Half asleep I made my way to Barra de Lagoa where the sun was shining and I almost sweated to death carrying my backpack the short walk to the hostel.
I should have made the most of the sunshine whilst it lasted as it soon transpired that I had brought the rain with me from Rio...two days of the stuff! This meant not really getting to see much of the island rather just staying in the hostel playing ping pong, drinking and seeing who could do the best accents - boredom makes you do funny things...
My body-clock hadn't really recovered from my time in Rio and it didn't really in Floripa either, as a result to this and the poor weather my average going to bed time ended up being 5am which meant that the nights soon became days and I became a walking zombie.
One night to make up for the lack of activity in the day we all went to a local club which may well have been in London given the prices they were charging for everything. Despite the expense, we did all have a great time although I did struggle height wise with my lack of heels.
Finally the sun decided to show up so we wasted no time and literally ran to one of the stunning local beaches (there are approx 24 on the island apparently). Arriving there our eyes were struck by the most amount of plastic surgery and tattoos that we had ever seen. It was ridiculous and to think I was initially only concerned with being the palest on the beach...
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| milky bar kid legs |
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| locals that have not had plastic surgery or tattoos... |
Returning from the beach, a few of us went for a walk along the lakeside and up into the hills, it was beautiful albeit by the time we made it back to the riverside it had fallen dark and having brought no torches with us, our only option home was to wait for the local taxi boat to pick us up and take us home...that wasn't for another hour. Cue more stupid pass the time games including taking pics of our eyes.
Finally it was my time to leave Barra de Lagoa and head to Foz de Iguaçu which is where there are spectacular water falls which you can view from both Argentina and Brasil.
To get here involved flying to Sao Paolo and then onto Iguaçu. Both flights were exhausting as I was not feeling great having not slept the night before due to having a fever and waking up achy. Being the hypercondriac that I am I started to get paranoid about the mosquito bites Id gotten by the river the day before (mossies usually hate me but not here it would seem) Google told me I had all the symptoms of malaria, my room mates told me not to worry. Just to double check I went to the local hospital next to my new hostel in iguaçu. The consultant confirmed my fears and said he suspected I had dengue fever which is like malaria. I didn't register initially as I told him I had had my yellow fever jab back in the UK before id left, my consultant just laughed at me and said it didn't make any difference as there was no real vaccine for it!
He quickly carried out some blood tests and did an ultrasound of my belly as apparently the mosquito can leave liquid which forms around your internal organs (spleen) etc.. I was then asked to be kept in overnight for surveillance and to be hooked up to an intravenous drip with antibiotics and some other drug I forget the name of. There is nothing worse than being ill and on your own in a country where you don't speak the lingo (other than my consultant no one spoke Spanish) Thank goodness for my special peeps back home - you know who you are!! xxx
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| Intravenous in my arm... |
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| My bed for the night |
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| Obligatory bible and food menu in bed side table |
On a separate note since arriving in Iguaçu about five people have asked is my name Arabic?! I didn't have the vocab to say it was Hebrew...
sounds like such an adventure!! Glad you are ok now, you had us all worried for a minute xx jojo xx
ReplyDeleteGlad you're feeling better! Jonathan xx
ReplyDelete