Arraial d´Ajuda

1. Festa Juninha

2.Gabriella being cute


With Gabriella feeling better, we decide to go out and see the town on Saturday night. We got some incredibly delicious pizza, and talked with our friendly waiter. That night was one of the Festas Juninas, or June festivals. I think it was the feast day of São João, or St. John. They had a big party that night, and everyone was dressed up in the traditional costume, the guys in jeans with colorful patches and plaid shirts. The ladies had plaid dresses and striped socks, all with different colors. They all danced forro and it was cool. But Gabi was getting tired, so we all went home to bed.
The next day we decided it would be a beach day. We walked down this really built up street, with tons of little boutiques and restaurants. As we walked along the beach there were four restaurants that all had tables on the beach and each restaurant had a guy who would meet us at the beginning of his place’s table and talk with us all the way to the end of the table, trying to get us to eat there. So we had to walk by four of them, off to a less crowded area of the beach, where we spread out our blanket and relaxed for a while. The walk back was a killer though, because Arraial d’Ajuda is on a bluff above the ocean, so walking down to the beach was no big deal, but walking back up seemed to take forever. When we got back to the pousada, we went into the pool, because Gabi doesn’t really like to go in the ocean all that much.
Monday we spent all day at the pool, playing with Gabi and talking to two people, a guy from New Zealand and a girl from Australia, who were staying at the pousada as well. They had been traveling around South America and then were going to work in Ireland for a year. We’ve also met two Swede’s and a German here at the pousada. We went out for Sushi and Yakissoba(lo mein with veggies) that night. Gabriella has been really funny here about food, for the longest time she wouldn’t try new things, but when we went out for sushi at another place she picked it up and took a bite. Now don’t get me wrong when we talk about sushi the only stuff Nate and I eat are rolls made of veggies, so all it was was cucumber with rice and seaweed wrapped around it. But still she just picked it up dipped it in the soy sauce and took a bite. She didn’t really like it but she swallowed it and on Monday when we got some more she ate a lot of the cucumber out of them. We have finally gotten her to eat jelly and she is trying things that she has never seen before, but only if it is her idea.
On Tuesday we tried to figure out where we are going to go from here, and talked to a travel agent about the cheapness of flights versus buses. The flights can sometimes be the same price as buses, but unfortunately we’d have to pay for Gabriella on a plane, where we don’t on a bus. We didn’t actually figure anything out, but got some good ideas on the prices. The next day was fun, because we went into Porto Seguro, and saw the first Portuguese settlement in Brazil. They had the first church, the first prison, the second and third churches and a bunch of other buildings. They also had a really insistent guide who wouldn’t leave us when we said we didn’t want a tour, and who we eventually gave R$15, he really wanted R$30, but he didn’t even give us the full tour, and had told him a couple times that we didn’t want any tour, so we were okay with only giving him R$15. The buildings were really pretty, and it’s on a cliff, so you can see the coast stretching away north and south.
Thursday was a little exciting, because I went to get bus tickets in Porto Seguro, which involved a bus, a ferry and a bus there, and the same thing back. It took 2 ½ hours, and freaked Shelley out because I was gone so long. She was on her way out of the Pousada to look for me when I got back. We had our delicious pizza again that night and they were quite happy to see Gabi again. They talked and played with her the whole time. Today was a laundry day. There is a sink with a built in washboard, so we washed a bunch of clothes by hand, taking turns between Shelley and I. While one was washing, the other would play in the pool with Gabriella, who enjoyed that very much. So now all of our clothes are spread out on chairs around the pool, drying.
So we had all these great plans of where we were going to go and how everything would look, so we mapped it all out and went to a little travel agent here and saw about getting some plane tickets. We ended up talking to two or three different places and realized our dreams were not reality. We have since then, become more realistic as to how things are going to look here in Brazil and we have changed our flight to leave from Sao Paulo on August 14th. That puts us in Brazil a total of two and a half months, not the four we originally planned for. We could have stayed four months but we would not have been able to really do anything. We have decided to make it more fun, but just cut it short. So our journey north is coming to an end in Salvador around the fifth of July. We plan on heading back to Sao Paulo then and from there we are going to head to Iguaçu falls, which is on the border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. It is larger than Niagara Falls and said to be amazingly beautiful. While we are there we plan on putting one more stamp in our passports, and heading into Argentina. If it is really easy we might just cross the second border so we can say we have been to Paraguay, why not, right? We are still having a great trip but just made some changes to make it even better. We love hearing from everyone so keep posting and anyone wants us to call them please let us know.

Vila Velha and Arraial d´Ajuda

1. Gabriella and a monkey.

2. Convento Nossa Senhora da Penha

3. Gabi at the convent

4. The penitentiary walk we went up

The only reason we even decided to come to Vitoria, which is not really a huge tourist place, is because of a friend of Shelley’s family, Luiz, and his wife Angela. He and his family live in Vitoria, and when we talked to him before we came to Brazil, he said we should stop by. We met up with them one night and they drove us around Vitoria, and told us all about it. There has been a lot of stuff going on there, they reclaimed a bunch of land from the ocean, connected two islands to the city, built new bridges to the mainland, and there are a ton of new buildings going up. We also got some pizza with them, which was really good. Gabriella absolutely loved Luiz, he was really good with her, playing around all through dinner. She was really sad when he had to go, she wanted them both to come to the pousada and play.

Vila Velha is famous for the Covento da Nossa Senhora da Penha. It’s a really cool old convent at the top of a hill, built in the 1600’s. We walked over there from our pousada, and then climbed the Penitentiary trial, which is really steep and paved with stones. Apparently people sometimes climb it on there knees. I walked about 4 knee steps, and it really hurt. It was a really pretty walk, though, through dense forest up to the convent. When we got to the top, we saw a bunch of little monkeys climbing around some garbage cans. They were pretty cute, and there were a bunch of them. The convent itself was really pretty, and the little church attached to it was beautiful. There were also amazing views of Vitoria and Vila Velha. We got some food at the little restaurant/gift shop by the convent, saw some more monkeys and then walked back down. Gabriella wanted to be carried most of the way, and it was incredibly tiring. Gabriella wanted to be carried most of the way, and it was incredibly tiring. There was a sign that said the trail was about 500 meters long, and it went up 140 meters.

Vila Velha is also the home to Garoto, a famous chocolate company in Brasil. We were all excited to go there, but we found out that Gabriella couldn’t go because you have to be at least 7 years old to tour the factory. So that was disappointing. But she still had lots of fun going to the beach, so it wasn’t too bad. We ended up staying there for about 5 days, and decided that our next stop would be Porto Seguro, Bahia. So we looked at the bus times, and decided for another overnight bus for the 9 hour ride. Because our bus wouldn’t leave until late at night, Shelley thought we should go see the other huge mall in the area, Shopping Vitoria. Oh, the malls are all called Shopping, because they took the name from Shopping Mall in English. The only thing is that in Portuguese, Mall seems to modify Shopping, instead of the other way around, so they thought Shopping was the noun, and thus call all their malls “shoppings”. Shelley is just amazed by the hugeness of these shoppings, and they are pretty huge. These two in Vitoria and Vila Velha are about the size of Gurnee Mills, for those who know, just to give you an idea. The one in Sao Paulo was a bit bigger.

So we wandered around the Shopping, got more ice cream instead of milkshakes, and Gabi again got chicken nuggets, and we all had pizza. Then we decided to walk to Vitoria Centro, which we hadn’t seen yet. So we walked and walked and walked and walked, with Gabi asleep in the sling on me. There were some really pretty views, because Vitoria is kind of like Rio de Janeiro and kind of like New York. The part like Rio is that there are mountains coming down to the sea, and the city is built around and up these mountains, although they are smaller than those in Rio. It’s like New York, because Vitoria itself is on an Island, like Manhattan. So you have lots of water, and big rocky hills, and it’s really pretty. But we were much farther from the Centro than we though, so we ended up hopping on a bus. We got off right by the Palacio Ancheita, which is a big 18^th century mansion built in honor of a Jesuit missionary who had first Christianized the area. The only problem was that we had no camera for any of this, which was really disappointing. We had packed so well for our upcoming bus trip we forgot to bring the camera with us.

After all that walking we just stayed in downtown Vitoria for a bit and jumped on a bus back to our pousada. It was night time so we grabbed some food and headed back to rest a bit before catching a cab to the bus station. We arrived at the bus station all ready to by our tickets when we were told they were sold out. We never imagined this would happen because we were told so many times that Vitoria is not really touristy, it was a Wednesday night, and just the night before when we looked at tickets online there were 29 of 40 tickets still available. Plus we were 2 hours early for the bus, nonetheless the tickets were sold out. We were told we could travel on the executive bus which left in 40 minutes and cost R$30 more per person. We tried all the other bus lines in the station to see if any went to Porto Seguro, and none did, we then tried to see where we could go in the state of Bahia that night, that was costal. We had no luck so with 20 minutes to spare we went back to buy the executive tickets, used the restroom, jumped on the bus and were on our way.

In some ways we were grateful this happened because the bus was really a lot more comfortable. The seats lay down more, there is water and coffee provided free on the bus and we even got to see a movie with headphones also. A little side note about the movie, it was The(A) Nights Tale dubbed this time instead of with subtitles so I was a little disappointed because my Portuguese isn’t really that great still, but as the movie started I was so excited because I was understanding what was going on, it was awesome. I was just about to pat myself on the back and tell Nate that my Portuguese was getting better because I understand the movie, when he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “This is in Spanish.” Darn, no wonder I was following it so well, so I guess some people notified the driver and he pulled over and changed a setting on the player to have the movie be in Portuguese. Bummer, but I watched anyways.

We arrived in Porto Seguro around 7 in the morning and was it ever a whirlwind of a bus stop. We were immediately ushered over to the tourist information booth, and some guy who worked at the bus station carried half our stuff for us. Once there they guy who ran the booth talked Nate’s ear off about a place to stay, told us it was only R$50 a day, with a TV in the room (one English channel, with movies and CNN, one Portuguese channel), air conditioning, a pool with a shallow end for Gabi, breakfast included in the price and, oh yeah, it is across the street from a Capoiera academy (he noticed Nate and my Capoiera shirts). He told us it was across the river from Porto Seguro in a town called Arraial d’Ajuda, he lived there and said it was so nice. He then arranged for us to take a cab there and Nate asked if we should call to see if there were any openings, he said “I know there are don’t worry.” We got here and it was really nice so we stayed. And it turns out the helpful tourist information guy owns the Pousada. We have now been here 3 days and two nights, we think we are going to be here for a whole week because we have yet to see anything in town. Now don’t worry we are great parents and everything is going fine, but you will all want to know, Gabriella has gotten her first sickness since starting the trip, so we have spent the past two days in the room. She had a fever and was acting crabby so we took to the doctor thinking she had an ear infection, he looked her over said she sounded great in the lungs and her ears looked great. He said to control the fever with water and not to use meds unless she seemed to be in pain. We gave in and gave her motrin then went to the pharmacy to see what they thought because she didn’t really want to eat or drink. The pharmacist told us to get antibiotics because it looked like it was her throat so we did and she has been talking them and seem a whole lot better today. Her fever is way down and she is eating up a storm again so we think we are the clear. That will teach us to go on a bus without having her take airborne first. This is the first bus we forgot to do that with.

Vitoria

We did indeed wander around Copacobana for a while, looking for a place for dinner, and we also found a used book store where I got Harry Potter and the Sorcerers stone in Portuguese. After dinner we went back to the hotel for sleep. In the morning we hit the beach after breakfast and layed around for a couple hours. Then we went to the H. Stern headquarters in Ipanema. H. Stern is a Brazilian jewelry company that offers free rides to the headquarters to all people that stay in the hotels in Rio. Then they get a free tour, with snacks and drinks and then the tour ends up, of course, in the gift shop. Except in this case they try and sell you really expensive jewelry.

Then we had some dinner and they gave us a ride back to our hotel where we picked up our stuff and took a taxi to the bus station. This time we had our passports and took a 9:50pm bus for Vitoria. It was a pretty long ride, and neither Shelley nor I could sleep, but Gabriella slept very well.

We got into Vitoria around six in the morning, and it was kind of cold and we didn’t have a clue where we should go. Eventually we went to a place that was in our guide book, Hotel Principe which was right by the bus station. We figured we would stay there one night, and use the day to find somewhere better to stay. We took a nap, then took a bus to Vila Velha, the town just across the river, that the guide book said had really nice beaches. We found a nice place, Pousada Requinte, and reserved a place for the next day. Then we got dinner and went back to the hotel for the night.

On Friday, we left the Principe for Requinte, and then went to the beach. The beach here is every bit as nice as in Rio, and it’s mainly familys and people that live here. It was warm and beautiful and we stayed there for a couple hours, then went out for dinner. Saturday we decided we needed an inside day, because it’s been really hot. We walked to a nearby mall, and looked around at all the stores. We got some lunch, and delicious Bob’s milkshakes, and then we went to see Shrek III. The lady at the ticket counter thought we were goofy for wanting to see the subtitled one instead of the dubbed one. It was pretty funny and Gabrielle really liked it. We stopped at a grocery store and got some food for dinner, than walked back to the pousada and ate. We got Gabi some comfort food, Frosted Flakes and Soy milk. She loved it.

Today was another Beach day, and we saw on our map that there was a lighthouse as part of the “Sitio Historico” and so we walked over to it. It was a really long, uphill walk, and when we got there, you could only get a little glimpse of the lighthouse over the giant gate and fence in front of it, because it’s still a working lighthouse and part of maritime union property. As we stood outside a bunch of guys came back from lunch and walked inside. So that was disappointing. We got back to the pousada and cleaned up and ate lunch.

One thing we have noticed on our trip is that everyone loves kids. At the beach people always come and talk to us, tell us how pretty Gabi is, and give her hugs and touch her hair and stuff. It is kind of a little crazy how much they like her. We’ll be walking down the street and people will stop and talk to her, one guy dressed as a clown was walking by where we were eating in Rio and stopped, came back got our attention and then made up a little poem about her name. . That’s another thing, people have no problem touching other peoples kids. On one bus, which all have turnstiles inside the bus that you have to pass through after you pay, this lady walked through holding one of her kids, and her other daughter was on the other side. She couldn’t push the turnstile, so this random lady just picked her up over the turnstile. On the same bus we walked all the way to the back, and there was only one seat in the back, where Gabi sat. She wanted to sit next to the window, so the lady sitting there switched with her and held her up by the window, making sure she didn’t fall down. And we were there the whole time watching so don’t worry about that. Other people have given her candies, chocolates, and one guy who spoke English and had been talking to us even gave her a quarter of his sandwich. We had seen it being brought out by the waitress and he hadn’t even touched it before he gave it to her. But people are so great with her. And they have been really friendly with us too. People have been recommending places for us to go, helping us get places, doing all sorts of stuff for us that people would never do in the states. One guy made a call for us to get directions to a pousada, this other girl, about 17 years old, who spoke really good English walked us about 6 or 7 blocks to a different pousada. We talked to her while we were walking and found out she is going to Boston this December, and she asked us if it was cold there, we tried to tell her, but I am not sure if she gets it. She told us it was cold here now! Everyone is super friendly.

1.Us at the waterfall.
2. Gabi at the beach another day, a little out of order, sorry.
3.Gabi again at the beach, so cute huh?
4. the rope bridge we wrote about in the past blog.
all of these pictures are of Parati, we don~t have any new pictures yet!!

So our money saving idea did save us money, but only about $12 US, and it was incredibly uncomfortable and no fun at all. Shelley got peed on by Gabi, even though we had a diaper on her. Gabi had to change clothes twice and then eventually just stay in a diaper. Nate felt like he was going to throw up, and Shelley had to pee for about 2 and a half hours. But we made it, and we are now on the famous Copacabana beach. We got here in the afternoon, lay around and watched English language sitcoms to recuperate. Then we got ready and went out for dinner. We ended up eating pizza at a little kiosk on the beach, and talking to an Australian who was heading 100 miles offshore to manage an oil rig. After dinner we sat and watched a soccer practice for a little bit, then walked up and down the main street, Ave. Atlantica for a while, and then we wanted to go to a grocery store for some stuff for lunch. As we were walking Gabi had to go the bathroom, so we went to a Bob’s which is a fast food chain with the really good milkshakes we had gotten before. When we got there, Gabi said she was hungry again, despite having just eaten a couple pieces of pizza. So we got her a six piece chicken finger thing, and she ate five of them. She has been a non stop eating machine. We stocked up on stuff for lunch, and then went back to the hotel, and called back to the states, and talked to Nate’s parents and Shelley’s Dad.

This morning we had the continental breakfast down stairs. It was quite nice, but the hot water that Nate got for tea smelled like a hospital. He thought it was the tea at first, but then the hot chocolate smelled like that too. Shelley said the coffee tasted odd too, and she thought it was the steel urn they were in. Either it’s brand new or they didn’t clean it very well. Shelley’s mom called and we got to talk to her a bit also. Gabi gets really excited whenever we get to talk to people in the states. We going to head to the beach soon and then maybe wander around a bit.

Parati

On Monday night after we got set up at the pousada we walked to town to get dinner at a little all you can eat place. It was a pretty good deal, a little salad bar with lettuce, carrots, cucumber, tomato and cold cheesy pasta. The hot food included rice, beans, sausage, French fries, chicken, hot pasta and maybe one other kind of meat, for only 8 reais(which is like 4 US dollars). Gabi ate for free and we found out she loves sausage, I think she ate about 4 of them and Nate only ate 3. We ate our hearts out and went back to our room to sleep.
So we are actually pretty lucky to have wound up here at the Pousada do Imperador. It’s pretty nice, and there are three ladies who work here who are incredibly friendly and love Gabriella. Our routine so far has been for Gabriella to wake me up, and then the two of us go to get breakfast, which is in the front room of the Pousada. It’s a nice spread of different breads, ham and cheese, a couple cakes, fruit, coffee, juice and they bring little jellos to the table. Gabi and I will get a plate each full of cakes and bread and ham and cheese, and then eat for a while. Gabi entertains the other people staying here with her singing and talking in English, and then repeating stuff I say in Portuguese. This will go on for about a half hour, and then I’ll go and wake up Shelley (on Thursday this was reversed, Shelley got up and I stayed in bed). She’ll come out and we’ll have about another half hour of Gabi playing around and eating and talking really loud. Luckily all the people that are staying here really like her and don’t mind her talking loudly all the time. Seriously, she rarely stops talking at breakfast, only long enough to eat a bite or take a drink.
Tuesday morning we slept late ate breakfast, took a little nap after breakfast and then decided to wander the town or Parati. It’s an old colonial town and they have a large area of preserved buildings from the original town. The streets are all paved with big stones and the buildings are all the same, just updated with lots of restaurants and shops (the picture of Gabi walking is in the historic part of town). The first few times we walked around town Gabi would try to pick up the huge stones because she has a fascination with rocks; it was pretty funny to watch. We bought some food for lunches, crackers, jelly, a really good cheese spread and a 5 gallon jug of water for the week, the guy at the store thought we were pretty funny for buying all that water, with out a dispenser, but we did it anyway. The stuff that we bought has been our lunch for the week. We bought some bread on Wednesday, and the jar of orange jelly we had broke so we bought some cherry jelly. But that $8 dollars worth of food has lasted us all week for lunch.
At some point in time we found this great little internet café that was offering a deal, of 5 hours for 10 reais. It ends up the guy that runs it is from Milwaukee; he came here liked it so much he decided to stay, and then he got married and has been here for 4 years now. That night we were looking for a cheap place to eat for dinner, and wound up at a little bar that sold sandwiches. Gabi and I both got misto quente (hot ham and cheese sandwich) and Shelley got an egg and cheese sandwich. This wasn’t on the menu, but they make cheeseburgers with fried eggs on them (really, really good) so we ordered one of those without the burger. Of course, when we got our food, all Gabriella wanted was an egg sandwich. She ended up eating her whole misto quente and part of a second egg and cheese sandwich we ordered.
Wednesday after breakfast we got ready to go the beach and to see Forte Defensor Perpetuo, a fort the Portuguese had built to defend the bay of Parati. The fort sits on a hill between the beach right by our pousada and the Jabaquara beach, so we thought we would walk to the fort, and then to the other beach. It was a nice walk up to the fort, which is all overgrown, and there isn’t much left but the walls and some canons (hard to tell if the canons were original). But there were nice views of the town and of the bay. After that we went to Praia Jabaquara and had our lunch. Gabi ended up taking a nap on the beach, and when she woke up we went to a pizza place we had an add for. It was a cute little place and all of the people that run it were from Argentina. The pizza was really good, we got just cheese, but it came with some delicious salty green olives, placed right in the middle of the pizza that I really liked (Shelley not so much). They spoke English there, so we talked with them for a while, and they played around with Gabi too. We had a long walk home and hung out a bit before going to bed.
Thursday after breakfast we lazed around a bit, and then walked around town in the morning, it was Corpus Christi, some kind of Holiday here in Brazil. We eventually found out it is celebrated 60 days after Easter, but we are still not sure why exactly and everyone we asked said it is Corpus Christi. There were some really neat sawdust drawings, dyed all different colors on the ground outside a church, they were cool but we failed to get any pictures of them, doh! We headed back to the Pousada after we found out our internet café doesn’t open till noon and had some lunch before heading to the beach right by our Pousada. Gabriella doesn’t like to go in much above her knees, so one of us will just stand there with her and she’ll run around us, or hold one hand and kind of spin around. She is really cute at the beach, she loves to play in the sand but doesn’t much like sand on her hands, so she will play a minute and then have to go wash her hands off. That night we decided to go back to the little all you can eat place, but decided we would take it to go and eat back at our place, it ends up the carry out version is only 5 reais, so I filled my tin full with sausage, French fries, carrots and a little pasta, while Shelley just filled up on rice and beans; we came back to our room and ate a hearty meal for around 5 US dollars.
Friday we thought a beach day would be good too so we just kind of lazed around in the morning, taking naps after breakfast, playing with Ella and what not, and heading to our beach yet again. We took our lunch to the beach and found out picnicking in Brazil is not all that common, we have been the only people eating on the beach every time we do so. A bunch of Brazilian children were smacking the water with sticks while we ate lunch and we could not figure out why. Later when we went in the water I noticed some clear jelly fish and figured out that is what they were killing in the water. I made Nate go ask somebody if they were dangerous like the big ones in the States. They were pretty little, smaller than a soda can, and some people just went in the water with out any fear so I thought they might not be harmful. Nate went and asked some Mother and she told him they were called “Agua vivas; living water” and they if they got you they would burn a lot. We decided to make it a short trip in the water and pretty much kept Gabi out. That night we finally decided to eat at this little trailer booth of a restaurant we pass everyday on our way into town. The lady there always says hi to us and the food smells pretty good. We finally got our hands on some Acai(ah-sigh-ee) which we have been craving and started off with that. Gabi was sleeping so we let her rest a bit and when she awoke she agreed to try some veggie with macaroni and meat, soup. After the Acai we order what they call panquecas, it is really a savory crape. We got ours with veggies and cheese, it was amazing. There was broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms, some green leafy things and cabbage, it kind of resembled a burrito, that was then smothered in a creamy cheesy sauce, pretty much it was to die for, oh yeah and Gabi really liked her soup. After dinner Gabi had lots of energy so we took her back into town to run it off, we went to this crazy little guy who had set up a big trampoline and was charging 2 reias to enter, we only had R$ 1.70 on us because we left our wallet in the room, but he let her go on anyways. There was no one else around, but he made her stop after whatever his time limit was, maybe 5 minutes. Gabi didn’t want to jump at first, and kept wanting us to come in, but when she had to leave she cried and cried and cried. So then we walked around town a little more, and then went home for bed.
Saturday after breakfast we went to a cachoeira (waterfall). We got to the bus stop too late for one bus and an hour early for another. We got some more Acai while we waited, and as we ate it we watched a group of five people (I think they were English, Shelley thought they were Australian) as they tried to figure our what bus to take. Finally Shelley volunteered my help to them, and I went to talk to the ticket guy with one of them. They were trying to get to a near-by island called Ilha Grande, but didn’t speak a word of Portuguese. They had already talked to the ticket guy twice, but got nothing out of the conversations. I translated for them, and they found out they couldn’t get to the Island until the next day, because they had already missed the ferry. One of the guys didn’t realize it was an Island, and kept telling me to ask what bus to take to it. Eventually we got onto our bus and headed inland toward the waterfall. When we got off at our stop, I had left our baby sling on the bus, so we had to wait about 15 minutes for it to come around. Then we hiked about 5 minutes into the forest and saw the waterfall. It was really cool, more of a series of small falls over huge rocks. We waded in some pools a bit, and then crossed a rope bridge to a closed down bar where we sat at a table and had our lunch. We thought there was another waterfall nearby, on the road back to town, so we walked for a while, but didn’t see anything. We decided to just keep walking, and we flagged the bus down when it was headed back to Parati. As we walked back to the pousada we saw a place that had Prato Feito (prato feito means “made plate” and is rice, beans and some kind of meat) for only R$2.00 and decided we would go there for dinner. We rested at the pousada for a little bit then went to dinner. The restaurant was a little shady, but the food was good. The servings of rice and beans were huge, and Gabi and I got Calabresa, which is the sausage that Gabi loves so much. She ate her whole serving, and a bunch of rice and beans. We walked back into town and wandered a bit, then we thought there was a concert starting soon so we went by the bandstand. There was no music yet, so we went to a mobile tattoo studio we had stopped by earlier. Shelley has been trying to decide what kind of tattoo she wants, and we thought we would try one idea out in Henna. It’s an outline of Gabriella’s hand, and she got it on the small of her back. It’s pretty cool. She’s still not sure that is what she wants. She likes the idea of Gabi’s hand, but may get it doing the peace sign. We don’t have the money for it yet, so she still has time to think about it. Today, Sunday, we woke up early, had breakfast, and started to pack up. We’re leaving Parati for Rio de Janeiro tomorrow. We used our credit card points to get a hotel for two nights on Copacabana beach. It should be really cool, and we’re quite excited. We didn’t want to stay too long, because Rio is pretty expensive and very busy and touristy. After packing for a while we went to the beach again, and this time Gabi wanted to jump over the bumps a lot. We kept telling her that the bumps were waves, or ondas in Portuguese, but she kept calling them bumps. We also finally got some sun, because before we kept going to the beach around 2 or 3, and this time we were up and about before noon. We came back to the Pousada for lunch, which today was extra special. Two days ago we had bought an avocado, but we had to ripen it for a couple days. The avocados here are enormous, bigger than Gabi’s head. It was super delicious spread on bread with salt. People in Brazil treat avocado like any other fruit, and eat it with sugar or made into smoothies. We stuck with what we know. It was so big we couldn’t eat the whole thing, and gave the rest to the ladies that work at the pousada. They decided to be adventurous and try it with bread and salt, and they said they liked it. We’re not sure we’ll try it their way, but we might. Tonight were going to pack up for good, because we want to get an early bus to Rio. The main bus line is R$40 a person, which is too much for us. The six hour bus trip we took from Sao Paulo was only R$37, and was two hours longer than the trip to Rio. But that’s the only bus line from Parati to Rio, so I guess they can charge whatever they want. We’re going to take a R$6 bus to Angra dos Reis and from there a van to Rio. We´ll tell you about that when it happens. Tchau

new video

Here is a video of Gabriella playing with Gu at Andre´s apartment

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8132952450574838058

1. Gabi at Praia Jabaquara 2. Igreja Matriz 3. Gabi walking in historic Parati 4. Gabi e seu Papae

Saturday we were supposed to go to Andre’s uncle’s house in the country, but we slept in really late, and Andre didn’t go anyway, and it was raining, so it worked out well that we didn’t go. We stayed in the house a lot, because it was raining, and then in the afternoon, Andre came and got us and took us out to Habib’s, a Middle Eastern fast food chain. We had s’fiha’s, which are kind of like little pizzas, and hummus. Gabi didn’t really like the s’fiha, but she liked the pita’s that came with the hummus, and the crust of the s’fiha. After that we went to the mall again, to get some more groceries. Andre was craving a milkshake, so we went to a place inside the mall and got some. He and Shelley got ovaltine, it had little malt ball pieces in it, which Shelley loved, and I got chocolate, which was great.
We got back to the apartment and had to take showers, because Dre was taking us to his cousin’s birthday party, at his Aunt’s house. We had a really good time at the party. Ella was really excited for all the desserts that were there, and it was fun talking to Andre’s family. They were all super nice, and surprised that I could speak Portuguese and everyone who knew a little bit of English spoke what the could to us. Gabi played with Gu a lot, and with some of Dre’s younger cousins, one of whom was just like Shelley’s cousin Jasmine. After we had sung “Parabens pra Voce” the Portuguese version of “Happy Birthday”, we got to eat the cake, which was a coconut cake. Gabi had so much of that and of Brigadeiro (a ball of dulce de leche with chocolate sprinkles) that she threw up. Then she wanted more, which we didn’t let her have. When we got back to the apartment it was time for bed and we watched a few tv shows in English.
On Sunday was the day the whole bread story happened, Nate got confused and thought it was Friday but it was Sunday. After we all had some breakfast we hung around the house and played and just relaxed until it was lunch time and we all went over to Titia’s house. They had made pasta, sauce with tuna and without tuna, salad, chicken, and fresh mango juice. We all ate a good lunch and Gu and Gabi played again. They both started jumping on the bed and were having a great time with Dre and his sister Adriana. We tried to get Gabi to take a nap but too much was going on so we took her to the park with Gu. They had lots of fun on the slide and teeter-totter. After the park we were ready for dinner so we went to get some authentic Brazilian pizza for the second time. Dre thought he was taking us to an all you can eat pizza joint which sounded great but when we got there, it was the wrong place, we decided to stay anyways. We ordered a pizza with half four cheese and half sausage. When the pizza arrived it was crazy, the sausage side had no cheese. It was crust with sausage, not the American sausage that comes on pizza more like a kielbasa sausage cut in big slices, covering every inch except the crust. And then the sausage was covered with a million little white onion rings all over it. The cheese side was a little more recognizable as pizza but it was still very different, the cheeses were very strong and there was a blue cheese on the pizza, I thought that was odd, plus when you order a four cheese pizza in the states you can’t really tell where one cheese ends and the other begins. You know it is well mixed, no, not on this pizza it was crazy you could see each cheese individually on the pizza. Ok enough about the pizza. So we ate and left, oh yeah Gabi was asleep on Nate and my lap all through dinner. So as we got ready to leave she woke up and asked are we going to get pizza, oops it was all gone!! On the way home we told her we would get her something to eat, but we also needed to get some more money before leaving Sao Paulo. Dre drove us all over creation looking for a Citibank ATM and on the way we ran into a road block with cops. One was stopping cars holding a hand gun at his chest ready to use it, and another had a rifle, luckily they waved us through and we didn’t even have to stop. Dre said maybe there was a bank robbery or something. So we finally got to the ATM, Citibank that is and got out cash. As Dre was driving us home we were kind of being followed by cops, they had their lights on but no siren and I said “Oh no, Dre we are being pulled over.” He said “They don’t do that in Brazil, people don’t get pulled over by cops on the road, they get tickets in the mail, from cameras on the street.” But he thought it odd they seemed to be following us. Because he was so concerned about it, he ended up driving in a complete circle trying to loose them and they still kept following us, finally we made a turn toward the house and they didn’t follow any more. It was a pretty exciting night all in all!
When we got home it was time to pack because this was to be our last night in Sao Paulo, we had decided we were going to Parati (pronounced Para-chee) in Rio de Janeiro state. It had been in contemplation the past few days if we wanted to head straight for Rio or go somewhere else. We thought Rio was a little too big and wanted to go somewhere we thought Gabi could be a little freer. In Sao Paulo it is such a big city (at least 17 million people, and as far as the eye can see) we felt she had to be glued to our side and didn’t want her to talk to loud because then it would be obvious we were foreigners. Parati is a little town(about 17,000) and on the coast so we decided this was ideal. We packed everything up and tried to lighten our load a little so we could travel better. Well let me say we are one bar of soap, one pack of wipes, a book and a jar of vitiams lighter, what a difference that made. We are still traveling with 2 huge backpacks, and two day packs, Gabi’s backpack, Gabi’s bed and my sea green ESPRIT beach bag straight from the 80’s. Oh yeah, we made a big decision to leave the stroller in Sao Paulo, which we still aren’t sure was a great idea in the end. Ok so to say the least it was a long night with little sleep and lots of packing. And after we finished packing we tried to take care of some stuff on the computer which kept us up even longer. And in all of this hubbub, Shelley forgot to put a diaper on Gabriella when she went to sleep, and of course she peed all over her Dora bed.
We woke up Monday morning at 5:30 with plans to take the 8am bus to Parati, and Anderson said he would drive us cutting out traveling on a bus and two trains. After dealing with the pee bed and dragging all of our stuff downstairs and cramming it into Anderson’s two door little car, we were on our way to Tiete (Chee-eh-tay) bus station. We got there at 7, bought two tickets for Parati, kids under six ride for free, and eat and stay for free at a lot of places, which is nice. We had photocopied our passports earlier, and used these to fill out our information on the tickets. We hauled our junk down stairs to the gate, and had some donuts and cheese bread for our breakfast. Gabi liked the donut so much she threw up. It was a sugar covered, chocolate stuffed donut, and she hasn’t been doing too well with the sweets on an empty stomach. The bus showed up around 7:45, and we started to get our stuff put on. Nate put our two huge bags and Gabi’s bed under the bus. As we were ready to climb on board, the guy asked to see our passports. So we looked in the bag we had put them in last night, and they weren’t there. And then we looked in the other bag we had put them in, and they weren’t there. Then we looked in our two other bags, and they weren’t there. So Nate got the bags off the bus, we looked in them, and they weren’t there. Everyone was staring at us as we pulled everything out of all our bags, and Gabi just really wanted to get on the bus. So we pulled all of our stuff back into the station, and put it in a corner, had one more good look through, and then decided we must have left them at Anderson’s house. So Shelley built a little fort around herself in the corner with all of our luggage, sat Gabi on her lap, and Nate went to call Andre, to ask him to have his mother walk over to the apartment and look for it. When I came back, we remembered that when we were doing stuff on the computer the night before, we had taken the wallet with the passports out to get something that was in there. And we had left it by the computer. By now it was 8:15, and our bus had left. Luckily the ticket guy said we could change the tickets for the 12:15 bus with no problem. So it was decided that I should take the two trains and a bus back to the apartment, while Shelley and Gabi sat in their fort. The ground was cold, the door nearby was drafty, Gabi fell asleep on her lap, but she soldiered it out, guarding our luggage and waiting for me to get back. I meanwhile had to find the two trains and bus, and luckily got to a train or bus just as it was leaving, so I didn’t have to wait around a lot. I got to apartment, and found the wallet just where we had left it.
Anderson offered to drive me back to the train station that was by his work, which was incredibly nice of him, and I made it back to the station by 10:30, a two hour round trip. I changed the tickets and we filled out the stuff with the info from our actual passports this time. Shelley was able to get up and get some feeling back in her legs, and warm up by walking around the station. We grabbed some lunch, and got on the bus with no further problems.
It must have been fate for us to take this bus, because we ended up sitting next to a woman and her 5 year old daughter. The little girl was adorable, with bright red hair, and fair skin, her father must be an Irishman. But she was Brazilian and super friendly, as was her mom. They shared their toys and food, and even had Gabi sit with them for a while. We had Gabi share her toys too, and the little girl really like her MagnaDoodle.
The busses in Brazil are the most popular way of getting around between cities, because they are cheap and really really nice. You can lay down in them farther than an airplane, there is lots of leg room, a fairly decent bathroom, and they also had leg rests. We even got to watch It Takes Two to Tango, and My Girl Two, both in English, with Portuguese subtitles. The ride was six hours long, and we when we got into Parati it was dark out, and we had no idea where we were going to stay. Luckily, there was a super friendly guy just waiting for people like us. He had a stack of brochures from Pousadas of every sort and every price, all of which probably give him a commission for bringing us there. We had read about one place on the way down, so we said we wanted to look at that place and one of his places. We walked a good six or seven blocks with our seven bags, and of course Gabi wanted to be held. The whole time we were walking to the place we had read about, the guy was saying how we would look at it, and see how uncomfortable it was, and how the other place would be so much better and nicer and so on and so forth.
We got to the first place and talked to the owner, and he said he was full. But when he realized that we wanted to stay a full week, he said he had a room. It was kind of small, with just a bed and not a lot of room, and it was a little dirty. He tried to convince us to stay but we decided to look at the other place first, he must have known how far away the other place was because he offered to watch our bags in his office while we walked to look, we took him up on it and brought our bag with our passports and money with us. After walking all through town and over the river we got to the second place and it was much nicer, it included breakfast and had two beds(which we were grateful for because we really didn’t want to deal with the pee filled bed so late) and we talked him down R$10 a day(in the end it saves us 35 US dollars in total). Oh no actually the owner said our guy would cut his commission so he could cut it down that much, we were grateful and said we would stay. But now the conundrum was getting our bags here, no way in HE double hockey sticks we were going to haul them all the way here. Just so happens the pousada owner has a son who owns a taxi and drove Nate and our guy back to get the bags, the owner picked up the cab bill and we tipped our nice friendly guy, who was already earning a commission off us, 5 reais(hey-eyes). (Still Monday but now in the evening, seems like a long day? It was!)

Well you still are not up to date but we will continue working on it, thanks for all the comments we really like hearing from everyone!!

1. playing at a park 2. Gabi and Gu 3. Praca da Se 4.View from Andersons

So here we are in Brazil we are in our second location now. We spent five days in Sao Paulo and our schedule looked like this, on Wednesday we spent the day at Dre’s house. We got in really early at 8:30 and had been traveling all the day before. We left our house in California at 11am and our flight left LAX at 2:35 on May 29. We first flew to Houston and had an hour layover, just enough time to get to the next flight and get a little food. When we got to the gate in Houston we remembered that we had three seats all over the plane but when we tried to change it in LA they said all seats were full. They were boarding when we arrived to the gate so we got in line to speak to a ticket agent and figured she would tell us to try and change with people on the plane but at least we could get a gate check for our stroller. The agent was really nice and told us we should get a onepass, because after flying to Brazil once we would have enough miles to fly primer. She also got us three seats together in a flash, we didn’t ask any questions and just went on our way. When we got down the runway and started looking for our seats we found out we had the best seats, we got the first row, bulkhead seats the middle three all together. Oh yeah and on our first flight we met some really nice guys from Brazil who had been on business in Las Vegas, they were two brothers and they asked us if we were Brazilian because we had two kids books from Brazil. When we said no, they just started talking to us, one of the guys told us about his son who is Gabriella’s age and they found out about our plans and wanted to tell us about where they live. They live in the southern state of Brazil and pretty much convinced us to go there, but we are going to go there in August because he said it is 4C=40F now so we asked if it would get warmer at the end of our trip and he said yes. When we arrived in Brazil, the next day May 30, he gave us his card with his home number and cell number written on it. Oh, yeah and when we got to the customs and started to go to the foreigners line some people who were working the lines to help said oh no Brazilians go over there, we told them we weren’t Brazilians. Then they told us to go to the small line for the pilots and flight attendants because we had a kid, so that was really nice too.

In Sao Paulo we pretty much just slept the first day and went to the mall for dinner. Gabriella loved their little dog, Tony, and would run around after him and try to pet him, and eventually he got fed up with it and nipped her hand (it wasn’t bleeding or anything, and we couldn’t even see a mark). We thought it was great, so that Gabriella wouldn’t bug him any more. Gabi was a little traumatized, but she got over it. We ended up going to Andre’s brother, Anderson’s, apartment to sleep. He and Andre kept trying to figure out how to get extra mattresses and blankets and stuff to make us more comfortable, and to figure out which room we should go in, but we finally convinced them we didn’t need anything extra and went to the apartment. On Thursday we didn’t get moving until about 12 noon, the first thing we did was get some lunch, pizza. Pizza is really popular in Brazil, but it is very different than pizza in the States, pizza here does not have to have cheese, but the pizza we got on Thursday was just cheese and boy was it a lot of cheese. After eating we when to a park and Gabi played on the slide and teeter-totter, then we got on a bus to the train (Gabriella has so far loved every train and bus that we’ve been on) and went to the Praca da Se. We walked around a bit and got a little coffee at a soda at a little streetside bar, more like a café just a little place open to street. After that we headed to Mastre Suassuna’s academy, we got there early so we got some food at a little place on the corner near the academy. Then Nate went and practiced for a bit and we headed home with Dre on the train and bus.

On Friday we woke up late again and I (Shelley) wasn’t feeling very well so I slept quite a bit while Nate and Gabi played with playdough and toys. Around 2 we headed to Avenida Paulista and found a bank to get some money and looked into getting a cell phone which we thought would be a good idea. But really isn’t because they don’t have nation wide plans so whenever we go to another state we would have to pay roaming or get a new card for our phone with a whole new number. Maybe if we find somewhere we want to stay awhile we might think about it again, but for now it really isn’t a good idea. We got a little snack of bread and coffee and rested a bit, before walking around and thought we would wait for Dre to get off work because he works near there but he said he had to stay at work late so we decided to head home. When we transferred trains there were so many people we decided to get off and get some dinner, we walked around Praca da Se again and found a place to get some dinner, we thought we were set but when dinner arrived I had a plate of rice and fries and Nate had a plate of rice with a steak, Nate asked where the beans we ordered were and the guy said they had run out, but he could bring us a salad. I thought that this was ridiculous! How could they run out of beans in Brazil! So we had to settle for a salad, which was good, and rice. Gabi ate a ton of Nate’s steak and a ton of rice too.
After our meal we hopped back on the subway, to the bus, to Anderson’s apartment. When we got back, Anderson, his son Gu, Andre and their sister Adriana were all hanging out at the apartment. Gabriella and Gu played together for a little bit, but when the two of them got together it was pretty hit or miss, especially at first. They would do the classic kid thing where no matter how many toys there were in the room, they each had to play with the same one, no matter what it was. Gu got really mad and said he wanted Gabriella to go back to the United States. It was pretty funny.
The next day, Nate and Gabi got up and went to get bread. This is one of Gabi’s favorite stories to tell. She says “Me and Daddy went to the store, and Daddy went to the wrong store and Daddy couldn’t find any bread, and then Gu and Anderson got the bread!” She get’s really excited when she tells it. Nate forgot which way to go to the Panadaria (bakery) and went to a little market that didn’t sell bread, and as they were walking to the other store Anderson drove up with lots of bread. So we had delicious fresh bread for breakfast.
This takes us up to saturday, and we´ll post again soon, and hopefully bring everything up to date.