Brazil Recap 10/1/12 - 10/20/12

Recap of Brazil:

Time in country:  20 days
Money spent: approximately $1500 USD each (includes cost of Visa)
Currency:  Real
Conversion Rate: approximately 2 Reais per USD

Food:
There are two popular kinds of restaurants in Brazil.  First, is the churrascaria.  This is where you pay a flat price and then an unlimited amount of meat is brought to the table on meat skewers, plus a buffet of sides, salads, dessert, etc.  Just like the Texas de Brazils back home, but better ;-).

The other is the "per kilo" restaurants.  There's a buffet of veggies, sides, meats, etc, and you pay a price based on its weight.  

We enjoyed both of these!!

Card on the table: green means bring more meat, red means I'm done!

As far as drinks (alcoholic) in Brazil, they are known for their capirinhas (with cachasca) and caprivoskas (with vodka).  

Places Visited (in order):  Corumba, Bonito, Campo Grande, Rio de Janeiro, Paraty, Sao Paulo, Foz de Iguacu

Random Thoughts:  
There are so many great things about Brazil including the following:

  1. Brazilians are super super nice.  They go out of their way to help people and are so friendly.  The towns / cities we visited had such "good vibes" about them.  Brazil was great!   

  2. The bathrooms! (Per Kristin)  The bathrooms were very clean, they actually flushed, there was toilet paper, hand soap, and even a hanger on the door for backpacks!!  One might assume these things would be in all bathrooms, BUT, I had not seen a lot (okay, most) of these items since Colombia. Oh happy day!

  3. The music, it's very energetic and has a good beat.

  4. Vegetables.  Brazil is the first country in South America that actually serves a variety of vegetables in restaurants.  The veggie choices in the buffets was appreciated!  

  5. The meat! Brazil sure knows how to cook meat and serve lots of it.  In general, the food in Brazil was some of the best yet.

  6.  Matt says Brazilian bathing suits should be on this list.  They are quite a bit smaller than the typical bathing suits back home.


The only downside that we encountered about Brazil was the cost.  It's the most expensive country in South America.  And since we came from Bolivia (one of the cheapest countries), everything in Brazil seemed so much more expensive!  We spent a lot of money, but we had fun doing it! 

Foz de Iguacu (Iguazu Falls) 10/19/12 - 10/20/12

Iguazu Falls (recently added to the New 7 Wonders of Nature) can be seen from both Brazil and Argentina, but each country provides different views of the falls.  Foz de Iguacu is the town to visit to see Iguazu Falls from the Brazil  side, and this side provides a breathtaking panoramic view of the falls.  The Argentina side provides a more close-up, intimate experience with the falls.  It's nice to see it first from the Brazil side so you can appreciate the magnitude of it all.  There's somewhere between 150 and 300 waterfalls, depending on the water level, ranging from roughly 200 - 270 ft high.  We had no idea what to expect, so we were amazed, surprised, and in awe when we got our first glimpse of the falls. 

The Brazil side also offers the chance to walk out on a bridge in the middle of the "Devil's Throat" (the highest and deepest of the falls).  There is no way to stay dry on this walk even if it's not raining.  The power of the falls is indescribable. 

It takes a little less than 3 hours to do the entire walking trail to see the falls from the Brazil side.  We arrived to Foz de Iguacu mid-day and we weren't sure if we would have enough time to do the falls that day, so we decided to wait until the next day to do it.  Bad decision.  It was sunny the day we arrived, but the next day it was sprinkling most of the time, raining hard for a lot of it, and overcast the entire day.  The falls were still incredible, but the pictures in this kind of weather just do not do it justice.  Blue skies would have made it more impressive.  But, as Matt says, now we don't have to wonder what Iguazu Falls would've looked like in the rain......we know!! :-)



While in Foz do Iguacu we stayed at Green House Hostel in a room shared with one other person for $17 each.    

Sao Paulo 10/16/12 - 10/18/12

We finally managed to leave Paraty and got a bus to Sao Paulo.  The plan was to stop over here for the night, meet up with one of Kristin's previous co-workers, Uma, and start the long bus journey the next evening to Iguazu Falls.

Kristin and Uma worked together on a client back at E&Y.  Uma is still with E&Y and happened to be in Sao Paulo for a 7 week international rotation!  We managed to coordinate getting together for dinner (quite a feat without the use of cell phones) and had some of the BEST pizza in South America.  It was great meeting everyone and catching up with each other.  Thanks guys!  

Pioneer Audit Room Reunion ;-)

The next day was used to upload pictures to the computer, update the blog, return emails, etc.  Yay for finally having a good internet connection and our laptop working!  We had a bus ticket that evening, so we had all day to be productive.  This is where we spent the majority of our day ;-). 

Sao Paulo Global Hostel "living room"

We headed to the bus station that evening only to realize while grabbing a quick bite before the bus, that our bus ticket was for 20:00 hrs, and at this point it was 21:00 hrs.  For some reason we thought the bus was at 10:00 pm/ 22:00 hrs (crazy military time) so we were there by 9:00 pm, but that was an hour after our bus left. Oops!  Luckily, the bus company was super nice and simply exchanged our ticket for the next day at 8:00 pm.  Ever since the beginning of Bolivia we can't seem to manage to leave towns when we "plan" to.  Lets hope that changes soon, we only have a month left in South America and lots to see!   

Paraty 10/11/12 - 10/16/12

After our sad departure from Rio, we (Mike included!) made it to Paraty, a small colonial beach town on the coast.  Normally it is a gorgeous town with lots of character and charm.

Unfortunately the rain gods had other plans for the weekend we were there.  It rained all day every day Thursday night through Sunday night.  However, we still had a great weekend.  It was actually a Brazilian holiday weekend, so it was packed from Thursday night through Sunday.  Everything was double the price, but it was good to be there and continue our visit with Mike.

We did manage to have fun despite the rain and went out one of the days on a touristy adventure on a boat to a few of the beaches surrounding the area.  In the sunshine, pictures of the places we went to look amazing!  In the overcast and rain, many of the places still look great, just not as spectacular. 

At least we were able to get out of the hostel.  Plus any day on a boat with good company is better than a day on land.

Due to the holiday, we actually weren't able to leave until Tuesday, even though we were shooting for Sunday, because the buses were full until then.  Fortunately, the prices dropped back down to normal prices and we could make the most of our time exploring Paraty.

The next day we went on a jeep tour to the local waterfalls.  

Our guide was actually a new friend that Matt talked to every morning at breakfast.  Even though it was still raining during the tour, the waterfalls were pretty impressive due to the amount of rain from the previous three days.  There were spots where the tour usually stops to swim, but the water was so high from the rain that those spots were "flooded".  The tour also included, amongst other things, a stop at a rope swing, visit to the cachasa distillery (liquor made from fermented sugarcane juice and used in the national cocktail of Brazil, caipirinhas), and a trip to the famous huge rock water slide.  The water was freezing and fast, but the slide was so much fun!!  The rain couldn't stop us from enjoying this activity!

The last day there it was finally sunny so we spent the day on a beach close by.  It wasn't anything that special (the more beautiful beaches were a short bus ride away), but after 3 days of rain, it was good to just get out and hang out in the sunshine.  

We stayed at a Che Lagarto hostel which is a chain in South America.  It was crowded and overpriced for the holiday weekend, but we were happy to have a bed for $30 each.  Once the holiday was over, it was only $15 each.  It did include a decent breakfast though.  However, it also included two SUPER loud snorers that interrupted Kristin's beauty sleep!

Through Campo Grande to Rio de Janeiro 10/7/12 - 10/11/12

We left Bonito mid-day for a stop over in Campo Grande in order to get to Rio.  Once in Campo Grande we looked into flights to Rio and found a couple for about $25 more than the bus, but we were not able to purchase the tickets online within 24 hours of the flight.  Thus, it was another long bus ride ahead of us for the next day!

After waiting in the bus station for 6 hours, we had a night bus to Sao Paulo with quite comfortable seats.  We also had a cool stop at a restaurant (churrascaria)/gas station/store/rest stop which we referred to as the Buc-ee's (a Texas thing) of Brazil.  Matt LOVES the meat buffets in Brazil ;-).

We eventually got to Sao Paulo to exchange buses and continued on to Rio where Mike, Kristin's brother, had a driver waiting for us (sign and all) in the bus station.  It was great to have a worry-free arrival!  Mike has been coming to Rio for the past few years for his job in the oil & gas industry, and we were very excited to make it work so that we were in Rio the same time as him!!  It was so great to be around family and have our own personal tour guide and translator for the city.

The next few days in Rio were spectacular!! Rio has such a great vibe.  We stayed on Impanema beach and that part of the city feels so clean and friendly.  The combination of beaches plus amazing restaurants and a big city feel made this city very unique.  We can't say we did even close to all of the touristy things the city offers, but being in and around the city itself was pretty cool.  Our days were spent on Impanema and Copacabana beaches in the sunshine.

One day we went out paddle boarding and the view looking back at Impanema was very cool.  We thoroughly enjoyed this activity, but it was definitely much harder staying up on the board in the ocean compared to the lake we were used to.  And the water was Freezing!!! Matt really seemed to like jumping in the water off the board, aka he fell a lot.  He said it was to "cool off" but Kristin knew better ;-).

In addition to enjoying the beaches, we went up to Sugar Loaf Mountain one afternoon to have a view of the city and enjoy the sunset from on top of the mountain.  It was also spectacular to watch the sun go down and the city light up with the night lights.  Such a cool view!

Once we were done enjoying the views and were about to make our way down, Matt noticed a couple taking pictures and said, "That's Annie and Chris!", two travelers from the States that we "know" through mutual friends.  They left 2 days after we did and are on a similar trip.  We had been emailing each other at various times during our trip to see if our paths were going to cross.  No joke, that day at lunch Matt mentioned that I should send them an email that evening to see where they were since it had been about a month since we chatted.  Such a small world running into them in Rio without even knowing the other was there!!  We got to meet each other and chat about our trips for a little while.

Our nights were spent hanging out with Mike and enjoying incredible food, some of Rio's best!  Our tour guide took us out to a few of Rio's different neighborhoods including Santa Teresa (a very cool town up in the hills with a European feel) and Lapa (one of Rio's "party" areas where locals dance/ party in the streets late at night).  Both of us had been craving sushi, but were skeptical of getting it from certain countries, cough cough- Bolivia.  Our first night in Rio we went to an amazing sushi dinner, with a sushi boat and all :-). The perfect way to start our stay in Rio.

It was great to not to have to plan a thing while we were there.  A nice vacation from our travels.  Believe it or not traveling can be quite exhausting.  But, we're not complaining!  A BIG THANK YOU to Mike and everything he did for us to make our time in Rio so amazing!  I think I saw Matt shed a little tear when we had to leave.  We both agreed that Rio was our favorite city in South America so far!!

In Rio we had some info from a friend about Terrase Hostel in Ipanema just a block from the beach.  It actually worked out that it was only 3 blocks from Mike's hotel as well.  Perfect.  It was $25 each for a bed in a dorm.  We opted for the 10 bed room to avoid the crowded bunk bed situations.  Welcome to Brazil and the high prices!!