I have heard speak of Jamaican time being different to European time, well I have not been to Jamaica but I have now been to Brazil and I am beginning to feel that it is not just a Jamaican trait but a trait of most of it not all Latin Americans.
The day starts at around 5am when the sun rises and it is hot enough to sunbathe at 6am, though most places do not open for breakfast here until about 8am.
I have now had a few meals here, and apart from the superfast pizzeria where they just keep coming round with dish after dish until you give in and are full to bursting, they are very slow and do not seem to serve people in any order just whatever comes out of the Kitchen first.
The food is cheap, a plate of chips a can of drink and a Lasagne big enough for two huge portions of three normal ones all the price of only BR $15 is very good value for money, but I almost feel that I want to order and then go for a walk and come back in half hour or longer by which time they might have got round to taking the can out of the fridge.
Music is everywhere and cars drive slowly with huge bass speakers strapped to their roofs pumping out music at all hours day and night and if only the music was good I wouldn't mind, but some of it is strictly a local speciality taste, i.e., if you don't go berserk for all forms of Latin music you will probably think its shit.
Although the weather forecast said no rain it has rained every day on and off, but only very light showers and the suns rays dry the crazy mosaic slab pavements so fast that only in the deep broken holes can you even see proof that it was raining at all.
As I was walking along the beach road yesterday I saw a man with a small kitten sitting on his lap carefully as he was riding his motor cycle very slowly along the inside of the street. On another occasion I saw two guys riding on a bike and only the pillion passenger had a crash hat, but this seems more normal as I spend more time here.
Football and beach volleyball all seem to be played by the locals whenever they get together in large enough numbers, and all the while the older generation sit under the umbrellas playing dominoes and drinking a local brewed beer.
On most street corners there are dvd sleeves showing movies to buy, but as wide and large as my movie taste stretched to, not even the kids movies or cartoons ring any bells with me, and so I pass them by without more than a slight pause.
A wandering street merchant comes up to me and offers a selection of flimsy plastic some-things that I failed to grasp the use of despite his putting them inches from my face and then coming back less than ten minutes later perhaps thinking that I had changed my mind, either that or just out of boredom and routine.
Not having had any of my five a day in awhile now, I nipped into one of the market stalls behind my hotel and bought a large bunch of grapes, seedless too, and a small carton of strawberries for the princely sum of BR $4.50, and with prices this cheap I might go get a banana and a pineapple for my trip to the airport tomorrow.
Apparently there is a place near by where you can go and see the sea turtles which is only an hour away by bus, so with the sun rising early each morning I have arranged with my Spanish friend to go there together in the morning and take a few photos and then come back in order to be at the airport at 4pm.
He seems a genuine nice guy but is occasionally he is a little bit out with his estimates of what things cost, for instance he convinced me to get my laundry in the hotel as it would be very cheap and they would consider it almost an insult to go to a laundrette as it is taking a job away from one of them, so I agreed and the following day it was returned to me but at a cost of BR $20 which is the most I have ever had to pay to have my linen cleaned, and the only reason seemed to be that it was done by hand.
Now considering that I have just done Europe and some of its most expensive cities, for it to be more expensive here in Brazil than anywhere else there is something a little wrong somewhere along the way.
Earlier today a man came up to me, smiled, pointed at my shoes and then begged for some money by pointing at his mouth as if to say "hey man, if your rich enough to have shoes then you can afford to give me a little change to get something to eat!" but again I just had to walk on by and try to not let it spoil my view of this land.
I know that I am lucky enough to be born in a rich country like the UK and to have a caring and supportive family around me, but that does not mean that I have to carry the burden of giving whatever change I have just received from my most recent purchase to the nearest local several times a day.
I have no job, I am using up fast my trip savings and all too soon I will be spending on my credit card, which is money that I will owe, so no matter how rich I appear to the locals in actuality at the end of each day they have more than me as they owe nothing but I will owe many thousands of pounds by the time I return home.
In Salvador I was meant to be meeting up with one or two new friends that I had met over the internet but alas they both turned out to have either forgotten me or to have had better things to do with their time, so it is lucky that I have befriended my Spanish friend or I would be truly a stranger in a strange land.
On a side issue, from time to time I use google analytics to tell me how well I am progressing in reaching an audience that might be interested in reading a book about travel and sad to say that around 30 was the highest I ever managed on a daily basis, with not even a quarter of all my international pen friends reading my blog once a week, some appear never to have read it, and so I feel that my dream of becoming a travel writer is fast disappearing.
That said, it takes a bit of pressure away from me, as I am becoming more free to think and do what I like as the reality is that not enough people will ever read my blog, or subsequent travel book, to be worth doing things for the audience and so If I chose to just sit on a beach and do nothing for a week then no one would mind.
The only serious negative slant on the whole thing is that it means I will have to face my occupational demons rather sooner than planned in order to find another paying job to repay the debt that this trip will put me into almost as soon as I return to the UK, as it would appear that I no longer require a few months of writing / compiling time at the other end of my voyage.
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