The first night came after the best sunset, sinking miles along the white beach into the borderline of perfect peaks and endless horizon beyond.
We realised what time it was so trekked back to change for dinner - at which point we realised that it was somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes walk from the pousada to the town. We hit the restaurant at 9pm and ordered the Brazilian speciality - a plate of meat (4 different animals) served with rice, chips and, if we felt we didn't have enough carbs at this point, toasted 'manioc' flour. Fantastic. Two starved sun-stroked travellers' ideal.
The next day was beach day. After a nice breakfast of white bread rolls, sliced cheese and juicy papaya we settled into sunbathing. Sensibly we thought we would avoid the peak midday heat so went back to change and head into town. Again, unfortunately the long walk slightly changed plans and as we arrived at the back streets past the mercado and locals bars my shins began to prickle. The sun was unforgiving and shade was hard to come by. Sidling awkwardly along curb corners for as long as possible I side stepped sun streaks until we found a suitably canopied restaurant to regroup.
After 3pm we thought it might be safe and set out to hunt for a bus station. What a difference to Rio's hell hole. Just 4 people waiting quietly by a juice bar, cheap easy ticket sales and reserved seats for tomorrow's journey.
The walk back was a challenge.
Surfing the shade we made it to the main bus stop along the seafront and waited for our release back to the fan cooled room. Still it was not all plain sailing just yet…
The bus rattled past our left turn, and slid around the next roundabout too. Jonny said get off, I said stay on, who knows what the best thing to do was - the bus was clearly heading deeper into the jungle and none spoke our language. After twice as long as the ride home should have taken the bus got a small rural village (red roves, some exposed building works, a small window selling drinks) turned around and switched its engine off.
Everyone got off - the time had come to take action! Oh dear. The bus driver looked utterly confused and two women waiting at the bus stop began to giggle. Fortunately the younger (scantily clad) woman was an energetic communicator and made a good effort to work out what was wrong with these crazy english people. Between three of them they decided to find the only english speaking person in the village. After some time a young girl - definitely not Brazilian - was brought out to speak to us, she may have been French or European, because she definitely could not speak English! Her 'guardian' did the best job at translation and eventually they worked out that we were just waiting for the driver to start the bus back up and return to our starting point.
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