowly and like a ¨ lady¨ lady with the last grain of rice when the pizza arrived and its presentation was lacking. The taste was best augmented, or rather´ improved´ with quantities of mustard and the base was like bread, or cake. I finished it, even the olives.

Riding out from the town my stomach began to protest, I initially thought it was the olives, then the mustard, or mayo, or the cheese. Too many culprits and no way to prove which done wrong. We were rolling through plantations of palm, for dendé, and eventually I spotted a bus stop shelter that would serve for the rain coming down as well as a place to park my bike while I made my way in nature. It became one of those panic’d situations that follow bad food where I could set my bike straight, then the toilet paper was missing, then Wei Ling was determined to parcel out just the one roll, and my gloves were not coming off. I got through all that to run off amongst the undergrowth of the palm plantation.

Here is where the mosquitoes come to the situation. As I crouched there making things right the first mosquito slid sideways into view, unfortunately my business was not concluded that I could quit that grass spot hid from the road. The rain was misting down and the world seamed all over damp as several more mosquitoes waved into view. The attack began and I was fixed to the spot, retreat was not yet an option. My further struggles are best forgotten but that I returned to the bus shelter and Wei Ling with less faith in the world than before and had a hard time sitting comfortable for the afternoon.

Spanish Moss

Orange trees scattered spread across the forested hills, in places the trees tend to a dusty purple as smoke towards evening.

Sky Blue with Passing Clouds

Wei Ling figured before me that the TV advert was for a church. First It had b+w timelapse scenes of a city with words coming up… “Stress, Syndrome de Panico…” Then it switched to a blue sky with clouds rolling across and a message to the effect of “Where would you find relief…?”

Wei Ling guessed it with the blue sky; I just never imagined that a church would run a TV advert.

Well now, there be drama sure enough

So much has happened yesterday and partly today that there is drama sure enough. 

Yesterday I awoke feeling sprightly and was abed and not eating by dinnertime. Today, we rested in this most confusing of towns and I finished The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, Dover Thrift Edition, Unabridged.

Andrew had another what appeared to be renal colic.  So our day was cut short to the next closest town. However the town is 7km off road, while on the map it appears to be very close to the main road we were on.  Well, that wasn´t the first time our ´trusted´ map has misled us…  Andrew had a puncture going into the town, and when we finally found a reasonably priced pousada to stay, we were told the only room left was on the FOURTH floor…

Oh and it was the first one year on the road anniversary sure enough, and we recently passed 16000km, finally we are but slightly more than 1000km from Rio de Janeiro.

Seems as there was more but it’s a done now.

Our One Year Anniversary

Due to inadequate accounting of days one tally had a surplus and the other a deficit of days. The net result was that we celebrated 2 anniversaries for the singular event of us having cycled for a year!

The first is mentioned concisely enough above. Oh and the being abed by dinnertime was hopefully the last kidney stone. Good riddance I say.

So on the second anniversary of the passing of one year on the bike we witnessed several phenomena that make this our favorite anniversary.

A Arcoiris Sobre A Lua

You just can not make this kind of stuff up.

After we had lugged our luggage down 4 flights of stairs and quit the curly city of Camacan our first stop was a roadside chocolate vendor. It was homemade chocolate made in the home using coco grown on the premises and complimented by a cold coconut.

It was mostly hills all day but we managed 100km none the less and after the first hour it was mostly all farm land. That first hour was forest and acai plantations. Towards the end of the second hour we crossed a river and climbed an enormous hill. Atop that hill was a small but perfectly stocked town.

We set down beneath a shadey tree next to the circus and had a staring match with a horse. The horse had blinkers and we never stood a chance. Beneath us leafcutter ants carried away the better part of the tree. I wonder how they can store so much leaf in their caverns burrowed into the ground for the line of ants is long and each carries a leaf. Muting the noise of passing traffic was an artisans stand full of pleasantly rough wooden bowls and small berimbau, which would be berimbauinha I guess.

We elected not to take on provisions in the small well stocked town atop an enormous hill and took our bearings by the map which showed another small settlement not 8km distant.

Much later we found that place and had lunch on the top floor of a lovely pousada strewn with rose petals and little red love hearts. We didn’t stay though there was an afternoon still and that was all time to be riding.  Andrew hardly ate his lunch that day.  I don´t blame him, as it was the standard feijaos, macarraos, arroiz, e ensaladas.  But I was just stoked that they had feijaos not cooked with meat! So I ga… down my share pretty quickly.

After a series of hills we dropped down and down to a river that was damned but a kilometer from the bridge, I but glanced it as we passed due to the construction work being done on the bridge which had us riding towards a line of oncoming trucks. The construction workers pulled aside the red road cones at the last moment as we took shelter behind the cordon as the rigs rolled by. They were making or fixing a large hole in one side of the bridge.

The sun was turning golden to better appreciate the lateness of the day. Up from the river the road eased off a mite to allow a view towards the ridge it crested some kilometers away. The road ran out all the way to that lofty horizon. We were rolling along so slow that it was hard not to appreciate the way the golden light made precious every clump of grass grown tall beside the road. When we reached the ridge line we entered into the shadow of the cutting and passed over.

The far side was beautiful and everything ran down hill, the road ran down and we ran down, the hill sloped down and the sun came down. Everything was going down and it was glorious. A sign said we had but 3 km to go, then later it said one kilometer. It turned out to be but a “posto”, and the man there said the town was another 3km down the road.

As we rolled that last little way the day reached its zenith when a rainbow went over the moon. The moon which had made an early appearance low over a forest hill was then placed beneath a rainbow that arched over the hill the moon and most the rest of creation. The trees of the hill were made golden by the low evening light. The day was complete but still we had a few meters to ride.

In the town we found a pousada rather nicer than what we usually find. They wanted a sum rather nicer than we usually paid as well though Wei Ling made the price the much nicer and so found ourselves a room with character to spend our 365^th night on the road.

All in all it was a fittingly celebratory day and our thanks goes to all the parts that over a year or more came together to make this a wonderful year. To the moon a special thanks. To the small drops of condensation that broke the light of the evening sun, we honor you here. To the hills that rose up over millennia that we might roll down them and appreciate those moments, we owe you a debt of gratitude. To all of you that have made this year wonderful, we thank you.

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