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Published: November 21st 2013
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After a boat back to the mainland and a 2 hour mini bus journey we arrived in Paraty. Our hostel was right on the beach front and the beach bar had a lot of locals playing music and drinking, straight away this seemed like a really relaxed place. However, the relaxation didn´t last long as Freeman realised he had left his iPhone on the bus leading to a two hour panic trying to hunt the bus down and searching the bus only to find out it wasn´t there, badden!
We then showered and headed into the main town of Paraty which is a really old school fishing village with cobbled streets, lots of nice restaurants and a ridiculous amount of liquor stores. We grabbed a hot dog (with mashed potato filling, amazing but strange) and a burger from a street stall. After that we just walked around soaking up the atmosphere as it was quite busy and there was lots of people playing different instruments in the street. We then ogled at all of the different bottles of alcohol and headed back to the hostel where Freeman played Fifa and i just chilled in the hammock.
During the night
i was woken by the loudest snoring i had ever heard, not ideal, and then when i woke again at 7:30 i felt something crawling up my chest. I lifted my head off the pillow, looked down and a huge cockroach was taking a gentle stroll towards my face, not for long though as i flicked him on the floor and smashed him with my trainer (after i had taken a photo of course). We got the local bus up the mountains to a place called Penha, famous for a waterfall that ran over a huge slippy rock which everybody used as a slide. We walked up to the top where there was another little waterfall and a small lagoon next to a bar. There was also a booze museum next to the bus stop where they make their own local drinks, they all looked horrible so we didn´t even try the tasters. Back at the hostel we planned our trip to Florianopolis and i had a workout on the beach as there was pull up bars and a little exercise area (my first proper workout of the holiday). After that we shared a pizza, chilled and hit the hay.
I woke up in the middle of the night with really bad pains in my stomach and low and behold, i had my first bout of the Tommy Tits. This kept me up through the night and then it was time to pack and head to the bus station for our long journey to Florianopolis. We got to the station 10 minutes before it left but the bus only had one seat left meaning we had a 3 hour wait for the next bus at this small bus station in the heat and couldn´t go anywhere because we had our big backpacks with us. We finally got on the next bus which headed to Sao Paulo but there was really bad traffic on the mountain roads so we were worried we were going to miss the last bus at 10:45pm. After 6 hours we somehow arrived on time 25 minutes before the last bus. After a mad rush sprinting around the station i found the ticket office but the bus was sold out, leading to our first night as homeless people in Sao Paulo bus station, a pretty ropey place at best. We set up camp in a quiet
corner and tried to sleep but the guards then came over, gently kicked us like we were poo on their shoe and told us we couldn´t lie down. Put it this way, it was an extremely long, tiring night with almost no sleep at all.
Morning finally came after what seemed like an age we finally got on our bus so we felt a lot better, but we were still faced with another 13 hour bus journey! The joys of travelling eh!? When we got to Florianopolis we then had to navigate two local buses taking another hour and we had finally made it to the hostel which looked to be in a really nice location looking over the beach. If anyone doubted my travelling credentials, i think this journey from hell and spending a night ´sleeping´ rough in Sao Paulo bus station has proved them wrong.
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