Reunion, Reunião (Meeting), Racing

This past weekend was a holiday weekend, with Brazilian Independence Day falling on a Thursday, making for a nice four day weekend. This allowed Ben, Nate, and I to travel to Salvador, Bahia, Brazil for four days, which also allowed us to meet up with Tracey Newlove, the Fogarty Fellow in Salvador, Brazil.

Salavador is a beautiful city (photos to follow later this week), located more than 1000 km down the coast from Fortaleza. Salvador has many hills, and more variable weather than Fortaleza. Salvador also is on a peninsual such that the Atlantic Ocean is to the east, and a bay is to the west, allowing one to view a beautiful sunset over the bay. I greatly enjoyed this change of scenery for a few days. It sounds great to have the weather forecast be sunny with a high of 87 and low of 76 everyday, but it is actually nice to have a little variety at times. Indeed in Salvador, we experienced cooler weather, and rain during 3 of the four days that we were there. Despite the rain, we still were able to explore parts of the city of Salvador and a few beaches north of Salvador.

The first two days were spent exploring parts of the historic downtown, Pelourinho, and the area near the bay. We ate at some good restaurants, walked through Pelourinho, and met some other students traveling in Salvador, some from the United Kingdom, others from Norway and others from the US. We were able to get a room cheaply at a hostel in the Pelourinho area. Saturday was the day that we planned to travel to a beach north of Salvador, Praia do Forte. We read in our travel guide that this beach had turtles and a castle, and we hoped to see both. We also hoped for sun. Unfortunately, we saw no turtles (they're actually raised in captivity for release into the wild, and they charge admission to see them), and were unable to find the famed castle of Praia do Forte despite driving northa nd south of the beach in search of the castle. It also rained for part of the day putting a damper on our day at the beach. Despite these facts, while searching for the castle after the rain had stopped, we discovered a beach 10 km north of Praia do Forte that was more isolated, much less touristy, and quite beautiful. Reachign this beach required a hike through a small town across a stream, around a lagoon to reach the ocean. I definitely preferred this small quiet beach to the touristy Praia do Forte. We returned to the city Saturday night and dined with Tracey in the Rio Vermelho area of Salvador. Here we had one of the few bad experiences in Salvador in which a man came up to us while we were eating at an outdoor restaurant, and after trying to sell some product or upcoming event, said something to the effect of "Gringos go home." This put a little bit of a damper on the evening, but we still enjoyed the chance to see a little more of Salvador and talk.

Sunday afternoon involved further exploration of the Pelourinho and Barro regions of Salvador. Our flight was scheduled to leave Salvador Sunday evening at 10:35 pm, and arrive in Fortaleza at 1:30 am after a stop in Recife. We reconfirmed our flight prior to heading to the airport in Salvador, taxied to the airport and checked in for our flight. We were then told that the plane was delayed leaving Sao Paulo, and the flight would be an hour or so late. In fact, the plane arrived about 2 hours late, and we departed 2.5 hours late, arriving in Fortaleza at 4:00 am, arriving back at our house at 4:30. This wouldn't be much of a problem, except for the fact that our PI, Dr. Guerrant was giving a presentation the next morning at a hotel near Praia do Futoro for an HIV conference, and we were expected to attend. This required us to wake up at 7 to taxi across town for the presentation, going on 2+ hours of sleep. This was followed by a day with a very long meeting about our projects, also on 2+ hours of sleep. The meeting refocused our projects, and now I have about 4 projects that I am in some way working on or planning. We're still continuing with final preparations for a physical fitness study, I continue to plan a vision study, and now have a project involving PCR testing for cryptosporidium and enteroaggregative E Coli that I am currently working on. Later in the year, we all hope to collaborate on a project that will bring together some of the diagnostic tests that we are working on for a small study in HIV patients.

The remainder of this week will be focused on my PCR project, and continuing to plan my vision study. Friday, Chris Brown, the final member of the Fortaleza crew will arrive. Chris is another medical student from my class at UVA who will be here for part of the year this year. This weekend I will be participating in a 10 kilometer race here in Fortaleza. It is part of a series of races across Brazil that apparently attract some of the elite runners in the country. I have been running quite a bit here in Brazil, and look forward to seeing how I can do in a timed test with other runners. The setting for the race is perfect as there will be two circuits of a course along Beira Mar, bordering the Atlantic Ocean near Praias Iracema, Meireles, Nautico, and Mucuripe.

Salvador photos should be up later this week, and I hope to post a few thoughts on life in Brazil early next week.