Beautiful land - or Landfill?

Hey few people that are coming to read this blog! :D

Julan and I took two friends of ours to take a walk at Barra do Jucu today. It's a neighborhood at the city limits and there's a nice beach there. And it's where the Jucu River finds the Atlantic.

We took a ride with my folks and we got to a part of the road where we have to cross a footbridge to get where we wanted to go. When we started walking we saw a cute black dog, she probably had puppies recently and she was not in very good shape. My friends and I are animal lovers, and the dog certainly sensed that about us. She kept following us till we found a bar where we bought her something to eat and some water, too. I didn't take any pictures of that cute bitch, though. =\

Then we had lunch. In a 'self-service' restaurant - you pay according to the weight of everything on your plate. It's something very common here in Brasil. We paid a little more then R$5 for my plate. Ana paid R$6 something for hers, Livia R$7 something (and she's the skinniest one) and Julian paid almost R$18... yeah that's right!!! Eighteen reais!!! LOL!!!

We went to the beach and we saw something that is what really inspired me to write this post. And not in a positive way. Because it's the place where the river finds the ocean, there're a lot of vegetation (mangue) around. That's good. But the river brings a lot of dirt from plants and trees from the other places. The worst thing is that it's a very populated area around that place, and, unfortunately, most of people here have absolutely no ecological consciousness. I'm not a very ecologically correct person. I take hot showers for hours, I waste water, energy, paper, natural resources... But in the city where I live we have a flooding problem every time it rains. People complain a lot, others lose everything... And they just don't realize that it's all their fault!!! It's very common to see people throwing trash on the streets and all that garbage blocks the draining system and when it rains it floods everywhere.
Well, back to the beach. I've told you that there is a lot of dirt from the vegetation because of the river. But the most terrible thing is that there is also a lot of human produced trash. All kinds of plastic and glass bottles, plastic bags, and everything else that destroys the environment and the beauty of that place...
We talked to a life guard who was working there and he told us it has been like that for many years now. The mayor doesn't send people over there to clean it, trash keeps coming because people have nasty habits towards the environment. Some people who live in the neighborhood have tried to clean the beach by themselves a couple of times, unsuccessfully.

It's really sad that Brazilians have such a beautiful place to live in, with so many options of energy and natural resources, but because of corruption, brainwashing from stupid TV shows, weak educational system and many other factors, we just can't see how amazing our country is. We could be a first world country. We could be a very important nation when it comes to helping our planet. But I guess that's never going to happen.

Here are some pictures of the place. Feel free to write your opinions about this post!