A week in my life

Oops, it´s been a week since I last wrote! I have a couple of excuses though! I spent the weekend at a place called Praia do Forte, which is about 2 hours from Salvador. It was weird to get on a bus again after so long, and even weirder to get off so soon, I don´t miss the epic journeys that Jen and I went on! Praia do Forte is a weird little place. It´s where rich Brazilians go on holiday. They fly to Salvador airport and then get a bus straight there and totally skip big scary Salvador. It´s small, safe and very expensive but a nice place for a weekend to escape the city. 4 of us went from the hostel. 3 Americans, Erin, Sarah and Will and I. However we bumped into two Danish guys who had left the hostel the day before so we all stayed together. They are very entertaining so it was a really nice and fun weekend!

We spent most of the time on the beach. It was gorgeous- pine trees, sand and then turquiosy-blue sea. The sea bed was so flat that the waves were breaking about 100m out which was odd. They have a turtle rescue centre there so we wandered around there and spent the rest of the time sunbathing and drinking coconut water, açaí (a sorbet made from a rainforest berry and served with granola and banana, it´s yummy!) and caipirinhas. On the way back I sat next to an Argentinian woman and talked to her in Spanish which was so nice, it feels so easy and fluent compared to Portuguese. My Portuguese is improving a lot though.

I went into hospital on Monday and Tuesday but since then haven´t been very well. I got an insect bite (not even the doctors can decide exactly what it was but probably just a mosquito) last Wednesday on my ankle. By Thursday morning it was a little blister and every day it grew until over the weekend and on Monday it hurt when I walked and was about an inch wide. On Monday the doctors drained it and gave me antibiotics (as in their words `you´re foreign and can´t cope with our Brazilian bacteria so will probably get infected and ill!´) Sure enough I did and have spent the last 3 days in bed with a fever. Feeling a lot better today though and just ventured out to buy more antibiotics (I could only afford half of them when I bought the first lot, they´re expensive here.) which feels like a big achievement! It´s my last weekend here though so I hope I´m well enough to at least make it to the beach, and maybe go back to the old town. This time next week I´ll be flying to Rio, and a week tomorrow I´m flying home!