The last two weeks of my Brazilian adventure began much like the previous two – work, work and more work, with the additional strain of trying to organise a trip out to the field. It seemed everything was against me – in order to get out there I needed one professor, one technician and transport. However, the professor was on holiday, the technicians were on strike and the university refused to rent a car to me. In the end, it only took 1 full day, 2 native English speakers, 1 Brazilian student who speaks English and two Brazilian professors, to resolve the situation to everyone’s satisfaction. The only slight problem, for me at least, was that we had agreed to meet at the university at 7am. Given the previous reliability of the buses (or lack thereof) this meant I had to wake up at 4.30am to be certain I would arrive on time.

So, before the sun had even begun to rise, I dragged myself out of bed, forced myself into the cold shower I hoped might wake me up, had some breakfast and got my things together. About 5 minutes before I was going to leave, in predictable Brazilian disagreeableness, it began to rain. And when it rains in the tropics, it pours. I decided to wait a few minutes, in the desperate hope in might subside, but no such luck. So, I found my rain coat and headed out. Fifteen miserable minutes later, I was at the bus stop. Thankfully, the buses ran smoothly and I actually arrived at University half an hour early, which gave me a chance to do a few bits of work before leaving. I made sure I was finished with all this promptly, and sat and waited. But 7am came and went, and there was no sign of the professor who was supposed to help me. I told myself he was working on Brazil time (usually a minimum of 15 minutes late) and waited patiently. By 8am I was just sending him a rather concerned and slightly irate email, when he arrived.

The professor seemed rather concerned and a little put out when I explained to him we were taking a taxi to the field, but somehow I managed to convince him it would be fine and we headed out. By this point the rain had finally relented and when we arrived at the field site I was feeling quite optimistic. We spent about 30 minutes finding a nest and getting started with the digging before the rain started again. It was only light at first and I tried to kid myself that it wouldn’t get any worse. At least the rain was softening up the soil, right? But within minutes it was raining full force again and I huddled under the bright yellow trench coat they had given me, waiting to catch ants, and desperately trying to keep my belongings and the ants from becoming totally waterlogged.

I kept hoping it would be over soon, but hours passed, we finished digging a colony, and still the rain continued to pelt down on us. The narrow pathways between the vegetation had now become streams, and as my two Brazilian helpers headed out to locate a second colony, I once again huddled under my rain coat, willing with all my might for the rain to stop. Unfortunately my telekinetic powers are not what they should be – the rain was unrelenting. So we started to dig a second colony. By this point I was losing the will to live. The hole we were digging and the entire area surrounding it had turned into a mud bath and it took all my energy to keep from slipping over as I transferred ants, larvae and pupae from the partly destroyed nest into the plastic box. Meanwhile I was constantly worrying about the important items in my not completely waterproof backpack – my camera, phone, the paper data sheets, my cigarettes….

About half an hour before we finished, the rain finally started to subside, and by the time we were back at the road waiting for the taxi, the sun came out from behind the clouds and I peeled off my rain coat. I arrived back at the university at about 2pm and it didn’t rain another drop for the rest of the day. Typical!

The rest of that week passed without event, and it was finally the weekend. Of course I was working Saturday again, which didn’t leave a whole lot of weekend, but on Friday night I headed out for a few hours to the Orla (sea front) to a Forro event. Never before in my life have I seen so much bunting. Other than that it was relatively unexciting. Saturday afternoon I managed to get out early and head to the shopping mall to buy some gifts. On Sunday, I made plans with my American friends Hans and Becky to head out of Aracaju to a much anticipated restaurant, located on an almost completely temporary sand bank in the middle of a river. Apparently it was once the place to be but when the decking collapsed it fell out of favour.

At about 1pm we took a bus out to tiny town about an hour outside Aracaju where there were boat trips available to the restaurant. It was a cloudy day with the occasional sprinkling of rain, and so we got a boat all to ourselves. The boat trip took about 15 minutes, sailing across the smooth greenish waters of the river, past little mangrove covered islands. As we began to approach the restaurant, I felt unconvinced. It was high tide at this point, and the place we were headed to was little more than a patch of damp sand next to less than glamorous looking wooden building on stilts. A few people were already there sitting underneath palm-leaf umbrellas on partly submerged plastic chairs. Forro was blasting out of enormous speakers next to the wooden buidling, from which waiters and waitresses periodically appeared to wade across the waste-high waters between them and their customers. I can say for certain this is the strangest restaurant I have ever been too. Nevertheless, the atmosphere was nice, the food was tasty and the caipirinhas flowed freely, so it turned out to be lovely afternoon. During the course of our meal, and the subsequent hours spent drinking caipirinhas, the water retracted to reveal a much larger patch of slightly damp sand, and as the sun began to set behind the mangroves it was actually really beautiful.

My final full week in Aracaju was one of the strangest I have had so far. It began uneventfully, but on the Wednesday I awoke to a rather awkward scene, as the son of my Brazilian mother was moving out of the house because he didn’t like her new fiance. Eager not to stick around for anymore uncomfortable family drama than I needed to, I ate my breakfast and headed straight out to uni. I wasn’t feeling very well that afternoon though, so I came home a little early. When I got back I was relieved to see the padlock on the door, indicating perhaps a few hours of solitude before the craziness returned. However, when I opened the door, I walked in to find an empty house. Completely empty. Every last piece of furniture, every nicknack, every item of clothing – gone. All that remained was a lonely plastic garden table (or the dining table, as it functioned here), a fridge, and in my bedroom (thankfully) all my belongings. I surmised that we hadn’t been robbed, but Nice was nowhere to be seen, so beyond that, I was clueless. More than slightly perturbed, but still feeling unwell, I went for a lie-down. I was woken abruptly an hour or two later by Nice bursting into my room, as she liked to do when I foolishly forgot to lock the door. She began to explain to me that a house down the street had become available at the last minute and she had decided to move house. While I was at work. She didn’t seem to think any of this was the least bit strange. She told me that I could continue to stay there for the rest of my time in Brazil, and that she would bring my food round in the evenings (since she had taken the oven with her). Still in a state of complete disbelief, and half asleep, I just about accepted all of this, and ate my dinner while she scurried about collecting the last few things she had forgotten.

The situation continued to get stranger when, the following day, a Brazilian couple started shouting up to me at my bedroom window. I explained to them that I didn’t speak Portuguese (OK, so I speak a little, but that one phrase gets me out of a whole load of hassle) and that there was nobody else home, and they went on their way. I thought nothing more of it, but later that evening there was a knocking at the door, which I slightly suspiciously responded to. We managed to communicate sufficiently for me to learn that they lived in the apartment below and water was coming through the ceiling. I said that we didn’t have a leak upstairs, gave them Nice’s number, and managed to get rid of them. The next morning Nice arrived with them bright and early and, while I tried to eat my breakfast and wake up fully, she explained to me that from now on, whenever I wasn’t using the shower, I was to turn the water supply off to the whole apartment. Fantastic.

Despite all this, I managed to almost get used to the routine of dinner arriving in a thermos bag every evening, and having to remember to turn the water on to brush my teeth. That Friday was not only my last in Brazil, but also the last weekend that Hans and Becky were in Aracaju. So we made plans to head down to the Orla to hang out, play a little basketball and drink a few caipirinhas. (Because what Brazilian evening is complete without one?). I had a lovely chilled evening with them and some of their Brazilian friends, and, despite my best intentions, didn’t get home until gone 4am. This wouldn’t have been a concern except I had booked a tour for Sunday, or at least I thought it was for Sunday until on Friday night I realised that when the company confirmed the booking they had put the wrong date. Since my internet contract had now been cancelled, I reached the conclusion that I had no choice but to be up and ready to go at 7.50am on Saturday morning, just in case they turned up. So, after just 3 hours sleep, I dragged myself out to the front of the condominio (apartment complex) and waited, hoping that the bus wouldn’t turn up and I could go back to sleep. Thankfully, this was exactly what happened, and I was able to get a few more hours sleep before heading out for the adventure I had planned for that day.

The adventure was a solo trip to an extremely isolated beach called Areia Branca. I had hoped to go with other people but in the end everyone was either busy or ill. Determined not to miss out on what had been sold to me as the most beautiful and deserted beach in Sergipe, I decided to brave it alone. This adventure entailed a 40 minute bus ride and an hour walk. The reason that the beach is so deserted is that about 25 minutes into the walk, the road literally disintegrates, and the remainder of the trip continues across sand dunes. After an hour of walking in the midday heat, I arrived, and for the first time I could remember since being in Brazil, there wasn’t anybody else in sight. This blissful solitude was interrupted fairly rapidly by the jet-skiers appearing on the horizon, and periodically after that by people turning up in four-by-fours, but for the most part I spent a wonderful afternoon sunbathing on the sand dunes completely alone. The beach was really no more than a large sand dune, surrounded almost completely by water, with the sea on one side, the river on another and the lake behind, leaving only a small sliver of land connecting it to the rest of the beach. The sand was brilliant white and the softest, finest sand I have ever seen. The kind of sand which sticks to you instantly and refuses to come off again, no matter what you do, but that for some reason you just cant stop touching.

On the horizon were more white sand beaches dotted with palm trees. The perfection of the beach was slightly spoiled by the dead couti (or something similar), but as long as you didn’t lie down-wind of it, it was fine. I stayed until the sun started to set, and then began my 2 hour journey home. The latter part of the walk was rather unpleasant because it was now totally dark and I road was sufficiently isolated for me to start to feel concerned about my safety. I tried to walk as quickly as possibly but my flip flops were rubbing my feet raw and I had strained a muscle in my foot walking along the dunes earlier. I made it back to the bus stop safely though, and concluded that, despite the pain, it had been a worthwhile excursion.

The next day I awoke to the horrible realisation that I had slept through my alarm. I looked at my phone. 7:48am. Crap. The tour bus was supposed to be arriving at 7:50. I got dressed faster than I ever have before, hoping that the tour bus would be functioning on Brazilian time, and managed to get myself out the door before 8. Thankfully the bus was indeed late, and I managed to get outside a good 5 minutes before it arrived. And so began my day tour to Delta do São Francisco. It was a 2 hour drive to the start of the boat tour, and we were further delayed by a marathon which was apparently happening that morning, so didn’t arrive at the jetty until nearly 11:30am. Here we quickly boarded the boat and set off. The river was beautiful, surrounded on all sides by thick forests of palm trees, broken only by the occasional village or fisherman’s hut.

For a full hour we continued down the river, past palm covered islands and hand-made fishing boats, and finally towards a beautiful white sandy outcrop which marked the point where the river met the sea. It was here that we stopped, and spent an hour on the beach before getting back onto the boat for lunch. Just before lunch, a ominous looking black cloud appeared on the horizon, and within 10 minutes it was raining. Thankfully not that hard, though, and the rain didn’t last long. The location was really beautiful, although my opportunity to appreciate it was slightly spoiled by a very chatty Brazilian woman who spoke English and apparently wanted to hear my life story over grilled cheese (the Brazilian snack of choice for the beach). After lunch it was time to head back. The return trip was less pleasant simply because it was still cloudy and the picturesque views I had enjoyed on the way out were overshadowed by dark rain clouds. And then we had to spend another 2 hours on the bus home. I have to say, the location was absolutely stunning but I found myself questioning whether it was worth 4 hours traveling to spend only an hour actually on the dune. Still, it was a perfectly nice day out, and in the evening I found time to squeeze in what would probably be my last few caipirinhas with Becky and her friend Fabio. Before heading home that night she took me to what is unquestionably the best pasteis (deep fried pastry with your choice of filling) place in town where we significantly increased our cholesterol before taking a midnight stroll along the beach. As I walked home, I was just starting to feel a little sad to be leaving Aracaju, when I turned the corner to find two stray dogs ‘getting to know each other’ in the middle of the pavement, and I decided that maybe it was about time I got back to England.