Ewane & Maëlle no Brasil

10 years after west africa, we are now travelling through south america. This time, we have skype, facebook, twitter, instagram, tumblr… you’re not gonna miss us!! First stop Brazil. Beleza !

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Behind the scene

Well, it’s been several months that we have been telling you how Brazil is awesome, shiny, how we love it up are coming the hours of reality check. There is no such place as paradise on earth. For a traveller it could look like it most of the time but if you really want to know a country you have to understand what’s happening around you, otherwise you choose to stay in a f***ing touristic place where people will mainly see you as a credit card or/and a good night party.

Brazil is not “awesome” mainly Brazilian would say. “Brazil is fucked”, they might even say and they would not necessarily be wrong. 

Long story short, the climate is as following nowadays in Brazil: a scandal of corruption implicates the actual government and a semi-public Brazilian multinational  energy corporation Petrobras. Brazil is facing a huge energy crisis due to the lack of water. Many floods have terribly damaged a part of Sao Paulo. Every day, murders of young black people by policemen are denunciated... and I guess this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

-i had an awesome picture to put here, but well you know, technology...-

Honestly, when I hear all that I understand that what makes differences between two countries (except of course all the history and cultural stuff) is also the way it is fucked. Clearly we don’t have the same kind of problems in France, surely we do have some. Not saying one is better than the other, hard to opine between plague & cholera.

France would be a proud spoiled child that keeps ignoring lessons of the past -lessons that inspired a lot of other countries, while Brazil would be a fresh released teenager full of hope and disillusionment. 

Brazil, France and hopefully many more countries have a lot of people fighting for them and this since hundreds years. It could not stop now especially when we have to face people whose ideas are dramatically opposite to ours and most of the time to the principles of respecting each other.   

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Barcelona had Gaudi, 

Niemeyer was born, he was born in Belo Horizonte

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Minas Gerais, food, culture and waterfalls

State of Minas Gerais is 588 383 km² big and counts more than 20 595 000 citizens. Its name and history comes from the great amount of precious stones such as gold, diamond and emerald. Sadly, what goes with the quest of these precious stones and marked history of Brasil and especially Minas Gerais is slavery. Long & sad story short, the result of hundreds years of slavery are a great diversity in the population and colonial cities that seems stuck in history such as Ouro Preto which was admitted in the UNESCO historical patrimony.

 Coming soon : war, rock, water, sex, hoopa

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Test : ZOOM Checked, zoom operational Prepare your body for summer.

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& then we split

Brasil is too big, we had to share the work. One can only leave Boipeba with great planned ahead. Maëlle decided to go north through Savaldor and reach Ceara Coast: Jericoacoara. Ewane decided to go south discovering more of the baianese coast before taking a plane in Vitoria, Espirito Santo for other adventures. You’ll read soon how we failed and enjoyed our times!

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Keep Calm & Canto Do Morere

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Did you know... that relation to time is completely different in Bahia than any other Brazilian state?

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From Morere to Cova da Onça. and back. Beach, Mangrove, Forest, a classic day on the island. 

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In the middle of a six hours walk in Boipeba's forest, Maëlle : “It smells like something’s burning”, Ewane turning to her sister with despair :“Our guide actually just lighted a cigarette”.

Maëlle partygirl by night, naturopathe by day.

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Something is definitely happening between Maëlle Bernadette and dogs...

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Morere, recovering place for everyone... and if you get bored with healthy and simplicity, you can always go party in the Bar Das Meninas Boipeba.

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From Boipeba to Morere, the recovering walk to peaceland.

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Boipeba, simple way to Morere

Surely the island of Boipeba will have charmed and maybe traumatised us a little with its beauty and atmosphere. How hard is it to leave Bahia now that we discovered one more of its paradise ! We got to Boipeba with and thank to Lucas. When we talked about Morro de São Paulo,  he just said :"you should rather go to Boipeba !". We had no idea then, we would end up going there with him a few days after. To go to Boipeba island,  just South of the island where Morro is, you take a boat from Valenca. The rapid boat (a lanche) is a 40 minutes long ride through the mangroves,  the longest one takes about 4 hours. We did not try this one, i figure it is pretty much the same but you get more time... Check travellers,  boat lovers,  maybe something to consider. Boipeba is a quite calm but traveller ready village (still no cash machine), with beautiful beaches and thankfully car deprived. You can adopte the lazy approach taking a truck to Morere beach, twenty minutes from the city of Boipeba (also available with a 10 minutes motocycle ride in the sand). We decided to negociate to leave our biggest bagback at a pousada in town, before getting the beach road, a one hour walk to Morere, a sweet afternoon if you take time to chill and wait for the low tide. Nothing can quite compare with Morere, serendipity of a town where the tide and moon produce the main attraction daily. 

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Morro De Sao Paulo : a walk on beaches from the first to the fourth, back and forth until we got hurt into the mangrove and decided it was Caipirinha time, after a 3 hours walk, we deserved it!

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A story of David & Goliath

In this version of the story, Goliath would be an abusive and loudly party maker while David who would have nothing against partying but would goes way more quietly and discreetly.  This would be the story of two islands southern of Salvador, in the state of Bahia. 

This is a story of Boipeba and Morro de Sao Paulo. The second one, the bigger, is more famous and offers to its visiting tourists great long beaches and animated nightlife. Easy to understand, when you arrive in Morro de Sao Paulo, you can read banners telling “Forget Ibiza, here is Morro de Sao Paulo”. Not sure people that goes there knows Ibiza, I have to admit I dont, but well if they say so. Morro de Sao Paulo counts about 5 beaches, easy to recognise since they are named : First beach, Second beach, Third beach and go on. There are natural pools which I did not like that much. After enjoying swimming with fishes in Barra Grande, the trouble water full of hurting coral of Morro de Sao Paulo was not that pleasant. About the party? Well not much my thing to go to expensive bar that has nothing original to offer : “wouhou let’s go listen to bad electronic music at the expensive Buda Bar, for sure that would be a unique experience”. Come on! We live in Paris, been there done that! Since we already knew about Boipeba before visiting Morro de Sao Paulo, it was not a hard choice to decide to go back to Boipeba. What about Boipeba? Let us tell you more about it in a coming post!

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Life is a beach they said...

When you start tasting beaches, it becomes hard to stop, you can quickly feel the urge to always go further in the search and dive in the beach bliss of life... That’s how we decided to go to Marau and eventually reached Barra Grande.  

Doris rocked this road.

Barra Grande is just a part of the peninsula, several awesome and sometimes empty beaches are “easily” accessible. From Ponta Do Muta to Lagao Azul (which name was obviously inspired by a deep dark nuance of blue), we escaped in a feast of serenity. Our heart goes to Taipu De Fora (familiarly renamed #patatedeforain) and its natural pool where you can spend hours swimming with fishes (well fishes dont really care swimming WITH you but it’s nice thinking you are all together). With the breath of the wind and the heat of the sun... refreshing dives in the water with the blue fish and its friends were the simplest pleasure.

That was it, pretty cool life, sun, beach, fresh fruit juice, Crazy French Sisters and Lucas. Sitting in the white thin sand, Lucas offering travels in time and culture, telling with passion stories about Brazil, from Tiradentes to Lampiao é Maria Bonita... Dream in a dream getting deeper in the wealth of young Brazilian culture. Time of chill, fun and great pleasures.