Weather

When Papai made his first trip to Joinville in September the weather was absolutely perfect.  It was spring and the temperature was in the 70s with little humidity.  That wasn't the Brazil that I knew, but 13 years ago I was in Sao Paulo in June (wintertime there) and it did get pretty cold because it was a humid cold.  I had a thick furry blanket to sleep with and I needed it since there aren't heaters there that I know of.  Still, it was hard for me to believe the weather could be so comfortable in Brazil.

Well, we arrived in Joinville in November, still in Spring, and it was NOT comfortable!  Supposedly it doesn't get much higher than 87 here but with the humidity it is just really, really hot.  The first weekend here we walked to the nearby zoo and walked around there for a couple of hours from about 4-6pm.  We were positively drenched in sweat--literally dripping--and not just a drop or two.   At least the Brazilians were complaining, too.  That made me feel a little better.  Later that week Papai looked up the temperature and it was 93 degrees that day.  With the humidity, the local weather place claimed it felt like 116 degrees.  YIKES!!!  

The next day my companion, Dani (short for Daniele) and her family came to visit.  We had the air conditioning on but my companion asked that we turn it off because her baby wasn't used to being so cold.  Whew.  That seems to be a general thing here. The temperature drops just low enough to start being comfortable to us and the Brazilians complain that it's cold. They are just used to the heat. The week we stayed at Dani's family's beach house there was no air conditioning.  So when we arrived at the local chapel for church and discovered it had air conditioning we were in HEAVEN!!!  But not the Brazilians--we heard several of them comment on how cold the chapel was (mostly women--I imagine the men appreciate it in their long sleeve suits and socks and shoes).  

Here's another example of how hot it is. As a rule, for my own personal reasons, I put on make-up every single day without fail and I never ever, ever wear shorts.  I don't even own a single pair.  At home, on vacation, camping, even backpacking (just ask my dad) I adhere to my rules.  However, with heat at the beach house, without air conditioning, make-up melted off my face as I was putting it on the first day and I didn't bother with it again the rest of the time at the beach house.  Also, I didn't care what I (or my legs) looked like, I had my pants rolled up to my knees the whole time.  My hair was up in a messy knot on my head. It was survival mode for us!  Thank goodness for showers, the ocean, and the church's air conditioning.  Those were our few moments of respite.

So we are living in weather a bit warmer than we bargained for but bit by bit we are getting used to it.  We like to play a game when we get up in the morning called, "Let's-See-How-Long-We-Can-Last-Without-the-Air-Conditioner."  It's a very short game most days--like 10-15 minutes short. Thankfully, we have air conditioning.  It only cools the two front rooms but thank goodness we have that much. It does cool off a bit at night but we still need the overhead fans and we sleep with our windows open to get a breeze since the air conditioning doesn't reach the bedrooms well.  We just turn it off at night. The fan in master bedroom doesn't work so we ended up buying a fan and life and sleep is much better now.

I remember this kind of heat and humidity in Recife.  Recife is only 8 degrees south of the border so it was pretty much hot all the time, all year.  I remember flying from Sao Paulo to Recife in August (nearing the end of winter) and as I walked off the air conditioned plane and towards the airport it was like walking into a dishwasher.  People with glasses will understand.  You know how it is when you open the dishwasher door right after it's finished?  There's just this heavy, tangible wave of heat and steam that makes it hard to breathe?  That was Recife--IN THE WINTER, and that's what it's like here on most days.  I hear it's at least somewhat cooler and less humid in the winter here at least.

Update:  When I started this post over a month ago, any time we commented to a Brazilian how hot is was, they'd say, "This is just the beginning.  It gets WAAAAY hotter here."  Then they'd tell us about last summer and how it got so hot for so long, they thought it was the end of the world.  Literally. Or that the devil had taken up residence in Joinville. Now that we're smack dab in the middle of their summer I can attest--it has only gotten hotter.   I didn't think it was possible but wow, it is HOT.  Here are a few examples to illustrate just how hot and humid it is:

1. It isn't even refreshing to go swimming in our apartment's pool in the afternoon because the temperature is not regulated so the water is almost too hot to swim in in the afternoon.
2. I pretty much can't get my kids to go out of the house anywhere during the day because after even just 5 minutes of walking outside we all need showers because we are wet with sweat
3. We close off all the doors in our apartment so that our air conditioner only cools the family room and even then it's still not always comfortable.  Definitely better but still not always in the comfortable, sweat-free zone.
4. Papai's co-worker admitted to taking FIVE showers this weekend--just to help stay cool.
5. The grocery store is less than a mile from our house but it is seriously a race to get home before our frozen foods thaw.
6. Chocolate must be kept in the fridge or becomes semi-melted.
7. Even with a fan blowing on us all night, wet hair, minimal pajamas, and no covers it's tough to sleep.  Last night I gave up and slept on the couch with the air conditioning on.

That being said, we have now spend several weekends in the Curtitiba area and while it still gets pretty darn hot there as well, it is a little more bearable there and even cools off slightly at night.   

The other big thing about the weather here is the rain.  Joinville is also known as Chuvaville or Rainville.  I think it has rained at least every other day if not almost every day we have been here. You get a warning sprinkle to start with and when you do, you know to move AND FAST cause the downpour is on it's way.  WOW-does it pour--more like a bucket dumping!  Streets become flowing rivers sometimes.  When you are driving the highest wiper speed often still does not cut through the rain on your windshield.  It's amazing.  Often thunder and lighting accompany the rain.  We have seen some AMAZING lighting storms here.  Sometimes its like someone is flicking a lightswitch on and off in the sky--just huge general light all over and other times we see ragged zig zags that rip the sky and zap the hills.  Sometimes the thunder rattles the apartment and other times it claps it's own beat in the background of the storm.  Yesterday the lightning and thunder pounded out on top of each other so that even I was a bit nervous.  Our kids are slowly getting used to it.  They have headphones and play games and listen to their music.  The Boss doesn't even need his headphones any more.  A lot of times the rain is over almost as quickly as it starts, sometimes it may last for several hours but I have never seen it last all day here.  Usually it's loud, and powerful, and throws it's tantrum in one big burst and then it's over and done and we're back to sunny skies and more heat and humidity.

Weekend Adventure #11 Florianopolis

Florianopolis, or Floripa, as they all it for short here, is the state capital of Santa Catarina.  It's a huge island even farther south than Bombinhas with over 40 beaches and a huge lake in the middle of the island.  We'd heard a lot of good things about Floripa so we decided we were going to have to get a hotel overnight to take full advantage of our time there.  We left this trip for the end of our time in Brazil because everyone says the beaches are much more crowded in the summer and that the hotels are more expensive so we waited for the end of the summer season.  School starts up again the first couple weeks in February so we aimed for that time.

I researched the beaches to figure out where we should stay and where we wanted to visit and then Papai searched out a hotel.  To be honest, there weren't a lot of hotels in our price range--even for one night.  Maybe that was partly because we wanted to stay right ON the beach.  Eventually, Papai found one on Canasvieiras Beach or about R$680 (Notice how I finally figured out the right way to write that?  So much less awkward than $680 reais...) that had beach access.  I used Google Maps and dropped the little guy in on the street near our Porto del Sol Hotel to walk around and see where we were going.  Based on what I saw, I wasn't sure about this hotel.  It was kind of off by itself and surrounded by dirt roads.  But it did have beach access....

January 30-31

Papai took off work a little early and we ended up leaving at 1:30pm about an hour and a half after our goal of noon (which was unreasonable anyway considering Papai was planning on getting home from work right at noon).  We made the same trek south towards Bombinhas that we've made the past two weeks on the freeway and then we passed it.  There's a bridge you drive over to cross onto the island and next to that bridge is the famous Hercilio Luz Bridge.  On New Years we watched the fireworks on TV that were shot off that bridge and it was SPECTACULAR!!!  They had fire shooting down from each cable on the bridge--it was awesome!  So it was fun to see the bridge in person.

Hercilio Luz Bridge

As we drove into the city we were super impressed.  It was GORGEOUS!  Lush green plants everywhere, palms and tropical flowers lined the roads.  The streets were clean and several lanes wide--nothing like the one tiny "main" road through Bombinhas that goes from pavement, to cobblestone, to dirt.  I thought, "This appears to be more 1st world than even Curtitiba to me."  (Though, I must admit--as we traveled around the rest of the island the next day while it was still very pretty there were plenty of areas that I thought, "Oh yeah, this is still Brazil.")  But we were very impressed with the downtown area.  The kids noticed a McDonalds with a play place (that's the first one we've seen, another restaurant, Habibs, is more likely to have play places than McDonalds here) and wanted to go there.  So we promised them we'd go on the way home.

Huge Angeloni's supermarket--a very common one here

I like the rounded corners of the buildings here like the one on the right.  It's a common sight.

We made it to the hotel around 5pm (3 1/2 hours of driving--not too bad....) and we were really, REALLY nervous because we forgot our passports and visas at home.  I haven't done a lot of foreign travel but I'm surprised how often they want to check our documents.  We couldn't buy any of our large furniture items without proper documentation (even with cash!), and my friend said you can't get on a bus to a different state without proper documentation for you and your children.  She says they have big problems with people kidnapping children either to sell to couples from the States wanting to adopt or to use them for their own purposes.  Anyway, we were super nervous that the hotel was going to turn us away.  However, when Papai filled out the forms and they requested our passport numbers, we didn't ask questions and just filled in driver license numbers.  We figured the car rental place let us do that and then later fax over our passport info. so we tried that here.   They didn't even question it--whew!

We got our room, which we paid a little extra for to have a beach view and we were thrilled with it! It smelled and appeared super clean.  The staff brought us an extra bed for The Boss because the room had a queen and a twin.   We had a beautiful view and could hear the waves from our veranda. Safari Girl even found shells on the veranda. It was so fun to watch Safari Girl.  Both she and The Boss slept for quite a bit of the drive and you could see it in Safari Girl's mood.  Everything single thing was completely delightful and exciting to her.  It was cute!

View from our room

Kids at the lounge area on our floor

The hotel had a playground so we let the kids try that out for a bit.  We had planned on hanging out at the beach that evening and swimming but it was sprinkling and even the slightest bit cold so the kids had no interest doing that.  Instead we took a long walk on the beach.  I got in 4-5 miles of walking that day without even trying.  Safari Girl collected shells and made a cool sand "crab" in the sand.  The Boss wrote his name.  We found the sand pocked with one inch thin pointed spiral shells with snails in them.  They were everywhere!  Papai found the entire top side of a crab shell in perfect condition!  (No body but it's eyes were still there,  Ew!)  Safari Girl was over the moon excited and couldn't wait to take that home with us to show her class.  She made me take a picture right away in case it broke. When The Boss couldn't stand walking anymore (and when we reached our designated spot on the beach horizon) and when it started sprinkling again, we headed back.   It was a heavier sprinkle than earlier so it was good to get out of it.

QueroQuero Bird

Crab shell Papai found and The Boss's picture in the sand

Safari Girl's Sand Flea

These sea snails were all over where sand fleas usually are.

I stink at taking selfies but you gotta love that background!

I think these were some private residences on the beach.

Next we explored our hotel room.  We found that the TV actually had some channels in English so the kids were able to watch Alvin and the Chipmunks 3.  The rain let up but the kids were engrossed and didn't want to leave the room.  We hadn't eaten dinner so we broke out the cereal, bowls, and milk I brought along.  Milk here doesn't have to be refrigerated--we do anyway for the taste but the mini fridge hadn't cooled it much yet so we ate cereal with warm milk.  I was super exhausted after having my friend stay with us all last week (some very late nights!) so I was about ready to pass out, but when Papai suggested, "One of us should be out there enjoying the beach we're at!  Do you want to go hang out there?"  I jumped at the chance!  I grabbed my book and walked out there.  The hotel had beach towels and umbrellas for us to use so I grabbed a chair, planted myself in it, and started my book.










Oh, blissful heaven!  I don't think I've been that relaxed in ages!!  It was after seven and compared to the beach at Bombinhas, this one was empty.  Just me and the sound of the waves and my book.  I enjoyed my perfect haven until about 8pm when between the sprinkling rain, and the guilty thought of, "I really should probably go help put the kids to bed...." I figured it was time to head out.

I picked up my chair and headed to the stairs and ran into Safari Girl.  Funny how suddenly, right at bedtime, the kids want to come to the beach.  Papai showed up with The Boss seconds later and we decided to let the kids play a little before bedtime. I made a couple of trips back to the room with The Boss while Papai and Safari Girl set up camp on the beach.  I can't remember what we went for but we got there and my key wasn't working so I had to go back to get the working key from Papai.  We finally all got settled in to let the kids play a little bit and then Papai was getting eaten alive by mosquitos.  (called Piernalongas here--literally "Long Legs" and Papai and I both thought our friends were refering to the daddy spider for the longest time!)  Anyway, mosquitos drove us back to our room after a short time.

Playing on the beach at bedtime!

Everyone was hungry and hotel's restaurant was open so we took our beach toys back to our room and headed for the restaurant.  Theere we got the most pleasant surprise--this huge dinner buffet was included in our hotel price!  That right there is worth about R$80.  We only had to buy drinks.  Dinner included rice and beans, fried fish, chicken thighs, beef, roasted potatoes, a carrot-broccoli-cauliflower veggie medley with some sort of common sauce they use here, some garlic noodles and more, including a salad bar.  We ate our little hearts out.  The chicken was expecially amazing--seasoned really well.  For dessert they had this delicious chocolate mousse, and some sort of cake/tiramisu type thing with bananas.  I thought the mousse was better.  The banana thing had this bread stuff in the bottom and I thought it would have been better with something crunchier. Texture issues--that's me!

The restaurant/cafeteria

Dinner

Dessert (The Boss put the lime on the plate)

We finished dinner sometime after 9pm and headed back to go to bed.  Except between having just ate, having taken long naps that day, and the excitement of a new place, the kids were wired.  We found Nanny McPhee on TV and put that on while Papai and I took turns showering.  Papai fell asleep early but I stayed up and finsihed the movie with the kids.  Even after that, The Boss still had a tough time calming down.  He wanted to play iPad still!  I put an end to that and I think we both fell asleep quickly.

In the morning, despite our plans to get up early, I didn't get up until 7:30.  Safari Girl got up as well and the two of us left for a beach walk while the boys slept.  I LOVE being on the beach early in the morning.  It's really hard to do unless you stay at the beach overnight so this was a rare treat for me!  When I was a teenager and living far from my grandparents, I adopted this older couple on my street for my own.  Their parents had a beach house in Cambria, California and one time I got to spend an entire week with them at the beach house.  That was one of the most awesome weeks in my life.  I'll never forget it.  The morning walking on the beach with Safari Girl surpassed even that!  We walked to the dock, looking for shells along the way.  I loved spending some one-on-one time with her just exploring.  We saw a seagull eating a fish.  We found shells.  We took pictures on the dock.  We watched the tourist pirate ships sail in for the day.  It was awesome.

Hard to see in the picture but this is the little shack where you could buy tickets for the pirate ships.  It was perfectly appropriately run-down and weathered.

Panoramics taken from the dock

Just as we arrived back at the hotel we ran into Papai and The Boss who had just come down to find us .  We took care of our stuff and headed for breakfast (also included in the price of the hotel).  The buffet for breakfast was equally awesome.  One table included a fruit and sandwich bar.  For breakfast and/or dinner here, it's very common here to have sort of bread or roll with cheese, ham, and mayo, or with doce de leite spread.  They had yogurt, scrambled eggs, the little pigs in a blanket that my kids love, tons of bread/roll options, these yummy little cheese bread balls called Pao Queijo and cereal.  I wasn't sure about the cereal. They had more options than I've seen here before for cereal but they put each type out on the table in one cereal sized bowl.  Do they sprinkle the cereal on their yogurt or something?  Are you supposed to take one entire bowl and then they'll replace it?  There were so many other choices (and no milk in sight) so we just ate other things.  They also had one whole section of the table for cakes--chocolate, banana, lime, and more.  Cakes?  For breakfast?  The kids were in heaven!  (Granted--their cakes aren't quite as sugary and sweet as your average American cake...)  Anyway, we ate a very hearty breakfast.

Breakfast Buffet

Lime cake

 Fruit buffet for breakfast

Again we wanted to head to the beach but The Boss really wanted to try out the game room. They had pool, ping pong, and foosball.  We played a couple games of foosball and then Safari Girl and Papai headed to the room to get dressed for the beach while I stayed and played ping pong with The Boss at his insistence.

After some time we finally, finally all made it to the beach.  The kids had a grand time with the beach toys we bought here.  I think Papai had just as much fun building an excellent sandcastle with them.  It was making every passerby smile.  After some time, I went back to the room and got Safari Girl's snorkel mask and then we went swimming.  The water was very calm once we got past the small breaking waves and Safari Girl loved swimming around me and diving with her mask to see if she could see anything.  The water wasn't as clear here as it was at Bombinhas but it was still fairly clear.  We spent about a little over an hour on the beach and then I went in to shower and pack.  Check-out time was noon.  When I was done and went to get Papai, the kids wanted to be done, too.  So we all headed back, showered, packed and checked out.  We didn't even make it to the gorgeous pool!

I love this one of Safari Girl working busily and The Boss watching the boat.

Papai like to make sure we take pictures like this to send to his co-workers living in winter just to give them a hard time....

The nearly finished sandcastle complete with moat and bridge.

Awesome pool but we prefered the beach!

With our stuff all packed up, we were off to explore the island of Florianopolis and to do some beach hopping.  Our first stop was the beach of Brazil's rich and famous--Jurere.  A friend of mine told us that Florianopolis is like our Hamptons and Jurere would be the beach most comparable.  (By the way, I was super impressed that my English speaking Brazilian friend even knew about the Hamptons since the only way I know about them is through that TV show Revenge.  Turns out that's the way she knows about them, too!  So funny!)  After visiting the beach, I wouldn't say that they are exactly comparable but it was definitely the beach of wealthier and beautiful people.  We took a few pictures and left since The Boss wanted to be carried the whole way so his feet didn't have to touch the sand.

Jurere Beach--with the yacht club in the background

Next we backtracked to the east, passed the beach we stayed at (Canasvieiras Beach) and stopped at a lookout over what Papai is telling me was Praia Brava.  He wanted to take one of those pictures wtih his BYU shirt on that appears in the BYU magazine so we did that in several places.  We stopped so many places, I can't remember now hardly which was which but the lookout was beautiful!  The kids were already getting antsy to go home so we told them we'd "only" make 10 more stops and then we'd take them to McDonald's.






I really wanted to make it to Praia Mole, which is a famous and beautiful surfing beach so that was our end goal.  We drove around awhile and made it to Santinho Beach and then it was a dead end.  Papai's co-worker had told him that the island was really well marked so we didn't worry too much about figuring out directions.  I guess we should have.  The turn off for Praia Mole from where we were on the north east side of the island was not well marked and we missed it.  We ended up driving back west and south across the island and finding it from there.  It took a good two hours just to find it.  Papai didn't worry too much about that lost time because he was enjoying exploring and the rest of us were taking some much needed naps!  When I woke up I was about ready to give up on Praia Mole and go home.  It seemed like we were seeing a lot of the same area.  Boy, am I GLAD we didn't give up!  The best was yet to come!

On our way we saw this cool Art House made completely out of glass bottles.  My pictures don't do it justice but it was like this little mini treasure hunt to see what cool things were included in this art castle.  There were windshields and glass mosiacs and all kinds of interesting things.  The "castle" was a hostel you could stay at.  So that was a fun little find.





Once we knew we were on the right track to arrive at Praia Mole, we perked up.  It turned out to be very cool to see the rest of the island.  We drove over a bridge separating the huge lake.  People were swimming, fishing, jet skiing, paddle boarding and more.    The bridge was very low and the water came right up to the road almost so we felt like we were driving through the lake.  We drove up a crazy switchback hill through thick, green forest to a look-out over the lake and we went a little tourist crazy.  One thing we've noticed here is that they definitely do NOT capitalize to full capacity on the whole tourist thing.  I've been hardpressed to find a decent postcard of any place that we've been.  They do sell a lot of handcrafted items and we've seen some T-shirts and mugs in a few places but it seems like they could do a whole lot more.  So this look-out had some touristy stuff and we bought into it hook, line, and sinker. As we were I looked around and told Papai, "Well, I think we've made every vendor here happy!" The kids got Florianopolis T-shirts from the guy selling them from out of his car, I got some sugar cane juice from the juice guy, we all got churros from the churro lady, and we bought a instant photo of ourselves from the photo place.  After all was said and done though, it only came to about US$25.  Not too bad.





Driving over the lake so close to water

Churros done right--filled with chocolate/dulce de leite and covered with it on top as well.
  

We finally made it to Praia Mole and it did not disappoint!  I think it was possibly my favorite beach that day.  We parked on the street and hiked down a little path to get to the beach.  On the way we passed these great, humoungous plants.  The pictures don't do it justice.  These plants were taller than us!  At the beach, the water was this gorgeous sea foam green and I LOVED the huge waves and listening to them crash.  I don't know if I've ever actually seen a tube wave before.  It was totally awesome!  And just like the beach's name (Soft Beach) the sand was super soft and squishy--almost like walking on snow--your foot just sank into it.  It was just all around gorgeous.  Totally not a beach to swim at with kids but I could have sat and watched the waves and the surfers all day.  I think because the waves were so strong, there was a steep decline from the dry sand to the wet sand.  I hardly even let my kids go to the wet sand and when I went there and got distracted for a second taking a picture, a wave came up out of nowhere and got me wet to my knees!  Safari Girl found a HUGE mussel shell so she was thrilled.  The Boss refused to even stand on the sand so we stayed as long as we could either hold him or listen to his anger about having to stand in the stand and then we left.  In the Boss's defense it had been a long, boring (to him) day with a lot of driving and walking.  I just wanted to see one surfer catch a wave and I finally did.

Famous surfer statue, hiking the short hike to the beach

Huge spiny plant--taller than us!

A tube wave!

The kids were just about at their wits end waiting to go to McDonalds so when we pulled off at one last look-out they were NOT happy and didn't even want to get out of the car.  Papai and I took turns getting out to look at the look-out and to help The Boss look for his shell he dropped somewhere in the back seat.  The look-out turned out to be one of the best things that happened that day though because there we noticed a sign saying "Project Tamar 3km" and it had a picture of a sea turtle on it.  I think Papai had already heard of this place and since we were already so close and Safari Girl was super enthusiastic about the possibility that hse might get to see a sea turtle we went ahead and went exploring for it.





We found parking.  It was free but as is very common here, there was a guy there that decided to make this street his responsibility.  You pay him in exchange for him watching your car.  There's nothing official about it and techinically, you don't have to pay but I've heard that if you don't you might come back to a broken window or slashed tire.  That sounds awful but in reality if you DO pay him for parking you get a lot more than if you just chose to park in a paid parking spot.  If it's a really busy street the guy will stop traffic for you and guide you into your spot, and he does actually watch the car for you.  There's usually a suggested amount and it's usually about of R$5 but you can pay as much or as little as you want.  Anyway, when I first learned about it I thought it was really annoying that someone would have the audacity to just choose a street on their own and charge people to park there, but now that we're used to it and have seen the benefits, it's not so bad.

So we parked and went into this place.  Project Tamar is a sea turtle education place.  Brazil has lots of fisherman who hunt sea turtles and have done it for generations so it's tough to just tell them to stop their profession.  This Project is meant to educate people on sea turtles so they will encourage others not to hurt sea turtles and to raise funds to help the sea turtle hunters find a different occupation.  (Or something like that--I was with the kids while Papai listened to a presentation.)  It was pretty cheap--The Boss was free, Safari Girl was R$5 and adults were R$10 each so I think we paid about US$10 for all of us.   It was small but it was SO COOL!!!

We got to see real live HUGE sea turtles.  They had maybe 10-15 sea turtles in the whole park in various blue fiberglass pools (a very common type of pool here).  There were wooden boardwalks connecting all the pools and only a wooden railing between us and the turtles.  If we had wanted to (if it had been allowed) we could have easily touched these guys.  I have never seen such huge turtles before.  They were very socialable.  They would swim around and seemed to come right over to us and look at us when we came to the edge of the pool.

Besides just watching the turtles, which was awesome enough by itself, they had a darling little art room where kids could color a sea creature, they had life size models of a variety of different sea turtles, they had places you could see how measure up to a variety of sea turtles, a fishing boat to play on, and several photo op places.  The kids had fun with those.  There was a little theater in the back for presentations as well.  They had a room with sea turtle shells, skeletons, and real babies in formaldehyde.  We got to see a display of a sea turtle nest.  Did you know they can lay up to 120 eggs multiple times in one season?  It worked out to be over 1000 eggs that they can lay in one season and usually only 1-2 of those makes it to adulthood.

 Safari Girl loved seeing this sea turtle with the long tail.

Anyway, this was a fantastic, super fun, surprise find for us on our fun day.  It definitely added magic to our day.  While I was walking around with The Boss he turn to me and said, "This is the most fun thing we've done all day!  Thank you so much for brining me here, Mom!"  Words to melt the heart, right?  It wasn't hard to see Safari Girl loved it as well.  She left very impressed with a specific sea turtle that had a long tail.  "I never knew sea turtles could have such long tails!" she repeated many times.  We spent maybe an hour or so there and then made the gift shop happy.  The Boss came away with a cool lenticular cup and Safari Girl got a small stuffed turtle.  The prices were fairly outrageous there but since we haven't bought much along the way, it was okay.  There was a beach right there--Barra da Lagoa so much to The Boss's dismay we had to quickly go check that out as well.  Then finally, FINALLY (in the kids' minds at least) it was time to head home and make our stop at McDonalds on the way out.

Barra da Lagoa

On the drive there we passed some of the sand dunes that nearly every Brazilian mentioned when we talked about going to Floripa.  "It's so fun for kids!" they all said.  But they don't know our kids who don't want to touch sand.  So you can guess why we skipped out on that part of touring Floripa.  Driving into the downtown area was just gorgeous again--wide, clean streets lined with the fancy looking type of palm trees, the beautiful white skyscrapers with all their lights on, lush greenery everywhere, walking paths right long the water, and very nice bike lanes.  Again, my pictures don't do it justice.

Dunes-this just shows the small entrance to the HUGE dune area.

Awesome bike lanes

Mall

Downtown

Even at McDonald's we had a beautiful view of the city at dusk.  I was a little worried about the time--we had a long drive ahead and it was already 8pm when we arrived at McDonald's.  But our driver, Papai, was okay with the kids actually eating and then playing for a little while.  I think it was good for them to run around and end the day they in a way they were happy.  We got ice cream as well--a huge cone is only US$.80 and Papai and I tried an Ovomaltine McFlurry.  The ice cream at McDonald's here is so yummy!  The Ovomaltine had little mini M&Ms covered in Ovaltine (malt/chocolate powder).  SO GOOD!



With our tummies full, we headed home.  We got to see the Hercilio Luz Bridge all lit up and we only had a little sprinkle of rain all the way home.  For some reason, the drive felt super long to me even though it was only two hours.  Oh, yeah--the drivers were CrAzY!!!  That's why!  We haven't had much experience with that since we've mostly driven it in intense summer lightning storms.  But I'll save that for another post.  We got home around 11 so happy with our fabulous weekend in Floripa.  I think it will definitely be one of our most favorite memories of this Brazilian experience.  I highly recommend going if you ever get the chance and we didn't even make it to the southern end of the island.  I would have loved to visit Ilha da Campeche, which is this preserved island with gorgeous crystal clear waters and lots of coatimundis (otherwise known as hog-nosed coons, and they look similar to raccoons with long snouts).  I also would have liked to see this nature preserve in the south but I'm pretty happy with everything we were able to see and do in just a day and a half.  It was a fantastic trip!

Hercilio Luz Bridge