Itacare

Travelling around the world is both fun and exhausting. The constant routine of packing, moving, looking for a place that will be a home for a day and unpacking can be a hard work indeed (see also what Ohad had to say about it). We've been travelling for 3 months now and we became quite tired, so we needed a break from our vacation. We needed to lay down on a beach, worrying only about where would the next fruit shake come from. Itacare was the best place to do that!

Itacare is a very small and easy going town with easy going people. It lays on the coast, about 4 hours drive south from Salvador. It has a long main street full of shops, restaurants and tourist agencies and our hostel. Although it wasn't cheap, didn't have breakfast and charged extra for the Internet access, we loved it. Mostly because of the atmosphere.

The town is surrounded by few very nice beaches. Only one of them was calm, while the rest had plenty of waves, which made them ideal for surfers. Since we were out of season, there weren't many people at those beaches or anywhere else, which was nice.

After spending one afternoon staring at the surfers, Lilya decided that its time for her to learn how to do it, so she booked 3 surfing lessons starting the next day. Because of the low season, those lessons turned out to be private. Lilya turned out to be quite good at those lessons, and by the third lesson she caught most of the waves and really enjoyed herself. Oren, spend the time doing some surfing himself, on the web, of course. Unfortunately, those lessons were given at a beach that could only be reached by swimming, so Oren couldn't take pictures of her surfing. On the last day we rented a surfing board, so Lilya could surf and Oren could picture her. Sadly, Lilya didn't catch any waves that day because the surfboard and the waves turned out to be too small (and the water were too cold/warm/blue/wet and the floor was not straight enough...). Only in Australia it will be found out if Lilya's stories are true or pure legend.

During our trip in Brazil we have met few people that came to learn from the best teachers in the world. Ohad wants to learn a specific kind of martial art in Rio, we met an Argentinian girl that came to learn African dancing in Salvador and a Finnish girl who came to learn Capuera. We came to learn laziness from the masters: The great sloths. The first mission was to find them, and that was not an easy task at all. We spent two days wondering around the Atlantic rain forest near the coast with no success. All we got was a pain in the neck and lots of mosquito bites. But even without seeing them, we learned something from the great sloths: if you want to be lazy, sit around and do nothing all day long, find yourself a place that no one else will spot, or else they will find you something to do...

We spent the rest of the time resting, eating and taking care of the important stuff in life like this blog, and after one week we decided that it is time to move on to Rio de Janeiro.

Tip 1: We really liked our hostel: O' Pharol on the historical center.

Tip 2: At Nelson's, on the main street, you can find delicious sandwiches for less than 3 dollars. You don't have to eat expansive in Itacare.

Tip 3: If you are interested in surfing lessons, Caruso is the guy for you. You can find him in an agency by the name: "Brazil Trip Tour" on the main street (3 lessons for about 100 US$) . He's really nice and funny (and he is the only person that knows how good Lilya really was at surfing). If you don't want to spend your money on lessons, you can always try to learn by yourself. But the success rate is limited.