We just left the community this morning and we are back to civilisation. We spent one month without phone, alcool, TV, meat, tobacco and without shoes even for carpentry and gardening, now we have to re-adapt ourselves (mostly for the shoes !).
We are currently working as volunteer in a community near Itacaré, Brazil. This community is composed by 16 adults and 13 children living in wood-homemade-houses in the forest, near a river. There is always some volunteers working there to help in the house construction (Fabien’s job), gardening/farming (Paula’s job), making cacao paste (everybody), cooking, …
The place is beautiful and the people very nice. A short movie will probably give you much more of the atmosphere than a long talk :
This Video was shot just before we arrived, so we are not on it but it shows a bit the daily atmosphere.
About the work, it’s very well organised, we wake up at 6h30, breakfast all together. Then we work from 8h00 to 12h00 and all the afternoon are free. The Weekends are free too. So we have a lot of time for kayak, reading, swimming, personal projects, write diary,…
The guy who is managing the volunteers is also very open to new projects, improvement proposals,… So when someone have an idea he is welcome to talk about it, and make it concrete if it’s a good one. The internet connection here is very bad so we cannot upload new pictures of us. They will come later!
Last 2 weeks we were in Igatu, a small village in Vale do Pati, the same national park of the last 2 articles. We arrive there by hitch hiking. We went there almost because of the climbing possibilities : yes we are carrying our rock climbing shoes from the beginning and we want to use them.
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That’s what you can see after 3 days walking in the forest ! We decided to do some trekking in the Chapada Diamantina park (west of Salvador, in the Bahia state). This is currently not the tourist season because the monsoon starts. That’s means rain very often. But for us it was a good opportunity to go now and be alone on the trek, less hot and to be able to see water in the waterfalls (it needs rain for that !). That’s the point of view of the girls: (more…)
It’s already one week in Brazil, time passes very differently when it is not counted ! We talked with Paula and we decided to travel as if this trip would never end. And that changes absolutely everything.
We take time to discover this new country. For example
That’s how they say hello there. I will have to learn because it seems that people here don’t speak so much other language than Portuguese and Paula have already 1.5 month experience more than me.
One day, three flights, four airports, 32 hours from Toulouse to the Brazilian hostel. That’s my new best score, and that’s not good for earth…
But I think my destiny was to go there and nothing can stop me : I had the strike of the French planes controllers (50% flights cancelled), the strikes from the shuttles and the strike from the whole public bus company in Toulouse (I paid a cab)… and I was happy to leave France ;).
They also tried to loose my backpack in Sao Paulo and opened it because I had some suspect Kinder surprise boxes inside ! But I did it, I am in Salvador, Brazil drinking a Caipirinha !
Hi all !
Here is our blog about our trip in South America. We will write some of our feelings, news and some pictures when we have time to.
We ? Yes, we are Paula and Fabien, Paula is German whereas Fabien is French, that’s one of the reason why we will write in English. But don’t worry, we put an automated translator then you can translate the whole blog very easily. The translation is not perfect but you should understand.
Be aware that this blog is powered by a small computer and self hosted at a friends place, so in case of problem (a beer spilled on the computer during a party for example), this blog will disappear and you will not get anymore news… Don’t panic, even when you have a strange message saying that this blog doesn’t exist anymore, we are probably alive and enjoying life in a foreign country.
In case you wan’t to read us but you don’t wan’t to go everyday here, you can subscribe to our newsletter and receive a mail each time we write a new article ! (subscription on the top right, and unsubscribe link in all messages in case it’s too much).
Paula is already in Brazil since one month and Fabien is taking a plane on the 10th April to join her. We will meet probably in Salvador to start traveling together. We have no return date and we want to discover South America and take our time to do it. See you soon here for updates !
