We started the Brazillian travel leg with the big adventurous and exciting stuff. Journeying deep into the Amazon and Pantanal wetlands, and loving every minute. The middle section was city-based – Salvador and Rio de Janeiro; eye-opening and gritty, and a mixed bag for us. Our final stops in Brazil were designed to be a more relaxed affair, slowing the pace a little before our next big move.
We transferred from our stinky Rio hotel in a shared transport to Paraty, travelling west along the coast, through the sprawling extension of Rio into deeply forested roads, to the quaint harbour town of Paraty, nestled around a sleepy river, and bounded by hills and rainforest.
We were staying in the Pousada de Ouro in the old town. The Pousada was a lovely old wooden place, full of pictures of famous guests from over the years. The old town itself is a pedestrianised area with rough, cobbled streets. So rough, there was real risk of twisted ankles and falls, as the number of slings and limps we saw attested. We arrived on a public holiday, and it was wonderfully busy. The place was alive with local visitors, escaping to this lovely town for a long weekend.
Paraty old town is absolutely packed with small boutique stores, restaurants, and coffee shops. Local heavily tattooed tribes people sell their trinkets on the cobbled streets. The streets themselves are v-shaped in design, with a central drainage channel running through them. Amazingly, the drainage isn’t just for rainwater – the c18th Portuguese Masonic town planners built the town around streets with a shallow slope down to the ocean, so that during lunar high tides, seawater enters through drainage openings in the seawalls, washing over the low-lying cobblestone streets and receding as the tide drops. This system was designed to clean the streets, and still works today; leaving behind lots of little crabs burrowing into the sand between the cobbles.
The receding tide also leaves behind small pools which make perfect photography fodder. I went out early one evening to try and get some shots. Something was wrong though. The camera didn’t sound right; the shutter didn’t complete its operation. I immediately returned to the hotel and started running diagnostics. It was showing an Err 70 error on screen after each shot, and wasn’t processing the photo. Disaster. Catastrophy. Panic stations! The coming weeks are the real photography hotspots and I’ve dragged many kilos of gear around the world for this.
The next few hours were spent running every fix possible, and frantically trying to source an alternative camera, find a repair shop, or a combination of the two. Nothing worked, and replacement/repair looked implausible given how remote we’ll be. Later that evening, I straw-clutchingly wondered if perhaps a low battery charge could be causing the issue, so I fully charged the main battery and wonders! The error message vanished.
I now assume that I’m living on borrowed time. There is most definitely something wrong with the old girl, but fingers and toes are crossed. Just hold on! Only a few more weeks, then you can rest (you’re going to the bloody knackers yard!).
Our days in Paraty were spent doing exactly what we planned. Very little. A little running, wandering the pretty streets, eating excellent food (especially the Ossobuco Risotto and another Mouqueca Fish Stew), and enjoying al fresco evening beers in the lively streets. At one small street junction in the old town, a local chap brought along a speaker and started a random street party – crowds of Brazilian visitors joined in the dancing. It was impromptu and it was lovely.
Speaking of Brazilians (steady). We’ve found the people here to be lovely and welcoming. Not much English is spoken, but with Shona’s expanding Spanish and Google Translate, we’ve easily gotten by. They are an unabashed people. We’re in a warm and humid climate, with beaches and boats and the standard clothing is a pair of shorts and maybe some flip flops for men, and bikini’s with perhaps a short see-through wrap for women. Everyone is liberally covered in tattoos. Outfits and tattoos are for all shapes and all ages – it’s very liberating, and sometimes very comical.
Ilha Grande
We spent three days in Paraty. For the next stop, we were backtracking in the direction of Rio to Ilha Grande, an island off the coast. It took a couple of hours to drive to the port and another 45 minutes boat crossing to the island. We were dropped off at a pier in a pretty bay at Vila do Abraão, a little island village. Sandy beaches lined the bay, with small boats moored amongst the giant sea-washed boulders speckled along the shoreline.
We dragged our cases to our hotel, the Pousada Naturale, only accessible along the beach and through narrow lanes in this car-free town. We declined the offer of a porter and cart (we’re not geriatric), and immediately regretted it, as arriving at our hotel 15 minutes later, we were both drenched in sweat.
As mentioned in my ‘Reflections’ post, our room overlooked the beautiful bay and was a lovely place to relax during our two days here. The first day we pottered around the town, eating at a 4.9-rated lunch spot (Google restaurant reviews are our beacon) which served the absolute best Foccacia we’ve ever tasted – sorry Italy. We got laundry done (hooray!) and enjoyed a few drinks in one of the many beach bars.
The town is a real sleepy idyll. The lack of cars, and lively local population makes it feel really inviting and you immediately slip into the slower pace of life. Gone are shoes. Tops are optional. We spent a lovely day just mooching around the place, sitting at the beach and watching the world go by.
The next morning, we struck out on a hike – the island is known for its hiking. We headed along the coast and up into the hills, climbing steeply on thankfully dry trails. We stopped at a waterfall before descending down to a beautiful secluded beach with a few folks sunbathing, having accessed the bay by boat. On our return hike back through the forest, we spotted a couple of tiny monkeys – the common marmoset – amongst the bamboo that towered over the path. It was a hot, sweaty but thoroughly rewarding hike, and after we got back, we treated ourselves to another excellent Focaccia lunch after a much needed shower.
That evening, we shared a pizza at a local restaurant (double-bread day, I know!). As with many restaurants along the beach front, a resident guitarist entertained the diners. Unlike other restaurants, this chap could actually sing. I was immidiately sold when he played a great version of It’s all over now, Baby Blue. When we finished our meal, he started strumming a beautiful acoustic rendition of Flower of Scotland, which then blended seamlessly into Norwegian Wood, my favourite Beatles song, and one also loved by my father, who passed away last year. The evocative combination of a homesick-enducing national song, and thoughts of my dad had tears streaming at the table. Shona, leaking her own eye-water, tipped the singer heavily and we made a sharp exit before we spoiled everyone else’s night with our sentimentality.
Wandering back to the hotel, we were amused by the ubiquitous fat dogs everywhere. The people on this island love and care for their dogs. They roam pretty freely and are joyously happy. When not playing, they sit, hungrily waiting for droppings from diners all along the sea front. Most of them are pretty portly, but have excellent begging eyes. If they have no success at one restaurant, you can watch them trotting heavily, bellies swaying to the next one. It lightened the mood.
That evening, clouds that had all day loomed heavily in the hills behind the town, descended. An enormous storm ripped across the bay, driving the rain down in sheets, backlit by massive lightning strikes and an echoing thunder that rumbled around the surrounding mountains, causing intermittent blackouts into the night.
At home, storms clear the air, but here, the air was hot and thick with moisture the next day. After breakfast, we headed stickily to the port, and caught our boat to the mainland. From there, we were picked up by a driver in his air conditioned BYD, which, fully charged, hared us to São Paulo at pretty punchy speeds, topping out at around 175kph on stretches of motorway. Worried? Not even a litt… yes, yes, it was quite terrifying. We made it to our airport hotel with our bodies in tact, but our nerves in shreds.
We leave Brazil today and have another full day of travel ahead, arriving in Chile in the late evening.
Brazil, Epilogue
Brazil is a vast country and we’ve only visited a tiny fraction of it in our 2.5 weeks here. What we have seen has been incredibly rich in forest. From the Amazon and Pantenal, to the cities which have been bounded and braced by the dense rainforest around them. But this immense wealth of jungle seems both a blessing and curse to this country. Brazil hosts up to 14% of the world’s vegetation biomas; it is the literal lungs of the planet. But what makes Brazil so special to us is the very thing that causes untold challenges for its people. With so little usable land, Brazil clears the forest, but the soil is poor and farming hard. Traversing the country is difficult; it’s so vast that infrastructure is expensive and the terrain extremely challenging. It’s such an irony that a country so wealthy in nature seems to be held prisoner by it.
Like Colombia before it, Brazil has exceeded expectations. We’ve loved our time in this country, found it to be beautiful and engaging. While English is not widely spoken, this has only added to the richness of the experience, as efforts to communicate tell you a lot about how welcoming a people are – and they have been wonderful. My one regret has been allowing warnings about personal safety to get into my head before visiting. We’re pretty well travelled and have been to many challenging destinations. We’ve never had any real issues, because we are sensible and avoid risky situations. Nonetheless, the knowledge of the threat sits like a virus at the back of my mind, and it can add an unnecessary stressor. Almost without fail, I come away from a place lighter and more positive.
