Take a life to save a life.
The wifi in Paraty is terrible, Broken and intermittent (#firstworldproblems in a semi-third world place I know, but stick with me, it’s part of the story). We have to check a hostel cancellation in São Paulo, so in vain I try to connect in numerous places unsuccessfully. So we leave our room and try the Chill Inn reception to use the PC instead (The Chill inn is situated on the beach and is perhaps the best situated hostel in all of Paraty). There, we make small talk with the friendly receptionist and Lucy works out the particulars for our next stop in São Paulo. I notice a very small and rather cute bee wandering around the floor of reception. I’m not sure what he was doing there. Perhaps looking for a room on the way to Rio or maybe lost on the way to a local Thai restaurant. Anyway, as I had been wandering about barefooted, I lifted my feet to ensure no contact came between me and the buzzy one. Then, a surf style, hippy looking Portuguese lady with long blonde hair entered reception and started readying herself for taking over the shift of the other receptionist. This included changing from sandals to flip flops. As hippy chic girl made the change I noticed princess Beetrice centimetres from the lady’s foot. Selecting from my limited Portuguese vocabulary I point downwards and shout “¡Attençao!” To warn the lady of the bee. She quickly dons her flip flop and squishes the bee to our dismay. We both give out a slightly disapproving “awwwww”. She looks at me and in a heavy Portuguese accent she simply says one word:
“Allergic…”
Hippy girl shakes my hand as I state:
“I just saved your life…”
The next day we take another boat trip on a schooner ship and are transported around the many beaches off the coast of Paraty. I take up the chance to go snorkelling again but am disappointed by the murky locations we arrive at. I don the snorkel and mask but can’t see more than about 5 feet in front of me. The water is green like pea soup, but more salty.
We progressively find as we get further into our trip, Brazilians don’t speak English. At all. But why should they? It does feel a little strange being in the language minority but we get by with the ongoing attempts I make using iPhone apps to learn titbits along the way.
“Bom Dia”, “disculpe”, “nao entendo” and “¿voce falo ingles?” Get us by for the most part as small simple phrases seep in to our memory holes.
Our captain comperes the trip and I try to pick out words along the way. I try out a phrase I learnt earlier on him when about to get in the water. “¿Es claro?” I ask him.
He looks at me straight in the eye and says “sim..” Bloody liar.
On the boat trip we experience our first batch of rain which continues for the next few days. The boat trip is slightly marred from the bad weather but also the fact that we felt spoilt by the epic (truly epic) beaches of Ilha Grande. We still swim and try to snorkel more despite the murk.
Making the most of Paraty, we meet up in the evening with the Danes, Jacob and Line and get our spice pallets well and truly tingled by a Thai restaurant named Thai Brasil. Jacob and Line are great company and (as all good conversation should be) we talk about a range of subjects from terrifying travel tales to explosive diarrhoea. We share Caipirinhas into the small hours of the next morning and chicken out of trying to push a dog into the river.
We wave a slightly sad farewell to Paraty in the morning and try to navigate the giant cobbled streets towards the bus station. It is the first time we have had to put the backpacks on properly (due to the awesome wheels on our backpacks) and go into a slight panic when we can’t find the ticket office. The packs are excruciatingly heavy and I get a sweat on not more than three or four minutes into the journey. We eventually arrive and I leave Lucy with the bags to go running round the surrounding bus station, sweat running down my face, with departure time running out. The lady at the Reunidas ticket center makes me work for my tickets in a slightly unusual ticket/passport/receipt system but eventually I work it out and collect Lucy to go to the departure station. We meet Jacob and Line for the last time and board the bus. The bus is called a semi-cama (which means semi-bed seats, nothing to do with morning wood) The seats go back in a fashion similar to a reclining marshmallow and perhaps is the most comfortable bus ride so far.
Six hours comfortably passes from Paraty to São Paulo despite the fact the coach is involved in a minor collision in São Jose bus station. We wave goodbye to the Danes, swapping contact details, hoping to reunite in Buenos aires.
Suddenly we feel very small in the sixth most populated city in the world. São Paulo…