18-26.09.24

Im not going to lie, I am writing this rather a long time after the fact! I rather forgot all about writing as I went, as mentioned in my last post, so I’m afraid that I am lumping three places into one post and it’ll be pretty brief!

São Paolo – 18-21.09.24

We landed in São Paolo fairly late, and headed straight to the hotel and to bed. Pretty nice hotel, but hotel check-ins are one of those things that are bafflingly long. I don’t understand why it takes such a long time when its all pre-booked. Also why do they need all our passport details? Apparently we’re lucky in the UK (for once) in that you don’t need your passport to check-in to a hotel or buy bus/train tickets. Anyway, I digress.

The following morning we chilled a bit and headed out for some exploration around the old town. São Paolo is very built up, and although there were some buildings that were visibly older, it didn’t feel like an obvious centre, and there was lots of new buildings interspersed. It was pretty busy, and didn’t have the best feel… a little sketchy and unnerving if I’m honest! We also visited the cathedral which was pretty spectacular.

We also went for lunch at a Japanese place in Japantown. Brazil, and in particular São Paolo, has the highest population of Japanese people outside of Japan, with emigration occuring from the 19th Century onwards. As with any mixing of cultures, you get fantastic food. This restaurant was pretty traditional Japanese and it was delicious. There was also some pretty weird/surreal Japanese kids tv show on. Seriously trippy.

I actually forgot to take any photos of the food, alas.

I honestly can’t remember what we did for the rest of the day! More wandering about. I got pretty stressed waiting for the taxi home because we were in an area that, as. I said, felt sketchy, and a bloody policeman kept bothering us and trying to get us to go into some museum or trying to get a taxi for us even after we said ‘Uber’. Wouldn’t leave us alone. Very bothersome.

The following day we had brunch at a lovely place with enormous sandwiches called “Beth’s” (shout out to my sister). We had a lovely walk there through a different area of the city that felt far less dodgy, and saw lots of interesting things.

Following brunch we went for a walk around one of the large parks, and that was lovely. Very interesting people/pigeon watching and I got my first coconut with a straw of the trip. Scrumptious.

That evening we went to a craft ale place before heading to dinner. The craft ale place was really cool and atmospheric, made more so by a thunder and lightning storm whilst we were there. Somehow made it feel quite cosy!

We then realised that we were running late for our dinner, because it was booked in a different time-zone… We were meant to be there at 7pm not 8pm. So we downed the remainder of our pints and hightailed it on the subway (very efficient, very easy, very nice) to the restaurant with an excuse ready to go. Luckily, it wasn’t busy so they hadn’t given up our table, something we thought was a distinct possibility, given that we had to book about a month in advance and it’s incredibly popular. We lucked out!

Very much based all around pork (it’s called ‘A Casa Do Porco’) and using the whole animal, we had an incredible tasting menu, which was also tailored slightly for Alex who has to be careful with anything served rare or raw (I was a little concerned myself at pork tartar). All the dishes were incredible, as was the house wine and bottle of cachaça we had with it.

PARATY 21-23.09.24

I woke up, rather unsurprisingly, feeling a little woolly in the head. I blame the cachaça. We had to head off in pretty good time to the bus that would take us to Paraty. On the map, the beach resort doesn’t look to far from São Paolo, but this bus took more or less all day. Once we found the correct bus terminal in the station (there were almost a hundred and there was no obvious system explaining which bus was where), we boarded and got settled in. I had to move seat a few times (luckily it wasn’t full) because it was raining inside the bus. Very leaky. Despite all of that, I slept most of the journey, which was quite nice.

We arrived in Paraty mid-afternoon and had a hot, though thankfully quite short walk to our Pousada. There was an event on when we arrived, that we later found out was an ultra marathon where people ran 20km, 50km or 100km. Hideous. Who? Why? After sorting ourselves out we went out for dinner at a nice place that did good Brazilian basics: many carbs and a protein. Beans. Delicious, delicious beans.

The next day we wandered around the historic town, occasionally feeling slightly sorry for all the runners who were moving slowly and wincing as they tackled the enormous cobbles on their poor sore legs. But it’s their own fault for deciding to do ultramarathons. The town itself was beautiful and lovely to explore.

We had beer and nibbles at lunch, then I demanded a swim in the sea, which was lovely! My first dip in the Atlantic. Capirinhas on the beach followed. Very relaxed! One odd anecdote: a middling to old aged man came along and started trying to speak to us in Portuguese. We said ‘Sorry, English’ at which point he said ‘eeh, honey? You want honey?’ So he was trying to sell us honey. On the beach. Most notable was the fact that he did not, in fact, have any honey with him. Bizarre.

We had a lovely dinner, even if we did have to wait over an hour, and then went to bed, ready for another long journey the following day.

Ilha Grande 23-26.09.24

The bus to the port from which we needed to get the ferry was… long and uncomfortable. It was like a regular intercity bus rather than a coach and we were wedged in. Eventually we got to the port bus terminal and made our way to the ferry port which was, of course, without signposts. Found it eventually though and had plenty of time to get tickets.

A two hour ferry ride (and short nap) later, and we were at Ilha Grande. For the next few days, our job was going to be ‘beach’, with a side hustle of ‘drinking caipirinhas and eating’. More traditional Brazilian food but also some fantastic Mexican at a tiny place owned by a husband and wife who clearly love the food they make… The homemade pickled onions and spicy salsas were phenomenal. All in all, our short time here was some much needed R&R!

Before long, it was time to go! We arrived at the allotted time at the ferry port to head back, and waited a further hour before being wedged onto a smaller water taxi rather than a big ferry. Still squeezed about 50 odd people plus luggage! Thence we were transferred to a minibus that drove us all the way to the doorstep of our next and final stop: Rio de Janeiro!