Pousada Atlantis - Jericoacoara - Brazil: Moon-walking

Marina has been a bit stressed today as our occupancy rates can still be better and we still have to do a lot of maintenance around. I’ve been trying to keep the spirits up. Then in the evening our Slovak friend Daniel, whom we like to call Martin (he just looks more like Martin!) passed by. He’s the manager of the kite-surfing school that we work with and Martin (Daniel) came to bring us the commission for the people we referred to his school. Two of them were the Swiss guys we captured from the jardineira and two other were a Swedish couple that I also met at jardineria, and although they stayed with our neighbours, we helped them arrange a course as at their hotel no one spoke too much English and they found it cumbersome to arrange it with them. That has lifted up our mood and Martin was happy to get some borsch that Marina had made earlier today.

Meanwhile it’s full Moon these days and everyone talks about some special cosmic energy now. For some reason it is quite common to talk about the cosmic energy here, I even heard someone say that some American scientists did some measurements and confirmed that it is so. In the meantime I’m just trying to enjoy the beauty of this period!

Moon rising over Preá

On Saturday we went to the kite-surfing base in Preá. Originally we were supposed to go horse-riding, but due to some problems of communication we were late for that so we only took part in the dinner. Preá is only 15 km of the coast from Jeri and the kite-surfing base is about 1 km away from the “center”. Basically, it’s in the middle of nowhere, there is just nothing but the beach around. The base is really big, with a restaurant, hammocks, showers, chill-out area etc., everything is very well done - like quality design and quality products around, so uncommon for this area… It felt like we were so far away from Jericoacoara, nice short getaway! The dinner was very good too, but needless to say, it was expensive. Well, someone has to pay for all that beauty, right? Still, in terms of Norwegian prices I guess it was not too bad, but I was quite shocked to have to pay BRL8 (3,3EUR/25NOK/138RUB) for freshly-made mango-pineapple juice. But then again, watching the Moon rise above the Atlantis was absolutely priceless!

Moon light over Malhada

Last night my friend Lily and I went to the Malhada beach to take some pictures. The Moon was high and it was really bright. The light was amazing, it felt like we were on another planet, there was just such a surreal feel about it all! The ambience made me think of one of my favourite movies – The Wristcutters. We stayed a while and wondered off. Neither of us really knew the area and we randomly stumbled into this bar where four people were playing some kind of laid-back jazzy bossanova. There was no one else there but us and a lady who looked a lot like Susana Vieira who turned out to be a friend of one of the musicians. The musicians were all local except for one American girl. That girl had come to our hotel some days prior and she seemed to be totally lost, almost looney-kind-of-lost, as being lost in our village of five streets is not very common. She had had some water and went off looking for the main street again. That girl, the music, the lights, the place – the whole ambiance made me think of the Wristcutters again.

the Wristcutter style bossanova place

My friend Lily is leaving for the US on Wednesday so today we finally made our long awaited hike to the Pedra Furada (the Pierced Rock). We made sure in advance that the tide was low, so that we would be able to go by the beach and wouldn’t have to climb the hills around in this heat. There were a lot of curious rock formations on the way and the whole journey took us almost two hours I guess. The best part of it was the pools of water in the rocks left by the high tide, and thanks to Silvana we discovered a really deep one tucked in a rock by the water. The difference in the water levels was quite astonishing, it was quite deep and the water was refreshing, so we hung out there like in a nature-made Jacuzzi for quite a while. We would have stayed longer, but we noticed that the water really started coming up, so we had to hurry back before it was too late, and to be on the safe side we walked the hills the rest of the way. The climbing was not very pleasant, but the route took less time and I made it home just in time for my muay thai training.