Day 226 - Morro de Sao Paulo to Itacare
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2007
1
227
243
Trip End
May 01, 2008
Itacare, Brazil
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Spurning the advances of the many taxi wheelbarrow chappies, we walked the 20 minutes back to the harbour area, which was pretty hot work in the blazing morning sun.
The 'town' area near the harbour manages to be both the most contemporary part of the island and also the least attractive, quite an achievement.
When we could see the sea opening up in front of us we knew that we were getting closer to the boat!
Unfortunately half of Israel seemed to be waiting for the same ferry as us, so we dumped our bags and prayed that we wouldn't be jammed in a mini bus with them all the way to our next beach area, called Itacare.
For some reason the young Israelis that are travelling over here tend to be an absolute nightmare, really rude and loud, very different to most that I've encountered elsewhere?
Anyway, when we eventually set off the boat ride itself was most pleasant...
...it was a much smaller boat that the one we'd taken from Salvador, but we were heading to a much smaller town and a connecting bus down the east coast.
It was a really nice journey with plenty of other beaches on show.
We made a couple of stops before we reached our final destination, where we chucked all our stuff onto land and walked over to the mini bus.
Joy of all joys, my worst fears were realised, ALL of the loud Israelis were going to be on the same bus as us, but I tried not to show my inner turmoil on my face, especially when every single one of the 12 of them started to light cigarettes! This was going to be hell on earth.
Thankfully the muppet tour agency we'd booked with on the island had no idea what they were doing, so with all the backpacks it was impossible to fit 14 people plus bags into just one van! Genus.
At this point the driver motioned for Katie & I to get into a car which was parked next to the bus.
Various backpacks were then loaded into the car from the bus, which pleased Katie no end as they left our backpacks in the van! What the...?!
Eventually we set off, with less than zero confidence in the losers running the operation, but at least we had the car to ourselves, with our man mountain of a driver of course.
For such a big car there was no leg room or air con, so it was quite a painful journey.
Not least because he drove like an absolute lunatic, he was never any more than two metres behind the back bumper of the mini bus, despite them both driving over 100 kmph!
Katie eventually asked the guy to back off from the vehicle in front, so he dropped back another metre (!) but still drove like Mr Magoo on crack.
Just when we thought that it couldn't get any worse, he veered onto a side road and took us through a really beat up town, narrowly avoiding various road works and animals as he recreated scenes from The Italian Job purely for our own displeasure.
He pulled up outside one of the run down houses, pulled his t-shirt towards me in a suggestive manner (presumably he was going to change his clothes, rather than seduce me) and 10 minutes later decided to grace us with his substantial presence again, which was nice.
Naturally by now his mate in the mini van was miles ahead, so he drove at even faster speeds and seemingly with even less attention than before! We would be very thankful to get there in one piece.
We stopped once for refreshments (sales of Magnums must be higher in Israel than any other country in the world) and about an hour later we all stopped for lunch.
From the outside the lunch place looked pretty terrible, but inside it was actually quite nice, with a big 'pay per kg' style buffet and a lovely view over the surrounding countryside from the tables.
We both enjoyed our food (even if it was luke warm, like most buffets) and drinks and would have happily stayed there another two hours rather than get back in the car with 18 stone Lee Majors over there.
Katie bought some random fudge things "for the journey" (which didn't even make it back to the car!) and then we were off again.
...but not before I spotted probably the most inappropriately named teenage girl's magazine of all time?!?
The town of Itacare is located in a bit of a weird location, which means that you have to drive about 75 kms PAST it on the main road, and then turn down a coast road and go back the opposite direction. Very efficient.
As you can imagine we were delighted at the prospect of another hour with this maniac, who was now averaging 120kmph in a 60kmph speed limit. Great.
A kind incoming truck driver made a gesture telling him to slow down, which he did just in time before we encountered a police roadblock.
This was our first experience of Brazilian police officers, who have a notorious reputation for ripping off tourists to get bribes out of them to avoid arrest.
Two of my best mates (both Aussies) from my year in Dallas memorably had a bag of cocaine thrown into their taxi when they travelled through Brazil and they had to pay a big bribe to avoid a night in the cells, probably much worse.
So we held our breath and hoped that our driver had everything under control.
In the end he was fined for having an out of date fire extinguisher (?!), so at the next garage he had to buy a new one. Naturally he had no money on him - maybe he'd used it up on the fine! - so he pretty much ordered us to pay for the new fire extinguisher.
There was no please or thank you, just garbled Portuguese and rough gestures. We just had to hope that we would get the 15 Reals back when we got to town.
His car then refused to restart, so Katie and I were sure that we would be spending the night on the petrol station forecourt.
Mercifully it eventually restarted, and we sped towards Itacare like a Bat out of Hell who thinks that he's left the oven on.
The distance sped by but he'd lost the mini van for good this time; we just hoped he knew where he was going.
By now we were travelling on a road carved between what looked like rainforest, it looked amazing.
Occasionally we would see quick sightings of the ocean between gaps in the vegetation, but we couldn't see any of the famous beaches which line the coast here. They would have to wait.
When we got into town it became obvious that The Lump had no clue where the pousada was that the mini van was headed to, so he had to ask loads of people for directions. I'm not being funny, but even I understood the directions better than him, he must have been thick as the preverbial plank.
Anyway, eventually we were reunited with the other backpackers, swapped over the backpacks, kicked off for about 15 minutes in order to get our money back for the fire extinguisher (soooo painful) and then set off on foot to find a good local pousada.
By now the sun had set, giving a really nice sunset down by the water.
We tried three hotels before settling on a more expensive room than we'd originally intended, but it was a nice pousada in a good part of town; it was also the only place we saw where the air con unit wasn't pointed at somewhere completely ridiculous like the fridge or the bathroom!
Satisfied, we dumped our bags, collapsed on the (GOOD!) bed, inspected the tv (I would have to say that Brazil has the WORST tv standards that I've ever seen in my life, including Japan), then had showers and headed out for dinner.
Katie chose a pizza place which had a good write-up and it was a great choice.
The restaurant decor was really lovely and the pizzas were absolutely delicious.
We even ordered a sweet pizza for desert! (Mozarela with banana and Belgian chocoloate, YUM!)
We also discovered that not all Brazilian beer is disgusting and gives you headaches, after finally finding one we liked, called Brahma.
We left the pizzaria stuffed and happy (excellent service and very friendly staff), waddled back to our room and collapsed, finding sleep easy to arrive for once.
It had been an unecessarily stressful day, but Itacare looks like a nice relaxed place, apparently surrounded by some amazing beaches. If only we had more time here!
Lots of love,
Al & Katie xx
