Firstly a leg update as I have not done one of these for a while. I stopped taking the antibiotics a week ago and have left it open to the air. The first couple of days it oozed a bit but since then it has dried up and a nice scab formed. It now looks quite healthy. I am keeping it dry and as advised not going in the sea and for the same reason avoided any pools. So fingers crossed this is now on its way to being fully healed.
With the air con blasting out all night we woke having slept well. We had the mosquito thingy plugged in all night and so suffered no bites either. We were up and in breakfast for just after 8am. It was the usual fare and I am happy to report the scrambled eggs were delicious. There was Brazilian champagne on offer and so we sampled that as well (tasted like sweet cheap Prosecco). We had several welcomed cup’s of tea.
We then decided to venture out to the nearest supermarket which was some 600m away. The streets all around this peninsula are made of large flagstones. They are very uneven and difficult to walk along alone drive. There was also a lot of traffic on the roads albeit moving slowly as every 100m or so on every road were very steep speed humps. The walk to the shop seemed a lot further than 600m in the heat. We found the supermarket called Princesa without too much trouble though. We bought some rolls for lunch and a bottle of wine for later on. Then we decided to buy a folding chair for Karen to use on the balcony or in the hotel gardens as there were many loungers but no chairs. Although we won’t be able to take it home we considered it worth the expense to keep Karen happy and comfortable.
Once back at the Hotel, Karen promptly put the chair to good use in the gardens outside of our room. I was so hot that I chilled in the cooled air of our room for a while before joining her. We both sat for a while reading our Kindles enjoying the quietness and the prettiness of the surroundings.
After having a late lunch of our rolls we then went back to the beach in the late afternoon. The beach and bay is really very pretty and there was a lovely sea breeze. We still sat in the shade of an umbrella though out of the powerful sun’s rays. I read for a while and then listened to a Podcast of Desert Island Discs.
This evening we had booked the Hotel shuttle into Buzios Centre. This started running from 7pm, hourly until 11pm. We booked the first one out and the 8.30pm back. We didn’t know what the place was like and were worried even that might be too long. The journey was very lumpy bumpy on the roads but we got there in the end.
We were more than pleasantly surprised when we arrived. It was really nice and buzzing with people. There were some busy streets lined with shops and restaurants that led to a bay with a promenade also lined with more bars and restaurants. There were lots of families about and it all felt very safe (exactly as described). We soon realised we should have booked a later shuttle back as we had so little time to look around and get a meal. We quickly selected a pizzeria and got a waitress who claimed to speak English. However she clearly knew as much English as we knew Portuguese. Nevertheless we eventually managed to order a Pizza. However after 20 minutes we were still waiting for it to arrive and we were getting close to the shuttle leaving and I then had to try and explain that we would need to have it as a takeaway instead. Eventually they understood and we got our pizza to go instead and hurried back to the shuttle meeting point. We decided we would come back here tomorrow and spend more time here.
Back in our room we devoured our pizza as were by now quite hungry. It was a lovely pizza and after I managed to borrow a corkscrew from Reception we washed it down with the bottle of wine we had purchased earlier.
As I anticipated we are growing into this place although Karen is struggling with the intense heat. We are really well off the beaten track here. Although apparently a haunt of originally Bridget Bardot and now the likes of Jagger and Madonna, it is clearly not somewhere that hosts many other English speaking people. This is probably due though to the sheer distance we are from anywhere. We almost feel like trailblazers in our own little way.
