sugargold

I took a three day adventure to a community called Morro Grande seven hours away from Salvador. To get there my friends took a ferry, found a driver who drove us for three hours into Camamu, and then took a converted fishing boat two hours to this fishing community. The community was quaint with a population of maybe more than fifteen hundred people. After scouting through private homes and a few seedy pousadas(hotels), we found one for ten US dollars a night, which included a delicious breakfast. There was no reception desk and the place was still being constructed and when it was time to pay we had to search for someone to pay our bill. It was a small town, so we found someone who knew someone who pointed us to a person who could help us, but we could have just walked off. The town center was nicely decorated with drawings made of bark, leaves, and colored sand. They were celebrating Saint San Antonio that week, they like to celebrate a lot here. It reminds me of how we always get together on the weekends for some ritual or event. We came when there were nightly festivities with forro(country music). I saw a lot of younger kids gathering in the cultural center playing capoeira in a roda(circle), playing video games, and checking the internet at a nearby internet cafe. The place was reminiscent of a countryside only because it was secluded, but conveniences of supermarkets, indoor plumbing, electricity, internet, and telephone poles were present. It is interesting to be in a developing country and have to rethink what I do believe is a modern convenience. Warm showers are definitely a modern day convenience and so is a cellphone signal when you are in the interior of the country. I saw there were a lot of clothes out on the line, roosters walking around, and lots of collarless dogs that loyally followed their owners by the sound of their voices were common sights.