Ubatuba IS Uba Chuva! We woke up to pouring rain! The forecast for Thursday was thundershowers all day long. It’s a good thing we saved the “indoor stuff” to see today.
Breakfast was a typical Brazilian breakfast of ham and cheese sandwich, cakes, pastries, and sweetbreads. Topped off with yogurt, fruit, coffee and of course fresh orange juice.
The Tamar Project was located about 300m from our Pousada. The Tamar Project Ubatuba site (The Projeto TAMAR (Portuguese for TAMAR Project, with TAMAR being an abbreviation of Tartarugas Marinhas, the sea turtles) is a rescue project for the endangered sea turtles caught by fishermen off the coast of Ubatuba. I really enjoyed the sea turtles in Cayman Islands so we HAD to see this project! I was REALLY hoping to see the babies again but because it was a rescue mission it just had the larger sea turtles as well as some endangered tortoises. However, for a small site it was very impressive!
Next stop…the Ubatuba Aquarium. Lots of fish, alligators and even penguins. The night before on the way to dinner we saw the alligators through the glass display at the aquarium and they were so still they looked fake…even inside at the aquarium we watched them for a long time. FINALLY one moved, WOW!!! I think I would get gobbled up by one of these animals because they are so perfect they don’t look real.
When we travel I like to research the culture and see what “the food” of that area is and if it doesn’t sound too terrible, give it a try. In Ubatuba and along the southeast coast, Azul Marinho is a popular dish, especially along the north shore. Azul Marinho is a kind of fish stew where bananas are cooked with the fish, usually grouper, along with onions, tomatoes, olive oil, lime juice and cilantro. The bananas are cooked with their peels on and then halfway through the cooking are peeled. This supposedly helps with the “coloring” process of the dish giving it the “blue” (azul in portuguese) color. We went to a restaurant along the water called Peixe com Banana and tried Azul Marinho. It was so good!!
After a late lunch we looked around some of the shops and because it was still raining we decided we would head for home. It’s not fun climbing mountains and winding roads with hairpin turns in the rain.
We really enjoyed visiting Ubatuba and if we were in Brazil longer we would definitely go back and enjoy this beautiful beach area but our time is limited and there is more to see…
Make sure you take a peak at our Day 1 post and hope you a GREAT weekend!
Adventure For Two 