Brazil......

We´ve landed in Brazil and so far it's everything (and more) than expected. Hot days, sticky nights, really cold beer and $2 Caipirinhas. Oh, mix in some white sand beaches, atlantic rainforest, turqoise water, and well, things are good. Really good. Sooooo, if you get the impression we´ve been drinking in the sun you are umm, well, correct. And Bendites, I must say, it is nicer than a cold beer in a cold bar, where outside there is.......snow. Anywhooooo, like I was saying.From Rosario (Argentina) we headed north to Iguazu falls. Or, dry to tropical. For those who have not heard of Iguazu Falls , Eleanor Roosevelt´s reaction of "Ohh, poor Niagara" says it all. The "waterfall" is actually a collection of nearly 300 hundred falls, spread out side by side for over a mile, each plumetting about 350 feet to the river basin below. Our first view of the falls came from our ski boat as we zipped upstream through the rapids and then again later from the catwalks above the falls. Like all the other pictures in the blog, they never really seem to capture the full effect. But if you look closely, you can see that the falls keep going and going.... One more for good measure, with some earthlings for scale.

Although we´ll spend about a month in Brazil, we decided not to pretend to see too much of the worlds fifth largest country. The Amazon and the Pantanal will be another trip. Nope. Just the coast, please. So, from the falls we headed south to an island called Santa Catarina. We did nothing here for 6 days. It was great. But it's a damn nice place to do nothing.

We learned to surf (actually, not at all), got a sunburn (sorry moms, we were having too much fun), and cooked mussels that we picked right off the rock. Believe it or not, doing nothing in the same place is exhausting, so we rolled north to do nothin' somewhere else, namely a little town called Paraty. Paraty is a town of 17,000, that until 1950, could only be reached by boat. It is also, coincidentally, almost perfect. The 300 beaches and 65 islands no doubt impacted Amerigo Vespucci when 500 years ago he proclaimed from his wooden boat, "Oh! God, if there were a paradise on earth, it wouldn´t be far from here!"From Paraty we headed north to Ihla Grande, which in the past has been a leper colony, political prison, and pirates lair. Today all that remains is natural booty..errr, beauty, and what many Brazilians consider to be the best beach along their 4,700 mile coast. Tell me what you think.

So that is what I did today. . In paradise. If only my portuguese had less portu-guess.

Time to take a dip.
Tchau, Brig and Meredith.
PS- make sure to check the link on the right for a few more pics..