Local flora, fauna and other things [by Anna]

So last Friday I went out with a bunch of the girls. We met some people we know on the Main street (unavoidable) and were a group of around ten people in the end. There was a lot of dancing on the bar counter (the good old Hungry Duck style), samba dancing and just dancing. “The more the merrier” principle never fails me.  We stayed out all night. When the place closed and the dawn was breaking, everyone went to padaria (bakery) to get breakfast which is a pretty common thing to do here after a night out, and I went home cos I was too tired by then. I had a lot of fun! Don’t remember when was the last time I had so much fun with non-rugby people!

I’m still doing the physical work around. Last week I finally finished hanging the infamous hangers! We have them up in all the rooms now. This week is the second week that we split the shifts and write down the hours. Last week we did around 80 each in six days (we started noting them on Tuesday). This week it’s a bit more relaxing. I have the late shifts that start at 3 p.m. So today in the morning I went to the training, took a nap, went to the beach (finally!!!) with my friend Sarah and then and only then started the shift. At last I’m reaping the advantages of living one hundred meters away from the beach!

There is a six day jazz festival in town that started today and we are getting filled up again. Four rooms out of six, and only European tourists, me likes!

Meanwhile a couple of words about the local flora and fauna.

So we’ve already written more than once about the toads. Here is the last time, I promise! The toads are still hooked up on the cat food, even though there is no cat food anymore. And since we started closing the door between the reception and the kitchen, they cannot get in anymore. The other day Marina witnessed a toad continuously throwing itself onto the door, real Jean Claude Van Damme style! A couple of days I saw another one walking back and forth along the door, getting up and down on its paws (legs?) as if it was trying to think of a way to get it. Maybe the toads are more intelligent than we give them the credit for? Or maybe it was just a she-toad?

Then there is also a tiny frog that lives behind the sink. It only comes out in the dark and it crawls the walls as a roach and it also jumps to the ceiling and to the glasses and all over the place like a spiderman! I think it’s mega-cute.

Then there are lizards. Also two types – big ones that are out during the day, and the lizard answer to the behind-the-sink frog. Those live somewhere under the roof and only come out to the walls when it’s dark. They are also tiny and cute. Both lizard kinds are very easily startled so I didn’t manage to take a proper picture, but you get an idea.

Two days ago we had this guest at the reception. Marina claims she saw a bigger and hairier one, but this is my personal record so far. Looks scary, but I think it was more scared than me when I was trying to take pictures of it.

Some days ago we saw a huge butterfly. It probably had more than 12 cm of the wing span. It looked totally surreal, like one of those artificial butterflies in the old time movies, where you can see the string it’s attached on and that flickers its wings with a veeeery-sloooow-frequency. Amazing!

Talking about the wings flickering frequency, hummingbird is a frequent guest on one of the bougainvilleas, which are omnipresent here in the village. I wish I could take a proper picture of a hummingbird! Well here you can see the bougainvillea in front of the entrance that is frequented by the hummingbirds.

Out garden is not enormous, but I’m still discovering new plants in it. The coconut palms and papaya I have already mentioned. We also have a lime tree (without limes). The other day I also found a cashew tree in front of the fence. Cashew is pretty much everywhere here. They are mostly used for juice – the upper part of it, but the flavor is very astringent so I don’t fancy it much. Then there is one of those exotic fruit trees with hedgehog-like green fruits, but I don’t know what it’s called, I’ll have to get back to that. Also with a picture of a cashew fruit.  

On  side-note – I talked to my Mom the other day and mentioned to her that we don’t have glass in the windows, and she found it surprising. If anyone should be interested in what the windows without the glass look like – here it is. Depending on the size, the windows (and doors for that matter) have one to four individual shutters which can be opened or closed separately. Very practical!

And the winner is... [by Anna]

So I just got back from a short trip to Oslo. I met this lady in the plane from Lisbon to Oslo. I was very tired after having slept two nights vertically – first on the bus from Jeri to Fortaleza and then on the plane from Fortaleza to Lisbon and she was what in Norwegian you would call “pratesyk” or chatty, I guess. Anyhow, I did talk to her a bit before I passed out again. She was from Porto Alegre and she lived in Ålesund and she had a charming Ålesund accent. I told her that I had moved to Brazil and she became very nostalgic and started telling me that she really enjoys living in Norway, although it sounded like she was rather trying to persuade herself and not me. 

Oslo was gorgeous, Indian summer. I hadn’t felt like leaving when I was sitting at the bus stop in Jeri waiting for my “jardineira” in the beginning of the long trip, and in Oslo I felt like I had never left and one month in Jericoacoara had never happened. It got me thinking about this lady again and about what I miss in Europe and what I miss in Jeri, so I decided to put my own pros and cons list. Here it is.

I miss: 

-           Stable phone line and internet connection

-           Shower that is not permanently attached to the wall

-           Washing machines that heat up the water (yes, here in Brazil it’s cold water clothes washing only)

-           Sleeping in a cold room under a warm heavy blanket

-           Having no sand in the bed

-           Rugby!!! Playing it, watching it and spending time with all the rugby people

-           Wearing high heals

-           City smells

-           Food – lamb, duck, goat cheese, Thai, good bread and many many other things

-           Being able to stop thinking about work when I leave the office

-           Seasons changing

I don’t miss:

-           Public transport, rush hours an traffic jams

-           Freezing

-           The torture of trying to figure out what to wear for work every morning

-           Hearing the garbage truck early in the morning and realizing that soon the alarm will ring

-           Hating Mondays

-           Wearing heals (yes, I know)

-           Missing the beach and needing a vacation in the South

-           Urge to comfort-shop something useless

-           Using make-up and taking sun-beds

-           Sitting in the office wondering why the time takes such a long time

So what is the final score?

Field-report: sporting activities – wind-surfing, BJJ, capoeira and horseback riding [by Anna]

So I’m continuing my quest to try or at least to see all the sport activities in the village. So far I got quite hooked up on muay thai, it’s a lot of fun! I go every morning Monday to Friday and plan to do some evenings as well. I also go to the gym every second evening more or less, and it’s touch rugby on the beach on Sundays.

Last week I also took a couple of wind-surfing lessons, luckily for free – from our Serbian friend. Well what can I say… It is as difficult as I remember it from the last time! In two days I did manage though to sail both directions and turn one way. Then the small lagoon in which I was learning became too shallow so now I’m waiting for a high tide to fill it up again, plus I kinda had to do some work as well... Anyhow, hopefully tomorrow I'll be back to it.

The other night we also checked out BJJ and capoeira.  Well what can I say – it was fun to watch, and I think it’s cool that in such a small village as Jeri there is that good selection of sport groups! However, neither is for me I reckon. BJJ is too messy and in capoeira there is no contact, and I like to punch!

Yesterday I went horseback riding with some girls from the hostel. It costs 15 BRL (6EUR/47NOK/260RUB) for one hour. Well riding a horse in short and flip-flops is neither practical nor comfortable, plus the guide liked sneaking up on me and smacking my horse which would set it galloping… But all in all it was a wonderful experience! We rode to Pedra Furada (Pierced Rock) which is one of the biggest sights here and got to see the sunset from somewhere else rather than the Sunset Dune for a change. Quite stunning!

Field-report: night-life - samba [by Anna]

Well I guess it’s about time we write some updates! Still no internet here, and still no mobile phone. I have hard time putting up with the fact that it can be so hard to get it, but apparently it is. Yesterday the whole day I spent sawing curtains. While Marina is doing more advanced work, that all is pretty natural for now I guess, until my Portuguese gets better (it’s probably about time I open the book…)

So last night was samba night. It’s right next to the outdoor place where they sell drinks, so it’s quite practical. Marina and I had some drinks at home (Scandinavian style!) before we hit the sand-road around 1 a.m. It figures that Friday night is the biggest night out in town, and we met everyone there. There was some live music (yes, samba) and there was some main-stream provided by a DJ, but it was mostly the locals that were on the dance-floor, all the gringos stayed by the bar. Marina ditched me around 2 and I stayed with this cool Finnish/Swedish/Greek girl I met last week-end, who stays in the hostel. There was quite a bunch of people from the hostel and we just hanged out and chatted away, and by the time they closed it was already break of dawn so we decided to climb the Sunset dune to watch the sunrise. I must say it was quite amazing!

We stayed a while, there was this guy from Fortaleza who came for a week-end with a Russian girl, he is in her hosting family. He was interested in rugby so I did my usual rugby-is-the best-sport-in-the-world-all-the-other-sports-should-not-be-allowed sales pitch (that job is never done, eh!) and a Kiwi guy who was there confirmed it and said it was strange to meet a Russian in Brazil who is so passionate about rugby. I did a demo tackle on a Dutch guy and got another approval from the Kiwi. By then the sun was quite high up so we all shuffled home. It was time to grab some sleep cos it was a new day already!

Just another day in Paradise... [by Anna]

Today in the gym they were playing "Alors on Danse" and it made me think about the "normal" and "different" that Marina was writing about the other day.

I heard from many of my friends in Oslo "oh you are so brave", "it's so cool you're moving to Brazil to open a hotel", "so many people want to do something like this, but so few actually do it". I did feel kinda different. Here in Jeri we are surrounded by these kind of people! Our new Serbian friends had quit there jobs last summer and stay wherever in the wind is. They work on the internet in the morning and surf after that. They are planning to go to Vietnam when the season is over here. We met this Dutch guy working on a luxury yacht having like around 6 months of vacation a year, surf-bumming the rest of the time. There are other hotel owners, working during the high season and going back to Europe for the rest of the year.

We are still very busy, today our tasks ranged from working on the web-site contents to sewing curtains and planting papaya seeds. The working hours are obviously pretty flexible though. I fit in quite a lot of sports and it's fantastic. It's always sunny and around +30 during the day and +25 during the night. Yesterday I managed to put together the first session of beach rugby here - we played 3 on 4 and after the sun went down I went for a swim in the ocean. It's all pretty movie-like, but - you do start taking it for granted in no time!

We are still quite far from the civilization here, separated by about 15 km (?) of sand "roads" in the dunes from the closest village and by 300 km from Fortaleza. There is no cable internet and we still haven't managed to get our own connection established, so we really appreciate that our neighbors share their password. We don't wear a watch cos time is irrelevant here and people make the I-will-pass-by-later kind of appointments. We never know for sure what week-day it is, cos for us it doesn't really matter, we don't really have the days off. We don't have mobile phones, cos the place is so small, you just pass-by-at-some-point.

I am not really attached to the material things and brands and gadgets don't mean anything to me. At the same time, the selection of the things you can buy in local supermarkets and other shops seriously reminds me of my childhood in Soviet Union! It's pretty strange to know that there is no IKEA (in the whole of Brazil) and in order to get some pretty basic things you actually have to go to Fortaleza!

So anyhow, I have many questions in my head. What do you actually do when your dreams have already come true? Is too good still good? Am I going to miss the city-life? Where do I go from here?

Field-report: sporting activities – gym, sand-boarding and muay thai [by Anna]

And so we are slowly getting into our status of “moradores” – inhabitants I guess would be the best English word. As we still haven’t got our own internet connection, we are using our neighboring hotel’s password. The decent speed is only at night so we go to bed late and get up at 5 a.m. in order to be able to get some work done. During the day we go to the main town – Jijoca  – to continue our struggle with the Brazilian bureaucracy (city-hall, lawyer etc.), try to prepare some content for our marketing efforts, go around meeting the other owners, etc., etc. The bottom-line is – it is exhausting, but also super-exciting! Well on today we are getting installed our own antenna for the internet (there is no cable-internet here in the village, we are far enough from the civilization) so hopefully this misery will be over.

Anyhow, we are getting to know the people and the way the things work around here and it is time to start getting organized with some leisure activities. Now, nothing will ever replace rugby for me, but I gotta do my best to survive, right? Jericoacoara is a famous wind-, kite- and surfing spot and it is on my to-do list to revive my wind- and kite-surfing career, which has been on hold for a few years now. I would actually prefer surfing, as like snowboarding you only have to manage one thing and with your legs, but it looks like the waves are big enough in January only and the winds are good for almost half a year, so the choice is obvious.

But I’m taking a slow start. I’ve signed up for the local gym. The membership is 60 BRL a month (23EUR/180NOK/1000RUB ). Totally overpriced, if you ask me, considering the size of the place and the quality (I am not even sure I can use the word quality here, its lack rather!) of the gear. 

The picture speaks better than anything that I can say about this place! Around five machines, two tread-mills (only one functioning properly) but a lot of free-weights. Well thanks to the Basement Challenges Hardcores I can be creative enough with the gear available! Plus due to the climate, I sweat more than during the Hardcores doing one tens of the effort.

Next step was sand-boarding. For 10 BRL (3,8EUR/30NOK/168RUB) an old snow-board of unidentifiable brand (oh my LibTech, baby where are thou?)  is yours to ride the Sunset Dune “until the sunset”. Having said that – you gotta work your way up by feet, so it’s only that many times you can have a go. So my first try wasn’t that good. As you ride with bare feet and the sand is much heavier than the snow, it’s kinda difficult to control the board, at the same time it goes much slower than it would on the same inclination on snow. After the first ride down I thought – hey this sucks! I tried a second time and thought – hey this still sucks, but I give it one last shot. On my third ride I managed to start controlling the board, took a steeper slope all the way down to the beach and even caught an applause from some local guys passing by. So I ran up again, but to my great disappointment the board got wet from the beach sand and refused to move at all. Marina was getting hungry and impatient and we left.

Today I was to my first muay thai training. I got really hooked-up on kick-boxing in Oslo, so I was very much looking forward to it! So 8:30 in the morning together with our new German friend (surf-shop owner) we headed off to the training. What can I say, it was amazing! In a way similar to the gym kick-boxing training, but really oriented towards actual fighting. The instructor is very charismatic and motivating! There are trainings from 8:30 till 9:30/10 each morning AND evening Monday to Friday and it all costs 50 BRL a month (20EUR/155NOK/855RUB). That’s what I call money well spent!

And – wonderful news – yesterday I met some Argentineans living here who used to play rugby back home! We’re meeting up 4:30 a.m. to watch Scotland – Argentina and organizing some touch rugby on the beach! I also met a guy from Perpignan on muay thai today who’s also in, so things are beginning to get better!

I will revert with more field-reports on wind-surfing, horseback riding, capoeira and of course rugby.

One rainy Sunday morning in Oslo... [by Anna]

... I was sitting at my brand-new bar-table having a cup of tea and mackerel in tomato-sauce with crispbread for breakfast. I had just finished renovating my new apartment which I adored. I had a rather boring but quite well-paid job. I was playing rugby and I loved it. I had an extra job in a bar which I kept for entertainment mostly and which brought it some extra money in form of tips. I did a lot of traveling. I had a lot of cool friends.



And so I was sipping the tea, looking at the parking outside my window (the view was the only thing which was not perfect in my new apartment) and thinking - is this as good as my life is gonna get???

I guess that was the day when I realised that I gotta go, although at that point I wasn't quite sure where to.

Some months, a couple of suite-cases and endless good-byes later I'm lying on bed in Santos writing this entry and watching my friend Marina's agony while she's trying to fit the contents of her studio apartment into four cartons. It is D-5. Tuesday the 13th we're heading off to São Paulo to catch flight to Fortaleza. By 3 a.m. Thursday we are supposed to reach Jericoacoara.