Hotel & Internacional Golf Club Dos 500 Guaratingueta

... con playas pequenas y maravillosas. Absolutamente recommendable para todos que quieren visitar Brazil!! El ultimo dia salia un poco el sol y prolongabamos nuestra estancia hasta la tarde y nos apuntabamos a una excursiona a unas playas y lagonas muy bonitas. Era una lastimaa que muchas touristas tenian la misma idea y asi estuvimos entre 5 y 8 barcos con unas 50 personas cada uno. Massas de turistas en el paraiso... Bueno , lo disfrutabamos igual!

... town along old uneven cobbled roads, headed over the hill to the other local beach called Praia da Jabaquara and scored some free Skol beers being handed out in the main street last night. As you can see our time here has been very relaxing. Food here has been interesting. They definitely love their hamburgers with pretty much all eating places selling them (we avoided the old town restaurants as they are very over priced). With little other variety we ...

... a football match, went out to a club with some people from the hostel and the place was mental, its just like a house party and you get a sheet at the front door for your drinks and when you get a drink they put a mark on your page so basically you dont know what you are paying and at the end of the night the screw you for everything you are worth, it was a cool place though and they had every different type of music you could think of and a live raggae show down stairs which i tried to ...

A small town south of Rio. Nice to visit, cobblestone streets closed to traffic lined with great shops with local arts and great bars and restaurants but the highlights are the boat daytrips to nearby stunning beaches and islands. At a restaurant I stayed back with the staff and listened to them play guitars, drums, tambourines and harmonicas to Brasilian music and blues...awesome...

Going against any kind of prediction, we got 12 celsius on Campos do Jordão while the whole rest of Brazil was melting down on summer. My Carioca heart was freezing! We ate a lot (specialy those hot fudge strawberries... yummmy!), drank a lot of Malbec wine and hot chocolate, we shopped, we danced, we kissed the guys... Why bother when life can be that great?

I don't even have a religion, but seeing all this people's faith was interesting. Aparecida Basilica is beautiful, and, specially on october 12th, it gets really crowded with people praying.
There's a room full with things people left there as symbol of their faith. From simple letters to plaques of thankfullness, to wheelchairs they don't need anymore (since they've been cured by Our Lady Aparecida).

... our first day we had wonderful sunshine the next and so we headed out on a boat trip. It was brilliant just relaxing on deck in the sunshine, going around beautiful islands and coastal beaches, stopping occassionally for a swim. During one stop we we were taken into a cave half full of water and through it to where there was this breathtaking pool. It had crystal clear waters and white sand. Above you were rocks and green palms shading ...

... and the bites are huge so that will look good if the sun actually comes out for me to sunbathe! On Tuesday we travelled to Paraty,found another hotel which is still being built and we are the first guests, so woken up early to banging! We must look for places that have already been built. We did have a lovely view (see photos)and had breakfast brought to the room. Again Simona got excited, this time by self-service ice-cream where you fill up ...

... be a beautiful waterfall - that's how it was described to us. They also mentioned a 2km hill, but what would that be to us after negotiating the heights of Dundee. Unfortunately their estimation of distance was about as good as our own estimation of cycling expertise - Helen fell off when she was stationary (which was blamed on Anna's reefers) and I ran out of gears on some important sections of hill climbing - a good yank of the lever sorted ...

... and hate being mean to people but we had to be cruel to be kind. Two Israeli girls also arrived at the hostel which helped a bit but they got the same night bus as us back to Rio and it looked like a long day when we arrived at 4am and they virtually sat on our laps in the bus station and followed us to the loo! Luckily I managed to get us on a bus to Paraty at 6am so we finally escaped their clutches - phew :-) I should say that Mr Ellis is currently enjoying ...