Ciao Brazil!

The entire morning has been spent packing - the suitcases are like a puzzle that just don't seem to fit anymore.
Soon the taxi will be here to take us to the airport for our internal flight to Sao Paulo then later on to Heathrow.

I was unsure of Brazil when I first arrived here but it has been an incredible trip with the countries diversity. The buzz of Rio, the spectacle of Foz, the richness of wildlife in the Pantanal and the relaxing family holiday aspect of Joao Pessoa. It's been like four different vacations in one.

I don't suspect I shall ever visit Brazil again in my lifetime. There are too many other countries to sample and it's just too far away to be on the regular English tourists travel map (hence why we've barely met any other Brits). But I shall remember it always as the trip of a lifetime.

I'll miss the ham and cheese toasties for breakfast, the açai, the warmth, the amazing sights. I've advised Erin to come back in her gap year perhaps and to see the things we didn't see - Christ the Redeemer and the worlds largest cashew tree (I don't think any of us will get over missing out on that).

So goodbye Brazil. There have been many highs and a few lows but an entire month spent anywhere would result in that. Maybe when I'm old and grey and can spend my last years on my travels I'll be back again. Who knows?

Oh, and thanks for listening!!

xxx Suz, Gareth, Erin and Ibby

All you can eat Brazilian style

As the time of our departure was imminent, Patrick and KeKe took us all along with Carla and Anthony to their favourite 'all you can eat' establishment - Terere (rated 10 of 40 restaurants in JP on trip adviser if you're interested). It was indeed very good with many different types of food - Brazilian, Italian etc with a great salad bar and waiters circling the tables constantly with large skewers of various types of meat.
By this stage of the holiday I was pretty sick of meat and more meat so was delighted to find an entire sushi section which was a breath of fresh air after all the heavy food. And I pretty much ate only that.


Carla drove Patrick, KeKe and Anthony home whilst we decided to stick around the Tambau area for a few hours as the boys needed to walk off their impending 'meat sweats'. We strolled (staggered) aimlessly along the coast line, perusing a few more shops for a few more souvenirs.

The evening was ended at a kind of open air food court where we could only manage to fit in a few drinks around all the food consumed earlier. The waiters from each food operation stand waving their menu's and hissing at passers by to get them to come and sit at one of their tables - which is always nice. One particularly insistent waitress came across repeatedly to encourage us to buy tapioca which is like a sweet, sticky, white omelet but she was to be disappointed. Numerous vendors circled in entice us into buying their hooky DVD's - probably the most relaxing drink stop we've ever had.

Carla and Anthony arrived with the car at 7pm as we watched a march against government corruption rolled by and it was time to go.

Warning, she bites

10 things to do before I die #2

2: Learn to swim (properly)

When I was a child swimming lessons were a fairly unstructured affair. The aim of the game was to ensure every member of the class got across the width or length of the pool without putting their feet down - but it really didn't matter how. I think it would have been quite acceptable to fashion a rudimentary raft from a nearby chair and sail it across with a makeshift chair-leg oar as long as you reached the other side.

To put it kindly, my swimming technique is not a text book one. I use far too many muscles, make far too many movements and expend far too much energy so that 25 metres feels like swimming the channel. It's probably quite amusing to watch as I frantically flail about like someone being chased by a swarm of wasps, gasping for oxygen as I reach the other side.

This holiday has been helpful in that every time we are lucky enough to have a pool in our hotel, I do as many lengths as possible with hints and tips from Gareth to improve my technique - so I have got a little better. But I have completely given up on front crawl as it involves putting my face in water (which I can't abide) so I stick to breast stroke - which I wasn't even taught at school (and explains my ineptitude for it).

My sister Lynn took adult swimming lessons a few years before she died and improved so much that she could swim for miles. I feel it's time I followed in her footsteps and booked some lessons. It would be great for my health and I wouldn't feel like such an idiot when we go as a family to the pool of a weekend and I'm forced to rest for a good ten minutes at the deep end trying to get my breath back to return to the shallow end. It's not a good look when ultra-fit women go up and down, up and down in lanes when I struggle with just a few metres!

Life's a beach

Sunday was spent mainly on the beach which, normally empty during the week, was extremely busy at the weekend - vendors selling all manner of things strolling up and down the sand. We've also been told its some kind of holiday - Brasilia's birthday or something like that.

Gareth, Sean and the children were taken off for a while to meet a local artist who is a friend of Patrick and KeKe's whilst Caroline and I stayed and chatted on the beach. I stupidly threw caution to the wind and substituted my usual factor 50 for some of Caroline's factor 20 and now have two vicious red stripes down the fronts of my legs which is very attractive.

Soon it was lunchtime and time to go in and shower off. Sean turns 33 on the 24th so KeKe and Patrick threw him a little surprise party and barbecue on the rooftop balcony. It was a jovial, relaxing afternoon and evening - our last in Brazil.

After an ice cream in the next door parlour it was early to bed for us all because too much time in the sun had tired us out.

Tomorrow we fly home. It's odd because I don't know exactly how I feel about this. I'm certainly looking forward to being in my own house, seeing friends and family again and just being in England but am also apprehensive about returning to the real world after a month away. It's as though I've forgotten how my life used to run but I guess I'll fall back into the old pattern of things. I'm going to have to because it's straight back to work and school the morning after our return *sigh*.

Things to do, places to see

We've been trying to cram quite a bit into the last few days and had been meaning to spend the day in Centro since we got here. This is the old part of the city with more Portuguese architecture so it's very pretty but perhaps not maintained as well as it should be.

Carla and Patrick joined us on a visit to the San Francisco church, built in the 16th Century. It was a beautiful building and very worthwhile looking around inside to see its original features plus some modern art installations. The guide spoke no English (and neither does Carla) but with Patrick's pigeon Portuguese, we got the gist.

Back in the car and it was on to the Science Museum designed by Oscar Niemeyer the famous Brazilian architect (not famous enough to be known to me). The building was a feat of modern architecture but the free museum inside was a little sparse but interesting. We preferred the outdoor scientific installations, experiments with weight, balance and sound waves etc. There was also a very pleasant English speaking guide who took great pleasure in showing us around the entire place -inside and out.

The next day the car was in use so Patrick joined the six of us on the same half hour journey we had made along the beach on our first day here and spent the morning at the beach bar. It was overcast or raining most if the time so we spent much of the time undercover drinking and chatting interspersed by a couple of dips in the sea by those brave enough.

That evening Sean and Caroline kindly offered to babysit the girls so Gareth and I could spend our first evening out alone in Brazil - our honeymoon meal! Trip Adviser rated Mangi as the top restaurant in JP so we felt it appropriate to go there. It's essentially a kilo restaurant where there is a buffet and you pay for what you eat by weight. The food was all authentic Brazilian cuisine and the one and only English speaking waiter advised us what each dish was. So we set to work!

A kilo each of lovely mains and puddings later (that's actually quite a bit of food) we had to call it quits. We sampled a couple of juices - the fruits of which we'd never heard of. It was lovely being just the two of us (since it was officially our honeymoon but we couldn't allow the kids to miss a holiday like this!) which is a fairly rare occurrence. Gareth and I chatted over the good and bad times during the varied trip and the very few days we had left here in Brazil.

Jacare

We had been advised to visit Jacare in Joao Pessoa for some time so one evening Carla offered to drive us there.
For some years a jazz saxophonist has taken it upon himself to go out on a boat into the bay and play Ravel's Bolero every evening around sunset (like you do). It has become quite a big tourist attraction.

So we headed down a dirt road with what seemed like throngs of other tourists, parked up at ten past five but kick off must have been at five as we could already hear Bolero in full throttle blasting out on the saxophone.
Following Carla we hurried past restaurants to a balconied area of the bay, pushing past Brazilian tourists to get a glimpse of an old rotund man in a white suit being slowly circled around in a small motor boat playing Bolero on saxophone with a microphone. The music could be heard all along the little shopping street and in the restsurants, hundreds of people watching as the sun begn to go down.

I've never heard Bolero played on a saxophone and as he drew to a close his bay-side audience cheered and applauded. I have to say it was pretty cool and I can see why it took off. He then made his way up to one of the restaurants and began to play a set of familiar jazzed-up tunes. Apparently he has an understudy who performs on the nights he doesn't wish to so I guess we were lucky to see the original.

We were then at our leisure to browse the souvenir and gift shops and had an icecream whilst Gareth took an age to set up a photo of the setting sun (nice photo but Jeez Gareth, get on with it!).
We then had our photos taken with a couple who go round dressed like Pariban soldiers (Pariba the state in which Joao Pessoa exists once had its own army and fought against the country as it wanted to remain independent from Brazil). An embarrassing experience if I'm honest but we grit our teeth and got on with it, thinking of the Facebook photos.
It had been an enjoyable evening viewing a spectacle we may have missed but for the knowledge of locals.