As I write this blog, I am here in Florianopolis, Brazil with a couple too many caiparinha’s (see AA’s earlier post from Oct.29 about these drinks) under my belt. I have downloaded Shakira’s first album (all in Spanish) to my ipod and then copied all the lyrics into a word document. I am jamming to Shakira, trying to sing along in Spanish, and for some reason AA – who is reading his book next to me – is not to amused with my singing. Hum…. I feel like my Spanish is really coming along nicely.
Brazil has been an adventure. From the frantic cab ride to make the flight here and every step along the way, it has been an experience. We have had numerous fun times here. For example, hiking to “Christ the Redeemer” in Rio de Janeiro was awesome. It was definitely a good hike – I sweated like crazy and both the guys sweated through at least one shirt. For those of you who don’t know, “sweating through a shirt” means that you sweat so much that taking off your shirt and ringing it dry only works a couple times. Then you break down and put on your new shirt, and repeat. Disgusting! The view at the top was totally worth it though.
We had two really nice days in Rio (one on the hike and the other on Ipanema beach) before the rain began. Our hostel – the Mango Tree hostel - was a great location. We had less than a 5 min. walk to Ipanema beach and then another 15 min walk to Copacobana beach. Both of these beaches have some type of black and white stones forming a walk path above the beach, which apparently is very famous. We now notice the design of this pathway on all the postcards, shirts, and sarongs that we see.
Our first day there (the one in the sun) was great. We rented some chairs and an umbrella and enjoyed the sun and beach. AA made friends very quickly with this guy that came up to us on the beach. He befriended AA (trying to understand as much Portuguese as possible) and quickly shook hands with AA. Immediately after that he grabbed a beer out of his cooler, opened it, and put it in AA’s hands. He continued his “friend” role-play while also asking for $3 Reis for the beer that was now opened and in AA’s hand. AA was not happy with his role-play and tried to hand the beer back to him, but he refused. So AA went to set the beer in the sand, not wanting to pay for it, or drink it. Luckily, just in time, the guy that rented us our chairs and umbrella showed up, and he ended up with a free beer. Funny how things work out. The beach was packed that day, full of amazing looking women in butt-bearing swimsuits as well as “sculpture” looking men in speedos. It was a fun day!
After spending the last three days of Rio stuck in the hostel due to the rain, we decided to bounce to Ilha Grande – a secluded island with no roads or cars. Rio was tough on our budget and we were looking forward to a more peaceful location. We ended up taking a van to some beach where there was a boat/ferry waiting to take us and 4 others to the island. The 4 others included 2 guys from Iran (in their 40’s) and 2 girls from Europe (about 20ish). As the trip went on we concluded that the 2 guys and the 2 girls must know each other because of the way they interacted, sharing snacks, chapstick, gum, etc. on the boat ride. This was later confirmed over drinks on the island we shared with the guys from Iran. The boat pulled up to a dock on the island, and not much more was there. Luckily there was a nice young lady there to greet us that did speak English. We asked her how to get to our hostel that we had reservations at, and she said just cross the bridge, walk on the beach 400m, walk through the shallow river of water, and then take a left on the only street and it will be on your left.
At this point on our travels we are traveling heavy. I have my suitcase (which rolls really well on pavement, not on the BEACH!), AA’s big backpack, a little backpack with most of our valuables, and a big bag with all of our camping gear – tent, sleeping pads & bags, cooking equipment, etc. So usually how it works is I carry the little backpack on my back, and pull my rolling suitcase (which is VERY heavy), while AA has on his big, heavy bag and is carrying the camping stuff in his arms. Well, the 2 guys from Iran quickly noticed that we were going to have problems carrying all of our gear on our journey to the hostel via the beach as there is no road or sidewalk. They were very nice and one of them ended up carrying the camping gear bag for us and the other switched off with AA carrying my heavy “rolling” suitcase that doesn’t roll when walking across the beach. I’m pretty sure what really ended up happening was I had the little bag, and the Iran guy would hold my big bag for less than 1 minute and then get tired and hand it back to AA who would walk about 5 min. with both big bags and then the cycle would repeat. Regardless, we finally found our hostel and made ourselves home in our bug infested, no a/c, musty, 4-person dorm shared with two girls from England. It was their final night on the island, so they were excited to make the most of it. We didn’t see much else of them, only heard them when they returned to the room in a drunken state around 2am and then woke up at 6am to pack and catch their early ferry.
We had a nice seafood jumbo mix cooked by the lady running the hostel the next night. It filled our bellies well after spending the day taking a boat to a private beach and laying out in the rain. The rain continued for the rest of the time we were on the island. Therefore we played lots of card games (AA still has yet to beat me in nerts!) and also killed plenty of time eating at several different places. We decided that the two nights we had originally reserved would be plenty due to the unsatisfactory weather. Our next destination – Paraty.
We took the big ferry, in the pouring down rain, to Angra, the main connection point from Ilha Grande. In the pouring, tropical rain we walked/ran with all our stuff to try to find the bus to the bus station. Luckily it was the first bus we found, so soaking wet we got on and rode to the terminal. We caught the first bus to Paraty – only about 1.5 hr by bus. We got there and the rain continued. We saw some English-looking travelers at the bus station that were leaving, so we asked them what there is to do here, where to stay, etc. They recommended a hostel and so we walked there, again in the pouring rain. We arrived to what they described as a “really awesome” hostel and we both agreed there’s no way we would be staying in that dump, so we just started walking, again in the rain to try to find a place to stay and dry out. After walking a few minutes, we were approached by this guy on his bike. He suggested we try his hostel right down the street, so we did. We ended up liking it – our own private room with a TV! Unfortunately that’s all the room had to offer. The TV had at least 2 channels – all in Portuguese, and we had the pleasure of eating our breakfast (bread) on our bed because there was no other place for us to eat. That’s pretty much all I remember about our room in Paraty.
The town was cute, historic, lots of beaches, boats, etc. The problem was the non-reliquent rain. We decided to heck with it and went on a boat tour to the surrounding islands regardless of the rain. It was cool and we really enjoyed the guy on the lower deck playing live reggae music for us the entire afternoon. We celebrated that night by going to the local buffet – the one of two choices of restaurants we had in this small town. It was a pay by the kilo buffet – so you load your plate, they weigh it, and you pay based on the weight of your plate. We both loaded up our plates high and dug into our awesome dinners. Unfortunately about an hour later (after we also enjoyed the pay by the kilo ice-cream joint) AA’s stomach started to let him know its displeasure. Food poisoning!
We had seen about as much as the town had to offer, so the next morning we were planning to leave – go to Curitiba, the next “big” town south of where we were. However, I woke up that morning, looked at the guidebook, and immediately started cheering to AA: “Ub-A-Tub-A, Ubatuba, Ubatuba”. This beach town looked awesome and it was only about 1 hour away – much better than the 8 hour trip to Curitiba would have been. AA had been sick the night before, but since then was feeling a little better. However, he woke up feeling very weak. We decided to make a dash for Ubatuba, despite his condition. We went to the bus station and bought our tickets. We ended up on a bus that was basically a school bus. It stopped every km or so to let another kid off the bus. So the 1 hour bus turned into 2 hours. Then the bus pulled over and told everybody to get off. Huh? Where are we? What do we do? Well we ended up waiting (AA getting worse by the second, feeling like he will be sick every second along the way) at a “bus stop” in the middle of no-where until another bus came and picked us up. We spent another hour on that bus until we finally arrived at the Ubatuba bus station.
Now what? No touristy-looking people around to get recommendations. Nobody around that could understand Spanish or speak in English. AA is about to fall-over sick at this point, he is not feeling well. I tell him to wait here for a minute while I go walk around and try to find a hostel. Well we end up at a HOTEL (not hostel, but hotel – with our own room, TV with English channels, A/C, good breakfast, wifi, the whole sha-bang, we splurged!) and it was heaven for us! AA did not leave the bed for 2 days. He was very sick and it was all I could do to convince him to eat some Fruit Loops and eventually a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Since it was raining I pretty much spent those two days watching TV and “surfing” on the Internet. We didn’t see much of the beaches that Ubatuba had to offer. Once AA regained his strength we set out for our next destination- Curitiba.
This city is not on the beach, at this point we had had enough of beach towns with non-stop rain so we couldn’t enjoy them fully. What do ya know – as soon as we got to Curitiba the clouds parted and the blue skies rolled in. We really enjoyed being “tourists” in Curitiba and site-seeing and meeting up with my friend’s aunt who lives there.
After several days in Curitiba we decided to leave for a place we’ve been dreaming of since we were in Colorado – Florianopolis. From what we’d heard it’s basically a beach HEAVEN. Well getting to Florianopolis was not so grand. Our bus stopped like every 20 minutes and so what should have been a 4 hour trip ended up being 6 hours and we got in after dark, never a good thing if you don’t know where you are going. I had spent several days prior trying to reserve a good hostel for us, but I couldn’t find anything reasonable. Everything was SOOOOOO expensive, I couldn’t bring myself to push the “reserve” button. I figured we’d get there and figure it out.
Well now it was dark, late, and I was wishing I had just hit that “reserve” button. We were getting frustrated because we didn’t know what to do – getting in a cab is guaranteed to cost you an arm and leg but we couldn’t figure out the local buses and didn’t know where to go regardless. That’s when Alejandro, who I think was an angel, came to us. He spoke Spanish, but the kind of Spanish that was as easy for us to understand as English. He was nice, sweet, helpful, and had so many (cheap) options for us. We ended up at a hotel he recommended in “centro” – downtown for one night, and then we planned to meet up with him the following day. He said he’d drive us to this great beach where he had the perfect “Pausado” (condo) for us right near the beach for a great price!
Well the next morning with AA’s buck knife in his pocket and our money belts around our waists (the first time we’ve actually worn our money belts since our first day in Buenos Aires back in September) we were ready to take the risk and ride with Alejandro, hoping the amazing beach images he’d implanted in our minds would prove to be true. We piled in his tiny car with another couple and he drove us to the beach in Barro da Lagoa. We arrived at an apartment complex 50 meters from the beach and he showed us our new home. It’s amazing, a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen area. A two minute walk to the beach as well as a two minute walk to “town” (I guess it’s considered a “town” as long as there is a shop selling food and a store selling souveniers). We have been here ever since. We’ve enjoyed some great sunny weather on the beach, swimming, getting tan, watching the good-looking people, laughing at the tourists trying to learn how to surf, and ahhing at the kite-surfers. We’ve found a great spot for us and we are loving it.
We did have one big adventure trying to get to a more popular and famous beach only 30-minutes away. It ended up being a 3-hour bus trip on 3 different buses, which left us only 1 hour at the beach in order to catch the bus back. But other than that it’s been great here. We’re getting fat eating donut-like pastries for breakfast, burgers topped with ham, peas, tomatoes, eggs, corn, and cheese for lunch, and of course this awesome pizza we’ve discovered on most nights for dinner, and rinsing it all down with more than a couple caiparinha’s. For now I guess we’ve found paradise….
