Arriving in Ilhéus, Bahia

Friday Dec. 20th we arrived at the Valença bus station at 7:30 hoping to get 9:00 departure bus tickets to Ilhéus.  We were shocked to find out that all the bus tickets on both bus lines were sold out for the day.  After exploring our options we decided to buy tickets to Itacaré and hope to get a bus from there to Ilhéus.  It was a pain, but after two bus transfers we made it to Ilhéus by around 5:00 pm.  We took two taxi's to our house and arrived to a lake of rain water as a driveway; it had been raining here for 5-6 days.  The taxi drivers waded through and we finally made it in.  The house is great, but small.  Derek and Taryn sleep in the family room and everyone else has a bedroom.  Brad and Annette were thrilled to have their bedroom air conditioned, and it worked!  The house sits on a large ocean front lot and has a pool.  We are very excited to finish our Brazil trip here.  Saturday was spent in a taxi going down town to find an internet modem, grocery shopping, and a quick stop at the airport.  Originally we had planned to take a bus from Ilheus to Salvador to catch our plane back to the US, but after our bus fiasco on Friday we decided to buy airline tickets to Salvador instead and avoid the 9 hour bus ride all together.  It was still raining all day on Saturday; we watched the lake grow bigger and bigger and wondered how we would get through the water to catch the bus for church Sunday morning.

Our house after all the rain

Sunday morning: getting to the bus stop is our only way into town.  We took off our shoes,
rolled up our pants and went for it.  After this experience we decided to rent a car for the three weeks we are here.

Almost there. Once at the top we waited, in the rain, for 40 minutes until a bus finally came by.  The only thing that kept us from giving up was the thought of having to walk back through the water.  Two families from church gave us a ride home.

Carson trying to get situated.  The boys put their socks on once they got on the bus because there was no place to sit down.  By the looks we were getting by people passing by, seven americans in church clothes on the side of the road in pouring rain must not be a common occurrence.

Once we got off the bus we had a five minute walk to the church.  We were only 30 minutes late.