After getting a tip from a lady from Sao Paulo, we decided to head to a beach town called Ubatuba. It's about 2 hours north of Sao Paulo and from what a few Brazilians have told us that it's where they like to go for long weekends etc. So we decided to hit it up.

As we've said before, Brazil is a little more expensive that we've been accustomed to and we thought that the place that the locals go (rather than the major touristy bits) would be more suitable to our budget. We were (thankfully) correct!

We arrived at lunch time one day and found a city rather than a town and there's quite a few beaches around. We found ourselves a hotel (same price as a hostel! Win!) and settled in. The first evening we had a walk and checked out the arts & crafts market and found a bar at the end of our street, overlooking the beach with beers for R$2 ($1 Australian). So had a nice sunset drink and relax.

It was the Sunday of a long weekend so when we went out for dinner, the main strip was packed! Soooo many people and quite a few restaurants to choose from. We ended up with an adequate Arabic food place.

The next morning we went for a walk along the waterfront and found our way to the Ubatuba aquarium. It was actually pretty good! There were quite a few tanks, with lots of information (unfortunately for us all in Portuguese), a touch tank and at the end an area with lots of information and displays about the effect humans are having on the environment/oceans in particular. Also through there are quite a few specimens of different sharks and large fish which are great to see up close. The rest of the day was spent relaxing on the beach, which was very nice after all the heat and busy-ness.

The next day we took the bus to the next beach up - Grande Beach. It was a lot nicer beach - more sand and beautiful rainforested hills coming down to meet the beach. Quite a lot more people! Everywhere in Brazil (so far) on the beach, they have little kiosks where you can get very reasonably priced drinks and snacks. So we had a snack on the beach front and got the bus back to our end of town.

In the afternoon, we went for a walk, which was very nice. There about ten minutes out of town there's a couple of small (probably private) beaches. So we had a beautiful lush sunset walk along the road near these beaches. One fun (!!) thing that Ubatuba as is make your own ice cream bars. You pay by the weight of it at the end. Whatever scoops, sprinkles and ICE MAGIC you want. Luckily self control meant we only visited one!!

One other random note is that here Brazilians have worked out how to advertise to you while you're not even consuming any media. Super Loud Car Stereos. They have an election on Oct 7th and every 5 mins or so a car or ute will drive down the street blaring campaign songs and slogans. Its rather irritating when you're trying to enjoy the beach or forest!

So that was our brief interlude in Ubatuba, a nice, relaxing, couple of days before heading up to Paratay