soon.

The next morning we were up fairly handy as we wanted to hire bikes. Our hostel man who prepared us breakfast each morning told us some good places to visit and thankfully the weather was looking at lot less grey and wet. Our hostel man was funny, each morning he asked us if we would like ‘eggs’ but you have to imagine him saying it in a very gruff deep voice, with a fag in one hand and a true beer belly. He would then ditch the cigarette and head off into the kitchen and come back with enough scrambled eggs for the whole of Paraty! He also had a friend who used to be there the odd morning, who sounded even gruffer than him, his friend was a ‘Darth Vader’ voice double I’m sure! Unfortunately we don’t have a photo of either of them. After our endless supply of ‘eggs’ we headed off to the bike hire shop which was just over the road. They were pretty good bikes thankfully and after a good half hour on main roads we managed to get on

quieter roads. It was really good to be out and the scenery again was fantastic.

We were heading to some waterfalls but we somehow managed to do a detour up a very steep hill. It didn’t take either of us long to get off and start walking, but riding in that kind of heat is a killer. The sun had made an appearance by this point and whilst not cracking the flags it was pretty hot and with all the trees around they made it quite humid. After we got to the top of the very steep hill we realised that we had gone the wrong way and weren’t heading towards the waterfalls - doh! We had great fun freewheeling down the hill and we sure did reach the bottom a lot faster than we had reached the top! The ride to the waterfalls was on a proper dirt road so it made it a bit painful on the old behind! The seats on our bikes weren’t especially padded so it was a great relief when we finally reached the