Salvador de Bahia, with 3 million people, is the oldest city in Brazil. We didn't stay in the city, but travelled by bus to Praia do Forte, about 80 km away. Here we visited the remains of the oldest (European) house in Brazil, now a museum, and then a turtle research station. P-do-F is an exclusive holiday area, reminiscent of Noosa 20 or so years ago, before it went 'upmarket'. The people are SO friendly.
Travelling with 3000 people, everyone picks up a 'wog' at some time - John's had an awful cold, Frances a severe case of vomiting and diahhorrea (Brazilian belly??). When John and the rest of the tour party went to a restaurant for lunch in P-do-F, she sat on a nearby patch of lawn, and promptly fell asleep ... only to wake up with a crowd of about 50 locals surrounding her! They'd brought a man who spoke good English, offering to escort her to a doctor nearby (free!). From old men, mothers with children, teenagers on motor scooters, everyone wanted to help ... MUCH embarrassment, but what wonderful people!
The other delight of our day was a lizard (iguana?) about a metre long. When we first sighted him on the grey branch of a poinciana tree, he was grey and white. He moved to a green bush nearby, and became light-and-dark green. Does Brazil have chameleons? We must find out!
Our hero of the day is the 10yo who bowled out Ponting! Good on him! What wonderful donations at the cricket! When is the day of mourning? We know there is to be one, but no date given.
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Hi Sally & John,
Arghhhh this is annoying!!! I went to great effort during the week to write a comment - it was long and wordy... so checking it by 'previewing' seemed to be in order - looked great so I... well I.. well I THOUGHT I'd posted the damn thing! Logged in on Friday night to find it missing; eventually replayed it in my mind and believe I was distracted by a phone call at a critical time and must have failed to post!
Anyway, a lot of it was doom and gloom re the fires in Vis and the fact that 60% of QLD has been declared a disaster zone due to the floods.
Part of my previous post was a breakdown of the fire toll by area to give you an indication of the areas effected - I'm unable to repeat that at the moment as Vic Police have temporarily suspended that site while they update it. I'll try again during the week.
On a brighter note - Maddy is doing well at college - absolutely loving it! She gets to spend most of the day doing the two things she has always loved most - cutting and pasting!
Jess has been getting plenty of work at Currumbin and is almost to her financial target for the year. The rain has meant that she's been sent home a bit more than she'd like but she's getting there.
Work has been quieter than I'd like, but I still feel positive. We are getting quite a few new customers from my marketing so we should be OK.
I think you need to run a paragraph for 'newbies' to tell them the steps needed to post on your blog - took me a while to figure it out!
Take care, hope all is still going well.
Love Jim
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