As the sun rose on this blissful new morning, a bus casually pulled into the quiet station of Sao Sabastiao. The weary SuperDael (disguised once again as the adventurous and inconspicuous Island Boy) hopped off and made his way to the ferry which, as luck would have it, was about to leave and waited for him to jump aboard… amazing… the Brazilian people are in no hurry whatsoever… and they are so ridiculously polite and helpful… sometimes to a point of disbelief. I often find myself a little suspicious of this eagerness to help out. Perhaps my insane upbringing in South Africa has made me a little paranoid… or maybe there is a huge conspiracy to lure me into this false sense of comfort before they “get me”… I cannot be completely sure and with my inability to follow conversations around me, I guess I’m just going to have to take this generosity at face value. Anyhow, thus far they have been amazing…

The ferry ride across to Ilha Bela is short… 15-20 minutes… and extremely pleasant. The “ferry” is a large square barge with no real covering that adequately transports a fair number of vehicles as well as people. Pedestrians don’t have to pay… a bit of an added bonus considering Ilha Bela is a vast and beautiful tropical island which consists of an absurd amount of beaches and waterfalls. Most of the island is covered in dense jungle and forms part of a national park, which means that it is a little more costly to take your car across to Ilha Bela but considerably less when you are returning to the mainland. I’m not entirely sure if this logic works the way it is intended. Sometimes I wonder who actually benefits from the additional charge because, clearly, it does not act as a deterrent. Everyone still brings their cars to the island (if they have a car… of course, they might not… I certainly don’t!). I suppose in an ideal world the parrots, sloth’s and other animals would benefit somehow… not entirely sure what they would want with R$17 in exchange for their free air and quiet forest. I imagine that the squirrels negotiated this one. Bloody evil things… one actually tried to pickpocket me the other day. If you gain one thing from my ranting, let it be this: Never trust a squirrel!

The ferry docks at the terminal in Barra Velha. This small village is the transport hub of the island, consisting of the ferry terminal and the main bus station with busses that head either North towards Vila (the touristy part of the island) or South towards Borrifos (more specifically Bairro Sao Pedro). The word “Bairro” means neighbourhood… and like the rest of Brazil, these can also be “Favelas” which means shanty-town (they are all over but apparently more infamous in Rio de Janeiro). The busses are cheap, only costing R$2 to go in either direction… no need for a car or a tray! (Você precisará de uma bandeja!)

Island Boy hopped off the ferry and took the short walk to the bus station to catch his bus to the Pinda Yacht Club (on the North of the island… near Vila) where the yacht “Josephine” has been patiently waiting for him, completely unaware of his recent kidnapping. Told you those Portuguese girls were sneaky… then again, they did wait with him at the bus station in Paraty until 3am once Ludi (my favourite Brazilian) had negotiated his release. The “negotiation” was a cunning one… it involved copious amounts of beer and cachaca (evil stuff but effective… I imagine it’s a bit like drinking paint thinners… I have never actually tasted paint thinners… but in SA it would probably be mistaken for Wit Blitz). He may even have thrown in some wacky but my super brain is missing parts of the previous evening.

I’m actually a little surprised I managed to wake up when the bus arrived in Sao Sabastiao… with the reclining seats (long distance busses here are super cool) and using my new hammock as a blanket (bloody useful things… bought one in Paraty for R$42 (meaning of life and all!)… that much shopping with girls, I was bound to buy something!), I was snug as a bug in a hammock (erm… nope, doesn’t really work anymore!). Imagine I slept through my stop. I’m not certain Andrew or Abbey would have been particularly amused if I suddenly phoned them to tell them I overslept and am now on the outskirts of Eastern Chile (not certain the bus goes that far!). I expect that normally they would have been ok with it but this is the day that Island Boy finally has to begin working for his bread… not too good to be late on your first day… then again “This is Brazil!” (Yup, Leonardo, I coined your catch phrase and altered it by 20% to avoid copyright infringement… so get over it already!)

Anyways, due to an efficient public transport system, Island Boy safely made it back to Josephine with plenty of time to spare. Although I must put it out there: who on this planet actually makes a habit of being awake at 7am unless they’re returning home from an adventure… its just way too early! Other than bus and ferry drivers, probably only hookers and that drunk clown who fell asleep in the bar and misplaced their car…

Right, so Island Boy is safely back on Ilha Bela once more and the last week has been all work for the poor unfortunate soul. Work, work, work… whats that all about… lets see if I can sum this up briefly: I’ve had to scrub decks, clean out bilges, spray down sails, pack sails for repairs and a whole host of other boat-related things… as well as assisting Abbey, Lucy-Jo and Sorgrinha with moving onto the boat. Of course, I got to celebrate completing each task by lying in my new hammock for a mini-siesta… which I successfully rigged to the foredeck of the boat using the port and starboard spinnaker halyards and some sail-ties. Bon Vida!

Hmmm, I almost make it all sound like hard work, didn’t I? It’s a talent really.

In actual fact, we moved the boat from the mooring buoy at the chilled, local Pinda Yacht club to the more glamorous Ilha Bela Yacht Club around the corner, which is currently under construction for the famous “Ilha Bela Week” sailing regatta, held in June every year. Apparently, some serious boats from around the world come to Ilha Bela to compete in this event. Last year there were about 200 yachts entered, so they have subsequently decided to rebuild their marina, transforming it into one of the most incredible clubs I’ve even lived in (meaning its better than the Royal Cape!). Anyways, we now had a proper solid mooring with water and electricity (in theory but our socket didn’t fit so there was no electricity on the boat), so it was easy to transport the several tons of apparel that Andrew’s family were bringing onto the boat. I’m still a little afraid to walk into the saloon of the boat for fear of being packed into a cupboard or worse still, being placed into the bag of stuff that is going to the victims of the Santa Catarina flooding…

I just realized that I have not mentioned this. As most of you are aware, while we were sailing across the ocean we got hit by this monumental storm which hammered us around for 4-5 days. Well, what I didn’t mention is that this same storm then went on to hit the Southern Brazilian coastline… specifically, the state of Santa Catarina… and cause absolute mayhem (Google: "Santa Catarina floods"...). Hundreds dead and large numbers left homeless after massive floods and landslides… scary hey (and freaky to think that we sailed through that!). Well, there are incredible relief campaigns being conducted here and there are donation centres all over the place. Ilha Bela (an island) have about 3 or 4 scattered around. Its been a disaster, yet impressive to see how efficient the Brazilians have been in dealing with it (certainly putting the Yanks Katrina fiasco to shame).

This has been the primary reason that we are still hanging around the Sao Paulo coastline. Andrew made the decision to stick in this neck of the woods until the 3rd    of Jan because of all the storm damage down south. We may pull a little trip up towards Paraty for Christmas but it appears that for a lot of December we will be in Ilha Bela… so, I have been lurking around this island for a while now looking for things to occupy my free time with… and now that I’m working, there has been considerably less free time… however, this should change once the boat is organised.

When the lads (RupeDogg and Gringo Dan) were still here we had a ridiculous night out (which included the lovely Portuguese girls and King Ludi) where we ended up at this “super-flipping-rad gig at a local joint with a Jethro Tull look-alike” (quote from the boys!) leading up the house band. He was an English dude who arrived in Ilha Bela about 5 years ago and never left… now he has put together a band that are pretty fantastic. Actually he is an incredible singer and, despite looking a little like an albino (creepy!), is one hell of a performer. We had a great night which involved all sorts of antics… some of which have been deemed confidential under article 3 clause 7 of the Non-disclosure Act. I can, however, include Gringo Dan’s attempt to “escape” from his bar tab. It’s a stupid system anyways… they give you a card at the beginning of the night and whenever you order anything, they mark your card. Then at the end of the night, you go to the bar where they add up what you owe… you then pay your bill and the bar stamps your card which you hand to the bouncer in order to be let out of the bar. Well, Dan tried to “sneak” out and succeeded but was spotted. I probably would have done it too if I hadn’t only spent R$20. The bouncer then tracked him to the car… which, being the only blonde dude in the club (and possibly the entire island… other than Andrew… who wasn’t there!), could not have been too hard. I have never seen such a chilled bouncer… he just walked up and told Dan to go in and pay… which Dan did after a random fake phone conversation which I didn’t quite get. In SA, Dan would have been beaten to within an inch of his life… dragged by the ear lobe back to the club and then had his wallet removed as well as his phone, jeans and whatever else they could take him for! As I said… Brazil is so relaxed!

I also discovered that the island have a rugby team. Who ever thought? So I joined them for one of their practice sessions on the beach. The guys are pretty good too but they play a variation of “touch” rugby which involves more of a semi-full contact vibe… it’s a bit like mixing rugby league and touch rugby… not big tackles but you have to stop the dude. It was great fun… they ran me ragged but I did not do my country an injustice… I pulled a few sneaky manoeuvres and scored 3 tries. They’re a cool bunch of guys and are completely rugby mad… bizarre… but only 2 of them speak English tho which complicated things a little. They don’t seem to play much 15’s rugby… more 7’s cos they are an island team and struggle to come up with enough players. Apparently they lose a lot of players when guys finish school and leave the island to go to Uni. But it was awesome to throw the ball around…

Living on an island is the way to go. Everyone knows everyone… and everyone seems to help everyone. Just the other day, the ATM went pear-shaped and didn’t give me money despite the transaction apparently going through. This happened at the ATM in the internet café. The guys at the café then gave me free internet to check my bank and to email them… they then helped me sort out things with the Bank that manages the ATM. All this was done by communicating using Google translator… hell, its funny… I type and translate… they read… they type and translate… I read! Its brilliant… albeit sometimes a little misleading and occasionally takes some time to be understood properly. The best part (besides the ideal opportunity to flirt a bit!) is that some of them even offered to loan me money once the whole admin part had been sorted. How amazing is that?

Ok, I’m sold… I am officially Island Boy! *cue Tarzan call*