Good times: 40's, turtles, and a giant sting ray

Holy crap, Sadie and I found the best beach yet. It's a tiny little beach off the beaten path, about 20min walk from the hotel and wowzers it was a gold mine.

We got up late this morning and decide that we would try out the local beaches today. We followed the advice of the hotel and walked to one of the beaches. It was semi-secluded(this is a bit of an exaggeration) it was small, pretty dirty, and getting crowded. We decided to try the next one down, and holy chit, it was the most crowded beach I have ever been on. We returned to the hotel and asked the staff for their best recommendation. The told us about the "holy Grail" of beaches.

After a 20min walk through semi-sketchy neighborhoods we stumble on a small rocky beach with 5 other people on it. It's about a 1/2 mile off the open ocean and is about a 1/4 mile wide with rocks on all sides. (pics to follow). The beach is maintained and supported by the one guy and his family that live behind it. 40's for $6. Glorious!!!!!!

Nature awesomeness:
So on this little beach, there are at least 6 sea turtles that pop up from time to time. That's pretty cool, and we sit drinking and enjoying the surf. Then Sadie yells at me while I'm climbing some rocks, "holy shit ry look.". Of course I miss the huge 5ft wide stingray jumping out of the water. After several Bigfoot jokes, I finally see it myself. It was freaking amazing.

Long story short we are headed back tomorrow to enjoy our last full day in Buzios.

(this post was composed while under the influence of cheap local beer)



The view of "our beach".  We instantly fell in love with this place and spent a full two days here.



The 40 coolers were pretty awesome as well.



A panoramic of  the beach.



There was more....

There were about 5 more things I had written into my last post but somehow they got deleted. I'm aggravated with it now so I will update that later when we get home and I'm on a really computer with a key board that works....for now I'm heading to the beach!!

Miss you all....we will be home soon!!

Wednesday.....Buzios

Wednesday the weather was beautiful again, after a few cloudy, rainy days, which worked out perfect for us since we had scheduled another boat trip. The boat/city tour included a stop at two beaches and an island, along with lunch, Caprihans, and a tour of a small city called Cabo Frio. The trip was fun and very very beautiful but it's kind of useless with out pictures so I'll keep it short and sweet for today until I can upload some pics. The tour was nice and had a few interesting moments. At our second stop the had snowboards available to rent for roughly $3 for an hour. You then climbed a sand dune and snow (or really sand boarded) down the hill. It was fun and I was surprisingly better than Ryan at it....hahaha. On our way back to the big boat (you can be ferried by a small dingy) when the driver went to pull start the motor he broke the handle off. Hahaha. We drifted for about 5 mins before we could get another boat to come pull us into our big boat. It was pretty funny to hear the guide and driver yelling at each other. We don't understand 99% of what happens here but we understood that part.


A quick pic of our boat for the day.





The Monkey Face...can you see it?  Hint: It's a side view of the monkeys face.  The brow forms the dark triangle shadow towards the top left of the picture.





Ryan before he tried sand-boarding,  I wish I had some great action shots of him actually boarding but sadly, they all came out blurry.


Since our dingy was now broken, we had to skip the island part of our tour and went straight to lunch. Essentially the equivalent of Old Country Buffet. P.S. Don't pick out sushi at OCB. .....you will be very very disappointed. Then, they made you pay for whatever you didn't eat so I ended up wrapping my sushi pieces in a napkin and tossing them in the bathroom. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I should have know better!!


A live Blowfish.  He was really really cool.  One of our guides found him to show everyone.



Cabo Frio was very uninteresting!! It was a huge shopping area which might sound fun but here is a basic rundown of the stores: bikini, bikini, sandals, crappy t-shirt, bikini, bikini, bikini. It was seriously 100's of stores selling bikinis and more bikinis. Even I was bored after about 10 minutes so ryan and I shared a nice little beer outside while the rest of the group shopped and bought....you guessed it.....bikinis!

I'll post pics later and a movie or two of the snowboarding. Oh....and we found a blow fish too....that was cool....pics later.

In the mean time, here are some random cultural things we've found interesting along the way:
1. there are no pepper shakers. A salt shaker just doesn't look right on the table without it's ore half. It's like peas without the pod, ice-cream without chocolate sauce, or peanut butter without jelly.....you've got to have the pepper too.

2. We haven't seen one cemetery while we are here. We've been in Rio which is a huge city and through plenty of small cities in our travels but we've yet to see a cemetery. I wonder if they are above or below ground....maybe cremated???

3. Driving here is crazy. There are speed bumps everywhere, even on the highway. Cars literally double pass over double yellows. On our way back to Rio from Paraty, we were in a bus and passed a slow moving truck over double yellow, we were simultaneously passed by a car, passing us both.

4. Toilet paper in most public places isn't on a roll like we are used to. It's like little tissue paper hung in dispensers on the wall.

5. Bedays everywhere. Everyplace we've been they've had them. Maybe as Americans we are missing out on something???

In buzios.....sorry...it's Sadie again

Hello all....you're stuck with me again:o). I tried to convince Ry to post again today for you all but no dice. We've missed a few days of blogging but you haven't really missed much at all. We spent all day yesterday traveling back from Paraty to Rio and about half of the day today traveling from Rio to Buzios. Yesterday the weather was crap...rainy and cold but it was a great day to travel. The bus ride from Paraty to Rio is about 4 hours not including stops for other passengers, traffic etc. On the bus ride we met an amazing family from Australia. They were 4 kids in their late teens/20's and their parents. One of the daughter was going to study in Argentina for 6 months and the parents were traveling to Patagonia next....awesome....so jealous!

When we arrived in Rio it was still rainy and crappy but our hotel was seriously awesome. We stayed in a hotel called Porto Bay. Check it out online....Ry and I felt like we were high rollers staying there. It was so nice in fact that we considered ordering room service a luxury that neither of us has ever used in our whole lives. We ventured out into the city tip find a grocery store for some cheese and crackers. We are still trying to master the correct time to eat dinner and are still failing miserably but we've found that a snack in the evening (around normal dinner time) helps a little. On our way we found a cool little open pit BBQ place. It had a big charcoal burning fire in the middle with whole chickens, steak, shrimp etc roasting on a skewers over the fire. We vowed to come back for dinner but I had a hard time convincing Ryan to leave the movie we were watching at the hotel to come eat. I think that's the first time ever that I've had to convince him to go out...it's usually the other way around.


Our great room in Rio.  This hotel was very very nice. 



The view from our room.  We stayed on the 19th floor.



In any case, the BBQ place was really cool. We met two couples that were traveling the world together. The first was an Aussie couple who were on their 12 week vacation for the year. I'm so serious, 12 weeks each year, that's their allotted vacation time. Ry and I will be moving there in short order. Joke....well kinda. *smile*. The second coulee was from Oregon and was about to be married in January. They both quit their jobs in 2008 and had been traveling since then. Both very cool couples and they bought our drinks for the night so that was cool too.

Tuesday morning we woke up and checked out our hotel. The bus picked us up at 8:30 for Buzios. We rode with a huge group of German people which was pretty neat for me. I don't speak it well anymore but I can understand in context so it was fun to eavesdrop their conversations to try and figure out what they were saying. The weather was pretty crappy out again. Cold and cloudy but no rain so it was a good day to make the 3.5 or so hour drive here to Buzios.

In Buzios we are staying at a beautiful place called Villa D'este. Please please look it up online. Ryan and I spent the afternoon in the blue pool overlooking the ocean (see pics on the website) and drinking Caprihans (the local Brazilian drink.....don't worry, we know how to make it to share with you all) and getting our bearings here in the city.


Our little bungalow in Buzios.  It was great, we had this living room area and our bedroom area. 



The view from our bedroom window.  Everything was open air at this hotel.  It was so beautiful



Still inside our hotel Vila de' este looking back towards our little house.



The "warm tub" and the view.  It would be misleading to call it a hot tub but it was the perfect temperature for Brazil.





The second pool area. 



Ok enough for now....we are off to our next adventure.

Jeep tour (actually Land Rover Defender) by Ryan

So as Sadie mentioned this morning, our rain forest hike was canceled due to inclement weather. As a consolation prize we went on a "jeep tour" I was super pumped because in my head I assumed we would be doing some sweet off roading and love mud. While the Land Rover was super cool and I really want one, to say we were off roading would be a stretch. It was more like a very potholey dirt road, and people were driving the same roads in a VW Golf. The high points of the trip had very little to do with driving.



Here is a picture of our awesome wheels for the Jeep Tour



Stop 1
First we stopped at a "Exhibition Garden" the quotes are because this was literally on the the side of the highway and for all intents and purposes was just your average greenhouse with tropical plants.  figured it was going to be a long day.


There wasn't much to do at the first stop...so I took a bunch of pretty pictures



Ryan has conquered the bench



Stop 2
This was significantly more awesome. We hiked into the rain forest for about 5 minutes and came to a gorgeous waterfall with several very cool pools you could swim in. Myself and several others elected to swim, Sadie declined, afraid she would freeze to death. At the encouragement of our guide I dove off some giant rock into the small pool below. No death or head trauma ensued. (once Sadie posts some pics, this will be far more interesting)



Testing the waters, and that rock





Ryan actually sat down in that waterfall.  It was freezing so I opted for the standing picture :O)

 Stop 3
While this one was much like stop 2, this time there was a rope to swing off of and jump in. WEEEEEE!!!! I jump, Sadie takes pics. Rinse repeat.


TRAZAN....



In this picture Ryan has already let go of the rope...he just looks like he's frantically trying to grab it again.


Stop 4
They make a drink here called Cachaça its a hard alcohol flavored with various fruits. This stop involved visiting a distillery of the stuff from the 1700s. It was pretty cool, but more than a few of the "antiques" were from the 1950s and 60s with lots of rust. This included a rusty car jack that was probably 20 years old at the most an a singer sewing machine that couldn't be more than 30 years old. Whatever it was cool we got some free booze and bought a couple bottles to bring home.

Stop 5
LUNCH!!!!!! This was a super cool open aired restaurant nestled in the rain forest next to a river and waterfall. They served some great Italian food  and the peasants rejoiced. The other fun part is that this stop involved the only mild off-roading all day, as we forded a stream to get there. Turns out, to leave you just cross a long wobbly foot bridge over the rive to the paved road.



These are called "7 Color Birds".  I'm sure the name is prettier in Portuguese, but that's the name we got :O)




Ryan and every other boy on the tour started trying to shake the bridge as soon as thier girlfriend/wife got on it.

 Stop 6
Working distillery. Similar to stop 4, but we got to see how this guy grinds up sugar cane with a water driven press and distills it right there. He then does whatever else those guys do to put the flavor in then ages it in a wooden barrel. Again we drank and bought more booze. You have to see the pics to really understand this, but all this literally takes place in a shed, on a crappy looking farm, with chickens and not so healthy looking dogs.



See, we told you it looked interesting, thats the brewery.




Sugar Cane



Stop 7
The last stop. Then I will stop boring you with mindless dribble. "Surfing the Rock" our guide entitles this last stop. Even if he spoke English fluently and I didn't have to say "what?" fifteen times I wouldn't know what he was talking about. So we wander into the forest again and come to a huge smooth rock with water running thinly over the top and a very small rock lined pool at the bottom. The guide then convinces me and the other young dumb skinny guy in our group to follow him to the top. Since I can´t understand a word he´s saying, i let the other kid go first. The guides send him Slip ´n Slide style down the rock and into the pool. The water and algae (I assume) makes the rock really slippery . I went a few times on my ass and once on my stomach. ( the smooth rock is not that smooth, and my genitals my not recover) Finally the guide goes down. Picture a guy barefoot water skiing down the rock. He goes flying down looking like a bad ass and almost smashes into a huge rock at the bottom. The pool at the bottom is probably 5 ft wide and lined with big rocks, at least its deep. As we were leaving we see a sign for a local ``rock surfing contest.`` God only knows how many concussions will result.



Sadie: "How did that feel honey?"
Ryan: "It felt like a cheese-grater to my balls"




This is what they were SUPPOSED to look like. 





Splash!



A poster advertising the "surf the rock" competition.  Sounds like a "quick concussion" competition to me!

 Bottom line: Fun times all around, wait for pics


That's all for today folks!


PS Weird things about Brazil:
As I will most likely not be posting too often let me share a few weird cultural differences.

-PDA (public displays of affection) Holy crap people make out with each other all over the place; crowded boats, restaurants, tables with only 2 other people at them. Gross.

-Tiny bathing suits: Sure some people can pull off a tiny string bikini, but lets be honest unless you are a super model or still in high school you probably don't have the ass for it. And don't even get me started on the guys. Speedos and boy shorts galore. I stick out like a sore thumb because my suit leaves something to the imagination

-Moth Balls in the Urinal: WTF, nothing goes withe smell of urine quite like mothball. I have to hold my breath when i pee.


That is all for now, please ignore any spelling and grammatical errors as I have been drinking while typing this. OUT