If we learnt anything from today, it was that marmosets (Brazilian ones anyway) apparently turn their noses away at tomatoes and lettuce. My friend from home told me off for feeding the tiny baby monkeys wholemeal bread, she said the do much better with watery veg and fruit as a second choice. The trouble is, these monkeys just seem to have a sweet tooth. I understand – I’d much rather bananas over tomatoes too.
Waking up to the sound of tiny squeaking monkeys is an aspect to this leg of the trip I could get used to – the mosquitoes, cockroaches, spiders and giant ants not so much.
We headed back into Paraty today to take more postcard pictures and enjoy the local cuisine. “What kind of exotic Brazilian food did you eat?” I hear you ask. Ham and cheese toasties. Yep you heard it right. We are ashamed of ourselves but they were very good. Sometimes you’ve got to go for the classics.
We had a look around some of the boutique shops, tempted to buy and ship home some of the cutest baby-grows for my nieces. The reality of this meant that the babies would probably be double the size by the time the clothes actually reached them.
Home for us at the moment is on what feels like farmland. You have to literally jump across muddy puddles or find stepping stones – at one point this resulted in my brilliant white converse turning a deep shade of brown. Aside from the monkeys and beautiful shrubbery, there’s also wild horses not too far away. We stopped to take pictures and discussed how we feel like we both might be partially scared of horses – it’s the unpredictability.
We spent the evening in a restaurant on the beach eating a BBQ meat platter. I mentioned to Jake that I was thinking about trying the vegetarian life, but was glad I hadn’t started yet because it would be so hard to do that here. We’ve already eaten some of the best meat we’ve ever had and we haven’t even hit Argentina yet. Good things to come!
Alpaca Backpackers 