Paraty - March 8th

Last night when walking back from dinner I noticed a red line painted at a funny angle on the road and footpath.  A quick guess that this was the Tropic of Capricorn was confirmed on Wikipedia, so this morning we walk back down with cameras to take the obligatory on foot in the tropics, one foot out photo.  This, plus a very pleasant waterfront along which we walk further, makes Ubatuba a destination with a lot of promise.  The best thing is that the natural beauty, with green mountains right behind the town, hasn’t been ruined by high-rise buildings everywhere.  We do see a McDonalds, but I guess it can’t be perfect.

Unfortunately we were only staying here for one night, as I really only wanted it because of the name.  It is handily located for our next destination, Paraty, which is only two hours away.  Or so we were led to believe, but the bus driver flies along making it in just over an hour.  We did get some gorgeous views of this coast as we sped along, but they were only glimpses.  Maybe our getting here so fast explained why our bed and breakfast was closed when we got there.  It was slightly worrying but a phone call sorted everything out and the lady came along to open up for us.

Unlike Ubatuba which is a more recent town, Paraty has been here for 300 years, so it has a load of colonial buildings in the centre, which is closed off to traffic.  And rightly so because the cobblestones would be murder on suspensions, they are pretty bad on our feet.  But it is a nice place to look around and take photos.  Unfortunately for me (fortunately for Dorota) it also has a number of designer shops for the tourists, so we look around them as well.  The beaches near town don’t look very good so we settle for just sightseeing today, getting most of it out of the way to leave tomorrow free for the beach.  We do see one of the cool things about Paraty, the tide coming in and flooding some of the streets.  I think this is a deliberate design feature of the town (unlike when we saw similar in Hoi An where it was caused by silting up of the river), although for what purpose I cannot say.

In the evening we go for another French meal (a very good crepe and croque madame) and we have our first caipirinhas.  These are the national drink of Brazil, but we have waited here until Paraty to have them because the spirit cachaca with which they were made was once called Paraty because it comes from around here.  We have some and they are very good, although a bit expensive, our four drinks cost more than our meal.  I guess there is a premium for the location, a nice quiet cobblestone street in the old town.

Ubatuba - March 7th

We have an early start this morning, and so we have to brave the metro at rush hour.  But actually it is not that bad, and gets us to Sao Paulo’s massive bus station faster than expected.  Actually in 10 journeys on trains in 4 days we never had to wait more than 2 minutes for a train, it is an extremely efficient metro.  Mention has to be made of the bus station as well.  We have been in some big bus stations here in South America, but none beat this one which is huge, and has a range of shops that rivals any.  And thanks to the metro we are able to enjoy a quick breakfast here instead of having to buy bus snacks.


The bus journey itself is a 4 hour ride back to the coast, with amazing views as we descend 700m to the coast in only about 10km.  We are going to a place called Ubatuba, mostly because it is called Ubatuba.  It is a great name.  But it turns out this is a major holiday destination for the Paulistas, and rightly so because the bus passes a number of beautiful beaches on the way there.

When we get to the town of Ubatuba we do have a bit of a walk from the bus station, and it is baking hot, but we have arrived early enough to get a bus to one of the beaches after checking in, so we head straight out for Praia Vermelha which is a few kilometres out of the town.  Unfortunately we don’t realise that it is a surfing beach, and the waves are too strong for us to really bathe in (although we make an attempt) so we are confined to sunbathing.  Still it is an enjoyable afternoon.


In the evening we walk along the sea front looking for a restaurant that makes the local speciality, Azul Marinho, which is basically a fish and banana stew.  After trying the Lonely Planet recommended place to find they were out of bananas, we go to a restaurant called Fish and Bananas, where we get the stew.  It only comes as a portion for two, but 4 could have eaten what we got.  It was very good, if a little expensive.  Again as we are now out of season the town has a bit of a deserted feeling, but it is nonetheless quite pleasant to walk around,

Sao Paulo - March 6th

As yesterday was a Monday, all the museums and galleries in Sao Paulo were closed.  But today they are not so we start our day (again slightly late due to TV watching) by walking to the big park in the city, Parque do Ihirapuera.  It wasn’t that far from our hostel, so we were able to walk easily.  The park is sort of like Central Park in New York, with joggers, cyclists, rollerbladers and so on all keeping fit (in this heat I can’t figure out why they are doing it at midday instead of early evening, unless it is a safety issue).  It is also the home of a couple of modern art museums, which we visit, but it has to be said that they were not very good.  Our mood was not helped by the fact that the signage to find them wasn’t very good due to massive renovations going on.

After we were finished with the park we walked to Jardins, the upper class part of town.  Here we saw a lot of high end cafes and shops, as well as an Irish Pub.  But as it didn’t open until the evening we skipped it and instead ate lunch in a Polish café, and it as very good if a little pricey.  After the shopping was done, we then saw a café called “The Best Chocolate Cake in the World” (or its Portuguese equivalent) so we had to go in and give it a try.  I have to say it might well be, I can’t remember a better chocolate cake.

Luckily all this good food is walked off pretty quickly as we then walk back to Avenue Paulista, up some steep hills, and through a park with preserved rain forest.  This gets us to MASP, the main art museum in Sao Paulo.  It is far better than the modern art museums from earlier, with a floor full of impressionist paintings, a good photography exhibition, and for me the best bit, a visiting exhibition of roman artefacts from Italy.  What made it good was that it was free on Tuesdays.

In the evening we get the metro out to a suburb called Vila Madalena which is a trendy part of town.  Its trendiness is probably because even though it has a metro stop, it is about 8 blocks from the main part of town and there are no signs, so nobody can find their way there.  OK after a bit of confusion we did find our way there, and here we ended up in a very nice French restaurant.  Because of all the ethnic groups in Sao Paulo we have gotten some very good non-Brazilian food here, and this was no exception.  After this it is a metro back to our hostel (which we have realised may not be located in a great area, but as it is at a metro interchange station it is pretty well located for getting anywhere else) and an early night for an early start tomorrow.

Sao Paulo - March 5th

Our first full day in Sao Paulo gets off to a slightly late start as we finally had cable TV last night for the first time in Brazil so we stayed up later than normal catching up on some US TV shows.  But we are still on the subway into the centre of Sao Paulo by 11:00 for a self-guided walking tour around all the sights.


The centre of Sao Paulo is unlike most others we have been to before in that it has no grid pattern.  This irregular placement of roads makes it much more familiar to a Dublin/London native.  It is a much nicer place than I was expecting.  The buildings are tall, and the streets are narrow, but with the sun almost overhead it doesn’t feel dark and cramped.  And there are always plazas around to give an illusion of space.  We saw all the main sights, the municipal theatre, the library, the cathedral and all the main squares.  The only one which felt anyway dodgy to us was the main square outside the cathedral.  There are many unsavoury characters hanging around here, not least the money changers and the cash for gold guys.  Needless to say this is one place on the tour we didn’t hang around in despite the impressiveness of the cathedral.  

The one deviation we took from the suggested tour was to walk down into the Japanese section of town.  Sao Paulo has the largest Japanese population outside of Japan, and it felt like it.  Most of what the shops were selling was junk, but we did get a nice lunch there.


After our walking tour finished (with lunch stops it did take 5 hours, it would have taken longer had the viewing platform on the city’s tallest building not been closed for renovations) we got back on the metro and took three lines to get to Avenue Paulista, the city’s version of a Manhattan street.  It is a long street with tall buildings on both sides, mostly financial offices, and shops at ground level.  We finish the day in a large shopping centre at the end of the avenue where Dorota gets to do a bit of shopping.   Finally we eat in a Lebanese fast food place (there being mainly fast food around the shopping centre) because like with the Japanese, Sao Paulo has the biggest Lebanese population outside of Lebanon.

Sao Paulo - March 4th

Today we must leave our island paradise and move on.  Rather than take the long ferry back to Paranagua, we opt for the quicker ferry to the nearest point on the mainland, Punta Do Sol.  From here we get a bus back to Curitiba, and from there we will connect to Sao Paulo.


A few things make this a slightly harder journey than it could have been.  First of all the bus station and the ferry dock are not near each other (when all sources of information had seemed to imply they were), resulting in a taxi transfer.  Then our two hour bus journey took almost three hours as our bus had a problem going uphill (and as we were going from sea level to 900m this was an issue).  Still we got lucky when we got to Curitiba at 13:00 and found a 13:15 bus had been added as well as the 13:00 one (although the next one was 14:00).  Still it must be said that it was still a lot quicker getting back from the island this way than by taking the train like we did to get there.

Getting the early bus did prove invaluable though because the traffic on the road from Curitiba to Sao Paulo was pretty bad.  This is mostly because of lorries being slow on the uphill section, or road works.  The road works were mainly to widen the road so we could pass the lorries.  I’m sure it will all be fine in time for the 2014 World Cup, but for us it was frustrating.  We did get a good look at the Atlantic rainforest again, like on the Serra Verde train.  I had read that it is even more threatened than the Amazon rainforest, but there does appear to be a lot of it still hanging around.


The frustration is because with Sao Paulo being a city of 23 million it is a different type of Brazil to what we are used to.  And we are slightly apprehensive about the safety of being in such a city.  So getting there at 20:45 instead of 19:30 makes a difference.  But we didn’t need to worry because although the bus station was in a dodgy part of town the metro was there to take us right to a station two blocks from our hostel.  It is a very efficient, clean and safe looking metro.  We still had one issue though, after checking in it was almost 22:00 and we still hadn’t eaten.  Our hostel is not in one of the main eating areas of town, so instead on their recommendation we phoned for pizza and had it delivered to the hostel.   Actually this was quite a good introduction to the world’s 7^th largest city (depending on whose list you read).

Ilha do Mel - March 3rd

Our last full day on the island of Ilha do Mel is a Saturday.  We know this because while eating breakfast half the population of Curitiba seems to walk past. It is clear that there are a lot of day-trippers and weekenders here, so our almost empty beaches will be fuller.  To accommodate the new crowd a number of shops, restaurants and hostels which were not open previously have also opened.  This gives us an impression of what the island would be like in high season, rather than the low season we have come in (the season’s only changed last week with the kids going back to school).  To be honest, it is still quite a pleasant place, as the beaches are so big they can accommodate quite a crowd.

Anyway today we are to visit the last of the three major sights on the island, the old Portuguese fort.  To get there it is a 50 minute walk along an 4km beach.  The fort is on a headland at the end of the beach, and although it isn’t very big, or have much architectural merit, it does provide a few interesting pictures.  Around the headland from the fort is another little village, where we buy a drink and sit on the dock for a while.

Due to a combination of not much sun, not much beach here at high tide, and a cold, we decide to only sit here reading for a while before heading back to the middle part of the island, our part.  We have pretty much covered the island, or at least the 10% of it where we are allowed go.  The other 90% of the island is protected forest reserve.

The rest of the day is a repeat of the previous day, lunch at the same café, and dinner at the same restaurant.  This restaurant is even busier than the night before with all the weekenders, but it was great value so we squeeze in again.  And as we are even cleverer with our ordering this time, having seen the big portions of the previous night, we get an even better value meal.

Ilha do Mel - March 2nd

After all our walking yesterday (and we did do quite a bit, probably 10km) we decide to take it easy today and go to the local beaches.  This decision is also in part because Dorota has come down with a cold, which in this heat is pretty unpleasant.  There are more than a few beaches near our hostel, but for the morning we choose the Praia do Farol which is almost deserted.  We do get some passing traffic, but the only permanent fixtures this morning are us and the crabs.  As usual it is a mix of sunbathing and sea bathing.

The beauty of being close to home is that when it gets too hot at midday we are able to go back and shelter in our room rather than have to seek out a restaurant.  Although we do go to a very nice café for a quick bite for lunch.  After lunch we head out to a different nearby beach, Praia de Faro, which is near the lighthouse, but disappointingly the clouds appear just after we get there, and our time on the beach is cut short (although we do get in some swimming and sunbathing beforehand).

 
Because of this we decide it is time to get the second of the islands major attractions out of the way, the lighthouse.  This is located on a large hill on the east of the island, and from it you get magnificent views of the whole island.  Unfortunately you can’t actually go up the lighthouse (unlike in Uruguay) but it is still pretty good.  Overall this is almost our standard eat, beach, eat type of beach break, but there is some good walking as well.

In the evening we go to a restaurant which we saw on our way to lunch.  It was packed with Brazilian tourists then, and it still is now.  But we manage to squeeze in and have the usual very large and tasty portions of fish.  The only difference between this and the previous two nights fish dinners, this one cost half the price (less than £20) of the other two.