Day 28

Not a bad nights sleep in front of the fire. Woke up under the sun's already prickling heat, striking through the clouds, at about eight o'clock, and decided to hike up into town for something to eat. Already a lot of faces are familiar around here, it has the small village characteristic of personability wherever you go. One thing about travelling in an ever so slightly inflated group as this one is constant difficulty over deciding what to do and getting everyone to do it. n the end we dispersed around the main street and arranged to meet on the beach later.

This we managed without too much difficulty. This beach was notable for first the volume of dead fish milling around the shore and second the sand castle/community that Alex built, with a bit of input from Renaud and I. It had: a football pitch, a favela, three roads and entrances, a church in the shape of a female goddess, gallows, a portcullis, an assortment of outer walls, buildings and a starfish somewhere.

In the evening Rob and I had a chat with an English couple we met. Seemed relieved to speak to everybody other than each other, think they have the same isolated feeling we had in Sao Paolo. Weirdly, though, they seemed keen to talk about hostile atmospheres and strange looks from the locals in places. Definitely an air of apprehension around them. Must be hard as a couple to travel, especially with no language, and they just reinforced how lucky we have been on the trip.

We decided that Rob and I would go in the car with the guys, and split the cost of a bus ticket with Renaud, who went off with the Spanish girls. I'm finishing off writing this in the morning and we're waiting for them on the edge of a beach in Buzois. Could have organised this a bit better, both groups have at least one phone between them but not the other's number. The drive here was long and hard for Alex and Raphael, and uncomfortable for Rob and I, or at least hard to sleep through. Felt sorry for the guys though, and you could almost smell the stress levels rise as we creeped across towards our target.

I'm getting the impression in the last week or so that writing these notes every day is getting harder, and they're consequently getting boring, or repetitive; theres only so many times you can write "I'm having a great time, the beaches are great, I love the food" before it starts to grate a bit. Guess I'll just have to try a bit harder to observe everything closer and think a bit more.