Samba, Speedboats and Waterfalls

After we finally left Sao Paulo, we got to our destination called Florianopolis to be greeted by lots of sunshine which was good considering we were going to spend the next 4 days lying on the beach or by the hostel pool. After a short bus ride and another which lasted too long (e.g we missed our stop and had a guided tour of the island.) We got to our hostel and decided that we were going to chill out by the pool and have a few beers, however our chips were quickly pissed on when the rain came to spoil our fun. This turned into a regular occurrence of the rest of our stay, we’d get up thinking the rain would leave us alone, we’d have chance to eat breakfast then it would piss down again.

We did as much as we could do to keep entertained – we would do our washing, eat, drink, play uno, I’d read, Leah would look at the pictures but the boredom was still there. However, one night we did manage to get out with everyone from the hostel and go to a local Samba club. Now, after our little visit to the club in Sao Paulo we’d thought we were experts in Samba. To cut a long story short (as my dad would say..) we got to this club and it resembled the Ferny on a Sunday night (Anyone over the age of 28 and from Aberdare will be smiling as they read this) it was essentially a wooden shack – on stilts rammed with loads of young boys and girls wanting to get shit-faced and get off with each other.

Now, when I was going out looking for women, you would drink a few pints with the boys, stand on the side of the dance floor and when a bird gave you the eye or one you thought would be up for it looked at you, you would go up to her and ask her if she fancied a drink and then maybe at the end of the night you’d get lucky and you’d end up pulling her. Nope, not in Brazil. The etiquette is this – you see a bird you fancy/has a pulse, go up to her and start Samba dancing with her. Pretty simple really and in the 45mins we were there I saw a few boys get lucky – fair play I thought must tell the boys back home. So off I go’s to get Leah and I a drink, instructing Leah to not move and stay where she was. I return armed with drinks after queuing twice for things as you do in Brazil (1 to pay and get a chitty and the second to get my drink), to find Leah looking panic stricken dancing with this lad who thinks he’s Brazil’s answer to Patrick Sweazy. He clocks me and is soon standing on Leah’s toes better than I can and making his exit.

Apart from the Samba party, Florianopolis was pretty much a non-event for us. So we decided we should head off and make it to Iguazu Falls. Now, apart from Christ the redeemer, this was the other thing that I wanted to see in South America, after seeing the falls in James Bonds - Moonraker when Bond drives a boat over the edge of the falls and flies off in a hang glider. So we left Florianopolis on another overnight bus to get to Iguazu. For those of you that didn’t know, Iguazu straddles the border between Brazil and Argentina and the falls can be seen from the both sides. We were told that the Argentina side provided the more up close and personal view but the Brazil side provides the better perspective, but it was well worth seeing them from the Brazilian side if you can. We got to the park minus our bags and got to see them from the Brazilian side and was totally blown away by what we got to see.  I’d imagined seeing them from some platform where we could see them in the distance but when we got there we got soaked by the spray from the falls. I started thinking about the drunken conversation a few nights before and had I got it wrong – was the Brazilian side the one that you got up close and personal with?

We woke up the following morning and made our way to the park from the Argentina side and were again totally mesmerised by it! (You can start to see a pattern here – I liked the falls!)  Anyway, after 5 hours of taking photos and just watching water falling off big cliffs and getting soaked by the spray we’d decided to take the advice of some guys we’d met in the bar the night before, that a ride in a speed boat taking you right up and actually into the waterfalls was a must see. Surprisingly Leah was bang up for it too (She’s even considering paragliding soon but I can’t see her doing a bungee when we get to NZ!) after paying our money and signing our life away we got our lifejacket’s on and got on the boat to take up the last two seats on the boat. We’d been told to wear only swimming clothes on so Leah’s got her Bikini on and I’m in my best Baywatch shorts that would give Hasslehoff a run for his money! Now I’d always expected there to be some pikey young kid (Equipped with a baseball hat the wrong way around) driving the boat with a heavy right foot to give us maximum thrill factor. Sadly as I got on the boat I’d clocked the driver and a pair of driving gloves, a pipe and a dai cap would be better suited. However we soon found out this guy was re-living his youth and drove us all head long into the falls and got everyone in the boat duly soaked, after a few high-speed blasts and turns I turned around expecting to see him grinning like a Cheshire cat, sadly he was just sat there expressionless . I guess once you’ve seen a load of tourists soaked once it’s not that funny, when it’s the 15^th time and the end of the day you just want to go home!

That night we decided to celebrate at the hostel and as it was ½ price drinks for 3 hours of the night we were going to get on it. So the Cubra Libre’s were flowing and everyone chatting around by the pool and with Leah only having had 2 drinks. I turn around to find her rolling backwards down the stairs, her drink going in the air and the prospect of another 5 steps for her to go I do the just and honest thing and instead of helping her up , I get the camera out to take a photo! We’d heard that it was a party hostel so we expected kids drinking all night by the pool and not much sleep.  At 1am everyone had gone to bed and all that was left was Leah and I and two other’s we’d met the day before propping up the bar until 4 am. You’ll all be pleased to hear that we filled one side of the bar (About 5.5ft) in empty 600ml bottles of lager!

Anyway we’d been totally absorbed by the falls and hadn’t managed to get around them in one day so decided that we had to go back for the second day and take them up on the offer of a second days’ entry at ½ price. We went back to take some more photos and have a walk around as the weather had improved over night, sadly this was not good for my hangover and Leah had to put up with:

“Lea – I’m bad. Can we have a sit down?” & “Shit, I’m getting old. I can’t drink like I use to”

Normally – met by

“Look, forget the hangover, where are the monkeys?”

Anyway we’ve got loads of photos and some videos for you to see the falls. Photos don’t do it justice so have a look at these videos to “Wet” your appetite… (I’ll get my coat!)

First Video

Second Video

Amazing – hey?

Finally - I have to apologise for the delay in writing these blog updates. This was over a week and ½ ago but as you can imagine, us creative, arty people struggle to keep churning out quality work day after day and I’ve had a lot on! It’s also been absolutely boiling here so I’ve struggled to think let alone type. Anyway, it’s now Christmas eve and we’re off out tonight for celebrations with the Argentinians (They celebrate Christmas tonight) We’re off to the beach tomorrow and then it’s a BBQ on the roof of our hostel tomorrow evening/night. Feliz Navidad to you all! 

Patience in Sao Paulo

After the 7.5 hour bus journey, 2 metro rides and a taxi ride we got to our hostel at quarter to midnight, we had all sorts of thoughts – are they going to be open, will they have let our beds go, because we told them we’d be there by 7, etc. but we were pleased to find that they were open, they hadn’t let our beds go and to our surprise – they even knew our names when they opened the door for us! Now, that’s rare – Casa Club was going to be our base for the next few days.

Sao Paulo is a huge city, with a very American theme running through it. Distance is measured in blocks, there’s valet parking everywhere and the hilly streets remind me very much of San Francisco. Casa Club was located within one of the new, up and coming neighbourhoods called Vila Madalena. There were a few hostels to choose from but the reviews for Casa Club were really good and it certainly didn’t disappoint. The hostel was owned by most of the staff and Paulo and Leo were helpful giving us information on where we should go in the city and on what days and giving us the lowdown on the best places to go. Which is a good job really as there’s over 15,000 bars, restaurants and nightclubs in Sao Paulo and over 400 museums (You know we love our museums – yeah?).

We checked in and Paulo takes us up to our room (as it was a city and somewhere where we’d be out of the hostel a lot, we decided that a private room wasn’t worth it and we’d be staying in a dorm) In every dorm we’ve stayed in there have been  bunk beds and in some places there are triple bunk beds and to date – Leah hasn’t had the option of staying on the bottom bunk!  Something that is starting to get to her – I hope our next place offers her the bottom bunk! (Argentina – are you listening?)

Anyway we went to bed in readiness for a busy day the following day, as you can imagine getting up on to the top bed of a bunk bed is difficult when you’re trying to not to disturb the person below. As I’ve always been on the top bunk I’ve never actually seen Leah getting into a bunk bed and I have to say, it is something that you have to see! She does however confess that she’s not that ladylike, putting that aside for one minute – it’s hilarious, she bangs both her shins on the ladder on the way up then when she gets to the top, takes an age to turn and get into the bed – its nigh on hilarious. I even found myself waking up 5mins before her 7:15 toilet trip just so that I could see her climbing down the ladder!

As I said earlier the hostel owners were great in advising us where we should go on each day and they advised of us of a brief tour of the city, taking in the sights and sounds of the huge city that is Sao Paulo.  They’d advised us that a local club was well worth a visit as they have live music, if I’m honest I had pictured a group of past it old blokes playing with their banjo-strings but in fact when we got there we realised that we’d gone to an awesome Samba club. Now, we all know that I love a dance as much as the next person (more if I’m standing next to Pie) but this club was amazing, there were people dancing up from the minute the band had started, which is quite different from the usual in my local, where blokes have to sink at least 10 pints of Stella before they’ll even get their left leg twitching. It was truly amazing, to see people young and old, getting up and jigging about.

In fact, it got a bit heated and I’d never had myself down as a bit of a prude but to see people with hands over each other from start to finish was great/a bit much (delete as appropriate.)  I know I should be prepared for such eventualities - I have been to the “boot” on a Sunday night before but to see a woman’s eyes being crossed and her hair everywhere as her partner is rubbing up against her Samba style a true eye opener!

We were also told that Brazil has a national football museum, located in Sao Paulo. Now, I’m not that bothered about football if I’m honest but I thought my mates (who are all massive football fans) would disown me if I had the option of going to the museum and turned it down. After eventually finding it, I can honestly say that we both had an amazing afternoon and learnt so much about the “beautiful” game. The following day, happy about our cultured day at the museum, we decided that we should go to another museum we were told that the Portuguese language museum was well worth it so we made our way to it, paid our entrance fee and then spent the next 2 hours being totally clueless and understanding nothing. It would seem that the language museum is all in Portuguese and has not a single sign, piece of information or any additional piece of information in English! Disappointing to say the least…. However, the highlight of the day was to be our evening meal, we stopped for food in a little place in the Japanese district of Sao Paulo that had been recommended to us by the Lying Planet. It said it is one of the best places to get authentic Japanese food at the cheapest prices. For once, it wasn’t lying to me this was the best Japanese food I have ever tasted. The biggest bowl of noodles, veg, pork and broth I’ve seen, enough to keep even the Pie and his monster hunger at bay all for the very small amount of £4!

All good things must come to an end and with the help of the guys at the hostel we’d booked our bus journey to a place called Florianopolis, the journey was going to be a mammoth 12 hours so we’d booked an overnight bus to enable us to save money on a bed for the night and not have to waste our days on a bus. So, armed with our booking reference number and seat numbers we made it to the bus terminal early to get something to eat before the journey. For those of you that don’t know, Sao Paulo has the second largest bus terminal in the world and our bus was on Platform 4 out of 89! As we were early we decided to go and get some food and get to our bus stop early, being the boy-scout I am, I thought I’d better check with the guys that I had the right bus stop. The dude there confirmed I was at the right one - result! The driver hops out and an orderly queue forms, we get in the queue and I leave Leah to manage it while I take a pee. I return to see Leah in a state of panic and I realise that I’ve got the reference number including seat numbers; I calm every one down and produce the necessary numbers.

Then the driver drops the line – “You need ticket – no ticket, no autobus” So I run up the escalator, the 100m through the middle of the bus station, to the ticket office to be confronted with 3 queues of at least 15 people to each window, so I bite the bullet and push past them all where I can feel all of their eyes focusing on the back of my head, I point out to the stupid bint that the bus should be leaving now and I need to be on this bus! She then tells me that she needs our passports – I could have died. So, I turn around and run all the way back to get the passports – Leah’s face was of sheer relief however this turned quickly to fear when she realised I needed the passports and again I set off like Linford Christie’s training partner. I get back to the front of the queue, the guy hands me the tickets and I make it back to the bus, expecting to see Leah lying down behind the bus to stop it from leaving without us. No, in fact Leah is sat on the bus in our seats calm as anything and I’m a total bath of sweat from running the 1000m in an Olympic gold time. Now, before we left my mate Van handed us a list of the 10 travelling commandments, following his travels a few years ago. 

Number 4 reads –

“Be Patient – You’re not going to catch every bus/train, instead of getting angry use the time to explore”

Now butt, I’d seen a fair bit of Sao Paulo and I’d paid £70 for my bus ticket, like hell was I going to relax – I’ve got the legs for it, so I wasn’t going to miss that bus. I’m sure you can understand that… (It was £70 after all… Enough to get you back into your house after you’ve locked yourself out!?)

Next stop is a little place called Florianopolis for a few days then we’re off to The Iguasu Falls. Hopefully we’ll catch every bus without hassle this time…

Birthdays, buses, boats, booze, BBQ’s and Baby David!

As it was Leah’s birthday weekend, we decided that this should not go without miss and booked a room on an island called Ilha Grande. We’d heard lots about it and couldn’t wait to get there, a proper oasis, no roads, no cars a proper little remote island. We were told to take extra money, not because it’s expensive but because there’s no cashpoints on the island. To get over to the island we needed to catch the once a day ferry from Angra Dos Res, which in itself was a challenge.

Buses in Brazil seem to have the most stupid turn style right in the middle of the bus where some fat, over opinionated bint sits, whilst listening to samba music on her phone and grunts at people when they ask for a ticket. Now, this turnstile is a bitch to manoeuvre when you’ve got your towel and wallet in your hand let alone when you look like a turtle with an extension, equipped with your 75kg backpack on your back and a rucksack on your front!  To expect some patience and some consideration from this woman would be I guess, expecting too much. She does have some samba music to listen to and chocolate milk to drink, so I guess I’m the fool for expecting it!

I was going to dedicate a whole post on the blog on my view of Brazilian people, then after I started writing it I realised that it would be wrong of me to bundle them all in together. So, I won’t! But I will dedicate this rant to people that work on the bus network!

Our first poor experience of these people started in Rio, we got to the Rodivario (Portuguese for bus station, I know – check me out!) again poor signage didn’t help us but we needed to get our tickets to get to Paraty and there was no obvious ticket office apart from a little shed (Lonely planet was of no help it said there was a little shed out front selling tickets). So off we go, like turtles and we approach these 3 women with the view that they may be able to help direct us to the relevant ticket office, no! First of all they refused to acknowledge us (by totally ignoring our existence!) Then,  Leah stood in and with her best Spanish asked for two tickets to Paraty. I know, they get people asking them for things in broken Portuguese/Spanish daily but there’s no need to be so rude about it. What happened next was actually the rudest thing I’ve ever seen. Two of the women leave their colleague in the shit and alone with us and this last woman shakes her head, gets her big ass finger out and waves it in our face indicating NO! Then puts her big ass finger to her mouth to tell us to shut up and corrects us on our pronunciation of Paraty (it should be pronounced Para-chee), so we walk off cheesed off, insulted and mouthing some obscenities at her.

Once we were off the bus, we needed to find the port to get the bus. Now my powers of deduction are en par with Hercule Poirot. The port has to be near the sea and will generally have big boats in it I think, so rather than asking some local drunk I decided that I knew better, we’ve now managed to pick up two guys who are getting the ferry over to Ilha Grande too so we set off, safe in the knowledge that I know where we need to go. After 5mins of wandering aimlessly in 30 degree heat I give in and decide it would be better to ask for directions – fortunately for my pride I was leading our troop in the right direction. We turn a corner and are at the port, we’re aware that we have 2 hours to wait but as true brits we thought it better to be a little bit early!

As we’re making our way to the (empty) ticket office this dude comes up to us and offers us 

an alternative to being bored for the 2 hour wait, it becomes apparent that he’s no expert magician prepared to entertain us with his magic card tricks but has another “Super Fast” boat that he can take us over the island on and it will leave in 10mins but it’ll cost R$25. Like the money conscious travellers  we have become, I point out that the ferry is only R$7 and we’re prepared to wait two hours for R$18 (Note – at this time I became the voice for our group of 4!) so we walk off in disgust towards the ferry cool as cucumbers, knowing that this dude had plenty of room for haggling. Our group of 4 now becomes 5 with this guy hot in pursuit, instantly he tells us that he’s feeling kind and that he can drop it down to R$15 but we must not tell anyone else on the boat that we’ve had it cheap, again I nominate myself as the voice for the group and point out that he must be able to reduce it a bit more as its still double the cost of the normal ferry, he gives in and takes it down to R$10. So we agree and head towards the dock expecting some speed boat that will get us there in minutes, sadly this is not to be. We were greeted with what resembled the titanic having been resurrected from the ocean floor with a few bits of wood added to make it sea-worthy, we eventually set sail and over 2 hours later we get to the island.

After getting off the boat, we try and find our hostel in amongst the hundreds of restaurants, shops, and other hostels. I have to ask the question – if you see two people sweating, looking like turtles do you think it’s appropriate to ask them there and then when their clearly not interested if they would like to go scuba-fucking-diving? No, nor me. So why this one guy did I don’t know but it was met with the international look of – “Leave us alone butt”. After 5mins we decided to down tools, find a bar, get a drink and send one of us off to find the hostel. Being the gent I am, I suggest to Leah that she should sit down while I go and find the hostel. However, women weren’t burning their bras for nothing in the 60’s and Leah insist that she should go and do it and who am I to argue, within seconds I’m sat down my book is out of the bag and I’ve got Pedro getting me a beer. Leah returns later sweating and exhausted to tell me that she’s found it but it’s a bit of a walk…

We finally get to the hostel and are introduced to the lad that runs the place who looks not that much older than Leah’s nephew Iestyn. His name’s David and it became quickly apparent that he’s a bit of a wide boy and can you get anything you want legal or un-legal. After filling in the necessary forms we go to pay to be told by David that the hostel doesn’t accept cards and he’s a cash-only kind of guy! Balls – we don’t have enough money to pay for the hostel and eat and drink for 3 days plus as I’ve said there are no cashpoints on the island! However, David does have a plan and that plan is he’ll come with us to the mainland on Monday and we can get cash out for him there and then – sorted!

After a huge thunderstorm, that’s good enough to make Shaggy and Scooby jump into bed together we wake up to a clear day with not a cloud in the sky – not a bad day for Leah’s birthday! We booked a boat trip to one of the famous beaches on the island, called Lopez Mendes.  Our boat picks us up directly from the jetty at the hostel and we’re greeted with one of the whitest beaches I have ever seen – so crisp from the previous night’s storm it’s like walking on snow!

The photo just doesn’t do it justice but you can at least see how deserted it was and how stunning the views were….

We celebrated Leah’s birthday night with a BBQ at one of the many bars on the beach, called Café Do Mar (Which we’re told is legally different to the famous Ibiza bar, even though the sign looked exactly the same!) We finally left the bar at 2am after drinking as much Brahma as they could throw our way to celebrate Leah's Birthday in style! (Lianne/James – No Rules! ;-))

When it finally came to leaving on Monday morning we were confronted with really bad rain, which made leaving the island tolerable. The walk to the port, soaking wet and our bags soaking wet made it less tolerable however. We’re currently sat in the local bus station waiting for our bus to Sao Paulo which is going to take 7.5 hours! Hopefully we can sleep or it’ll be a killer game of eye-spy!

Will let you know what Sao Paulo had to offer…

Chilling, sunburn and eating dry food..

After getting to Paraty, we immediately fell in love with the place. Wikipedia describes the place as

“…located on the Bay of Ilha Grande, which is dotted with many tropical islands. Rising up as high as 1,300 meters behind the town are tropical forests, mountains, and waterfalls.”

What it doesn’t tell you is that it’s the most beautiful place ever, has over a 100 beaches within an hour bus ride and has an incredibly relaxed atmosphere which we fell in love with immediately. After months of planning to get away, the last few weeks in work being crazy and the hard slog of the Inca trail we decided that it was time to chill and that Paraty was going to be the place to do  it. Having pre-booked 3 nights we quickly realised that 3 nights wouldn’t be enough and wanted to stay here for the rest of the week.

Our hostel was located directly across from a small beach, serving  good, cheap food every night and had some good staff (aside from one stupid bint – ask Leah when you speak to her next and she’ll have the pleasure of telling you the story….)

The 4 hour bus journey went without any mishaps on my behalf; I’d employed the services of a cork for the bus. After getting to Paraty, we grabbed a shower, unpacked our stuff and sent our first load of washing off to be cleaned (Leah approved of the launderette  because the towels smelled nice…)

We awoke to our first day of “proper” sun and off to be the beach we went, factor 30 covering my pasty white body. I’d set up stall for the day and intended on getting a tan! After 2 hours in the sun I was sweating like *insert your chosen sweating phrase* so decided a quick swim was in order! After my best Duncan Goodhew impression and I’m back on dry land. Now as any seasoned sun worshipper knows, there’s no point in putting sun cream on a wet body, so rather than towel dry myself and risk the annoyance of rubbing  sand on to my body I thought – “I’ll let the sun dry my skin!” and this is where it all went wrong for me, 15mins later and I’m as dry as a bone. However, this was at the expense of my skin. I’ve had sunburn before, who hasn’t? But I certainly have never had sunburn in my armpits before! Now the next two days are spent with me looking like a Rhondda boy with my arms at last 8inches away from my sides. Who needs carpets under your armpits when you can’t physically put your arms by your side! (Don’t even ask how I did it but needless to say I won’t be lying on my back, reading my book again!)

The next few days were spent in the shade when there was sun but generally we had some poor weather which neither of us were bothered about as it was just nice to sit, surf the net and read a book.  We did however, manage to get ourselves on to a boat trip where we spent the day snorkelling and swimming with turtles!

Now, my boss wasn’t too happy about me leaving my job and on my final day said to me -

“So this is you off to go and do your “thing”?”

The day spent on the boat, finally made me realise that yes, this is me doing my “thing”…. [Insert the biggest smile you can ever possibly find….]

Fortunately, the sickness and dodgy stomach has now lifted and we’re both able to start eating again!  Dry food was the only source of vitamins, minerals and energy for nearly 5 days, thankfully pasta, freshly caught fish and meat are now on the menu, I can’t wait!

We have been fortunate to meet lots of different people so far, our hostel in Paraty was a stopping point for the journey from Sao Paulo to Rio and we were able to quiz other people and gather lots of information. One destination that kept popping up was Ilha Grande, which by the sounds of it is a bit of an oasis with, no roads, no internet, no cashpoints and just lots of beautiful beaches littered with chilled out bars! Sounds like the perfect place for Leah to spend her birthday weekend.

We’re currently on the way there, more to update once we’re back in civilisation!