Bad Case of Wanderlust (My Trip Around the World): Morro de Sao Paulo, Days 3-5 (Jan 20th-22nd)

Our third day in Morro was much like the second. Although I had gone to bed "early" on the previous night, by Brazilian and Argentinian standards, I awoke too late for breakfast on Saturday, and instead found a local artisan working in the dining area of the hostel.

After watching him work for a while, Ben and I headed out to the Second Beach yet again. I spent the day chatting with the group and getting some sun. Since out of the girls, only Vanessa and Flor spoke English, and none of the boys did, save Ben, my Spanish continued to improve, despite the fact that I was in a Portugese-speaking country.

I rented a pair of chairs under an umbrella for the day so that I could stay out of the sun for a bit, and it turned out to be worth every penny. The cabana boys ran up to rinse your feet off every time you hopped back onto the chair, and my umbrella became the center of our little group's area, with everyone rotating in and out of the chair next to mine. We relaxed, enjoying acai served by the infamous beach runner who roamed the shores shouting, "A. CA. Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii" every five minutes.

At low tide, Laura, Vanessa, Flor and I walked over to the Fourth Beach and sat in the shallow pools left behind as the water receded. This less populated shore provided an excellent respite from the bustling party of the rest of the island.

When we returned, I went out for one more swim with Liev, one of my Israeli roomies.

We ended the day watching the sunset from the beach once again.

That night, we spent most of the night on the beach, drinking cocktails of caixaca mixed with fresh fruits like acerola, caicu, kiwi, and strawberries. Stands for these drinks lined the whole of the beach, but the best were concocted by Tania, a local to whom we became very loyal.

Later, everyone went to another party at a club that featured both a wet Tshirt contest and a foam machine. I wasn't exactly feeling that vibe, so I returned to the hostel, hung out with my roomies for a bit, and went to bed. It was 3am, and I was actually accused of cashing in early!

The next morning, I joined the girls for some scuba diving just offshore. We had a blast, kayaking out to the reef, ramming each other like bumper cars. Our guide, Tyson, made us all laugh, splashing us often and finding an octopus and letting it crawl up Laura's arm.

Since we had gotten up quite early, I took a break from the beach and returned to the hostel for a long nap. I met up with everyone later, but elected to spend a night with just the girls. We hung out at their hostel for a while and shared homemade caipirinhas with their neighbors.

Then we headed up to another club by Toca and partied late into the night. So late, in fact, that by the time I returned to the door of my hostel, the sun was coming up.

I decided to forgo bed for the time being, and I hung out in front of the hostel, watching the sky light up alongside of Moran, another guy from my hostel who had wandered up at the same time.

By the time it was done, we were both awake again, so we walked back up to the Second Beach, where we ran into my Argie guys from Salvador again, and I bid them farewell, since I would be leaving that afternoon. One of them said he wanted to kiss me goodbye, so I held out my cheek. Instead he grabbed my face and gave me what can only be described as a silent-movie-era big, goofy, close-mouthed smackeroon, he held my face in his hands as I pushed away on his shoulders with mine, keeping the rest of our bodies about three feet apart and moving us in a bizarre slapstick dance around the sand. When he let me go after an epic 3 seconds, he literally jumped into the air and hooted, as his buddies nearly fell off of their chairs laughing. He was so clearly drunk and the whole thing had been so ridiculously comical that I couldn't even get mad.

Following that, I returned to the hostel for a few hours rest before collecting my things, returning to the beach to say goodbye to my friends, and jumping on the catamaran back to Salvador. The boat ride, which Ben and I had avoided on our journey to Morro, was in fact quite nauseating, but fortunately, I had a companion in Clara, a girl I had run into in both Salvador and Morro.

Much to my surprise, upon my return, I found Salvador in full swing, pulsating to the rhythm of Olodum, one of the most famous blocos that perform at Carnavale each year.

A gigantic crowd filled the Pelourinho, where the group performed an outdoor concert as a warmup to the festivities the following month. No option existed but to push through, holding my bags tightly under my arms. Thank goodness I had only brought a weekend bag to Morro and had left the majority of my things at Hostel Cobreu.