Just a quick update on best bits of Maceio - Flew here from Salvador the other day with Sam, Gary and Colin. The Flight to Maceio from Salvador is cheap as chips and takes 45 mins however it was very turbulent and all the guys promptly fell asleep and left me to fret over whether the plane was to fall out of the sky! To top this the English spoken by the cabin crew was so bad I couldn’t even get the gist of what they were saying over the intercom thing... Been up for so long at this point I swear I began to hallucinate thinking I could hear English voices when in fact every one on the plane bar us was Brasilian and speaking Portuguese! Met up with Tiago and his friends Rogerio, Alan and Danillo etc that fist night and went for a non-alcoholic (all I could manage) beverage at a street cafe at 3am (7am English time) and had a chat. All of the guys are really nice and most speak very good English. Finally went to sleep at 4am and woke up after only 1 hour feeling like I'd slept for a lifetime (jet lag does funny things).

It's so very hot here it's unbelievable! Even the previous evening when we arrived it was 27C at 2am! So next day it had to be 37C at midday didn't it, I thought I was going to die I swear. Met the guys again and went to Praia do Frances which is a beautiful white sandy beach way out of the town (you can only get there by bus or car through the lagoon and marsh area) I sat under the parasol to frightened to get my pasty skin burnt, too right and all, Gary and Colin went surfing for a couple of hours and came back the darkest shade of pink I’ve ever seen! Sam, Tiago, and I had cocktails in pineapples and coconuts which were divine (see pics). All the guys wear Speedos here, Sam and I found this hilarious because we are simply not used to it! Tiago, Rogerio and Alan looked slightly concerned at our laughter! Went to the mall after to have some lunch and went to a buffet place of which there are so many which you pay by weight, I of course being the smallest had the most amount of food out of everyone, food so nice (mainly rice, beans, meat, fish, veggies, bread) waiting to see if it agrees with me now!! Bought my first pair of Havaianas, black with Brasilian flag on them, I'm so proud. 

That evening we went out to a bar (can't ram the name of) but I got pretty drunk and I blocked the toilets twice (keep forgetting no loo roll down the toilet in this part of the country!) and had shots of cachaca (pronounced cachasa as the last 'c' is supposed to have squiggly line underneath) which is an evil spirit made from sugar cane and is very popular here. Went to club called 'Life' where they give you little cards to pay for everything and you pay on the way out which is a bit bad because you could lose the card or have it nicked and you'd either have to pay a fortune to get out or wait till the end (5am) to see if it turns up! Plus you have no idea how many drinks you've had! They had a separate smoking room in this club which is bizarre and lots of ugly Brasilian guys said they loved me and one guy said how long do I pretend to be here, took me a while to realise he was trying to say how long do I intend to be here, a lot was lost in translation! However whilst drunk I seemed to be able to understand Rogerio who is the only one who doesn’t speak any English at all, perhaps exaggerated expressions and hand movements and the fact you can hear anyone in clubs anyway helped this!

Spent hangover day at Alan's house by his pool which I refused to get out of all day until that is food arrived in the form of steak and pizza. It's weird how everyone here lives with their parents until they get married pretty much. Went to Lopana after the pool, Lopana is a bar on the beach which serves the weirdest food, curry and potato soup with mussels in it and cheese and chocolate banana pudding! Had more of these Caipiroscas, liquid sugar, vodka, ice and crushed fruit, Sam loves them, I'm not so keen on the lumps of fruit making it hard to drink the drink as it absorbs everything!Snorkelled in the natural pools the other day (piscina naturale) and fed the fish, yellow ones, black and white, Sam was please as found a 'dory' look-alike, they have bars out there too, I swear this country loves their beer. This was the day that I got severely sunburnt to the point that it blistered, never again... It was an overcast day as well so it takes the pee!! Went to ice cream parlour to sort me out, have every flavour imaginable although I have to guess by colour (as don’t have sense of smell and cant read Portuguese) what the flavour is and you guessed it they charge by weight again! Internet cafes are a little scarce round here but finally found one and checked my email as had been itching to do so, why is that whenever people go away they go on the internet and contact people so much more than they did at home?!

Anyway I was feeling decidedly unwell at this point, not sure if severe sunburn, time difference, the heat or the food but I got that age old travellers illness...! Everyone’s gets it at some point or other, no ones safe!! That evening we went to what I call the cow restaurant as I cant remember the name of it (see pics of us all at long table), where they bring round big bits of meat from the grill to your table which was cool until they brought chicken hearts round... Ate some palm tree though and I wont be eating it anytime soon, tasted like blander pickled onion. We went to another bar that evening but I couldn’t drink and felt awful, but the others were all a bit pissed so stayed and ended up having a really good night despite being sober!

The day after that however I didn’t leave my bed until the afternoon (or when the budgies and other birds in the cages outside my bedroom window got too much). Gary, Sam and Colin went on a trip to Praia do Frances (again) and Praia do Gunga, a beach where apparently the ocean mixes with a freshwater lake and you can visibly see the 2 diff colours mixing, but I will never know what it looks like will I because I was bloody ill!!!!! On the last night we went to the lagoon for dinner and to say goodbye to all the guys and we had crab, prawns and fish, it was lovely sat right by the lagoon. We taught the guys some English swear words and they taught us a few Portuguese which I’ve forgotten now. There were huge ants in the toilet and they were under the toilet seat and everything so I was frightened to go! I’m going to have to get used to this though... God the food and alcohol is so cheap here and the people so nice, I don’t want to leave! Flight to Rio stops in Aracaju so have to land and take off one more time so that makes 4 plane journeys since leaving the UK.