2 June: Some wonderful chats with fellow campers from Argentina but also exhausting as you have to concentrate so hard and use google so much to make each other understood and then we wandered into town for lunch and had to repeat the same process – Sometimes it would be nice just to have a free ranging conversation in a tongue we are comfortable with!!
3 June: It’s been a fantastic and chilled few days in the little village of Itamambuca. A great little surfing village where we could definitively live but with the waves too big it is time to move on. Drove into a little bay called Trinidad (after making poor MR Jones climb up and over some very steep roads) to find it very very touristy and filled with too many people trying way too hard to be hippy so we left and continued on to Paraty
5 June: Both feeling a little frustrated, firstly had a couple of days of rain and cold and then even though today was nice (ish) weather there wasn’t much to do other than a relatively short walk along the beachfront. We could have got the SUP out and pumped it up but didn’t. Ultimately, we are stalling time while we hope for a decent weather window to go into Rio de Janerio.
7 June: Never have we struggled to find a marked campsite so much as we did today looking for Fritz house on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. In the end we found it, thanks to good fortune in that the gate was open when we passed after having wandered around the neighbourhood a good few times.
8 June: Great day in Rio. Left Mr Jones outside and Ubered in. Wandered along Copacabana beach, had great Capriniahas and a simple plate of chips and it was so reasonably priced – cheaper than other less touristy areas. Supper was also good and at a local restaurant just back from the main strip.
9 June: Outright frustration and anger this morning, the tour operator arrived at our designated pickup point 20 minutes early, waited roughly 10 minutes and then left. We must have just missed them as we arrived 10 minutes before the designated time. To add insult to injury they claimed to be there all the time! In the end though they agreed to put us on tomorrows tour which may work out better as the weather looks better then. As a bonus we got to visit a few places ourselves which we wouldn’t have done if had been on the tour.
10 June: A very long day, with a 9 hour Rio city tour and then a very dodgy Uber ride back to our campsite where Mr J has been parked. Glad to have done the tour but ticking off must see tourist attractions is definitely not our thing when you are sharing it with 1000 other people. And in the end we felt we have had more authentic experiences seeing the carnival on Ilha Bela and the mosaic artwork near Soa Francisco Sul.
11 June: Exhausted and not happy this evening! Shopping just took forever today and the shops were super noisy and being surrounded by talking you don’t understand is exhausting! To ad insult to injury we paid exorbitant parking (R70) at one place and then couldn’t exit because of an issue with our ticket so had long queue of cars behind. At the end of the day after driving 30 minutes to a supposed campsite it was closed so had to drive back another 45 minutes to one we had been at this morning which is in the rainforest and very wet and muddy at present. The straw that broke the camel’s back, wading around in mud while getting sorting Mr J out and the very large box of wine bottles bottom falls and the bottles into the mud!!!!! On the positive side no bottles broke.
12 June: Woke to no rain but lots of mud, where on the road early for a traverse through Rio de Janeiro. Fortunately, being Sunday and early, traffic was minimal and the “feared” drive turned into a non-event. Spectacularly long bridge across the RJ bay.
14 June: Our gas ran out yesterday so today was a day of mission in around the town of Cabo Frio trying to find someone who could fill our South African bottle – when you have to rely on google translate and all gas places look like a township shebeen bar on steroids (big security bars and small turnstile in the wall through which they receive and dispatch bottles) it makes for a very difficult process. In the end we were unsuccessful and so then tried a number of “vende de constucuo” (hardware stores kind of) to see if we could find a fitting which might allow us to do a gravity feed which was also unsuccessful. In the process did manage to spot a few butcheries and get hopefully some nice meat.
15 June: Bought a Brazilian 5kg gas bottle and regulator today, if we are here for 4 more months it will be worth it. Hoping we might even be able to mount it on the existing bracket thanks to some mods we did back in ZA to give us this flexibility. Then headed a bit up the coast to Buzios, a very funky town but struggled to find decent camping, eventually stopped at one which is about a 2,5km walk to the beach and rounded the day off being pounded in the surf, didn’t even catch a single wave.
16 June: Better day, back to the same beach as yesterday and actually caught some waves on the mid-low tide. Spent whole day on beach apart from a trip back to MR j parked in side street fro lunch. Confirmation that a van with surf board storage in the “garage” would be nirvana.
18 June: Aargh another thing goes wrong! The SUP exploded today and looks like it is now FUBA
20 June: A bit of a mission shopping, as always, becuase we couldn’t find the one shop Tania had in mind and then when we did find an okay Aticada it takes forever due to language and not knowing where to find everything but at least we got some good food and okay wine. Then drove south to Saquerema, where the WSL surf champs are taking place but finding a campsite not easy due to not many and then huge crowds expected. Found a spot but doesn’t have 220v power which may be an issue as despite our solar it has many big trees so charging may be an issue.
24 June: It’s been some long but ultimately fun days. We have made sure to get down to beach early on each of the competition days and have been able to position ourselves in front of the athletes warmup area and on both days get the SA flag out for the two South African surfers.
26 June: Neither of us feeling too good: Tania with body aches and Stuart just a scratchy throat
27 June: A good day, we succeeded in extending our visa so that we will now be able to spend in totality a full 6 months in Brazil if we wish.
28 June: Long day as we head north towards Vitoria, especially as both of us are not feeling great thankfully the driving was relatively easy.
29 June: Another long day, even though neither of us feels great we figured we may as well move a bit further up the coast and position ourselves ready to do chores in Vitoria for when we feel better. Unfortunately the spot we had chosen as an overnight destination turned out to be nothing more than a parking lot and with it being only lunchtime we decided to move to a better looking place. This of course meant traversing across the town of Vitoria. We only had a brief glance as we drove through but Vitoria looks like a very attractive city. After crossing the huge bridge that spans the bay you are greeted with a very busy toll plaza and while waiting in the queue we had many greetings and thumbs up from curious residents and then we were blown away as one gentleman proceeded to pay our toll fee for us. It was only ZAR10 but the gesture is so typical of how welcome we have been made to feel in Brazil.