17/02/2020 – Travel to Morro de Sao Paulo, Brasil

Woke up reasonably early, showered, coffee and packed our things up. Our Uber was a tiny car so the driver was laughing when we piled our laps high with rucksacks - between the four of us we have a lot of stuff! We got to the port and checked in and got straight onto our ferry. All the bags were piled up in the front of the boat and we took our handluggage out onto the deck and lapped up the sunshine. Being outside helped with preventing sea sickness as it was a little bit wavy. We chatted between ourselves for the 2 hour crossing. The landscape as the boat got closer was very ‘tropical island’ - palm trees, blue sky, and turquoise water. When we got off onto the jetty there were loads of locals with wheelbarrows who offer to take your bags for you for a small fee, but we batted them off as we all had rucksacks that we were able to manage. It is busy at the moment in the build up for carnival. We had to queue and pay island tax before walking up the path into the main town of Morro de Sao Paulo. We wandered around a bit aimlessly unsure of where to go until we found a café with wifi to stop in. We sat down and unloaded our bags, all very sweaty - it is incredibly hot here! Josh logged onto the wifi and managed to get in touch with our Air bnb host who we then went up the path to meet. Our host Freddy is an Italian who has been living on the island for over 15 years. We got shown into our 2 bedroom apartment, it is very cute and more than adequate. It has a great jungle view out of the kitchen windows, which we almost immediately saw monkeys from which was exciting! We unpacked, suncreamed up and put our swimming stuff on. Josh and Joe went to the supermarket and bought some bits to make lunch with. When they returned the heavens opened and there was a huge tropical storm, its very wet rain if that makes sense! We made some scrambled eggs for lunch. The storm passed quickly and the sun came out so we packed our bags and headed out to explore and on to the beach. We walked to beach 3, which was fairly quiet. It was white sand and shallow clear water, which was the same hot temperature as the air. We set our sarongs down on the beach and went swimming. We played with the woboba and the nerf in the water, which was so fun! Henna saw a sting-ray, Josh a sea snake and Joe and I saw a puffa fish, amongst loads of other cool colourful fish. The goggles were definitely worth bringing! We caught some sun to dry off and as the sun got lower at around 17:30 we walked back along the beache and stopped in a beach bar for our first Caiprinha together. The drinks went down so well that when we came across a bar with a happy hour we stopped for another round. The only thing with Caiprinhas is that they consist of only Cachasa (the alcohol which is often compared to rum) lime and sugar, so by now, after about a month, my teeth feel like they are rotting. We walked home via the supermarket feeling a bit giggly. We made a big pasta and vegetable dinner and Josh made us some more cocktails. After clearing up we sat chatting around the kitchen table with a few drinks until about 0200, when we called it a night.