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Published: November 25th 2008
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(Matt)
We decided a while ago that our last two weeks would be a ´holiday´ rather than ´travelling´. You may agree with the English hotel owner in Paraty who, when hearing about this and the rest of our travels, muttered
´greedy b@$****$´then, without pausing, he slipped back into his role as perfect host and followed with ´just let me know if there´s anything at all we can do to make your stay more enjoyable´.
Travelling vs Holiday • On holiday we´ve started to choose from a menu with taste as a priority rather than price.
• Our practical travelling clothes now make us look like we sleep on the streets and eat from dustbins, I have shorts I can´t wash anymore because they´ll fall apart!
• We´ve talked a lot about how many sunny days there´ll be before we fly home.
Paraty Paraty is a laid back, pretty, cobblestoned colonial beach town. We had a really relaxing time (apart from when the hotel owners three year old son threw Catherine´s lipbalm in the swimming pool!), we wandered the streets, ate lunch in the square and enjoyed a few drinks in the evenings. It was only on our last day
that we found out that someone had been shot at the weekend, every supermarket owner has had at least one family member held to ransom and threats of violence are not uncommon in relation to the lucrative taxi rank at the bus station...which is why our friendly English host dropped us around the corner from where our bus departed with the parting words
´I´m pretty brave but I´m not stupid!´ You really would not guess the locals were so proactive, we spent hours trying to buy more drinks or get a shopkeeper´s attention and everything seemed so chilled out!
Ilha Grande Our next stop on our two week holiday was Ilha Grande which can be translated from the Portuguese as ´Big Island´ (why are the people naming islands always so literal: Isle of Wight - chalk cliffs, Isle of Man - island with men on it, Canary Islands - named after the latin for Island of Dogs...I´m completely losing the plot on this!).
Ilha Grande is a pretty, laid back (not in the gun toting kidnapping sense of the word!) jungle resort and port island. It took us by surprise that it was so busy, it took
me 45 minutes to find a hotel that wasn´t full (I learnt that the Brazilians have a hand signal that means full up, it´s the same as the UK one for ´talks too much´...very confusing at first!). After desperately searching for accommodation for the best part of an hour, I managed to secure a much sort after and completely booked out resort type hotel, result! The room didn´t have a proper toilet handle (you had to turn a tap on the wall rather than just flush!) and because it was a nice hotel they didn´t like to inflict minor tap turning inconvenience on their guests (so they don´t normally rent out the room). I comforted myself with the thought that if there was a problem, I could now communicate the term ´full up´!
Over the next five days on Ilha Grande the weather alternated between torrential rain storms and bright sunshine, it really could change within minutes. Catherine was pleased that she managed to catch some rays by the pool (as in sun not fish) and we went to Lopez Mendes beach, voted one of the top ten beaches in the world (not sure by who, probably the Brazilian
Tourist Board!). I spent my time exploring and climbed the second highest peak on the Island, only to slide back down some of it, I´ll still have the grazes by the time I get back to the UK.
Rio de Janeiro We reached our final destination Rio de Janeiro, only to turn up at the appartment we´d booked online to find no-one had heard of us and it was already booked out! (luckly we hadn´t paid any money). This turned out for best as after much internet searching later we found a fantastic hotel in Centro (the central district) and when we arrived, for the first time ever, we were given a room upgrade! We´re not sure whether the receptionist felt sorry for me entering the glitzy reception area with my hole ridden shorts or because I was paying with a Visa Gold Card (no big deal at home but they seem impressed in Brazil!). The funniest thing was when we pulled up outside in the taxi and the smartly attired porters went to carry our slightly worse for wear rucksacks, Catherine declined because she didn´t want him to dirty his uniform - I love it!
We´ve enjoyed what we´ve seen of Rio but have been blighted by bad weather (I think there´s been serious flooding in the south of Brazil). We had wine and a meal in the Bar/Restaurant where the´Girl from Ipanema´ was written (alledgedly!), we´ve also watched a lot of cable TV, tried to remember the words to Barry Manilow´s ´Copa...Copacabana´(another of Rio´s famous beaches) but most of all we´ve waited in vain for Christ the Redeemer statue to appear from behind his persistent cloud cover. Losing patience on our penultimate day we took the train ride up the hill to stand right next to the famous landmark...I´m not lying if I said the cloud was so thick we could have walked right past it without knowing it was there! It was actually quite funny watching people taking pictures of cloud!
With a mere eight hours to go before we catch our plane back to the UK, I can see a patch of blue in the sky, so maybe, just maybe, we´ll still catch a glimpse of the most elusive of all men!
[Footnote for my Dad, I know the Isle of Wight didn´t really get it´s name from the chalk and ditto for Isle of Man, Canary Islands was true though! ´Rain Check´ can also be phrased ´Rain Cheque´ - it was originally used to denote the replacement ticket given when outdoor events have been cancelled by rain.]
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