'Oh-oh-oh-oh' goes the official EuroCup 2012 song - in my last blog entry I wrote excitedly about the start of the Cup and the orange streets, but so far the first round isn't going so smoothly for Oranje... There's still hope though.
Well, the ball needs to keep rolling, so in the meantime I came here to tell a bit about the incredible Brazilian coastline as I have promised to do a little while ago. Quick recap: a couple of years ago, Nationalic Geographic Traveller published an article by journalist/writer Stanley Stewart, in which he goes on a rather decadent journey, to find the most idyllic beach in Brazil. That sounds good huh, but given the length of the Brazilian coastline, it's actually not such a straightforward task ;) (It's a really interesting piece, I got this magazine a little by chance actually, but it definitely makes you want to head in that direction as well). Anyhow, I re-read that article recently and as I have visited a few beaches in Brazil myself, I thought I would delve a bit into this topic myself...
Actually, I'm going to throw things up into the air right now and not start at the beginning and not follow a linear path in telling my tale. Among the most perfect beaches in Brazil are those of Morro de Sao Paulo, on an island off the coast of Bahia, a state towards the north of the country. I took this picture as we sailed off from the island, which can boast of beautiful beaches and a still relatively unspoiled atmosphere, or so it seemed at the time we were there. It's got the cutest central square with restaurants and soft lighting in the evening dark, local kids running about to entertain themselves, and ladies selling accessories at stalls set up around the praca. Morro de Sao Paulo lies close to Salvador da Bahia, a large bustling city known for its colonial architecture, lively population, old beautiful centre known as Pelourinho, crazy Carnaval celebrations every year, the Afro-Brazilian cult religion candomblé and Olodum, a famous musical assemblage from Bahia, featured even in Michael Jackson's 'They don't care about us' video back in the day. The craziest night in Salvador is considered to be Tuesday (!) in Pelourinho, when the centre explodes, and Olodum makes a nice contribution to this Brazilian weekly festivity :)
Naturally, Salvador also sports a number of great beaches, in the centre of the city as well as somewhat further out - and even though it took a little while to get there by bus and on top of it all, it rained - we still had a great time and even played fortress on the beach. Well, if you consider that our 'fortress' was fashioned out of a couple of large beach restaurant parasols on the aforementioned restaurant terrace :)
Fortress on the beach, see? ;) Actually, Salvador is also featured famously in the novels by the well-known Brazilian write Jorge Amado, such as Dona Flor and her Two Husbands, which tells the tale of the young woman Flor, whose party animal husband Vadinho dies suddenly in the midst of celebrating Carnaval. Just as Flor finally manages to get over him and marry another, much more decent man, Vadinho comes back to Flor as a ghost, expecting to fulfill his duties as her rightful husband, putting Flor in a rather strange dilemma, as you can imagine. It's quite a hilarious book actually, I believe it was written at the end of the 1960's (so there are some gender values in there that a modern woman may disagree with, but for the sake of getting to the end of this otherwise well written and entertaining book one might have to ignore that), and describes life in Salvador colourfully and in rich detail. If you want to see more about what Salvador is all about nowadays, I would recommend the Brazilian musical O Pai O.
I haven't been further north than Bahia last time in Brazil, but there are two other Brazilian cultural products that feature the sea and the beach in the North extensively that I want to mention here: first, the film Rania, which takes place in Fortaleza, a large city on the coast in the very North of the country. Similar to Rio, it really shows how the beach is a daily part of life of the people in this city. I've written about this film before just after I watched it at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival - so check the blog records :)
The other interesting thing I wanted to mention is the book for children and young adults by the Brazilian author Isabel Vieira, called Uma Garrafa no Mar (A bottle in the sea, which I read in Portuguese, oh yeah). It's a cute story of a young girl who in her loneliness and despair one evening on New Year's Eve throws a bottle into the sea with a letter in it, baring her soul - and sometime later this ''message in a bottle'' is found by a boy in... wait for it... New Zealand. This story largely takes place in Natal, another major city on the beach in the North, not too far (for Brazilian standards then) from Fortaleza. Obviously, the sea plays a rather important part in this story as well ;)
So it really seems that the Brazilian coastline is an undeniably large presence in the country's cultural works, as well as the hearts of those who live there and come to visit :) Now that we're here, the country's most famous beaches are of course in Rio de Janeiro - but that will have to wait till next week, same time as the Rio+20!
Thanks lots for reading!
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