Day 223 - Salvador to Morro de Sao Paulo

  Morro de Sao Paulo, Brazil
Saturday, April 12, 2008

We had a pretty functional morning after breakfast. Katie tried to book our accomodation between here and Rio, while I tried to get some of our photos off the memory cards and onto DVDs to free up some card space.

We were both fairly but not totally successful, at least achieving enough not to look at our efforts negatively.

At noon we walked back to the hostel to check-out, load up and ship out to the harbour area of the old town, from where we needed to acquire tickets for the 2pm catamaran over to the beautiful island of Morro de Sao Paulo. 

After waiting for a public bus for what seemed like hours, we climbed up the back steps of the packed bus, paid our R$2 each and squeezed our packs through the turnstiles which they have at the back of all Brasilian buses to ensure that everyone on the bus has paid!

The journey into town took half an hour and we then headed off to the ferry station on foot.

Once we got a few minutes away, Katie managed to attract the attention of someone working for the ferry company that we planned to use, who must have been sent out onto the street to drum up some business.

So for the next couple of minutes we were fortunate enough to have someone walk us to exactly where we were headed anyway?! How pointless.

On a couple of occasions he stepped out into the road and thrust a 'WHATEVERRRR' type hand in the general direction of the relevant car windscreen, before shepherding us across the road like lost sheep, often without us having any need to cross the road in the first place!

Anyway, he guided us to the ticket office, grinning like a lunatic on uppers and the only way that we could get rid of him was to give him some money. Much as I objected to the principle of giving someone money for less than nothing, he was starting to give me the creeps. *shudder*

After paying our R$60 each for the ferry tickets we realised that we had somehow arrived an hour ahead of schedule.

So we had no choice other than to sit and read our newly-swapped books until the departure of 2pm.

Predictably there was still no sign of the boat by 2:30pm and eventually it pulled in about 10 minutes later, just as I was starting to think that it had sunk!

Just before stepping onto the boat we had a quick look at the local map showing the island.



We chucked our cases onto the boat, grabbed a couple of seats and prepared for the worst.

Anyone we've discussed this boat ride with has told us that we will probably be sick on the crossing because the sea is so rough.

To try and avoid this we'd taken some sea sick pills while we were waiting for the boat, so we felt a little cheated when the ride was as smooth as a baby's bum! 

We enjoyed some great views of Salvador as we pulled out of the harbour, looking back towards the old town...



...and then down the Salvador coastline.

 

We soon passed the most expensive part of town, with their private funiculars (vertical railways)leading up from the water!



We also recognised the beach where we'd watched the sunset last night in our neighbourhood (called Barra).



It was another perfect day in Brazil, so we even had great views back towards the city an hour later!

 

The sun was absolutely roasting, so we tried to build up some colour in our pasty English bodies...



...before pulling into the island's harbour about an hour later.

 

When we climbed off the boat we were met by the incredibly bizarre sight of self-advertised "taxi" drivers with.... wheelbarrows.

That's right, there wasn't a car in sight, it was just a bunch of guys with wheelbarrows!

The idea was that you chucked your luggage into the wheelbarrow and they would wheel it to your accommodation! Interesting...

It was actually more of a pain for us to unstrap all of our bags, so we just walked on, paid our "tourist tax" (?!) and headed off down the island to find somewhere to stay.

Very quickly we saw that the poor "taxi drivers" had to wheel their wheelbarrows up a very steep hill just to climb to get out of the harbour area; it looked like bloody hard work to be honest!



Katie wanted us to try a place on what was known (imaginatively) as ''Beach 3', which was (you won't believe this) the third beach that one would reach when walking away from the harbour. I know, who'd have thunk it.

The island itself looked lovely and we had some really nice views at the sun started to go down.

This was the view looking back to the romantically named Beach 2 when we reached Beach 3.

 

This was the view looking down Beach 3, which would become our home for the next couple of nights.

Nice, eh?!

 

It was just getting dark when we arrived, so we knew we didn't have time to look at a million places to stay. 

The place that Katie wanted to check first (a recommendation from someone else's travel blog) was not ideal, mainly because none of their tiny rooms had air con. NEXT!

The next place was ground floor only and smelled of damp. NEXT!

The third place seemed ok but was over budget, so we tried the old "sorry, it's too much" and walk away tactic, which resulted in the guy lowering the price but simply cutting out breakfast.

We continued to walk and suddenly a cheaper room miraculously became available downstairs.
This looked fine, it came with a fan AND air con, plus a fridge and even a hammock outside. Result! 

After dumping our stuff we relaxed for a while and then went off to find somewhere for dinner.

We knew there were supposed to be loads of nice places on Beach 2, which is the busiest of the three main beaches, so off we set.

We looked at most of their menus but still couldn't decide where to eat.

In the end we headed back to the one where a nice waiter (called Alex) had offered to make us exactly what we wanted, plus he'd chuck in a round of free caipirinhas... SOLD to the man with the big smile and the silver tongue! 

The food was actually really good, we had crab and bruschetta to start, then Katie had a big fillet of swordfish and I had a nice big steak. The drinks were also really good and the bill wasn't too bad considering we were in tourist central, so we left with smiles on our faces. 

Alex told us that there was a big party tonight at Beach 1 which started at midnight and asked if we wanted to come. We told him that we were a bit tired but said that we'd think about it and agreed that we might see him again later.

On the way back we watched two of the Rio football teams battle out a tense penalty shoot-out on a tv in a bar and then had two absolutely DELICIOUS alcoholic drinks at one of the many fruit stalls lining the path on the way home.

I had fresh mango and passion fruit mixed with rum and Katie had two fruits that we'd never even heard of before ("caja?!" "meliondria?!") with vodka. Yummy scrummy for my tummy!

After that we did a bit of internetting (which was PAINFULLY slow so we gave up) and then headed back home to sleep, after setting our alarms for midnight to see if we fancied the party.

Unsurprisingly neither of us could get out of bed when the alarm went off, so we skipped the big party and hoped that we hadn't missed a great night out!


Lots of love,


Al & Katie xx