5:30am
I have a (very) early morning bus to Natal to catch. The Italian guy who is running this pousada proves me again that he is either really good in his "job", or just a really nice person. Come to think of it, maybe both. As he promised me last night, he has left bread, butter and marmalade on the table, he has also made coffee for me before going to sleep, left it in some of those bottles that keep coffee warm for hours. He didn't have to, breakfast "officially" is not served before 8. He earns himself and his pousada a place in my list of people/places I'll praise once I make it back home and I send my feedback to Lonely Planet...
3:20pm
Looking out of my window. I'm in Natal, or, to be more exact, in Ponta Negra, a coastal suburb south of Natal. What you can't see in the picture is that the sea is about 500 metres on the left, as well as that the room is really messy. The guy who let me in, said that last night four girls were here. He said girls are worse (actually better, in this case...) than guys when it comes to... turning a room upside down before checking out... I don't care about the mess, I like this place, the hostel (Albergue da Costa) and Natal itself. My first impressions are positive for a reason...
3:30
At the bus station, I needed someone to tell me which city bus I had to take to go to Ponta Negra. There is a tourist information desk at the bus station, and the piece of info I was looking for, was provided to me by a beautiful woman in her early 30s who not only answered my question with a smile on her face, but also showed interest in hearing my story, which country I come from, where I have already been in Brazil, what are my impressions up to now, so on, so on... Then, on the city bus to Ponta Negra, both the driver and the guy you pay for the ticket, were very friendly and in the end made sure to drop me off at the very stop I had asked them to, once again, with a smile on their face (at least the ticket guy).
3:45
There, I asked some taxi drivers which way my hostel was, and once again, friendly/helpful people assisted me, very willingly I must admit. Finally, I checked in my hostel and all three people I met at the front desk, guys and girl working here, made me feel right away like a member of a bunch of laid back young people. First impressions... How important they are, how decisive in making you like a place before you even take a shower and hit the road for your very first stroll around...
3:50
Natal is one of those places I had never heard before, until I bought my "Brazil" Lonely Planet and started coming up with itinerary ideas. "Sex tourism" is once again (as in Fortaleza's case) a pair of words I came across reading about Natal, which makes me feel a little awkward. I'm not here to have sex with a different prostitute every night, but seems like many Europeans and Americans who come here, come for this very reason, and this makes me feel that as I am walking along the coast, people look at me and say "there, another tourist who is here for cheap exotic sex". Soon, I start getting over this... "complex". The kind of people I see on the beach, anywhere around me, make me feel that things are not that bad, after all... Then again, it's only 4pm... What did I expect?...
4pm
Ponta Negra has a long and narrow stretch of sandy beach, backed by a small street, at the other side of which you have cafeterias, restaurants, travel agencies, bars, souvenir shops, and some hotels. One thing I notice is that people are different to Fortaleza's, meaning... their looks are different. In my city, Thessaloniki, it's easy to spot someone who is from... Georgia, for example (I'm talking about the ex Soviet Republic), be he Georgian or Greek who used to live in Georgia and came to Greece back in the 90s, along with many others from ex Soviet Republics and Albania. In Fortaleza I saw many faces that to me looked like faces of people who are grand-grand-grandchildren of the people who lived here before the Europeans came. In Natal I am under the impression that the vast majority of the people are either white or black. I shouldn't be surprised, this is a seriously big country after all, a real giant, it's not little Greece where we all look the same, race characteristics-wise...
4:10
I have Lonely Planet's "Travel Photography" (apparently I haven't learned anything from it...), and this picture goes against all rules of photography, I guess, but I like this kind of pictures, especially when clouds are involved. The reason I like these pictures is because they remind me how small we actually are... Remember "Antz", some animation movie? For two hours you watch a story being unfold in front of your eyes, a story full of happenings, events that are matters of life and death for the people, well... ants actually, who "star" in the movie, but in the end the camera zooms out, out, out, it leaves the hole in the ground where the story has taken place, it keeps zooming out, the camera "flies" high above New York's Central Park (if I'm not mistaken), and finally gets lost in the clouds, with earth looking so small as a head of a pin... We are small, and...
4:20
And I think that one of the biggest mistakes we humans make, is being under the false impression that we are actually the... centre of the universe, literally and metaphorically. We take everything too damn seriously, we make mountains out of molehills, we make big deals out of nothings (I know there is no such word as "nothings", but this is my blog, I violate the English language any way I want), failing to realize that in reality we are nothing more than a tiny piece of sand in an endless, literally endless, beach... Who do we think we are? Honestly... And I ask this question to myself first, because I'm no exception... I take such a picture and for a few seconds I bring me back to the ground, reminding me that I am not the centre of the universe, and then these seconds pass to history and slowly-slowly I let myself fall into the same trap again, giving my life or life on earth in general way bigger proportions than what they really deserve...
4:30
I've reached the end of the beach, I'm standing at the feet of Morro da Careca, this big sand dune you can see in the last pictures. If you go back to today's second picture and you "look" out of my window, you will see a tall thin communication "tower". The same "tower" can be seen in this photo, in the centre and sliiiiightly on the right. Gives you a rough idea where my hostel is. Once again, I have forgotten to eat... It's no wonder that every single time I travel alone I end up losing weight, having my mother telling me off when I finally find my way back to Thessaloniki, and I visit my parents for my first lunch after returning home. My pants are falling (not exaggerating), I make sure to keep all coins and of course the smaller of my two Olympus cameras in my day-pack and not in my pockets, because this only makes my pants fall more easily... At least I have money and I know that whenever I want, I can put something in my stomach...
5pm
Which is not the case for this tiny kittie... I see/hear it crying as I am going back to my hostel, its mother cannot be seen around, seems all alone, and... well, I do love animals, but I am not the kind of person who will go and feed the neighbourhood's stray dogs. But... seriously, look at it... It's so small and skinny, looks like it's all bones, no real fat, it's crying, and I may be mistaken but its eyes look seriously desperate. I stop a girl that is jogging, she doesn't speak English (surprise-surprise!! -not), so I am trying to construct a sentence in Portuguese including the words "where", "buy" and "milk". She points me at some direction, I pick up the kittie (which, needless to say, is shivering, out of fear I guess, even though I keep trying to cuddle it and make it feel safe), and to make a long story short, after failing to find milk in a bunch of places I went to (give me a break people!!! In Brazil you only sell powder milk?!!! What about normal milk?!!! Jesus!...), I finally shared my "salgados" (small snacks) with the kittie, before taking it back to the place where I had found it. I thought maybe its mother would appear at some point, or... I don't know. It's the only move that made sense to me.
7:50
After spending two days in anything but crowded Canoa Quebrada, the full of people promenade of Ponta Negra looks pleasantly refreshing... Everything has its time and its place, and being in this coastal suburb of Natal on a Friday night feels perfect. To be honest, I do notice something that makes me feel awkward, something I saw in Fortaleza as well. Fat/bald guys in their 40s/50s, skin all white, looking British, my guess is, are holding hands with gorgeous looking young girls who look locals(...). Nothing more to say on this one...
8:20
Another lonely stroll... I'm a member of hospitalityclub.org and couchsurfing.com, I could have arranged to meet with members living here, I could have even asked to be hosted, but I've chosen to be alone. These days I've been in Brazil I had a bunch of chances to hook up with other travelers, but... no, I... made sure to keep everyone at a distance. I even had chances to flirt, but I let them pass me by... I keep myself locked in the same golden cage I have trapped me back home as well. I don't have friends, I don't have a girlfriend for some months now, I try to see my parents as rarely as possible, in other words, I have no expectations from anyone and there is no one to have any expectations from me, I hurt no one and there is no one to get hurt by me, and... that's my "colourless paradise"...
9pm
These are thoughts I make almost every night here, in Brazil. During the day I am distracted by everything I see around, by the very fact that I am in Brazil, but every night, when I pull the brake and look back at everything that happened since the moment I opened my eyes in the morning, thoughts start jumping out of my head, and every night I... count how many moments would have been different if I was different. I'm not complaining, I'm not moaning, really, I am happy to be here, this is a dream coming true, but I feel that... I am driving a Ferrari, going only with 120km/h, while the road is totally empty. There is no speed limit, I am allowed to step on it and reach 200km/h, I have the car to reach such a speed, but... I stick to my 120km/h. It's as if I am hesitant to be TOO happy, as if I'm subconsciously punishing me for... for things I can only write in my notebook, and not in a blog which can be seen by anyone, no matter if this little counter thingy I have on the right says that hardly anyone reads my daily served bunch of mumblings...
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