Day 8 - 13 Dec.2011 - Sítio do Conde

First thing this morning we went to the beach where we had the chance to watch local fishermen fishing ‘espada’ – a tropical salt-water fish.
Having had a relaxed morning we were ready to hit the road again. We set off at approximately 11:00am after filling up our stock with water and crackers at the local village supermarket.
Today’s journey stretched along three states: Alagoas, Sergipe and Bahia. As we crossed the State of Sergipe we also left the sugarcane plantations behind us and the surrounding landscape changed to vast grasslands and woodlands.
The Brazilin Government initiated a major upgrade of the Brazilian inter-state roads and as we experienced on our way the BR101 seemed to be a single, big road works project. This slowed us down a fair bit and we only arrived in Conde at the Bahian Coast after 6:00pm, which turned out to be 7:00pm local time as Bahia has now summer time. We checked in at the small hotel directly by the beach. To our surprise our room fridge was completely smeared with some sticky substance. We asked the hotel porter if he could give it a wipe but he explained that the fridge was deliberately covered with Vaseline to prevent corrosion. Later on we had a nice pizza with tuna, egg and palm hearts in a local pizzeria and the owner only confirmed that the air is so salty that he is forced to buy a new TV every year as the corrosion destroys any electronic equipment. You really would not like to park your car there for too long!
After the pizza we walked a sand road back to our hotel and soon fell asleep with a sound of breaking weaves on the beach.
Another day completed with 465km more on our car meter.