Morro de São Paulo, the absolutely most amazing place on Earth

For this post, my style will change a bit. We left Friday morning with Murillo to go to a small island about 70 kilometers southwest of Salvador called Morro de São Paulo (which I announced in an earlier post). I’ll just list things I did there rather than a detailed order, since it was more magical than reality and I can’t really remember the order so well. Lots of distractions, action and alcohol.
Made the journey there in a made rush thinking we’d miss our ship only to wait for a half hour at the dock, rode to the island in a catamaran, met some cool people in a volunteer program called Cross Cultural Studies (CCS) named Amber, April, Christina, and Gary (from Bolivia, New York, North Carolina and Oregon respectively). Made an afternoon out of checking into our Pousada, or small hotel room, and touring the tiny island ourselves, saw a pavilion full of live jazz and African drum circles, danced and drank for hours under a full moon, hit a crazy, huge outdoor dance club called Funny Bar and shook our groove things to a great mix of American and Brazilian music, randomly met Murillo’s friend Thiago (the funniest person I’ve ever met), his brother Bruno, and Bruno’s girlfriend Lorena, took shots and waded in the bathtub-warm water after midnight (under the fool, er, full moon). Next day, we slept in, fought our voracious hangovers with a delicious and free breakfast courtesy of the Pousada, took an all-day boat tour of three nearby islands (one deserted with a nude beach and salty, violent waves, another with only about 5,000 square feet, and the other one called Gamboa was basically the most beautiful place on the whole planet hands down) with Thiago, Bruno and Lorena and some snotty Argentinian hoochies that Thiago knew, bumping loud techno and hip-hop the whole time on our private boat. Caught small crabs on the Gamboan beach with our hands, I got pinched, watched small white monkeys fight over fruit, bathed in silty red mud called lama that sprung forth from a natural spring on the side of some cliffs, met a bunch of exchange students there from Minnesota and Germany, ate a massive moqueca lunch and passed out for about an hour in the shade afterward, headed back to Morro to clean up and sleep, watched the sun set in a 490-year old Portuguese fort, went out again for dinner, more moqueca and about four caipirinhas each (the beginning of a very sauced night), window shopping for art and admiring the full moon, watching live reggae bands for a while, more dance floors, more exchange students, and finally sleep again at sunrise. Following a sleep deeper than death and shorter than breath, we ate another delicious breakfast and set out for Beach Four at low tide, fed fish as they swam all around us in the hundreds, received deep but painless cuts on the razor-sharp rocks, watched a guy windsurf like at the X Games, drank coconut water, did crosswords on the beach, ran about two miles with Murillo through high tide (I didn’t think I’d survive that portion of the trip) only to charge up a one-mile hill and ride a half-mile zipline called the Tirolesa. It’s at least 150 feet above the ocean and super long, quite the view. Then we ran back to meet with the rest of the gang, grabbed our bags from the Pousada and check out, ate a little before catching the catamaran home, thankfully bumped into our CCS friends, waited for about an hour with them for some technical issues to resolve themselves with the boat, and THEN began an epic journey home. Rather than a two-and-a-half hour boat ride to the dock in Salvador, here’s what actually went down: an engine broke on the catamaran for which we had tickets, so they boated us to the island of Itaparica about 30 minutes away, boarded us onto a bus, drove about 2 hours to the north side of the island, dropped us off at the wrong location where we waited for about an hour in line to get enough ferry tickets to ferry everybody across to Salvador at about 9:30 pm, waited another while for the ferry to let us on, crowded aboard the massive ship with a bunch of cars, other tourists, poor and tired people, watched a fight break out on the upper decks between some zealous soccer fans as they watched a Bahia versus Vittoria match, watched a lady puke from seasickness, drank a bunch of Skol beer that a guy was giving away since he couldn’t have it in his car when he drove off the ferry in Salvador, eventually made it back to mainland, got picked up by Murillo’s mom Teresinha, and made it home around midnight. Our four p.m. catamaran ride ended up with a 12 a.m. arrival time. But hey, it was still really fun all day. I heard some great jokes and told some great jokes in return, more material for the rest of my trip. There’s an expression here that says, paraphrased, “we locked up our travels with a golden key” to mean that the trip ended on a great note. Muro said that right as we made it to the dock on time in Morro, at four in the afternoon. I asked him if maybe he wanted to take that back when we got home to sleep at one the next morning.