Buzios

Monday February 13th - Thursday February 16th 2012

So to Buzios, 180k north-eastish of Rio, and a total of 8-9 hours driving.  Having bought a proper map, we chose to take an easier route than the one Google  picked for us on the way down, and it turned out to be a very easy and pleasant day, with just one or two heart-stopping moments in the Rio area.

Buzios is a strange place – it’s a peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic, about 18K long, fairly built-up along the main road all the way, but with roads off leading to the 17 glorious beaches that have made this the weekend retreat for the Rio Cariocas.  Centro, or “where to be seen” is at the far end of the peninsula, and our nice little pousada was the short walk from the Marbella-like town centre.

A leisurely sundowner down by the bay, great pizza chef and a sublime snooty cat:

The plan here was simple – do as little as possible.  However, we did feel in need of some physical exercise after a day cooped up in the car, so we hiked off to a few of the beaches, did a little tanning, a very little swimming – the water was COLD! – and a bit of eating and came home happy and nicely tired.

After a siesta – seems no-one eats before 9pm at the earliest - we took to the streets to find supper, and after a cruise, settled on the most crowded restaurant in town as it was playing live Samba music – and what a good call that was! The food was good, but the band and the lady Samba dancer were just excellent, and we had a ball, as witnessed in the somewhat embarrassing photos below – you had to be there, it was a blast!

More of the same the next day, except this time we took the car to further flung beaches, also lovely, though we didn’t bother climbing down to the last little beach in the pix below, as it turned out to be the Gay beach, and standing sentinel at the top it was a little disconcerting to find a well built, stark naked black guy! We couldn’t understand what he said to us, but decided to turn round fairly soon after anyway – don’t know if I was relieved or disappointed to find he’s put his shorts on when we returned!!!

Fresh caught conger.

Conclusion – Buzios was just what was needed after 4.5 weeks of travelling, but we probably won’t be there again, whereas we’d highly recommend Paraty to anyone.

Final stop coming up…..RIO!!