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Published: August 28th 2008
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What is this rain??? It should not be like this???
We flew in about 7pm and it was raining!!!!! We took a taxi to our hotel/compound to find our room. We were staying at an "eco-lodge" which is environmentally self sufficient. There are down sides to this however-
*Toilet paper cannot go in the toilet. It goes in the bin next to the toilet and is only emptied every 2 days.
*No heating or airconditioning
*The water in the shower is heated by an electric motor on the showerhead so that it's not wasting water heating all the time. This means if you want a shower with loads of pressure, it can't heat the water fast enough, so it is cold. You have to have a hot shower that dribbles.
Looking out the back verandah, I see a hammock! Perfect for reading my book during this relaxing time, and I can gaze over my shoulder to the view of our razor-wire fence. I told you this was a compound ;-)
On advice from our landlord, we decided to hire a car because public transport is not so good and taxi's are pretty sparse. The next day was miserable
but we'd decided we were going to do the walk to the lighthouse on the south of the island. After a few minutes of getting used to left hand driver seats and right side road driving, we found ourself going in the wrong direction and heading back to the mainland off the island hahaha. Managed to turn around but I was stressing out a little.
The drive down to the coastal town was lovely, all paved stone roads and real little fishing villages. We found the entry to the trail and begun the steep uphill climb. To get to the beach, it was about a 2.5km walk that was varying difficulty. We reached the beach eventually and could see the lighthouse. To get to the track, we had to jump over a creek that ran between the ocean and the river behind. Danyane asked if we should proceed, and my reply was "don't worry, it's low tide", having almost no idea what it was, just an educated guess. We scaled the rocks near the ocean to find the path up to the lighthouse and managed to do the return trip in about 30 mins. I rushed us back after
we reached it by admitting that I was not 100% sure it was low tide and we would not want to get stranded hahahahaha!
We trekked back to our car and took off back to the apartment. For dinner, we went to an awesome almost shanty town village, and to a local seafood restaurant. For $50 between us, we had way way more seafood than we could eat, include a crab shell stuffed with crab meat, herbs etc and then fried, oh so so good. As you'll see in the pictures, all over the walls and roof of this restaurant are slips of paper where people have written little stories or thank yous. We couldn't see any in english, so we contributed one on behalf of Australia.
Also, we purchased a bottle (brewed in the restaurant) of Cachaca. It's a spirit distilled from sugar cane and cost us about $6AUS for a 750ml bottle. The guy who rented us the car told us you could fuel your car with it, and after tasting it straight, we weren't sure if he was actually joking or not. The Brazilians drink it in a tumbler over ice with half-to a full
lime and two teaspoons of sugar. These drinks are awesome and we started to live off these.
The next day we went to a ritzy restaurant on the lake which was basically somebody's back porch. Easily the best meal we'd had all tour, we had a salad with watercress, blue cheese, strawberrys, mango and dressing. Entree was octopus carpaccio which was glorius and then the best of all, Ravioli Anatra. It was duck filled ravioli and served in a duck and cream broth. Definitely learning how to make this one.
Not too much else to report from Florianopolis as the weather was terrible, we didn't even get in the water once. I did however see my first vulture making its way up and down the beach looking for scraps. These things were massive, probably up to 1.5m wing span.
We left on the Monday for Sao Paulo, just as the sun was coming out :-S
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