fresh n juicy chunks of oyster :: RTW travel blog

As threatened here come the words to accompany the Arembepe / Aldeia Hippie pictures:
Once upon a time Arembepe, about an hour North of Salvador, used to be a small fishing village with beautiful beaches, palm trees and all the rest. Then, the Hippies came. They occupied the nearby land, built their huts for them and their kin and brought lots of drugs. This attracted other Hippies and people like Mick Jagger and Janis Joplin and others who liked doing drugs, having sex and rockin and rollin. Now Arembepe, the village, looks like any other holiday resort on the Brasilian coast and is packed with native tourists. Bloody hippies, they ruin everything.
But seriously folks, the actual Aldeia Hippie (which roughly means Hippie commune) still has a hint of paradise about it. No electricity or running water, but other amenities such as a very friendly community (which is nowadays more Rasta than Hippie), wind-bent palm trees everywhere and a clean river for bathing and the sea -both about 2 minutes away. People there don't live off much and the money they do need seems to come from selling art and crafts to tourists or homemade bread and the like which is sold from a basket, walking door-to-door in the commune. Ultimately, it is a very cool place for doing nothing (or any other such thing) for a couple of days.
That's about all I can currently remember or care to tell about Arembepe (I am notably leaving the stories of some of many of the crazy people there for another time).
My current home is Lencois which is a pretty amazing place so I've decided to spend Xmas here, instead of dodgy Salvador. A good way of describing the area is as a natural Disneyland for Brasilians and a lot of families seem to come here to relax. Lencois lies in the middle of a national park with seemingly endless possibilities for hiking to waterfalls, caves, lakes, rivers, mountains, horseback riding, another alternative commune and who knows what else. A main attraction seems to be a natural water slide. Natural in this case means it is made out of mostly smooth rock. Mostly in this case means that your ass (or other parts) tend to hurt quite badly after a good slide down and that it tore a nice hole into my swimming trunks. The less said the better, but I ended up flashing half the people there for a good while before being told.
Anyway, moving swiftly on and repeating myself, the town Lencois is very lovely, however, I will not delve into details now but instead wish everyone a very happy Xmas, Hanukkah, days off or whatever else people may be celebrating. Peace, love and rock n roll to all!