We left our hotel in Rio at 7am on 1/8/12 for a 30 minute taxi ride to the airport - enroute we saw the iconic symbol of Rio ie the hill with the monument of Jesus on it - it had been shrouded in the cloud the day before. The hotel said the taxi to the airport was 80 Reals - when I took out 100 reals to pay the taxi driver said it was 99 but when I challenged him he gave me 20 reals change and rolled his eyes. This was the only time someone tried any sharp practice.
We caught the 0930 TAM airways flight to Belo Horizante but had to wait there until 1500 for the flight to Porto Seguro. We arrived in Porto Seguro on time and the luggage was off quickly - as we emerged from the baggage hall I immediately saw my name on Xurupita (the resort) paper and after inntroducing ourselves made our way with the driver to a car which took us to the timeshare. The resort was away from the beach on a hill which meant our nice and spacious 2 bedroom apartment had views of the sea. The staff were lovely and helpful and the dilemma caused by us not speaking Portuguese and them not speaking English was solved by google translate and a phrase book - the former being really good.
As we had no food we ate in the restaurant alone; this is their low season and we were the only guests - but a few more appeared at the weekend.
On Thursday morning we went into Porto Seguro at 8am to do our shopping and have breakfast - there were a lack of breakfast places and Macdonalds didn't even open until midday perhaps indicating they are not going out for breakfast people! So we did our shopping and found a coffee bar for a pastry and coffee.
There was a good gym on the resort which I visited everyday. We also spent time catching up with and watching the Olympics - with the Brazilian TV we watched the Brazilian teams -so lots of volley ball, beach volleyball and football but they did show the rowing, swimming and athletics - no cycling though. A big thanks to the excellent olympic games website and the BBC news app which kept us up to speed with all the Brits successes almost as they happened. I still do not understand the Brazilian director though who stayed with the long jump and did not move briefly to the heptathlon 800m!! Albeit we saw Greg Rutherford clinch gold and then Mo Farrah win the 10000 metres we missed Jessica Ennis...hey ho! Great performances and keeping up with the minute by minute changes in the medals table made my iPad a must have travel accessory!
Overall we had a very quiet few days - nice resort but Porto Seguro is quite tired it reminded me of Kavos in Corfu a British package holiday destination -instead this is a Brazilian and Argentinean package holiday destination and similarly not very inspiring! I now can't wait to get back on the the eco tourism trail as we head to Belo Horizante tomorrow and after a night at the Ramada hotel we start looking for anteaters and maned wolf.