Catching Up on our Rays and Rest in Punta del Diablo

From Montevideo, we made our way up to the northeast coast of Uruguay...a town called Punta del Diablo. It was EXACTLY what the doctor ordered...dirt roads, small cottages, great rock walking, and sprawling beaches. Believe it or not, the weather cooperated with us as well.

We found a bugalow just up the hill from the beach in a great little complex. We had a small kitchen where we cooked our own meals. This was great for two reasons...number one, we were able to get back within our budget. Number two, we knew the food would be cooked sanitarily so we could avoid another bout of food poisening.

We stayed for four nights and were blessed with great weather the first three days. We worked on our tans, explored the beaches, and finished our books.

On our second night, the owners (Mario and Leah) prepared a parilla (BBQ in Uruguay and Argentina) for some of their friends that were vacationing from Argentina and Montevideo. After we finished our dinner, we cruised over to chat and ended up being fed drinks and BBQ until about 2am. Not only was it a great time...it was a perfect opportunity to get our spanish back on track.

After lots of talk about the traditional drink, Yerba Mate, everyone decided we absolutely needed to give it a shot. So the next morning they welcomed us into the social world of mate and explained all of the ettiquite and traditions involved. It was great, instead of making you feel like a "poser" for drinking the traditionally Uruguayan and Argentine drink, they love the fact that you want to try out part of their culture. We both agree that Uruguayans are, by far, the most genuinely friendly people we've met along the way.

Even the owner's dog, Cookie, gave us a tour of the beach and, on our last day, saw us safely off on our bus to La Poloma.

Onto Uruguay

After taking a serious beating in Brazil...both our wallets and our bodies...we decided it was time to commence exploration of Uruguay. So far, seems mellow and we're back within our budget. Not to mention, it's really nice to be able to communicate a bit more extensively again.

S-S-S-Salvador aka Bahía

Our hotel was just across the street from Bahía's oldest fort, Forte de Santo Antônio de Barra. By the way, a very nice place to watch the sunset.

Just on the other side of the bay lies a cool-lookin' lighthouse. If you look closely, there's a cable line from the end of the point into the water. Both of us agreed this would make for a killer zip line!

The cultural center of Salvador is known as Pelourino (portuguese for whipping post). This area used to be a major center for trade in the north of Brazil...slave trade not excluded, hence the name. All that aside, it's an area of capoeira (a Brazilian form of martial arts), cobble stone streets, and beautiful, colorful colonial buildings.

The Real Amazon River

After parting ways with Kirk, we hopped a plane up to Manaus. According to people that we had met along the way, Manaus and its surrounding area were "not to be a missed". We jumped onto a bus to get from the airport into the center of town. As we came into the city Brandon and I both found ourselves wondering if we were in the right Manaus. Our first impression of Manaus was a dingy, ill-kept port city. We were hoping that we just hadn't hit the nice part. After we found a hotel and wandered a bit we came to the conclusion that the advice we were given was WAY OFF.

We shook off this let down and reminded ourselves that we had come to Manaus in order to hop on a boat and ride the length of the Amazon River. Four days from Manaus to Belem...the end of the Amazon. We headed down the the dock to see what our options were. Once again, not exactly what we expected.

Yes, we DID know that river travel was the primary mode of transportation in this region. Yes, we DID expect to buy a hammock space as our passage. No, we didn't know that we couldn't catch a boat to Belem until Wednesday...we would have to spend 3 days in the "lovely" city of Manaus. No, we weren't exactly prepared for the amount of people they smash onto these boats.

After speaking with a couple touts and captains we took an evening to evaluate our options. Long story short, we decided to catch a boat to Santarém (two days travel from Manaus) on what we determined to be one of the more seaworthy passenger vessels. Another contributing factor was that the boat to Santarém left Manaus the very next day. We thought we'd give river travel a two day trial run and decide how we would get ourselves out of the jungle from there...boat or plane.

When we bought our tickets at about 9am the 110 foot boat was relatively empty. We figured we should have plenty of room for our hammocks. When we returned two hours later ready to board, we witnessed a much different scene...the boat was PACKED! Full capacity...250 people. There weren't even two hammock hooks together. Keep in mind that the hooks are only about a foot apart. After we sized up our surrounding and settled in we thought that maybe two days was the better course of action.

Once under way, we were pleasantly surprised at the level of comfort. Even while constantly bumping into our neighbors, the oversized hammocks provided an illusion of sufficient personal space. The weather also held up pretty well. There were only a couple hard rain showers over the two days so we were able to stay dry.

We got plenty of rest and reading done in the two days to Santarém. Given that everybody's baggage is on deck, our maine concern was robbery, but we were able to walk away with all of our belongings. By the time we arrived to port we were thinking that another two days on a boat to Belem would actually be a nice way to relax.

From Santarém we decided to head to a small town called Altar do Ciao, but were postponed when I came down with the stomach flu. Not surprised considering the volume of people on the boat and that there was only one set of dishes at mealtime that was rinsed and wiped in between groups of twenty. Two days later I was able to make the short 1 hour bus trip, but was still feeling fragile.

Altar do Ciao ended up being a perfect place to recuperate. It's an Amazon tributary just west of Santarém. The coolest part of the town is a sandbar that separates a lake from the river. During the wet season the sandbar with its white sand beaches disappear. Luckily, there was still plenty of sand above the river level when we arrived.

For Valentine's day we found an abandoned hut on the sandbar and hung up our hammocks. Thank goodness we had some shade because the sun was INTENSE. We enjoyed the day reading and by the evening I was feeling much better.

On the way back to our hotel we stopped to catch a bite to eat...the first since I had come down with the flu. Nothing special, but it did the trick and it felt good to finally have food in my stomach.

Both Brandon and I woke up in the middle of the night with a solid case of food poisening...what luck? Given the state of our health we voted down two more days on a boat and hopped on a plane to Salvador on the north coast.

Sugar Loaf

Before saying goodbye to Kirk, we decided we should do one last touristy thing. End result, we joined the crowds and took a cable car up to the Pao de Açúcar (Sugar Loaf in english). We were fortunate enough to get a semi-decent weather hence intermittent views of Rio de Janeiro. There were even points when the clouds ducked down enough to see the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer peeking out from the top of his mountain.

Recovery on Ilha Grande

After thouroughly enjoying Carnaval in Rio we had to get out of there. Unlike other, more traditional, Catholic locations, Carnaval in Rio doesn't end on Ash Wednesday. It keeps going through the following weekend!

We needed a change of pace in order to get ourselves back to 100%. On Thurday, we caught a bus/ferry combination from Rio and landed on Ilha Grande. First impressions were good! The area around the pier reminded us of a smaller, tropical version of Avalon, Catalina.

Ilha Grande is just one of many islands in the bay about 3 hours south of Rio de Janeiro, but it supposedly houses some of Brazil's most beautiful beaches. There is an extensive network or hiking trails to get to the majority of beaches, but there are quite a few that are only accessable by boat.

Friday, was Brandon's 28th birthday and the sun, FINALLY, decided to make an appearance. We celebrated by spending the day at a beach called Lopes Mendes...some say that this is THE most beautiful beach in Brazil. To get there, we took a 45 minute boat ride and then hiked another half hour on rain soaked trails. It was quite a bit slippery in parts. Only armed with Havaianas and our agility, we traversed some serious mud holes. There was sufficient evidence that not everybody makes it our with both of their flip flops, but those who conquered the mud hole were rewarded with a fine white sand beach.

We spent the day working on our tans and checking out the scene. When the clouds rolled in we decided to call it a day. We headed back, cleaned ourselves up, and had a birthday feast of some delicious gourmet pizza.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRANDON!

Carnaval in Rio

Whoa...where do I begin?

I guess the best point would be when Kirk finally met up with us. After a flight delay in Dallas due to a bird in the engine of the plane that was supposed to take off in front of his, Kirk missed his connecting flight from Miami to Rio. Luckily, the attendant at the airpot booted somebody off of the last flight from Miami to Rio for that day. The story ended happily when he landed in Rio just a couple hours behind schedule. Only bummer was that the weather took a slight digger and we transitioned from sun to off-and-on showers.

From there, we didn't waste much time finding the party. Initially, we were just going out to have some lunch, couple drinks, and a walk-around. Before we knew it, we were dead center in the middle of a "banda" by the beach. A "banda" is, basically, a block party revolving around a float filled with musicians and a parade of people following the music. Caranaval here, seems like a great excuse for everybody to dress up...young, old, and transvestite. It's quite a sight.

We followed the "banda" until it dispersed close to sunset. We walked over to a point at the end of Ipanema and Leblon beaches and caught the sunset while enjoying a couple caipiroskas. Kirk took a little adventure down a storm drain while looking for a suitable "bathroom". He made it back up okay using all fours...we made sure he showered.

That night we headed back out in Ipanema to join the homosexual masses. We neglected to note in our research that Ipanema is the gay mecca during Carnaval. We mingle with some friendly characters, but we mostly did a lot of looking. The scene was pretty crazy. These boys and girls were letting loose in a serious way. All of us were hit on by at least one member of the same sex that evening...flattering, but no thanks.

We had high hopes that the sun would peek out the next day, but no such luck. After nursing our fragileness we popped over to Copacabana beach to check out the scene...hopefully, a little more hetero. It was actually mellow compared to the party we stumbled upon the previous day. Thank goodness because little did we know what lay ahead for us that night.

When someone thinks of Carnaval in Rio, I'm pretty sure the first thing that comes to mind is half-naked women dressed in extravegant, glittering costumes leading a huge procession of drummers and dressed-up samba dancers down the street. This part of Carnaval is called Sambòdromo. It's a stadium with a stretch of road 1 km long soley dedicated to Carnaval and it's famous samba parades. Here's a quick tutorial on how it works...

There are multiple Samba Schools in and around Rio de Janeiro. These schools spend the entire year preparing their processions...themes, costumes, bands, etc. Believe me, no expense is spared. Carnaval is the "big dance"...all of the Samba Schools compete for the title of the best in the city. Sambódromo is where all of this takes place. The first Samba School begins at about 8pm and the processions keep going until the sun comes up. It's curiously similar to any sporting event. There are fans and supporters...you can even buy t-shirts to show which school you're rooting for. There are vendors set up all around the stadium selling beer and food. The party extends all-the-way around the stadium much like a tailgate party.

We decided against purchasing tickets to enter the stadium because they were EXPENSIVE! Taking the cheap way out, we wandered over to the staging area where the multitudes of dancers lined up for the parade. IT WAS SO COOL! Everyone was so pumped to share their experience with us. They jumped at the opportunity to be in photos and a lot of them even let us try on their headpieces...which were actually pretty figgin heavy. I don't know how they Samba for a kilometer with these things on.

We stayed in the staging area until the very last school left for their turn in the Sambódromo...it was about 6 in the morning. From there we wandered back over to the food stalls and the party was still in full-effect.

We, finally, decided to call it a night when dawn was on the horizon. We never would've noticed how late it was had it not started to get brighter. There were gobs of people still dancing in the streets when we headed to the bus stop to catch a ride back to Ipanema.

So how do you follow a night like that? We weren't exactly sure either, but the following night was the Tuesday before lent...there had to be something great going on.

After a couple beers and a little research in Ipanema, we found ourselves at a HUGE party at the base of the Lapa Arches. How great...sightseeing and celebrating at the same time. There was a free concert set up and thousands of people dancing and wandering the streets. We enjoyed the world's strongest caiprioskas as well as our new favorite Brazilian hot dogs filled with EVERYTHING...they even put a quail egg on top!

After a few hours of taking in the scene at Lapa we decided to make our way back to Ipanema. We took the most GNARLY bus ride to date. The doors opened up and we were presented with a bus full of people still enjoying the party. The driver was a maniac, but luckily everyone in the bus was too busy socializing to notice. Note: the bus ride from Ipanema to Lapa took about a half hour. On the way back, it only took 9 minutes!

We had a nightcap at a party on the beach in Ipanema and then called it. Our livers had had enough. I can see now why Carnaval in Brazil is a once-in-a-lifetime experience...it would be physically impossible to do it twice.

Greetings from Ipanema!!

We have finally arrived to Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Waiting for our friend, Kirk, to come and join us for Carnival. Working on our tans...it has been over two months since we have seen an ocean. So far, seems like we are going to love Brazil.

We're Back in the Tropics!

After checking out Iguazu Falls we crossed into Brazil...24 hours on two buses. Stoked to be here! While Portuguese is presenting a new challenge, the weather is warm and the drinks are cold!