Diogo- Stepping into the painting

To continue the nor cal parallels, we took a vacatican to Bolinas. Now you have to imagine Bolinas as a tropical Paradise with little monkeys instead of squirrels, a bathtub-warm ocean that hugs and kisses you and says, "My love, why have you been so long? Never leave me again!" and heavily laden mango trees everywhere.
There were many other wonderful fruits growing there too, only a few of which have names that I know in English.

Cicadas sound like sprinklers.

A monkey pooped on our mosquito net while we were at breakfast. That was the last time we left our door open.

The rain brought out these giant flying ants that would drop their wings, and the ants brought huge cartoonish toads called cow frogs. The were everywhere, tongues grabbing ants.

We interacted with every species. It was like being in a Disney movie. the Animals there were just chillin´living their lives. I swear a mule was waiting at the market to see if his credit had cleared.

This post isn't finished. I will continue to add to it. Check Raheemah´s posts on chateaulorange.blogspot.com for more details. So many wonderful things happened to us. It was an amazing and full vacation. Here are some pictures:

a little monkey

Val, Antonio, Coro and another guy whose name I forgot playing Capoeira Angola on the Beach




Giant spider

The walk to the beach from are pousada took about 20 minutes and involved crossing a river up to our chests and trecking through white sand dunes. Once we were there, the beach was ours.



Playing Capoeira Regional with Raheemah

Tiny Fried Fish

Large ant working

Diogo´s one road. Well, actually it has two roads... Or one road with a fork in it.

Another large spider

Ridiculously large snail

That´s Melanie in the middle. She took most of the pictures. She´s from Germany, and is super cool. The three of us took the trip together.




Val getting us all coconuts. There were eight of us. We were with the capoeiristas from the photo and their friend Raphael at a swimming hole in the river, a "sweet-water beach", washing the salt off of us. The tree is very tall, by the way. He took a while deciding which tree would the best coconuts for all of us. That took longer than the climb.





Val lead us back through beautiful jungly parts, stopping occasionally to reach into a bush and pull out some delicious fruit.

In Val´s house. He made it.

one of many cow frogs

party at the pousada where we were staying. Everything in town was full for the holiday, so Sophie, the woman who runs the pousada, let us stay in the room that is usually used for massage. Less comfortable quarters, but cheaper, and cute. And functional- our coconut frawn roof kept the rain out. We later found out that Val made that too. It´s a small town.

A short cut to the bus stop.