Itacare = amazing!

I got back in to salvador last night from an amazing couple of days in Itacare. The trip was extremely last minute and i am so happy i was able to go!!! For the past couple of weeks a lot of people in my program have been talking about going to Lencois over this weekend (5 day weekend... tuesday is a holiday). Lencois is a beautiful town and it lies within a national park... and from the pictures i have seen it looks gorgeous, filled with waterfalls and wilderness. but unfortunately since it was a holiday weekend and there was a music festival happening the same weekend we couldn't find a place to stay. (i hate hostel-world... dont book through it). So as an alternative a group of us decided to go to Itacare!!!

Itacare is south of Salvador, to get there we took a ferry to get to the other side of the bay, and then a 5 hour bus ride! Itacare is amazing, it is so gorgeous. Its a little town which basically consists of restaurants, pousadas (hostels), and little shops. there are 18 beautiful beaches that surround Itacare and to get to the less people filled beaches its about a good 40-70 minutes walk through the "jungle" to get to the most beautiful beaches you have ever seen.

We left right after class on thursday to catch at 12pm ferry and a 2:30pm bus. We got in to Itacare around 8pm and settled in to "buddy's pusada" . the hostel was SO great. it is run by these two Irish guys who were wonderful, the breakfast was bomb and they had hammocks that i took so many naps in. On friday we decided to "hire" a guide... basically this guy saw us walking towards the beach with surfboards and wouldn't leave us alone until we agreed to pay him to take us to the beaches. but good thing we got a guide... or else there was no way we could have found this one beach called praiahina that we wanted to go to. It was about an hour and a half hike in total to the beach... but with our guides help we stopped and cool little spots to go swimming in a swimming hole and stopped at awesome look out point to get some good photos. PLus the guy was very entertaining.. you could tell that the little english he knew he learned from tourists and american songs... he sang to us the whole way to the beach, everything from lady gaga to Michael Jackson.

The beach we went to was GORGEOUS, there were not a lot of people there which was nice and the water was perfect and the waves were great! I attempted to surf... i never stood up and only tried one run. i have discovered im not a huge fan of surfboard because the long board i was using kinda hit me and took me out. OH WELL, i tried.

Saturday we decided to go rafting!!! 2 guys from the rafting company picked up us in the morning from our hostel in this crazy trunk. it was like two benches that were elevated in the bed of the pick up and it was covered... like a mix between a covered wagon and the indian jones ride at disney land. It was about an hour drive out to the river, and the river was beautiful!!! I was in the jungle, it was amazing! the rapids didn't really compare to the other rivers i have been down in the US, but it was still really fun and definitely worth the money. In the middle of the trek down the river we were able to get out and swim around and cliff jump! i think i jumped from the highest i ever had before.. and then at the very end we did some zip-lining. All in all it was a really fun day and i was so happy to do something more adventures than just going to the beach.

we decided to leave sunday instead on monday (today) because yesterday it was raining and we needed to get back to salvador. On wednesday i have a paper due and a final. Haven't really started the paper or started studying for my portuguese final... but that is my mission for today and tomorrow.