So, we have decide to stay here for New Year. We have to move from this hotel, as it is fully booked for the celebrations (and, no doubt, seriously expensive too) and so we decided to check in to the Radisson on the beach opposite. It looks new and is reasonably priced, so we walked in there to book a room.
Apparently they can't book rooms at the desk, so we have to send an email. After two emails and no reply, we were seriously questioning how good a hotel this was going to be.
Anyway, whilst I'm on the subject, we needed to do our laundry. After wandering around town on a Saturday looking for a lavanderia, we finally gave up, as they all seemed to be closed. This caused a small problem, as I was out of clean T-Shirts.
To remedy this, we went to the shopping centre to see what we could find. We wandered into a shop called "TACO", which, whilst sounding like a fast food joint from Mexico, looked an awful lot like GAP. I walked in and was spotted straight away and asked if I needed help. Given my total inability to convey "No thanks, I'm just looking" in Portuguese, I was immediately discovered to be an Ingles speaker and the English speaking shop assistant was summoned to deal with me. The problem, it turned out, was that all the super-fatso T-Shirts had been sold in the run-up to Christmas and so the combined sales force of the whole shop was conscripted into searching for the last GG (Extra Large) T-Shirts in the shop.
I do not look good in Lime Green.
Finally picking a dark blue, a light blue and a white one, we paid for our purchases and said goodbye to Brazil GAP.
After a couple of lazy days, punctuated mostly by:
- Drinking beer in to the sights and sounds of "Best of the 80's" videos (including such masterpieces as "Take on me" by a-ha; "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits; two interchangeable Erasure songs; "Another brick in the wall" by Pink Floyd ... you get the idea)
- Eating moqueca (fish stew) a few times (tasty)
- Swimming
- Reading books
- Taking the odd stroll past a favela
We decided that we had to have an active day on Monday.
First of all, we walked back to all the closed lavanderias to discover that it would take them a week to do our washing. Ooops. Luckily, in one of the shops, another customer told us about a laundromat. Off we toddled. We dropped off our washing with the nice lady at the laundromat and arranged to return 3 hours later. Bliss.
Wandering through the blistering hot streets of Vitoria meant that we needed to stop for water. After finding a nice cafe, we had water, Coke, cheesy balls, sausage bits and two of the sweetest, stickiest deserts in the world. Finally we turned up at the HSBC to see if they would change some travellers cheques for us.
Now, banks in Brazil (much like the rest of Latin America (and some parts of Europe)) seem to be semi-fortified affairs. In order to get into one, you have to nod politely at the chap with the shotgun, pass through a metal detector and then go through some set of doors that ensure only one person can enter at once and, perhaps more importantly, leave at once. Given this increased security, T stayed out in the lobby bit (where the ATMs are) underneath an A/C outlet, whilst I went in and asked if I could do a spot of Cambio.
I got to the front of the queue and asked in my best "Lonely Planet Brazilian Portuguese phrase book" foreign "Do you have a foreign exchange office?" There was a big smile from the lady behind the desk, who promptly stood up and scuttled off to the back of the bank. Moments later she reappeared behind me and asked me to follow her. I was ushered into the "HSBC Premier" area. It was at this point that it got a bit surreal.
I gesticulated to T (through the lightly frosted glass separating us in the Premier lounge from the proles) to come through. She couldn't miss this.
We ordered water (without gas) from the be-aproned waitress as we waited in the leather armchairs to be served. Eventually I was summoned into an inner sanctum to effect our transaction. Luckily I had T's "first direct" card on me, so we were identified as bona fide HBSC customers. The woman dealing with me had to telephone up to find out what to do and, between the three of us, we managed to navigate the endless computer screens to provide me with some cash in exchange for my traveller's cheques. We stayed a while to split up the cash between us in the safety of this little exception from reality. At one point she came back to swap the piece of paper I had signed for another one - for what reason I have no idea. Smiling and waving goodbye to our new friends, we once more ventured into the sauna that is outside and took a photo - just in case we forgot about it. Behind the bank is the favela we wandered past on Sunday.
We then hailed a taxi and asked him to take us to the train station. We wanted to see if we could get back to Belo Horizonte by train in the new year. After the usual near death experience that is riding in a taxi in Latin America, we had a near perfect (i.e. no resorting to wild gesticulations) exchange with the staff at the station and purchased to Executivo class tickets on the 2nd Jan. Feeling pleased with ourselves, we once again imitated crash test dummies as we were transported to pick up our washing and then to a bar for a well earned cold one and chips.
Due to the lack of taxis, we started to walk back to the hotel and passed a nice looking hotel, right beside the Iate club. We popped in and were welcomed by Danielle and shown the rooms. They were small but have fantastic views and the hotel is right in the centre of everything. As the Radisson was quite so useless, we dumped that idea and booked in for a couple of nights. The only issue is that it might be a bit noisy, but, on New Year's eve - that's par for the course.
Back to our hotel, which has become alot less of a haven now that more people have arrived. We went to bed without our tea.
No comments:
Post a Comment