Blessed and Beautiful (and us)

Looking bad-ass in the Baby RS

Taking the buggies through town

This is how the Lonely Planet travel guide describes Buzios: “…a summer playground for the blessed and the beautiful…where caramel-hued hard-bodies beach-hop via water taxis from one sugary stretch of sand to another…”.  We all got a good giggle out of this, until the smiles were wiped off our faces and replaced by our jaws dropping to the sugary sand.  Before today, we thought we had seen our share of tanned skin.  We thought we knew what Brazilian beach culture was all about. 

To be completely honest, it happened three days ago, with the official beginning of Brazil high season on December 27^th.  Overnight, the blessed and beautiful caramel-hued hard-bodies descended on Buzios by the thousands.  The beach went from calm and relaxing to a 24-hour bass-pumping club party, where clothing is optional… scratch that… clothing is prohibited. In fact, if you put all the clothing of all the people in Buzios in one pile, it probably wouldn’t even be a full load of laundry.  On the other hand, if you put all the gold chains with giant crosses in a pile, it just might eclipse Mount Kilimanjaro.  No joke.  Throw on cell phones, flip flops and aviator sunglasses and it would rival Mount Everest.

And then there’s us.  My family is still here, and they are having a hard time blending in.  Maybe it is their vanilla-hued pasty winter soft-bodies.  Or by this point, their sunburnt cherry-hued soft-bodies.  Even my bronzed skin is several shades lighter than the lightest Brazilian.  But somehow, somewhere between all the man-speedos and dental-floss thongs, we are managing to have a rip-roaring fun, wholesome family vacation.  Surfing, swimming, lazing on the beach, tearing around town in crappy buggies, and shopping.  The perfect Christmas vacation!

Hanging out with Brigitte Bardot... she gets her own statue because she made Buzios famous

Don't we look cool?!!

Surfer Gully and his beach babe Elise

You know you're in a beach town when the art is made of sand....

And more art... sandals in the setting sun

The quintessential Brazilian.. speedo, chain, cell phone tucked in speedo, and white flops

Thong re-adjustment

Enjoying a day at the beach

Make note of the speedos and white board shorts, and chains with crosses

Some nice tushies and washboard stomachs :)


And a little peek at what you're missing here at the beach:

City of God

 

Merry Christmas from Brazil!!! The Christmas spirit is definitely a bit toned down here, but in an effort to mitigate homesickness I’ve managed to draw some parallels between our Christmas in Brazil and the typical Christmas back in Canada: instead of -36°C with the windchill we have +36°C with the humidex; instead of candy canes dangling from coniferous trees we have coconuts dangling from palm trees; instead of Christmas carols we have samba music; instead of half a meter of snow we have half-meter-overhead waves; instead of rum and eggnog we have, well, just straight rum. Thankfully, Elise’s family made the trek down to Brazil to spend Christmas with us in the town of Buzios, giving us at least SOME sense of normalcy this Christmas.

About a week ago now, after spending a couple of days in the (supposed) outdoor adventure getaway for Rio de Janeiro’s elite (all there was to do there was jump off a waterfall), we decided to give The Big City itself a try. Rio: the undisputed beach capital of the world and the place with the most awe-inspiring cityscape in the world. Sounds romantic, right? Question: anyone out there seen the movie City of God? Anyone familiar with Rio De Janeiro’s favelas? If not, suffice it to say that the favelas (of which there are 1000 in Rio alone) are some of the seediest of underbellies, the slummiest of slums and the ghetto-est of ghettos in the world. Thus, driving in Rio (btw we rented a car to drive from Sao Paulo to Rio) presented a whole new set of problems for the reigning International Driving Champion, aka me. Now, I’ve navigated the streets of some pretty hectic metropolises – recall our jaunt through Eastern Europe last summer where I conquered the likes of Athens and Istanbul – but the urban chaos of Rio may have been my greatest test behind the wheel to date. Dodging traffic and pedestrians on cratered cobblestone streets with no lanes or traffic signals is challenging enough, but the stakes are raised when one wrong turn can bring you unwittingly into a favela. We knew that we in such a situation when I noticed all the parked cars on the street were suddenly burnt-out and sitting on blocks. I slammed on the brakes and did an Austin Powers-like three-point turn on the one way street and gunned it hell outta there. Some favela-dwellers were just staring at us in awe (luckily without weapons drawn). After an hour and a half of tense moment after tense moment (and almost rolling backwards down some of the super steep hills paved with slick cobblestones) we managed to find our place, us and the car all in one piece.

-G

 

 

 

WAY-overdressed Lochnessy on Ipanema Beach

This monkey loves bananas even more than I do!!

JC

Co-pa...Co-pa-ca-ba-na (singing)

The Johnson clan + some Gulletsons

Taking the Plunge

A couple videos to divert your attention from the fact that we haven't posted a blog lately....

-E

Vanessa's Jump



Gully's Jump



Elise's Jump....or at least part of it...

Par(a)ty Time

It didn’t take long for Vanessa to get fed up with our poor-backpacker habits, and she soon had us jet-setting around Brazil on airplanes and in rental cars.  After all, she has a real job and a steady income.  No more bumpy bus rides on dirt roads for us!  After our stint in Caraiva (or butt-f$#^ nowhere, as Vanessa affectionately calls it), we hopped on a 3:30 AM flight (the cheapest one) to Sao Paulo, then rented a car so that we could zip along the coast between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.  And zip we did… at least for about 250 kilometers, until we were 15 km from our next destination, Paraty. 

And then – we encountered the bumpiest dirt road that has ever existed.  The irony!!  We found ourselves in the classic navigational blunder: “The Google map directions says there should be a road here!!!”  Google forgot to mention that only 4x4’s could possibly get over the massive craters, streams, and giant boulders that the road is comprised of.  Being in the middle of the jungle, and the shortest detour being 100 kilometers, we foolishly decided to give it a go.  Well, we made it (eventually), and it only took us 3 hours to finish the last 15 kilometers, with the sun steadily sinking and the jungle around us getting more and more ominous.  Our little rental VW Gol (no that’s not a typo) didn’t get discouraged at all, and did a great job even with the giant 4x4’s speeding by us every little while, only slowing down to tell us we were never going to make it.

I guess it was all worth it, because Paraty is a lovely place, full of …. you guessed it – beaches and palm trees and cobblestoned streets.  We’re here for a couple more days, until Gully’s complaining about the lack of surfable waves becomes too much to handle.  We’re also beginning to mentally prepare ourselves for what comes next… Rio, baby!!!

-E

Figuring out the next move

This trench looks much bigger in real life!

The car ahead of us followed their GPS and found themselves in the same situation as us

Pretty Paraty

Picturesque Paraty

One so dark, the other so pale...

Doing the Thumbs Up is cool here in Brazil

Weekend home of some rich and famous Brazilian

Cruising around Paraty Bay in our private boat

Enjoying drinks on our private island while the rainclouds move in...

...and then comes the rain

'Tisn't the Season

Christmas season is moving into high gear – and we’re none the wiser! We’re slowly but surely moving down the perpetually tropical east coast of Brazil, sticking to the small, chilled-out surfing towns. Other than a lame-ass miniature fake Christmas tree I saw in the Japanese restaurant last night, Christmas is pretty much nowhere to be found out here – no Christmas music playing in all the stores, no commercial after commercial on TV, and, much to my chagrin, no eggnog! Nevertheless, the wind that was taken out of our sails in Peru is blowing strongly again, thanks in large part to a much-anticipated visit from a family member. My sister Vanessa, aka Sista G, aka Loch Nessy decided to take a long overdue three week vacation in Brazil. She met up with us in a small surf town called Itacare (where I’ve continued to develop my shred skills in some solid surf for the past six days). My sis’s arrival was like an early Christmas for us; she brought replacements all the way from Toronto for nearly every item we lost in Peru: new camera, new iPod, new netbook, new backpack, new long johns, new….the list goes on. With the remnants of Elise’s wounds all but faded away as her skin bronzes in the tropical sun, we can finally close the unsavoury chapter of this trip that is Peru.

In an attempt to show my sister the true meaning of ‘getting away from it all’ on her vacation, we ventured eight hours by bus, then took a ferry, then took another three hour bus, then a canoe to get a place called Caraiva. It’s supposed to be a sandy hamlet on a long, churning surf beach (Lonely Planet’s words) but what it really is is a beyond-off-the-beaten-path time warp to the age before cars and electricity. There are no motorized vehicles; the streets are paved with beach sand (this makes it extremely difficult to transport rolling luggage). Also, there are no street lights, which means we need to take flashlights out with us to find a restaurant for dinner! On top of it all the ocean is flat right now, so no surfing for me here. On the plus side there are no other tourists around, so we pretty much have the run of the land (which includes about 3 km of beach all to ourselves!)

Yeah yeah, I know what you're saying, another dull blog… – I know! Hey, at least I didn’t write about how we’re living it up in this tropical paradise, sipping cocktails on the beach and surfing all day long while the rest of you are scrambling at work and settling in for the cold Canadian winter. But seriously, we have a fancy new camera now so we’ll do our best to take more pictures of our pretty faces for you all to use as your desktop backgrounds during the Christmas season.

-G

I had to have at least one pic with my shirt off

Aprés-surf electrolytes

A frolicking Loch Nessy with a missed opportunity for me in the background

Vanessa on the Main Street in Caraiva

Sweet Tropical Relief

Heaven knows we suffered in Peru, and it was about time that we had a change of fortune.  

Beach sports provide plenty of eye candy for the ladies

So, finally!!  Tropical paradise!!  We spent three days on an island in the Bahia state of northeast Brazil, in a small town named Morro do Sao Paulo.  We stepped off the boat, and breathed a huge sigh of relief after enduring a taxi ride, 3 plane rides, 2 more taxi rides and a catamaran ride in a 24 hour period.  All the while, Gully is as sick as a dog and running for the bathroom every ten minutes.  One last gift from Peru, I guess.

Palm tree partytime!!

We truly feel we are in paradise.  The town has no roads, no cars, only friendly people and beach after beach after beach.  And did I mention the cocktails?  For only a few dollars, someone will mash up fresh tropical fruit of your choice and mix it with your alcohol of choice, and then you´re sipping on the best drink you ever had (well, until the next one).  And did I also mention the food?  We are gorging on amazing seafood dishes that I have never heard of or tasted  before, which is a pretty big feat after living in multi-cultural Toronto, where I thought every type of ethnic food was available.  And I should also mention the climate - hot and sunny!  Our bathing suits are our official uniforms now.  And Gully is ecstatic - shirts are optional (perhaps even discouraged)!  Even in the grocery stores!!  

I know, this is a pretty boring post, no bad news or funny adventures, but it is great for us. Finally we are relaxing a little.  I´ll take cocktails and seafood over trials and tribulations any day.  I know your mouth is watering... maybe we can even convince some of you to come join us!

-E

I bet you can´t name half of these fruits!

Choose your sweet, sweet poison

Hmmm.... should I take my shirt off now? or later?

Swaying palm trees and tropical breezes....