It has been some 40 hours or so since I did not put on my walking boots anymore. The Easter weekend has caused a hickup in my Caminho already so soon along the way. I am already missing out on the daily activity of walking for hours on end but tomorrow I will be back at it again.

It’s something which more or less I had foreseen that could happen: Brazilians taking advantage of the Easter holiday and going some place nice resulting in hotels being fully booked. That more or less seems to be the situation right now. Most of the small towns will only hace one proper accomodation which does not provide for a lot of alternatives when it happens to be fully reserved or, like two days ago, when the owner decides to close the hotel because there are just not enough guests during the year. Upon arrival here in Sao Sebastiao do Paraiso I quickly analyzed my options to continue walking the next day and tried to call ahead to book a hotel for the next night but without any luck. That’s why, yesterday morning I decided to already have a first resting day. I already had thought of stopping here for a day but that would have been after having done another stage, the one that I did by Taxi now.

I think my body isn’t all that unhappy with that decision. My legs are a bit stiff after the first 3 days of walking and my lobster like look on the extremities of my body also indicated that a day not being out in the open would not be such a bad idea. So a pause in Paraiso/Paradise it is. I filled yesterday with drinking some coffee, there are surprisingly few coffee places around here, and trying to find some plastic cover to prevent me and my stuff from getting drenched again further on along the road.

After having bought a big piece of plastic and while enjoying a coffee coffee with a Pāo de Queijo (cheese bread) my optimizing mind thought that it would have been nice to have a tarp which you can set up quickly to have some shelter during a rain shower. “I might buy that some day but no use looking into that now” I thought, only to be followed moments later by the idea to make one myself using the plastic I just bought. And so i did some more shopping and got some rope and even some plastic grommets to be able to fabricate some kind of a tarp myself.

And so another part of the day was spent cutting plastic and tying rope around the door knobs of my hotel room to come up with the in my mind so necessary rain protection. During the process of making my tarp at moments I felt like I was exaggerating and I would not be surprised if I will not really be needing my hotel-made tarp further along the way and that I will just have dragged some excess weight along. Time will tell. The result all in all was satisfying enough but I don’t know if it will withstand a lot of real world usage.

Looking for accommodation occupied some more of my day resulting in adding an extra day to my stay in Paradise since I was not able to get anything untill Monday. My walking shoes should be more or less dry now so I will be putting those on and do a short walk to a Christ statue near the entrance of the city. A nice Easter activity I guess.