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Published: July 12th 2006
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Our first few miles on the bikes has been in the superb setting of the Costa Verde, the coastal road between Rio and Sao Paulo. The winding, undulating road runs between lush, jungle and mountains on one side and beautiful beaches and fishing villages on the other.
Our first night out of Rio, (after a modest 30km and one big hill!) was spent in a rather chic poussada (guest house). We had a room with a balcony and a view over a pittoresque bay where we could see turtles swimming around in the morning! This luxury living is going to have to stop soon!
The second day we misjudged the distance to the next town end ended up cycling more than 80km - hard going for our sore bottoms! It's very difficult to find out distances between towns here because they are never marked on the road signs. Towns often don´t feature on the maps and distances vary from map to map. Although we've learned the Portuguese to ask how far it is to the next town, noone seems to have any idea of distance in kilometres they just know how long it takes by bus. Now to make
maters worse my cycling computer thing has stopped working so we are cycling blind!
Anyhow, we certainly compensated for our 80km by having four days rest!! In fact, on the third morning we took the ferry to an island not far from the mainland called Ihla Grande. We intended to stay one day but it was so beautiful we had to stay longer. The main town is just a small port with no cars, cobblestone streets, flowers everywhere and lots of charming little poussadas complete with hammocks and a view of the sea. The island is quite large but almost completely covered in jungle with tropical beaches around every corner. We spent our time there walking the tracks through the jungle and lazing on the beaches. We also went on a boat trip snorkling with some Brazilian tourists who were more interested in drinking, dancing and chatting up the opposite sex than seeing the fish- it was very amusing!
On Saturday night there was a festival and boatloads of people arrived from the mainland to participate. We were lucky enough to have a fantastic demonstration of the Capoera (Brazilian dance/sport mostly practiced in Bahia), my favourite part of
the evening. Later, the main event was a traditional dance from the north of Brazil danced by groups of about 20, equal numbers of men and woman, in the most wacky costumes. The woman were wearing pokka dot childrens party dresses with full skirts and crazy coloured knee high socks and the men some kind of farmers outfits. There was story behind it which they acted out involving a couple who were trying to get married, a crazy priest and constant interruptions by mad woman trying to seduce the groom and jealous farmers. Unfortunately our portuguese was not really up to understanding the plot. The Brazilians found it hilarious though. The dance that followed was a bit like an energetic barn dance with a few fireworks added. These people are crazy!
When we came back to the mainland we had our first rainy day. Apart from that the weather has been 25-30 degrees so we are getting a nice tan! We cycled a little in the rain and yesterday we did a big day to arrive here in Paraty.
Paraty had been recommended to us by a lot of people and we could immediately see why when we arrived. The town has a fantastic location on the sea front with some great beaches and a bay with lots of little islands but what is most impressive is the architecture. Paraty is apparently the best example of old portuguese achitecture in the world. The old town is like a museum with whitewashed houses with colourful stonework around the doors and windows, cobblestone streets and four beautiful old churches. There's a lot of history to the town. It was at its prime in the seventeen and eighteenth century when it was the second most important city in Brazil because of the gold trade. Now the money is made from tourism, which is not a bad thing as it means the town is really well looked after. So, we are going to spend the rest of today wandering around the old town, taking in all the sights before continuing down the coast tomorrow to new destinations.
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