Welcome to Paradise. The beach is still beautiful and each day the weather competes to be be better than the previous day. I have been here for a week. I may leave for Salvador tommorow, but that is what I said yesterday. I am very tempted to spend one more week here, the remainder of my vacation here in Arraial. However, I do feel obligated to see more of Brazil.

Arraial is touristy. The "No Stress - Arraial d'Ajuda" t-shirts make that fact abundantly clear - and yes, I bought one. In the summer high-season, now, it is packed full of tourists. However, it remains almost completely undiscovered by English speaking tourists. There are more Argentinians here than Brazilians. There are a skattering of Germans, Isrealis and other South Americans. There are basically no Americans, English, Canadians, or Australians. A German who has been here for 2 years asked me how I found this place. He had only met two other Americans in his stay here. My response was that Brazillians had sent me here. Apparently the Brazillians are a much better source of information than the Guidebooks.

The daily routine consists of approximately the following: wake up in the afternoon, relax and enjoy the weather, at sunset dance for 2 hours to Brazillian pop on the beach, have dinner at 10pm, start drinking at 11pm, the party is just starting to warm up at 1am, you can continue from there as late as you want. I didn't go the first night, but a few nights ago, I did finally go to a dance club on the beach. I started the night by walking to the club and dancing with a group of 6 Argentinians women - It is amazing, but all of the Argentinian women here are simply varying degrees of hot. I ended the night dancing with 3 Brazillian women - only some of the Brazillian women are gorgeous, but they are all a ton of fun. I was not at all suprised to be walking home along the beach after the club with the sun climbing in the sky. I was hovever suprised to realize that I still had a drink in my hand.

Life here seems to just go from the good to the better. I'm only having two problems The 1st problem is that all of the Brazilliand pop tunes have a set dance routine. You thought the Macarena was difficult? These are worse and there are about 10 songs played constantly that one must learn. At least it is amusing in that in typical Brazillian style many of the dance steps are vulgar. They range from, as I've dubbed them, the basic pelvic thrust and the run your hands over your barely dressed body to the flying pelvic thrust and the advanced shake your ass 'til it hurts. The other problem is that I've started to get a bit of a cold from lack of sleep. For now, I'm drinking lots of OJ and it isn't slowing me down much. Last night, I was still out drinking and dancing until 5am, although I did drink less.

Now, with a little over a week left, it is time to start thinking homeward and that means DRINK RUN. What do people think of going out for drinks on Tuesday, January 25 at either the Carribean Zone or the Tikki Lounge on Broadway? I fly in on the 23rd and should have pictures developed by Tuesday.