Sand In Our Shoes

Quinn's feeling a lot better today. Only a minor headache at the beginning of things, which the Tylenol cleared right up. Up, breakfast, quick consult with the locals, and then we were out the door, heading for the end of the blue line and the bus station that occupies the same space. For we were headed to Guaruja!, and all its seaside enchantments. 

We metro'd across the city and bought tickets JUST before the bus left - we actually had to run to make it - and for the first time saw a little of Brazil that isn't covered with concrete. The forested hills (are they actually mountains?) look a lot like they do in Puerto Rico, and once out of the city, we saw much more in the way of forests than of cultivated fields, or even pasture. I saw a few cows and a dead horse scattered across the landscape, but apart from that, hardly any evidence of agriculture at all. 

Lots of audacious engineering, though. It's a steep descent from São Paulo to the coast , through rough mountains of unpredictable twists and turns. They've split traffic up - there is one two-lane road strictly for going down, with separate tunnels and bridges and everything from the "up" road, which we crossed numerous times going down. I'm not sure, but it sure seemed as if the cArs and heavier vehicles had been split up, too, since I only saw trucks and buses on our two-lane road. Which would mean that there are FOUR such roads, each with an individual set of bridges and tunnels, going up and down the toughest sections of the mountain? Wow. It really was quite a drop - didn't lend itself to photography, really, undortunately. But I tried.

So we pulled in to Guaruja after about an hour. Definitely a dingier and smaller town than São Paualo, but I'd guess it has over a hundred thousand souls living there. We took a cab to the local hostel that Roberto at Dos Franceses had told us about - it belongs to the same owner as D.F., so Roberto called ahead and told them we were coming. They gave us a locker and said we could put our valuables in it - they didn't recommend we take anything valuable to the beach. So our passports (I don't like to carry them around, but we were leaving the city, so in case something happened, I wanted them), credit card, and phones, as well as all our money, save enough for lunch, in the locker. So, no photos of the beach. 

Small price to pay, though, because while Quinn and I tossed a frisbee in the waves, three or four kids on bicycles swooped down and grabbed our back pack.

I only know his because a pair of women nearby said they'd seen them just prior to my running out of the water because I saw our pack was gone. The kids were long gone, somewhere dickering over $7.50 (change from lunch), a dry towel,ear buds,and a bottle of Tylenol drops. 

Quinn was disturbed by the whole thing but relieved, even tickled, that they had failed to get anything of value. We managed to end our day at the beach in pretty high spirits. 

I still get sinking panics when a memory comes up, though - the memory of hitting a Brazilian woman in the neck with the frisbee. It just took off in the wind on me. I RAN to her, babbling apologiesand looking   stricken; she was clearly unhappy, but was very gracious about it. A few minutes later I offered to buy her and her family a round of what they were drinking, (this was before the bag got nipped), but they refused, politely. "Ya pasO," she said. Uff - I still feel just terrible. And lucky - her husband was evidently a body builder. I mean, professional-grade. He was friendly and gracious too, which was a nice surprise. I was half expecting some roid rage. 

Had there been any, though, fear not. I ran a pretty respectable 200-meter dash back in the day, and Quinn's faster than I am. We'd have left the bag, our towels, our shoes - our identities if it came to that. 

Dude was HUGE.

We ended our day at the beach at about 3:00, and walked back to the Guaruja hostel. Showered, had them call a cab for us, and headed back to the bus station. The cab driver was a nice guy - his Portuuese was easy to understand. (Is it can drivers that are so easy...?) he turns out to be the father of the woman who handled our stuff at the hostel. "What country are you from?" "The US." Big smile: "Barack Obama!" So there it is. That's now the thing people say when they find that out.

Onto the bus:

And back to São Paulo, back through two trains on the metro, and to a mall, where there weren't any movies that interested us. So we had a cheapish dinner there and walked back to the Pousada. 

 And there you have it. I wound up being kind of an expensive day, between bus fare twice, cab fare twice, two meals out, and $7.50 lost to the criminal bike gangs of Guaruja. So we'll take all the cheap options tomorrow. Time to relax and maybe catch another episode of "an Idiot Abroad". That Karl Pilkington. He's such a moron.