Fuck doors

This is a photo I have been meaning to take for a long time. Anyone familiar with Engrish.com will appreciate this post. It seems someone may have clued them in to the idea that Fuck is not the greatest name to use, because in the 3 years that have passed since I moved here, they have added an SA to the end of the name. It's still funny, but not as, since you no longer see a whole bunch of "fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,..." stretching across the packaging. Some how having a FUCKSA door is not quite as intriguing, but still the photo is worth something.

Christmas decorations

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, etc.... It's 85 and humid here in Bahia. I had something eloquent to say about our decorations, but I have forgotten what it was. In any case, here is one of our many Christmas trees around the city. Not many of them are real trees, in fact, most are not even trees at all, but things in the shape of trees. This one is made of light up stars and is on the Orla near Pituba.

Caldo de Cana

Mmmm, sugar water! Just what everyone finds refreshing on a hot day while walking along the beach. Quite literally, this sugar cane juice is made by shoving the whole sugar cane down a sort of wood chipper / juicer and catching the juice coming out the bottom. It's not bad, you know, tastes like sugar because that's what it is. The residual parts of the cane come out looking like wet cotton fluff. I personally prefer coconut water, but this drink is popular enough to find at least half as many caldo de cana vendors as agua de coco.

Alternative modes of transportation

Nothing really educational in this post. These kids happened to be running down the side of the road with the wheelbarrow in action. They may even be playing, although I doubt it. More likely they are off on some errand or trying to find a quicker way to get somewhere.

Horses Xing

Not that you would ever see a sign indicating that anywhere around here. Although I was unaware of it at the time I was living in the States, there is some kind of law prohibiting farm animals inside city limits. I never thought much about it, but it would seem rather striking to see chickens and pigs wandering around down town Lansing or Grand Rapids. There is no such law here, however, and I would be hard pressed to think of a day that I have gone out on the street here and not see at least one rooster on the sidewalk or a horse tied up on the side of the road, nibbling the grass. The farther outside the city you go, the less restrained the animals are, until you start finding them wandering around on the road, just waiting to scare the bajeezes out of you as you come around a sharp turn. I only hit one deer with my car in MI and I cannot imagine the damage a full grown horse would do to the tiny cars we drive around here. Luckily, the pot holes are so bad in most of the roads, the speeds you need to drive at will most likely allow you to stop in time.

In the middle of nowhere

These photos are more of the Praia do Forte area. We happen to have some friends who live there - not in the main store littered walking area plaza, but across the highway and back up the back roads a ways. This is the main stretch of road to get to and from their house. Most of the rest of it is more the state of a two-track, complete with pot holes and large ponds in the middle of it (see below). I would say this would be a good place to buy a small lot and retire to, but development has picked up so much that I doubt it would be quite this nice and secluded 10 years from now.

Moto-Taxi

Outside of the big city area of Salvador, taxis are far and few between. It just is not cost effective to run a large taxi service with cars in areas where people don't need to take transportation to many places during the day. What you end up with, then, are motorcycle taxis, which will take you short distances on the back of a motor bike for a relatively low cost. This particular stand is in Praia do Forte, right in the middle of the public walking area full of little shops and restaurants. There isn't much to do in Praia except walk around and window shop, go to the beach, or go to the TAMAR area. If you get sick of one beach, you can take a moto-taxi to another one. In the mean time, the drivers can sit here on their nice covered platform and drink beer.

Maintenance

Obviously, all lights need to be changed once in a while. You know, the ones in your house are so easy to do, but what about your friendly neighborhood traffic light? I know these things need to be fixed once in a while, yet I could not think of any time in my memory that I actually SAW one being worked on, or a light bulb being changed, or anything, in the States. It was just like some kind of magical state that they remained in perfect working order, always.

Not here. This scene is taking place during the end of rush hour here, on one of the only TWO major routs to get ANYWHERE>>> The Orla. And not only did they decide to do this one particular light (I cannot recall if it was burned out, but it might have been) at this time, but they proceeded to do the rest of them in this stretch over the next several days, always it seems, at the same time. Just to give any non-locals a perspective : This is a two lane in each direction road that runs along the ocean - no way to turn off or go around. One lane was completely blocked by this truck.

The two lives of Pineapple

In case you never got to see a real pineapple growing.... Here, they can be both breakfast and landscaping!

Rock samba

This little scene was our background music for our day in Imbaccai, just North of Praia do Forte. A small river meets the ocean here, and it is dotted with barracas and bahianas with acaraje. Most of them have tables in the river and people sit partially submerged, eating a drinking. On this section of the river, there was a large rocky area, which was covered with people with drums and shakers playing some kind of samba for everyone's enjoyment. It was like a large jam session.

Occupation

On our way through Canela/Graça yesterday, we passed through the UFBA area and came across this building. It is the dean's office, I believe. More information can be found here. Most federal things here are doomed to have strikes, be closed at odd hours, etc. I can think of at least 3 times since I moved here that I have heard that the teachers of UFBA have been on strike for one reason or another, usually having to do with benefits and pay I assume. It seems the students are fed up with something (according to the website, it has something to do with "political student assistance" but I am not really clear on it) and so have taken over this building in protest. You can't see well, but the Brasilian flag's "ordem e progresso" have been replaced by "vergonha e desumanidade" and there is something about "robam" taped over one of the stars.

Verticalization

If you have driven around big cities, you have probably found that not all neighborhoods are created equal. There is generally a section of tall buildings, some shorter suburbs, and then houses in the outskirts. In really big cities, maybe you have seen mostly high rises like this one.

In fact, here in Salvador, the city was built, then grew, then rebuilt in it's new borders, then grew, and so we have several places that contain the tall tall buildings with almost every other kind of neighborhood in between. Our new epicenter for tall buildings in the last 5 to 7 years has been Pituba. Just since 2003 or so a few dozen new apartment buildings have sprung up, all high rises selling views of the ocean (at least until the next high rise is built in front of it). This has a way of wreaking havoc on the already established environment, causing massive heat bubbles where no ocean breeze can pass, or strange traffic flow because of increased rich commuters. Unsurprisingly, people generally do not want to see it happen to their nice-non-high-rise neighborhoods. There was recently a protest not far from the site of where this photo was taken, in Patamares, against the "verticalization" of the area. At the moment, this is the only high rise in the area - so marked as of yet that you can actually see the shadow it casts on google maps (search for Patamares, Salvador, Bahia, Brasil), while no other building in the area casts such shadow. There are signs announcing the planned construction of at least 2 other buildings just on this street, so it's a valid concern. But of course, why have a bunch of open land when you can build huge buildings on it...


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A valid, sad reason

Granted, this shot is over a month old. I delayed posting it out of respect for who ever was at the end of this long line of cars that we sat in for almost an hour. It is not uncommon to get stuck in long lines of traffic that seem to appear for no reason at all, or because of some political type reason, like a blitz. This was our encounter on Paralella late one night. Often this stretch is plagued with traffic like this because of either the FTC college site or the Wet and Wild concert venue. We figured that was probably the case when we got stuck in this line, but as we finally got to the end we started to smell a horrible stench, and came upon a body in the middle of the stretch of 4-6 lanes of traffic, covered with a sheet. It was rather shocking, even though this is not the first dead body in a road I have seen in my life. And considering it was stinking so badly, I imagine it had been there for some time. Apparently only the morgue can come to remove a body, and there is some paperwork involved, so the long line of cars probably continued to pass it for some time after we did, waiting for the red tape to be cut. For a few nights after we passed it, I couldn't sleep well, and kept seeing the strange position of the legs in my head. Rather awful, and yet so much a part of this reality.

Morning Rituals

7 AM is a very busy time here in Salvador - people on their way to work, kids on their way to school, and delivery trucks are out in storm, leaving their goods where ever they are needed, often in the middle of major traffic routes.

Here, for example, is our coconut distribution service. Besides the local kids who collect them and sell them individually, there are companies that "harvest" the coconuts and bring them into the city in big trucks that may have "DISK côco" painted on them (DISK is what you call truck delivery; we have DISK banana, DISK sugar cane, DISK gas...). Unfortunately, as traffic was moving, you can just barely see there are two guys with large metal shopping carts, loading up coconuts to take to their stands which I assume must be somewhere nearby. This particular delivery was being made near a bus stop on Tancredo Neves Ave, one of the main veins (even shown on Googlemaps as a yellow road, so you know it's a serious route) of the city. Not that we would be concerned about traffic slowing....

Water doesn't grow on tress, but we have DISK water as well. This truck is loaded every day from the distribution center building, or maybe vice versa, I have never been sure. Nice clean water, coming out of nice blue bottles. Yet not more than 50 yards from this nice clean water waiting to arrive in your home, is a small river that is so full of garbage and sewage that you can barely walk past it without passing out from the fumes on a hot day. And, I might add, it is populated by dwellings of the lower class who must be immune to the smell by now. At least this DISK, on Orla - another major route to everywhere, parks on the sidewalk instead of in the road...

For sale

There is no shortage of abandoned buildings and homes here, even in the "nicer" neighborhoods like Caminho das Árvores and Pituba. Some fall victim to squatters who can enter and live in a property for some time and then claim it as theirs because they are occupying it. Still others remain untouched except for the signs spray painted here and there and the graffiti added some time afterwards. These places have been abandoned since I moved here, but perhaps now they will find an international buyer since I am posting their photos on the site (*smirk*).

The world of EFL

I have been sitting on this photo for a while, trying to wait until I got several photos of English schools and then could post a kind of series, but I am demorando too much, so the series will be rather disjointed.

You can't walk through a barrio here without tripping over an English school or two. Every Brasilian studies English in their regular school, but often it is not taught in a way that allows for a student to get much out of it apparently, and most attend a secondary English school in the afternoons. At the end of these courses (can take anywhere between 3 and 6 years to complete) a student generally "graduates" with some sort of certificate declaring them to speak English (although I suspect this is rarely the reality).

Because of this huge market, there are big schools with several branches (ACBEU, CCAA, Cultura Inglesa, etc) and other schools with only one or two branches (too numerous to name). Many of them seem to choose the colors of red, blue, and yellow to decorate and designate their schools, like this one here called Skill. The buildings can range in all sizes, but many seem to be rather on the small side to be a "school." I have only ever been inside of two, both of which were on the large side, so I cannot imagine how a smaller school building is set up in terms of class size or number of classes available.

The makings of a fun afternoon

Welcome back!

This shot was just too good to pass up. Some friends of ours live in a rather rustic condominium towards Itapua. It's full of kids who play soccer in the street and pot holes and a couple of stray dogs. This past weekend when we went to visit, it also had a large Skol (a popular Brasilian beer that I personally think tastes like ass) cooler in the middle of the street next door to a really interesting chopper that vaguely reminded me of a dune buggy and may even be designed for use on the beach. Unfortunately it was not plugged in...

The state of the world

Of all the nice photos I could have taken on my travels that show how incredibley insane and annoying air travel is here - I was on vacation and I did not. But let me just tell you that I spent more time in airports than I would have liked and sat in a terminal for hours with no flights leaving or arriving and thousands of people just sitting around. I will get some photos moving here soon though, rest assured, just as soon as school starts and I am able to think strait.

This week in Bahia goes on vacation

I know it seems like I must be doing it all the time, due to my sporatic posts over the last few months, but now I am going on a actual vacation - out of the country. So, obviously I won't be able to post anything until I get back, unless it is of something other than Bahia, which would, really, defeate the purpose of this blog. So, just to hold you all over for a while, here are several photos to ponder until my return in July.

As you may or may not know, the months of May, June, and July are winter here. Winter means rain and sun in the same ten minute stretch with no way to be assured that you will remain dry if you leave the house without an umbrella, no matter what the sky looks like in the morning, or what the forecast (hahaha) says. Most of the time, there is so much rain that the streets flood a bit and slow down traffic. And no matter what time of year it is, drivers seem to feel rain merits more cautious driving (hahaha), so you will likely be later than you plan if you head out in the rain. This particular door has nothing to do with the story, other than that the shot was taken in the rain. I thought it was a particularly nice picture, somewhere in Brotas.



This photo is particularly nice because of the nice "late" day sun shining on select spots on the building (late day being about 4pm, sun setting around 5:30ish), as well as showing the ingenius "jeito"for older building adaptations to electrical connections. Coming from somewhere out of the shot is a direct connection to the wires running electricity into this particular building - one connection obviously is somewhat planned, because you can see the glass fuses on the side of the building. The other, however, comes from I'm not sure where and goes directly into the corner of a window to supply power to a store that probably didn't have any connections before. Rather than breaking through walls and doing costly renovations, the easiest way to get your power is to go around the outside. Not astetically pleasing, but very common, even in newer buildings (our downstairs bathroom uses this route for an over head light, and it was built in the late 80's!).



You can buy almost anything you want on the street. The most common is pirated CDs and DVDs. Just yesterday I saw that Shrek 3 is already out for sale on the street, along with Ocean's 13. There seems to be no way to prevent it, at least in this country, and guys selling these illegal copies are almost as common as window washers. This one is stationed next to a bus stop, as vendors often are (there and at traffic lights). I have no idea why no one ever gets arrested for doing this, but I have never heard of it. I suppose it's better to be selling something, however illegal, instead of stealing.


And last but not least....

This great green tunnel is the entrance to the Salvador Airport, where I will be headed tomorow afternoon for an 18+ hour journey north. It's kind of a landmark and very memorable. This great green forest is made entirely of bamboo (it grows wild here, all over, who knew?) and goes about 3/4 of a mile (I think). It's quite attractive and makes you have the urge to pop out and take a few pictures, except that you might get run down by the other passing motorists who drive like bats out of hell through it. I have a friend who actually did wander around being photographed here, naked, as she told me, and was almost arrested.

Urban Cowboy

It's not terribley unusual here to see horses, or any kind of farm animal/livestock, within city limits on a regular basis. People keep them all over, and they are left grazing the grasses at the side of major roads, sometimes tied up, sometimes not, and are frequent road hazzards for unsuspecting motorists if they happen to think the grass on the other side might be tastier than where they are. Less common, at least in city limits, is the cowboy riding along the street (other than cops). This guy wasn't really riding in the street, but on the sidewalk between the lanes in each direction. He even had a saddle, which you usually don't see, and seemed dressed for the part. The only thing missing here is the cellphone he was chatting on right before I managed to drag out my camera.

Tree trimmers

I have been sitting on this photo for about 2 weeks for some reason. Just too lazy to log in and upload it I guess, that and the constant Ju distraction is making it difficult to sit down and finish anything online in a consistant time frame.

These are the tree trimmers of Coelba (electric company). Not that you can usually see the electric lines from the street anyway, but the overgrown trees do seem to become too overgrown and then they show up and trim peices off here and there at odd hours, like 7 am on a Sunday. There were 5 guys in this truck. In this photo, two of them were somewhere else picking up branches off the ground and dragging them either to this truck or into piles on the street. I have no idea what conditions allowed for one branch to enter the truck while others were left behind. There did not seem to be any commonly observable rule.

The truck would slowly drive along the street, stop under a random tree and extend this rickety ladder and I would not have trusted to climb on. One guy climbs up, jiggling the ladder all the way up, and starts cutting branches - with a large (and probably very very sharp) machete. This makes the shakey contraption wiggle even more and I feared I was going to witness some underpaid worker fall to his death or permanent handicap. After the branch was sufficiently hacked off with the giant knife, it would either drop to the ground where perhaps another worker would retrieve, or it would be somehow hooked on the wires you see attatched to the ladder, and shimmied down into the back of the truck. A neat contraption, but I wouldn't want to climb it and I bet in the States you'd have to sign about 30 papers stating you wouldn't sue anyone if you took off your arm somewhere in this process.

The rainy season

And so begins winter time. Supposedly arctic air is pushing up from the south, making us windy and cooler here. It was almost so cold I didn't want to shower this morning. It is not infrequent to see people dressed in jackets, hats and scarves in weather like this - outfits much akin to a brisk fall day in MI, right along side people dressed like those in this photo. Today, I wore long sleeves, a long skirt, and I seriously considered if I should take a jacket or not. When I got home, I had hot cocoa. Tonight I will probably sleep with a blanket - it's only like 75! Brrrrrrrr.....

Mosquitos beware

Long time no post. I have no real excuse other than lack of inspiration, until this week.

Not the best picture, I know. If you look closely, you will see a white truck with a sort of "sprayer" on the back, blowing out a smokey substance that hangs in the air for some time after it passes. This is the public health department's "Contra Dengue" movement. Several times a year, they send people to your house to walk through, put insecticide of some kind in your drains, and check all the places in your house where you might have standing water where mosquitos could lay eggs. Apparently they also send a truck around to blow mosquito killing fumes into the trees in residential areas. What the truck is spraying, I have no idea. Years of working for MSU Entomology made me terribley paranoid of things being sprayed out of the back of trucks to kill insects. Yet there were people walking around on the street as this truck went by, and they seemed unfazed.

The smoke hangs in the air a bit and I imagine settles on the leaves and the ground, doing it's job. How much of it is in my lungs?

Borracharia

Need tires? Just look for the sign made of a tire, or a large stack of them at the side of the road. Looking for new tires? Probably won't find them here. At least, it doesn't seem like many non-fully automated with lifts and what not stores sell new ones. If it doesn't look like a typical USA style tire store, you will probably have to go for the new used tire, which is much cheaper and more common. These hole in the wall stores are much more common than the fully automated ones. They can patch your tires, replace them, buy your used ones, you name it. Looks like this one does bike tires as well. Shame the bus got in the way of the cool sign made of a tire. Oh well.

(singing) The itsy bitsy anty....

No, it's not dirt. What you are looking at are the tinyest ants I have ever seen. They are by far the most irritating insect that infests homes here in Brasil (beating mosquitos only because at least there is a repelant for those). They work just as fast as the super speed ants upstairs, but they are always around, and are on everything, even me. Ever feel that tickle that might be a loose hair touching your arm? Nope, it's an ant. And that itchy feeling on your neck? Also an ant. Tickel in your nose or ear? Probably an ant. I can't figure out how to get rid of them - the smaller they are, the more ellusive they are. I wouldn't mind them so much if the didn't also populate the trash cans as well as investigave my table and Ju's high chair tray (which is where they are in this picture). They have sort of artistically surrounded some spilled juice here, but that doesn't really add anything credible to their CV in my book.

Stairway to nowhere

This is a stairway on my street. It used to go up to another street that runs along the top of the hill, but has long ago been walled up and blocked. Actually, there is a doorway with a large metal grate over it, with bricks walling it up behind it, so it seems it was sort of open after the initiall walling. There is another such stair way farther into the neighborhood that is in such a state that I don't even dare walk on it - full of holes, caved-in sections, and plants and trees growing out of every crevice. This one doesn't appear to be in too bad of shape, but I have not tried to investigate it thorally. The city is full of these funny little used-to-be-a-street-or-passage-but-was-blocked-for-some-unknown-reason things. Does it add to the charm? You be the judge.

Yeah, and old picture, deal with it

Due to the new "shopping" opening up on the other side of Tancredo Neves, Iguatemí is expanding. It has already been stated that there will not be enough parking for this new mall, nor will the traffic flow be lessened or helped by the numerous road renovations and expansions and confusions near by. So to compensate for the future competition for consumers who have little or no money, a new and improved parking ramp is being built to lure them by want to easy car access. Never mind that Iguatemí is still trying to fight the city to allow them to charge R$5 per car per park....

Pop

This is my dish towel. In case you can't tell, that is supposed to be a chicken on the top, and underneath is a nice row of eggs waiting to be eaten in their little egg holder cups. I remember when I was a kid, I loved having a hard boiled egg to eat for breakfast in that little cup. I thought it was so cool. Now they seem to be obsolete; I'm sure no one gives them as wedding presents anymore, and I had not seen them in stores in a long time. I have no idea if they have ever existed in Brasil, but they at least exist here in memory in my kitchen. When I first moved here, I thought this towel was so strange, and was baffled by the "Engrish" on the bottom of it. So much in fact, that I believe I already wrote about it once in my other blog. Eggs are Pop? In Michigan, pop is a carbonated drink, which made it even more funny to me. There are many other great examples of English here, perhaps I will begin a series...

Rain brings out all manner of creatures

Today we have some rain photos. It has been raining pretty much everyday since last week. It looks like it's going to continue to rain all the way through Carnaval which officially started in Bahia on Wednesday night.

First, a photo I took earlier and forgot to post. The rain seems to put everything on the move here, so I was only somewhat surprised to see a frog resting quietly in the cats' water bowl first thing in the morning. Actually, judging from the amount of water on the floor around the bowl, I suspect Lela was trying to get it out of there for some time, but some how proved unsuccessful. It's hard to see from the photo, but he (she?) has a lovely bright yellow speckled with black spots under the back legs that my husband insists is the poisen he (she?) carries for protection. We poured the bowl out in the garden, and the frog hung out under a cactus for another 10 minutes before disappearing.




Carnaval has begun in Bahia, more specifically here in our condo. Last night someone threw a Carnaval themed birthday party that lasted at least until 2AM, which is when some woman went screaming/laughing by our front window and woke me up. We get to "participate" in all the parties because we are right next to the pool, so we can either sleep through it, or roast with all the windows closed (although this only muffels the sound). The confettie and streamers are all over this morning, sticking to walls and sidewalks in the rain. There is even quite a bit of it in the pool, along with these strings of balloons so common at parties here. Rain won't ruin anyone's parade at this time of year.

What is it?

I just don't know. This strange construction seems to be made entirely of cement and is being erected inside a nature preserve in Busca Vida. This picture just doesn't do it justice. It seems to be a boxcar in the style of Frank-Loyd-Wright-meets-Salvador-Dali-kind-of-esk. There do no seem to be any roads to it and we didn't see any movement indicating an inhabitant. I have no idea what it's doing there, since I thought no one was allowed to build on or walk around in these federal preserves....

It's 78% of what you breath

Pick your non-poison. Air, like in the States (at least in some places) is free, but Nitrogen will cost you up to R$2 extra. Supposedly it will make your tires last longer by not allowing them to heat up so much while driving all over this hot hot city in the summer - an important detail where potholes the size of the car itself are not so "news worthy" as they should be. Sounds like a good deal, right? But how much longer will your tires last? No one seems to know. Another important point - no mixing allowed: once you choose N2 as your preferred gas, you have to stick with it. If you happen to be low and go to a station that doesn't have nitrogen available, you'll have to completely drain your tires and refill them with air. The infrequency N2 pumps in the city is what prevents us from putting it to the test.

Smart FUZZY!

I have no anicdotes to go with this photo, only to say I took it on Paralela (our sort of highway in the city) on Sunday and thought it was quite funny. And the fox is cute too, even sideways...

Beware of snake!

Just on the outskirts of the city, one can easily find poisonous snakes - usually coral snakes to be exact. They are usually the main reasoning behind the trimming of grass and maintaining of landscaping, lest you be walking through your "natural" yard one morning and step on one, resulting in death. It's also a good reason not to just go walking into someone's private property if it's not regularly maintained. This sign is one of several strung up around some beach front property that appears to owned but not lived on - "soon to be developed." Between this and the barbed wire everywhere, I can only assume they mean to keep out squatters or others who might think "hey, let's go check this place out because no one lives there." The question remains as to if the owners mean to warn against wild snakes that might be in the property or a snake they put there themselves to protect the property, because the wording here "careful snake" (or more colloquially "beware of snake") is similar to the "cuidado cãe" (more less the USA equivalent to "beware of dog").

Razor tip sharp

A sweet even scale of notes coming from a simple pan pipe signals the arrival of the knife sharpener (the "call"). This guy wheels his sharpener around the neighborhoods, sharpening your scissors, your knives, your machetes, anything metal that needs it. For about R$3 an object, you can make all your cutting and slicing and hacking apparatuses like new. This is a lot less than buying new scissors and knives and machetes. The sharpener is a foot pedal contraption that must work somewhat like old sewing machines and that any freshman engineering major could probably build, yet I could not explain it to you (you know us language people...). For a video of my knives and scissors being sharpened click here.

Um, dois, tres!

Like we have seen before, you can buy just about anything you have a hankering for on the street. This is Tonho and he is a "historia" as my husband would call him, meaning he's been around a long time. You want to know anything about Salvador, he could probably tell you; he has been walking the streets selling pipoca about 18 years or so. He remembers our neighborhood before it was populated, he remembers the old indian who had a bar around the corner (who cursed the land when he was kicked off and no shop has survived there since), he remembers when there when the Centro was actually the centro and not on Tancredo Neves... He walks the streets with a large bike horn attatched to his cart (bike horns are the "call" of popcorn - every vendor has a song; see Capelinha for another example), honking away, keeping an eye out for crazy drivers with his sideview mirror. He sells three types of things - popcorn with molasses (just like carmel corn!), plain popcorn, and candy in his divided mobile store. Should you want to buy something, you need only yell "Pipoca!" when you hear the bike horn.

Good Omen

This is by far the coolest thing I have ever taken a photo of, in my opinion. I wish I could have taken a photo of the actual event, but evidence is good enough.

These two paths here are the tracks of a sea turtle that came ashore and layed eggs sometime after 2 AM on New Years day, right in front of the house we were staying at in Busca Vida (and passed right over where I had fallen asleep with Ju earlier in the evening - good thing I moved, lest she had been scared off). The one on the right is the path in and the one on the left is the path out. Where the two converge is the laying site.

A TAMAR (the sea turtle project in Praia do Forte) guy came riding by on his bike, saw the paths, told my husband the story (I was still sleeping), checked the eggs and marked the site with this pole.

I remember reading somewhere that when the ships of the Conquistadors appeared on the horizen, the Aztecs could not see them because they had never before seen a ship, so the object didn't appear to them (not sure how we can validate this claim) - the lesson is that things when one has not experienced a thing before, one has a hard time seeing it for what it is. Case in point would be when I noticed all the poles up and down the beach here. They are everwhere in this area (the TAMAR guy says this is because no one here bothers them, unlike in Guarajuba or Praia do Forte, so this is an ideal place for sea turtle eggs), and despite having wandered this beach before, I had been completely blind.