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From The Coast To The Falls: Heading South
With the buses leaving at awkward times and featuring difficult connections, we opt instead to do a deal with a local driver in Paraty to take us all the way to our overnight stop at Guarulhos, nearly four hours’ drive away. As we leave the jewel which is Paraty behind and head up into the mountains, we ponder on whether crossing the range will take us out of the rain and back into sunshine. In reality the exact opposite occurs – the weather deteriorates considerably and by the time we’re on the freeways our driver is battling spray, surface water and worsening visibility. Pools of rainwater dance and splash in…
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Last Images Of Paraty
We have now moved on from Paraty and are now in the vicinity of one of the world’s most incredible natural sights, a true natural wonder of the world. But before we get on to that, here’s a few more images of beautiful Paraty which didn’t make it on to our earlier posts……
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High Climbs & High Tides: Last Days In Paraty
We’re not always altogether comfortable with organised group tours, and although both of the outings with Paraty Tours have been good, it’s time to go independent again after two successive days of being chaperoned by others. So Wednesday morning we head to the bus station and wait in the heat for the number 25 bus to Trindade which, by the time the driver reverses out of the stand, is ridiculously overloaded with far too many people and far too much baggage. The little bus really struggles on the mountain climbs, with the driver opting for first gear and a raging engine uphill, then inching slowly down the other side with…
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Boats, Bugs, Booze And Not Doing Things By Halves: Days in Paraty
Just as we’re fearing a stifling night without AC, the lights come back on and we can hear the sound of cheering from neighbouring houses – this has been the second lengthy power outage in our first few days here, brought on this time by the afternoon thunderstorm and lasting until bedtime. It’s been handy then that the Caborê Brewery is only just down the road: brewery means generator which means cold beer and a restaurant which is open, saving us a walk through the rain to those areas unaffected by the outage. This local beer at Caborê isn’t at all bad, either: more pricey than the ubiquitous Brahma but…
- Brazil, Independent travel, Outdoor Activities, Photography, South America, Travel Blog, Walking, Wildlife
Hello Again Brazil: Discovering Paraty
Exotic bird calls boom or squawk through the trees, now and again the undergrowth rustles with the movement of an unseen creature. We are drenched in sweat, dripping wet from head to toe; the baking sun casts searing heat into the occasional clearing but for the most part the lofty canopy traps intense humidity in the spaces below. Official signs warn of poisonous spiders, scorpions and snakes. The heavy air is full of the scents of foliage and damp earth. This is the Atlantic Forest, its million shades of green scaling every mountainside and sweeping with sumptuous colour to the very edge of the shore. The climb has been testing,…
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Returning To Brazil
It’s been a strange start to 2024. We can’t quite recall now why we decided to delay the start of our travels until February and give ourselves the whole of dull January at home in England. Had we had an inkling of what February would bring, we may have made different plans – but of course an event such as a family bereavement is not a predictable one. Our long journey through Brazil and into the USA was meant to last from the first week of February till the last week of May, but of course was cut short by the unfortunate news and we headed back home on Day…
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February 29th: Remember The Last One?
A post this morning by Lynette at In the net! was our prompt for these thoughts today… Where were you last time we had a 29th day of February? Cast your mind back. The news channels were by now full of stories emanating from a city called Wuhan, which most of us had never heard of before, about a killer virus, with all sorts of side issues including city lockdowns and the consumption of live bats, to name just two. Yet really, even then, on “Leap Year Day” 2020, we had no idea of how radically the world’s entire landscape was to change in the next three weeks. On this…
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Animal Encounters Of Various Kinds
The poor dog looks so forlorn that I fear he might be dying. He lies in a shallow pit on the beach, which he’s presumably dug himself, wilting in the sun but too exhausted to seek shade, his eyes heavy with sadness. “He looks like he’s on his last legs”, I say, not sure if I should pet him or not. “I think he’s just desperate for a drink”, responds Michaela, who knows a lot more about dogs than I do. I put her theory to the test, grab a discarded coconut shell and fill it from our water bottle. The pooch is unbelievably grateful, laps his way through the…
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Concluding Rio: Sugarloaf, Rocinha And Tijuca
Sugarloaf Mountain is, like Copacabana, Ipanema and Christ The Redeemer, an icon of this famous city. Reached by cable car from the neighbourhood of Urca, the double summit of Morro de Urca and then Sugarloaf itself provide yet more fabulous, panoramic views of the city, viewed from the opposite perspective to that of Corcovado. Thankfully a bit less crowded than the platform at Christ’s feet was, the peaks here also feature a number of paved trails through the surrounding hillside forest where vultures circle overhead, birds squawk in the trees and patterned lizards dart away from human footfall. Just like up at The Redeemer, it’s a joy to simply linger…
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24-Hour Party People: Up All Night In Rio
We are now just about to commence the long trip home after the news of Michaela’s father’s death. The following post was due to be next up before we received that news. There is one more Rio post to come after we arrive home….. Well, we’ve done it. We weren’t sure how we would react to partying all night, but we arrive back at the hotel while breakfast is being served and dive straight into the caffeine rush of Brazilian coffee, grab a couple of hours’ kip and then force ourselves to wake before lunchtime to start the day and avoid any jet-lag style slump. By the middle of the…
