Lencois

First of all...excuse any strange punctuation. \i~m on a /brazilian computer and the keys are not in the right place and \i~m too lazy to fix it. \9mostly because the delete button is also in the wrong place and it just becomes a mess. ...it took me forever to figure out how to get onto blogger because "/" is where the enter key should be...right. \i~m and idiot and \i know. /deal with it.

At about 10Ç30 two nights ago \i got an email from an acquaintance that went something a little like "hey eli...a group of us is going to lancois at 11pm. if you get this, you should meet us at the bus station." \i really do love salvador (and more on that in an upcoming entry) but I didn~t know what i was going to do for three more days there. so i through a few things into my backpack (my passport not being one of them) and ran to the bus station. by "a few" i guess this girl actually meant 40. the entire bus was sas kids. they actually hired for a bus to drive us to lancois so we wouldnçt have to worry about pickpocketing while we were asleep. and i fell asleep immediately. i was oken up at 530 am when the bus pulled into lancois. dreary eyed but filled with adrendaline. 40 sasers got off the bus and flooded the town of lencois.

have you still not googled lencois? \i~ll help you out\ç
http://www.enjoybrazil.net/amazon-brazil-national-park-lencois-maranhenses.php

while i actually have access to the internet...ill point out this page as well\ç http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DBGhXI586k

so...we were at 530 in the morning in lencois. of course nobody in the town was awake, and none of us had a hostel reservation. i guess that our plan had been to just start hiking. but of course it~s a tourism town so every single person to whom we asked about the trailhead told us that they would be our guide for 40 reais a person. so then we would wander away and find a new person who would offer the same thing. this was especially entertaining to me because i was the only person in th group who had really hiked before...but the idea of needing a guide...hilarious.

this is around the time that i decided to sit down and admire the absolute beauty of the town i was in. imagine a picturesque, colonial portuguese village. there were roosters, a water spciket in the middle of the town square, and a mercado with fresh vegetables. everybody seemed to know eachother. the houses are colored stucco. basically, i fell in love and decided to take it all in. then i found a man that said i could change in his house, so i followed him back to his house \9i~m an idiotn, i know\0 and changed while he waited outside. he showed me back to the square where all the 40 semester at sea kids had been...but nobody was there.

this is eli in panic mode. because holy shit this city is not that big, but i lost my group. i~m a girl by myself in abrazilian town. i don~t know portuguese and i don~t have a passport. i~m an idiot. i ran around the entire town looking for them, getting random points from construction workers etc etc. i could not find my group, but after about a half hour of freaking out, i did find another sas group. i just tagged along and followed them into the woods.

for all the beauty that i thought the town of lencois posessed...the mountains behind it multiply it. in three months i will finally be able to post pictures...but it is amazing. we hiked about 10 miles yesturday. in that time, i jumped off a 45 foot cliff into a waterfall, i slid down a natural rockslide, and i swam in numerous numerous natural springs. i actually started hiking in my bathing suit because it seemed that every ten minutes there was a new spring for us to jump in. of course the day started out rainy and the girl scout inside of me cursed me for not being prepared and bringing a raincoat, but by the time we reached our first waterfall, the sun was shining without a cloud in the sky. it was actually deathly hot and the water was perfect.

our tour guide also made us lunch which was i think the best food i~ve had in brazil \9so good when hking\0

when we got back ... it basically became a night out on the town. i have no idea how lencois managed to absorb about 150 college kids for a night...but in the end everybody was fed and had a place to stay. more or less.

of course i was the person without a place to stay. but we don~t really have to get into that.

i mostly just want to copy something that i wrote in my journal this morning. i think it~s hilarious because my mother~s main worry about this trip is that i~ll just never come home \9possibility\...but as much as i love lencois. this isn~t actually an option because of the following entry \9which i now find hilarious because i am now well fed, but at the tme was a serious concern\0...

"Three things are keeping me from moving to lencois full time\\
1. this is their winter. it~s great. but this is their winter. i need snow. and temperatures that are not any hotter than this.]
2. no eggs for breakfast - actually \nothing for breakfast. what kills me most is that i had a great americano last night - ham and cheese sandwich. but i have no idea what time that place opens - i just know itçs not by 9am. jc what i would give for tow eggs over easy wheat toast butter - served slowly and undercooked, hop style, or a seasame bagel toasted with plain cream cheese from bagel basement...heck i~d even go for a collis omlette righ now. something. this when in bahia do as the bahians do attittude is all great and wonderful until it starts messing with my breakfast. how do these people even fuction without eggs in teh morning\;;; brazilian coffee is not good enough for me to get excited fro the day. i am a morning person and i am very unhappy right now. i woke up at 7am because i was too excited to sleep anymore. eff this i~m excited to go back to the ship. love you lencois, you were great for the first 12 hours, bu tnow i~m totally over you.
3. it is too small. all adorableness was lost this morning when the man serving coffee called me eli, one of the construction workers knowingly waved at me, and a rando tour guide told me that ti suck at dancing. yeah...i know. i think that had i been served eggs at soem point i would have found these greetings to be a cute reminder of just how small and adorable this town is. instead, it made me think
a. don~t these people get bored of eachother\; like...i know this many pepole after one day...what if i was to stay for just one more\;
b. who are you\; how do you know my name\; and what the hell did i do last night\; "

so...lencois is great. you should all come here. at one point during the hike yesturday, i decided that i was actually jealous of my own life. ...but you should never ever consider living here. unbearable.