Monday, January 19, 2009

I am Sailing...

Awoke to the rather unwelcome sight of continued overcast. Not good, as I was hoping to do the sailing trip myself that day. However, luck was with me, and as I sat around munching my way through the usual hostel breakfast, the sun broke through the clouds, persuading me that it would indeed be a good day to be out on the water. Better yet, the name of my transport for the day was the Sir Francis Drake - a name to inspire any true Englishman. Thus, I made my way across town to the quay, set myself up with a nice shady patch under the awning for the day, and thanked whichever deities might be watching that I was on one of the lighter-laden boats and not one of those groaning at the seams. A pleasant day ensued, taking in 4 or 5 beach or swimming stops, some nice fresh fruit, and generally grat weather. In fact, my only case of sunburn so far came courtesy of this, but even that was fairly mild and consisted mostly of a couple of patches around my shoulder-blades that I hadn't been able to reach properly.

On getting back to town, I headed over to the Rodoviaria to try and sort my bus ticket out of town. Annoyingly, even though the company involved apparently had buses all the way through to Florianopolis (known to most Brasilians as Floripa), there was a case of "Computer says No" and I had to content myself with the ticket through to Sao Paulo, where I would have to buy my onward ticket. I then took an hour or two to catch up on some net time and sort out my finances, before heading back to the hostel. There I found that just about everywhere serving food our side of the river was closed, but eventually managed to get some Peixe Brasileira (the imaginatively named "Brasilian Fish") for dinner. I then meandered back into town, but didn't see any familiar faces, and decided I wasn't in the mood for a drink after all, so I got an ice-cream and headed back to the hostel, where I vegged out and swapped travellers' tales with a Norwegian girl called Victoria and a Danish girl called Nanna until it was time to crash out.