Lençois

Never before in Brazil had I heard the speech we were given before heading to Lençois. The gist of it: 1) it is required that everyone on the trip has a seguro ticket, meaning your life is insured on the trip, 2) nothing has happened before, and if God is with us, nothing should happen on this trip, and 3) there are five emergency exits, know which one is closest to you. After hearing about an overnight bus being robbed at gunpoint in the Northeast months before, we were all a little apprehensive of the trip. We chose seats in the middle of the bus, and I think each of us had a plan on what valuables we would be quick to hide (i.e. passports, phones, etc.). Luckily, the trip ended without incident, minus the fact we almost missed our stop. Apparently, Lençois was a stop on the way to another city around Chapada Diamantinha. Catherine thought she heard the driver say it was Lençois, but no one else heard him. She was right.

When we got off the bus, we were bombarded by people trying to get us to stay at their pousadas. It was a nightmare, especially at 5am. I had made a reservation, and we found the guy who was there with our Pousada. However, when we arrived, apparently, I had made the reservation for the night before, and we did not have a room. The owner was kind of a pain in the ass. He was trying to sell us day trips and get us to stay at his pousada at 6am. We ended up agreeing to stay at his mom’s pousada a little way up the road. We were offered breakfast there (which they charged us for as we were leaving the last day), and waited for our guide to come get us for our first day trip:

Stop 1: A waterfall. This is me getting ready to zipline into the water over the waterfall. 

 

Here is the waterfall I went over into the freezing cold water. 

The next place we went were a set of caves. 

Stop 3: There were snorkeling lessons that went into the cave, but we didn't go.

The other side of the cave above

Last stop: The mountains where we watched the sunset

Here is the sunset from onto of the mountains

After rowing down the river, we walked a little ways to this area.  

The second day we were not sure if we had a trip planned or not. We had talked to the owner of the hostel the day before about wanting to go to Mini Pontanal, but no one confirmed anything. The next morning he said it would be better if we went the next day instead, but we were set on going. We walked into a travel agency, and 30 minutes of phone calls later, we were on our way. It was crazy; our guide was a 20-year-old son of an actual guide. When we arrived, our driver could not find any actual guides to take us down the river and asked if he would do it, to which he agreed. To make up for our lost time, we helped him paddle the boat. We also bought lunch because we did not know if the restaurant would still be open when we arrived. The restaurant was open, but they did not have fish (which was supposed to be from the river we were rowing down), so we ate the lunch we packed. However, our guide seemed to be hungry and we told him to eat. We realized as we were eating that he was not going to eat at the restaurant. We think that he got a free meal if we ate there and nothing if we did not. We had not planned for that, but we were able to give him a sandwich and a banana (that was all we had brought: 2 bananas each and 2 sandwiches each, and we were already halfway done when we realized this). Overall, we were glad we did the day trip, freeing up the third day.

The rock formations were amazing as well.

 The third day was another crazy day. We changed our trip to go to Poço Encantado. However, the owner of the pousada could not take us there because he did not have a driver’s license (but he was driving us everywhere else). So, he had a friend take us. The problem was that the car was automatic and the guy only knew how to drive a manual. He kept shifting us from drive to park to neutral. All of us were trying to tell him how to drive and to not touch the stick. Then, he went around a corner and blew a tire. We were on the side of the road for a while; we could not find the required tools to change the tire in the car and had a bunch of people stop to help us. (The guide ended up finding it later under one of the seats, along with all of the seat belts, for which we were grateful.)

There were so many holes in this tire!

After that, we went to Poço Encantado, which I had come across on Pinterest and had wanted to see. But, the best part was the second place we stopped: Poço Azul.

Poço Encantado, or the Enchanted Well, was found by a hunter on accident. It is a pool/well within a cave with a ray of natural light hitting the water. For ten years, during the mid to late 1900’s, people were allowed to swim there. However, the water changes so slowly, that the dirt and body oils left a film on top of the water. For this reason, people are no longer allowed to swim in it.

Poço Azul is similar to Poço Encantado, but people are allowed to swim in it. Well, float in it. People must rinse off before descending into the cave, and there each person is given a life jacket and a snorkeling mask and snorkel. The history of it is crazy too. They have found the remains of giant prehistoric sloths and saber tooth tigers in the cave. There is a special about it available on youtube. The water is also extremely warm, especially for being in a cave. I think 22-24 degrees Celsius.

Overall, the trip was amazing and full of crazy stories, but the owner of the pousada was someone we are all glad we never have to deal with again. We do think we got better prices then going through an agency, but it was fairly sketchy. Anyway, once again we decided on an overnight bus to skip paying for a hostel another night, and headed back to Salvador. 

Salvador

Our flight to Salvador was at 8:30 am. When I booked the tickets, I figured it was a good time to head out of Curitiba. However, it was too early to get to the airport by bus, too expensive to go by taxi, and our host offered to drive us, but he had to be at work by 7am. So, at 5:45am we all piled into the car and went to the airport.

Two 2-hour flights and a 2-hour bus ride later, we arrived near our Salvador host’s house. The thing about Salvador is that it is gigantic and the people that live there are not exactly sure what busses go where. Normally, if you ask three people, you will get three different answers, which is what happened to us. For a while, we thought we were on the wrong bus, but it ended up going right where we needed to be. The thing we were unaware of was an 80-degree angle hill we had to walk down with our bags before getting to his house. After that hill, I didn’t think I would have to workout for a while.

The next day, we got up early to drop our bags at the bus station, and took a bus to Barra.

Eating aracujé, a fried dough stuffed with sauces and shrimp

Then we met up with Catherine and her sister, Sarah, and waited to catch our 11:00pm bus to Lençois. 

Curitiba

Tuesday was a long day! After our 3.5 hour bus ride, a 2-hour flight, and another 1-hour bus ride, we arrived in the city center of Curitiba. The only problem: our Couchsurfing host in Curitiba had to work from 6-10pm, and we arrived into the center of the city at about 6pm. Guess how we solved the problem....

We spent almost 5 hours in a shopping center.

Actually, it was not that bad. The mall was an old train station. So, it had a train museum in it, which was, of course, closed. Instead, we walked around the gardens they had inside of the mall. There was even water shooting across walkways and shrub sculptures of ducks, rabbits, and what we thought were giraffes. The best part: half off caiparinhas and trying avocado ice cream. (By the way, Brazilian avocados are slightly sweet and taste more like sugar water.) Luckily, our host got out of work early and we were able to get out of the shopping center and head to his house.

The next day we headed out, when our host went to work, to catch the tourist bus line. This bus goes to all of the major tourist locations for R$29 (about $12 USD), but you only get five rides on it. These are the places we chose to visit:

Botanical Gardens

Oscar Niemeyer Eye Museum: It had a Frida Kahlo exhibit

At Unilivre

Looking over the city in the Oi Tower

The Historic District at night

That night, our host invited us to go get a drink at a bar downtown. While waiting for him, Jake and I started a conversation with someone at the bar. After a few minutes, a dispute started. Two guys were arguing, while drunk, and one had a glass beer bottle (600ml) in his hand. The drunker one somehow ended up leaning on me, and the guy we were talking to earlier suggested that the bartender call the cops. Afterwards, we went back to our conversation about this trip. All of a sudden, the guy cuts himself off and asks if we are going to be at the bar a while longer. Then he disappears. Thirty minutes later, he comes back with a present for Jake and me.

After opening the book when we got back to our host’s home that night, it took us a minute to figure out why he had given us this book. I guess the author of the book was from Curitiba and then moved to Paraty (one of our later destinations). Later, he travelled around the world by boat. (Or, something like that.)

Our last day was spent with one of our friends from FURG who is from Curitiba. However, we had not really made a plan for the day. At 9am, I get a phone call from her telling me she is 6 minutes away. I was still sleeping. Jake and I hurried to meet up with her and spent the day walking around Santa Felicidade, an Italian area of Curitiba, and hanging out in a park in the city center.

Wine Tasting

Capivaras in the park!

Submarinos are a pint of beer with a shot of Steinager in a shot glass that is dropped into the middle of it. The tradition in Curitiba is to collect the shot glasses afterward. [Coming soon: More information on Jake’s blog post about Submarinos at www.thejakeperience.blogspot.com]

Overall, the entire trip was amazing! Our first true experience as surfers was great and we are excited to continue surfing in the future. 

It's the Start of Something New: Couchsurfing

As everyone in our house prepared to travel throughout the month on August, Jake and I decided to give Couchsurfing a chance. Over the past two months, we have opened our home on three different occasions for Couchsurfers. Now, we decided it was time to try surfing for ourselves. The process of just filling out requests was an experience in and of itself.

Two nights ago, we decided that the best option to get to Porto Alegre today was to stay in Pelotas last night. So, I sent out a couch request and had a response almost immediately. Unfortunately, the person could not host us at his house because he had owned a hostel and had been working a lot recently. However, he told us that he would like to host us in his hostel for the night, for free, and had already made a reservation. Jake and I were shocked, but grateful. 

Getting to the hostel was an adventure. We caught a bus to Pelotas, and at some point, I decided it might be a good idea to ask if anyone knew where the street of the hostel was. When I asked the bus driver, he said it was the stop he had just pulled away from, but that he would be returning to it. I wasn't exactly sure what he meant by that, but we stayed on the bus. When we arrived at the rodoviaria, he told us if we wanted a ride to the street, he would take us there.

Once on the correct street, we realized we were in the 400's and needed to be in the 900's. We didn't realize it was more than 5 blocks. Like 10 blocks and two parks later, we arrived. But just the comforters on each bed made it worth it. They were AMAZING! It was the first time I didn’t wake up cold in the middle of the night in a long time. Our host, another guest, and our host ate pizza that tasted like a coxina, and I thought it was great. The best part was that our conversations easily slide back and forth between Portuguese and English, and it was great!

Shameless Plug: For anyone looking for a hostel in Pelotas though, I would highly recommend staying at Hello Hostel. Everything about it is nice!

Now we are on our way to Curitiba…

Murder Mystery

This semester, I taught a 12-week beginner English course. The idea for the class was that it was a conversational based course for student who had little to no English knowledge. When planning the course, I was not sure how I could encourage conversations if the students didn’t have the vocabulary or grammar knowledge in English. So, I decided that the final exam would be a Murder Mystery game, and worked back from there. In addition, I made it an activity based course to encourage conversations. For example, we did a photo scavenger hunt throughout campus one day (which was hilarious and the students loved it), in two teams the class created an imaginary town, etc. This class made me realize I thoroughly enjoy teaching at the university level, but not younger than that.  

Last week Wednesday was their final exam. It had been a three-week series. We had a professor, who had done his Master’s thesis on Sherlock Holmes, come in and talk about Sherlock Holmes, mystery literature, and common character personalities. Then, I told the students the premise of who died in relation to the final exam game, and they chose their characters from a list (the list consisted of relationships to the deceased, such as wife, child, co-worker, friend, etc). Afterwards, their homework was to create their character. Here is the worksheet they had to fill out:

Then, they needed to create a routine for their characters. Over the following few days, I tied all the characters, motives, etc. together into one complete story, with a few twists and turns. On the day of the exam, I gave each student a clue sheet divided into three parts: 1) what they can say to begin with, 2) after new evidence was found, what they could add to the story, and 3) an alibi.

My students also earned cupcakes if they dressed up for their part. (I have realized that baking in Brazil is extremely difficult because the oven is in Celsius, has a different range, is not always correct, ingredients are sometimes different, etc.) Anyway, here is what my students looked like:

Although there were a few kinks, the story was more or less:

Franklin P. Dolittle owned Dolittle’s Funeral Home. Tuesday night, his wife found him in a coffin, partially embalmed (thank outside help for that part…Catherine and Jake…). What had happened was Franklin’s brother-in-law happened to be head of the Italian Mafia, and when Franklin’s brother and brother-in-law wanted Franklin in on their new drug ring, money from the mafia went missing. The brother-in-law thought Franklin stole it, so he went to beat the info out of him. Franklin’s mother saw this happening and wanted to know what was going on, out of rage that all of her children were part of the mafia, she killed him and tried to frame the wife. The wife being a nurse would know how to embalm, kind of, so the mom did just that. But she heard a noise and fled. Franklin’s employee, came in and found him that way and moved him to the coffin.

Obviously, there was more than that to the story, but overall, it was amazing! Only the priest was able to guess that the mother did it. I am so excited to see how it goes next semester!

—Two weeks later—

By the way, I am doing other things as well, but this class always made my day. They were a great group of students, and most are continuing in a second level next semester with me. I did teach an American Culture and Academic Life course for those going abroad in August. After the class ended, we did an American BBQ. 

Riviera & Alegrete

The week after we hosted brunch happened to be a long weekend. Thursday was a holiday, so most of the university was shut down on Friday, and then Monday was a Brazilian World Cup game. Jake’s new Gaúcho friend, Antonio, and his fiancé, Tchana, invited us to see their hometown, Alegrete.

Of course, at 5:30am, as we piled into the car, the first thing Antonio did was hand Jake chimarrão. After stopping at a farm to feed Antonio’s horses, and being surrounded by cows, we figured out we were on our way to Riviera, Uruguay for a chá de bebe. (It took me awhile to realize they were not talking about tea, it means baby shower.) And, I laughed as Jake and Antonio conversed the entire trip. (Remember that this was about a month after he arrived, and Antonio does not speak that much English.)

“Riviera is so much bigger than Chui,” was the first thought that went through my head when we arrived. I was surprised. It had just started getting winter coat cold in Rio Grande, and Jake had not brought a jacket. So, we spent a large part of the time looking for a coat for him. Of course, it couldn’t be a winter coat, like a North Face or Columbia jacket, it needed to be a Gaúcho jacket. These thermal jackets are wool button-ups look like lumberjack shirts, but are warmer. The biggest problem was Jake was too tall for the jackets. They didn’t have long enough sleeves, were too wide and still didn’t cover his torso, etc. I think we must have looked at 20+ stores. He did happen to find one that fit, and decided not to buy it at that time. Later, while the women went to the baby shower, Jake and the guys went back to buy the jacket and look for other Gaúcho items, specifically a mateira (the thing in which to carry all the chimarrão stuff).

Jake, in his new jacket, and me in Alegrete

I happened to find a 16G memory card for $12 (USD). I might have taken 300+ pictures over the 3 days…Here is the weekend through pictures:

 

The baby shower was an interesting experience. Let’s just say for the friend hosting the party, cost was not an issue. We walked into a pool house that was completely heated, with food on the table and workers bringing out drinks and more options. The best game that we played was strange, to say the least. Someone came out with a bucket of ice cubes. Within each ice cube was a plastic 1-inch baby and the water had been flavored with strawberries. The first one to suck the ice cube and free the baby won.

Lunch Line at Tchana's House. By the way, her dad is an amazing cook.

Antonio's brother-in-law invited us to see his horses. Although this isn't where is horses are, the landscape and experience was great. They kept saying it was the real gaúcho experience. 

Pecan Tree: I had no idea that pecans are covered by two different shells, the green one you see here, which is soft, and then the hard one below.

We picked up fallen pecans for the apple pie I made later that night. We also found out that you can open pecans by crushing two together. 

This is what a "real" gaúcho looks like. He works on the farm we were at. He is currently heating up water for chimarrão in the little can/pot over the fire.

This statue is in Alegrete. Can you guess who/what that is supposed to be?

We taught them how to play poker. We didn't have money or anything to use to show betting, so we improvised with pinhão, a type of pine nut. I was dealer for 5-card draw.

On the way home, we stopped in Bagé. We were looking for a mateira for Jake, and picked up one of Antonio's friends. On the way back from the 3 store border town next to Bagé, we stopped at this farm. While talking, we were invited to pick a type of orange off of the tree by the house and eat them. It was the first time I have ever done that. 

Fenadoce

A while back, the ETAs in Pelotas told us about a festival of doces that was going to occur in June. At the time, they did not have a lot of information, but I was excited. A festival of sweets? Count me in.

Pelotas, RS is famous for its sweets. Since Rio Grande is about an hour from Pelotas, doces de Pelotas are everywhere. Even the three snack shops at FURG sell a variety of them. Catherine and I have decided that doces de nozes (it is like a pecan truffle thing) is one of the best. The doces de amendoim (peanut truffle thing), is at the top of the list as well. Of course, I was excited to go to the festival, but I had no idea what to expect besides lots of sweets.

After waiting in line, two friends, Jake, and I entered Fenadoce and we were met by carnival rides, a giant building, and food tents. It was incredible. The building alone was gigantic. It housed booth after booth of people selling food, books, all things Gaúcho, clothes, blankets, and more. Additionally, other booths had travel and business information. Behind the booths sat the Cidade de Doces, the city of sweets. Set up as a mini town with little storefronts lining the indoor streets, place after place were selling doces. It was amazing. Our friends even bought us a cuia (the chimarrão cup), and engraved it: Lembrança dos amigos do Alegrete (A reminder of your Alegrete friends).

Jake and me in front of Cidade de Doces.

Cidade de Doces
I forgot to mention that the mascot of Fenadoce is an ant...

Jake found a giant cuia that he wanted to take home.

Doces
The doces de nozes are the milk chocolate and white chocolate covered sweets in the middle.

The doces even look like the Brasilian flag.

Once we had eaten our weight in sweets, we moved to another small building. As we sat and drank quentão (warm, spiced wine), we watched a group perform typical Gaúcho dances. Although the entire event was incredible, I was done eating doces for a while.