I am currently on an island off the northern coast of Brazil called Morro de Sao Paolo. This place is a little piece of heaven, when it´s not raining. Every day we step out of our hostel straight onto powdery white sand and spend most of the day sitting on the beach. But there have been a few days of rain, so it´s important to find other things to do as well.
One day, when it was raining, one of my friends came to me and said, "Hey Maya- want to go see a jungle?" Now I didn´t know that there was a jungle on this island, so I said sure, why not? and we set out on our way. As we walked along the beach, I asked him what he knew about this supposed jungle, and he said he didn´t really know anything about it, but he said we would be fine. Along the way, a couple passed us by on a carriage attached to a donkey. So we stopped them and asked if we could hitch a ride down the beach, and they said yes and took us. They let us out when we saw a big group of people, and turns out it was a big soccer game outside of the locals´ village. I don´t know that much about soccer, but I understood pretty quickly that even if it was just a local league, the level of technique was very high (my friend does understand these things and said that they were indeed very impressive). There was drumming along the sides and some capoeira as well (Brazilian fight-dancing. very cool stuff).
After about 15 minutes we decided to turn down the path that we hoped would lead to their village. We walked for a while and saw people passing by in carriages, on horses, bicycles, and cars. We reached their village and wandered around for a while, soaking in the sights of real life on the island, far away from our touristy area. Some people looked at us suspiciously, some waved and smiled. And I thought to myself, this is what I´ve been looking for the whole time. Something off the beaten track- something left relatively undiscovered by the masses. So maybe it wasn´t a jungle, but it was still exotic to me.
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