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Published: February 24th 2009
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So where did we leave you??....Ah yes, Sao Paulo bus station....
The 6hr bus ride was pretty uneventful, and bleary eyed we arrived at Rio de Janeiro station at 3am, found a bench and curled up to catch a few more z´s.....we´re back into the swing of things again now (after our cushy month in New Zealand) and have now regained the ability to sleep anywhere with any amount of noise around us! A couple of hours later our alarm woke us and we trundled off, with our fingers crossed, to find a bus to Arraila do Cabo.
What do you know, only 4 seats left on the 5.45am bus, and none for the rest of the day! We hoped on, watched a beautiful sunrise over Rio and then slept for the rest of the journey! We arrived to a stupidly busy little town, with half naked people everywhere and began to fear that our journey here may very soon end in tears....how could there possibly be anywhere left to stay??!!
Dan - Ok well the main reason to come here was to do some scuba diving as we´ve heard it was a good place to dive and
we really wanted to get back under the water one last time. So we set off first through the crowds to find a dive center. As along as we could dive it was worth while coming and we could sleep on the beach if need be!!.
The first shop we went to was fully booked!!! Sh*t we thought this is going to be bad!!! but they sent us to another shop to try, anyway found the shop WHICH HAD SPACE!! Wooo Hoooooo!! They also kindly phoned a few Pousada´s (Family homes) to help us find a room! and hey presto one came up with a lovely family. Yeeeeee Haaaaaaa everything sorted, we even managed to book the last couple of remaining seats on the bus back to Rio in a couple of days time...phew!
Nic - Wow, it´s not very often that we get that lucky and everything comes together....looking back, we perhaps should´ve bought a lottery ticket!!! We were chaperoned to our families home by a guy from the dive centre and when we got there were welcomed in as if we were old friends! What a heart warming day! After tearing ourselves away from the huge
family breakfast (Bread, cheeses x2, hams x3, jams, fruit, juices x4, coffee, cakes....the list goes on!!) we made our way to the beach....along with what seemed to be ´the world and his wife´!!...but who can blame them, with such a beautiful beach, bright blue sea and a fantastic carnival atmosphere....you just couldn´t help but feel good! We spent a nice few hours soaking it all up and then decided to make our way to one of the other beaches to see what that was like (at least 5 to choose from!) and stumbled across a ´Bloco´ - Street parade with loads of drums, music, samba, and half naked people shaking their bits! (the mens trunks are skimpy and the womens bikini´s even more so!...in fact I felt quite frumpy in my full bottomed bikini!!!) We joined in and ended up seeing it through the night...well, it´d be rude not to take advantage of such cheap beer and such a fantastic atmosphere!!
Dan - Next morning we jumped out of bed excited to become fish for the day, after yet another HUGE breakfast we set off down to the harbour where our boat awaited us. The diving was good, we
managed to go off on our own for both the dives which made it even better and weren´t disappointed. We swam with turtles, rays, giant trumpet fish, puffer fish and loads of other species and felt completely satisfied that all the effort had paid off.
We returned to our place and were greeted with beer and loads of food and even invited to the family birthday party for the son´s 25th later that night. It was a good night, we drank loads, ate cake, played pool and Nic even Samba´d with the ladies to the Rio Carnival on the TV, It doesn´t get more Brazilian than this, family party while watching carnival on the box!
Nic - Ha ha, well, I TRIED to Samba, cant seem to move fast enough, and just as I think I´ve got it sorted I concentrate too much and end up standing still again!!!....my booty doesn´t seem to wiggle enough! While Dan was playing pool I nipped out with a couple of our new friends to see the carnival celebrations in the street....A really lovely night!
It was a little difficult to get up for breakfast the next morning, but needs must
when you have a bus to catch.....We managed to tear ourselves away from our new family, after hundreds of kisses and lots of hugs, would´ve bought a tear to my eye if I wasn´t so dehydrated from the hangover!!
And so It´s back to Rio, our final destination....eeek!! More soon!
xxxxx
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