Day 1 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

A JOURNEY OF SEVEN THOUSAND KILOMETRES BEGINS WITHOUT MUCH OF A CLUE

Contents: Five people, four and a half bags and one bodyboard
Number of times the car key has been lost: 1
Hours in the car: Obviously not a particularly shocking amount since I have no record of it
The plan: There isn`t one


The story begins in Sao Paulo airport where five friends reunite (Amy cries) and are introduced to the most special of special buses (Amy cries ;) which by all accounts runs on alcool (alcohol) and Kit has already scarred by driving into a curb - what they have curbs in Brazil?


Let the games begin - first up is the Janet Jackson/Harold Bishop game...a few rounds in and Kit throws us all off with his description of some half cat/half man character/from a tv show/and a book/there are four members of the gang/he has a feline name/it is from the 90s/he is not main character/actor was in a film after the tv show/BBC2/9pm...basically you cannot believe how long it took us to figure out that Kit was Cat from Red Dwarf! Let´s move onto game number two shall we? Interpretting Portuguese road signs - oh yep, that one definitely means they are strengthening the bridge. Luckily we arrived at Sao Vicente not long after this point and the game came to an end - the one thing the book did say was DO NOT STOP AT SAO VICENTE...I am pretty sure someone piped up at this point and said ¨Shall we stop?¨, a precursor to the rest of our trip if you like - ending up in situations that we have specifically been told not to do, but did we learn...Nao!


We find our chosen hostel in Santos which turns out to be very expensive for what we get...five beds in a small room with a tiny bathroom containing shower (electrics on display), toilet and sink with no divide so that one shower in it is a fight to not get soaked whenever you enter the room...a particular problem for us squirlies who had to squat over the toilet whilst hoiking the trouser legs up and pulling the trousers down and holding the toilet paper under the arm - I thought this was supposed to be a holiday!!


When we were all ready to move out we head to the streets of Santos and almost immediately get run over on the bike track running along the beach...oops! The first cafe we come to caters for groups of four people only (i.e. the tables), no vegetarian option and when you ask for water you either get a bottle that has been previously opened or fizzy when you wanted still - Parlez-vous francais? This may have been the moment it dawned on Vikki that she may actually be living of cheese Doritos for the next three weeks! We ended up in a typical Brazilian style restaurant where you pay by the kilo...this turned out to be one of our favourite lunchtime jaunts aside from the lack of tables for more than four people!


By this time it was quite late on but we managed to spend some time sat on the beach while Kit went boarding, then back to the squat for a planning session of sorts and oh, it must be time to eat again by now surely...Lei - did you leave any room for anything else¿? We wandered to the `Old City` named so because of the presence of a cemetary and we had some pizza at a particularly unfriendly restaurant who would not understand "pizza com atum"...with hand actions/pointing/phrase books and all?? I´ll just have the pizza with heaps of cheese then please, times five! We wouldnt have known if there was any tuna/other toppings on the pizzas even if we had been successful.