BEACHING IN BRAZIL
WIND DOWN THE ADRENALINE, EASE BACK ON THE TRAVELLING.............
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Having been full on for some six weeks, with hardly a break, doing weird stuff and moving every few days it was time for a well earned REST. There are loads of beautiful beaches east and west of Rio and we did our research and decided not to visit several but to head to one resort that seemed to be the most popular, a town called Buzios, some 150 miles north east of Rio, and set up camp there.
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Out of the airport, hire a lovely car, fight through Rio, and drive like the wind to our new base......
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Sara picked a lovely beachfront hotel with a beach club, restaurants, the works. The Jubarte Hotel by Insolito. She did a demon deal by calling them direct and blagged a suite for five days (which within an hour of arrival we upped to ten days) at a demon price of just £130 a night incl bf (about 30% less than online). Ours was a three room unit (including a dedicated dressing room no less) and a spacious balcony with sea view and an all important hammock (love a hammock!). The plan was TO DO NOTHING.........
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The hotel and the area are lovely. It reminds us both so much of the Cote d'Azur in the south of France. Lovely mature trees eveywhere, really smart clay tile roofed villas, all in large grounds, nice beaches in coves, nice people. And nothing to do or see, just loll about a lot.
You can tell the type of hotel - it has its own helicopter service from its garden, just by our room. Proper place!
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We spent the first two days doing absolutely nothing at all. Just sitting around.
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Mind you, its been 15 hotels, 13 flights totalling 34.400k (21,300 miles, only 3,600 miles less than the circumference of the world!), and travel by car, boat, plane, train, bus, horse, parachute, foot, bike, buggie, so no surprise we fancied a rest.
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So just a week to go before we go home.
So loll about we did - in spades. It was such a lovely place with great beaches and sandy side streets. The town itself was a delight, masses of restaurants and traffic free beach front roads. We managed a couple of trips in their beach buggy style chauffeur driven rental cars, with added loony as the driver, singing and fooling around (the driver, not us, we are way too cool for that). We enjoyed some really long walks around the coves and villages, miles and miles of tree-lined roads with lots of really nice villas, Sara managed one alone of about 10 miles in 35 degrees of heat, the mad dog/englishwoman that she is.
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A couple more pictures give you an idea of how nice and relaxing it all was as the idyllic end to our travels.......
The photo above is Sara cuddling Brigitte Bardot, in statue form, obs. Brigitte visited Buzios a couple of times and as a result was adopted wholeheartedly by the locals as though she had been born and bred here. She's bloody everywhere, or at least her name/likeness/statues are, what a girl!
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At least some of her charm and style rubbed off as a result and now Buzios is a very upmarket resort town for the wealthy of Rio who can come here and enjoy the zero chance of wandering in a Favela by mistake when they have a few to many Caipirinhas.
On so ending the slide show with the picture above of our beach club you may conclude that the last ten days went swimmingly, which they did up to day seven.
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On day seven I felt a bit uncle dick, with added jippy tummy. Now I am a true soldier and i don't get ill often, but this time I actually had a day in bed, washed out, washed up, and out of it. Day eight I recovered but did not eat any thing except BRAT (bananas, rice, applesauce and toast for the uninitiated, supposed to be the diet for the runs) for the next three days. No problem. We fly home on day 10.
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Day 9 dawns and Sara goes off for a bit of paddle boarding, comes back feeling a bit odd, goes off for a massage, and has a meltdown. Room turns into "emergency ward 10", by nightfall the doctor is called to the delirious patient who is passing in and out of consciousness (Sara's story, I think she was sleeping). Doctor pumps her full of a litre of intravenous drip and says "this will sort you out". It doesn't. Doctor changes his tune and now says "if this gets any worse go to hospital", or things along those lines.
We are due to drive 150 miles to Rio in the morning, dump the car at the airport and board our flight at about 15.00 so its squeaky bum time - in more ways than the obvious - will we be able to make the plane????????????
Day 10 dawns, Sara not well, not really, really ill, just really not well, so we decide to go for it. Difficult drive for her to manage, me too, the moaning can actually be heard over the car radio on full, but I persevere.
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Get into the airport a relapse is suffered which involves lying on the floor of Departures, in full view of everyone. We have a disucssuion on our options. Option 1 - go to the airport medical centre, miss the flight, get sent to hospital in Rio. Option 2 - be strong and somehow get on the plane home. Option 2 was duly picked and Sara, brave girl, splashed some water on her face and we approached check-in.
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I suggested that as Sara was a funny grey colour with purple lips, that maybe, just maybe, she should stand behind me and keep mum. Let me do the talking. Which I did, thinking we had less than a 25% chance of my poor darling making it past the next few hurdles without hurling over a security guard or air hostess. That is until we both heard the magic words "Mr Henslow, you'll be pleased to hear we have upgraded you both to Business Class with flat beds". GET IN!!!!! If that does not get my baby on board, then nothing will.
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And it did, just. I won't bore anyone with the gory details of how close we came to failure on several occasions between being given that amazing news, and Sara making it into her flat bed to immediately hide under the covers and zonk out until we landed 10 hours later, but my stoic darling held it all in at both ends and we managed get home safely.
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POSTSCRIPT: As it only affect the last two days of our trip it became more of a funny story than something to worry about - until Sara got the results of the hospital check up on our return (she was till not right at all, even a week later). As it turned out she had not been a weak lily livered malingerer, I didn't ever think that, the hotel receptionist might have though. She actually had Dysentry (Shigella)! As a result she was contacted by the local health authority to try and trace the source, obviously they lost interest as soon as Brazil was mentioned, but still - Dysentry! Oh, and they said it was very contagious and not to travel in a plane while you have it. Too slow!!
I had it too, and it would have killed a lesser man, but I survived.
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A not too perfect end to a perfect two months adventuring in South America, where to next year???