A foisty room and beautiful beaches in Arraial do Cabo

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We took a bus from Rio 3 hours north up the coast to Arraial do Cabo. When we we arrived we thought we'd made a big mistake coming here. The town is described as "delightfully working class'' which over here basically means poor, we also seemed to be the only English people in the whole town. It was a stark contrast to Rio but once we got used to the differences and realised that it was actually very friendly we felt more comfortable with our new surroundings. The hostel we were staying in seemed to be in the worst part of the town but still only a 10 minute walk to the harbour and the town centre. Our room however stank of urine and the foisty air seemed to settle in our lungs, but the owner was so sweet we couldn't bring ourselves to tell him. Even though we were the only people staying in the hostel he laid on a huge breakfast in the mornings for us. We felt well looked after.

We only had one full day in Arraial so we took the advice of the owner and booked ourselves onto the boat trip for the following day. The trip made our stay here well worth while. It was a three and a half hour trip around the coast to some secluded beaches. They were absolutely stunning and deserted apart from the people from our boat. The water was perfectly clear, paradise. We spent the day swimming and lying on the beaches and drinking the free Caipirinhas (very strong Brazilian cocktail) that were on offer on the boat.

We were befriended by a Brazilian couple on the trip who were on honeymoon and afterward we went to have lunch with them. Our Portuguese is very bad and their English wasn't great so we spent our time talking through our phrasebook. It was good fun though and we managed to communicate well enough. We visited a church after lunch which dated back to 1003 and then the couple took us in their car for a tour of the town and some of beaches that we hadn't had chance to see. At sunset we drove up to the top of a hill which overlooked the bay and the town to watch the sun go down, it looked beautiful and we could see why people come here, the town definitely has it's charms. I think our initial reaction to the place was down to shock as we'd just come from Rio, but by the end of our time here we had grown to like it. It definitely helped having the Brazilian couple to show us around otherwise we wouldn't have seen half as much as we did.

The next day we left to head south to Paraty, despite the hostel owners desperate attempts to make us stay another night. All in all a good couple of days..... apart from the pissy smelling room!

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