Playing on the beach in Garapua, Bahia - Ilha de Tinhare

The beach in front of our house in Garapua is beautiful.  The water is so clear and clean.  When the sun is shining it turns different shades of green and blue.  The pictures look edited but they aren't.  The sand is so clean and almost white.  The beach is 1 mile long so we take walks every day looking for sea shells and sand dollars.   When the tide is low the beach is wide and flat so it becomes the town playground and there are some great coral reefs and tide pools at each end of the bay for exploring.  We go swimming and play on the paddle board pretty much all day right in front of our house.  There are coconut trees surrounding the entire beach.  They sway in the breeze and create great scenery and pictures.  Even the locals that have lived here their entire lives appreciate it and realize they have a piece of paradise right in their backyard.

Video of playing on the beach in Garapua

On our way to the tide pools.

Low tide out on a sand bar by the tide pools.

Brad on the paddle board.

Derek playing in the sand.  He wishes his 1st Grade class at Haley Elementary could be playing with him.

Taryn, Maile and Annette lounging by the water.

Brad coming out of the water with the paddle board.  

Taryn showing up her brother in horseshoes.

Carson throwing another ringer.

The girls showing their treasures from the tide pools.

View of the beach from our patio.

Annette with her sand dollars.

We find at least 10 sand dollars every day.

Taryn with a big sand dollar.

Annette on the paddle board.

Hannah on the paddle board.

Derek and Maile hanging out in the warm water.  Our house is the 2-story with the brown roof.

Natural pools of Garapua taken form the paddle board.  This is a sand bar in the middle of the coral reef 1 mile off the shore.

Natural pools with coral reef under the water.  The water is 2-3 feet deep.

The natural pools are a big tourist attraction and boat loads of people come every day.

Grocery shopping in Valenca, Bahia

The town we are staying in is pretty remote and small so we need to travel to another town to do our grocery shopping.  There are a couple small markets in Garapua but their selections are limited and the prices are high.  That said, Brad, Maile, Hannah and Amparo (our friend) traveled to Valenca to do some grocery shopping.  The trip started at 5am by riding on a trailer pulled by a tractor down a sandy road about 1 mile to the river.  At the river we loaded on to a wooden boat that went about 15 mph.  Two hours later we were in Valenca.  Once there we did some shopping at a pharmacy, stopped at an internet cafe because there has not been internet at the house for 4 days, and then went to the supermarket to buy groceries for the next month.   We spent R$ 700 which is about $350 US.  We all thought it was pretty inexpensive considering we spend that much in one visit to Costco.  The boat waited at the dock for everyone to do their shopping and then left to head back around 2pm.  The boat was filled with everyone’s groceries and didn’t move quite as fast on the way home.  We got home at 4:30pm with a total round trip of 11 1/2 hours to do the grocery shopping.  It really made us thankful for the conveniences we have at home like reliable cars parked in the garage and grocery stores within minutes of the house.  

Video of our boat trip to Valenca

Maile and Hannah on the boat ride to do our grocery shopping.

Hannah and Maile are happy because we found a restaurant in Valenca with wifi.

Football on the beach in Garapua, Bahia

In a previous post we said how the entire town comes out to play soccer, foot volley, and dodgeball on the beach at low tide.  The other night the boys were playing catch with a football and it caught the attention of most everyone so Carson and Brad showed some of the boys how to throw it.  It was pretty funny watching them throw the ball...probably as funny as it is for them to watch us play soccer.  After they got the hang of throwing the ball they wanted to play a real game so Brad, Carson and Derek organized a game of two-hand touch football on the beach.  Brad did his best to explain the rules in Portuguese and they had to keep teaching the rules after every play when they would do something illegal.  They kept wanting to throw the ball when they were about to be tagged.  In the end it was fun...and funny, and the scenery and atmosphere couldn’t have been more beautiful.

Morro de Sao Paulo, Bahia - Arriving in Garapua

We left Salvador on Wednesday morning, Nov. 13th, and headed to the island of Tinhare.  Tinhare is an archipelago about 50 miles south of Salvador.  We went by boat and it took 2 hours.  We landed in Morro de Sao Paulo, a tourist destination for many Brazilians because of its beautiful beaches and warm ocean water.  Once in Morro we walked about 1 mile through town to the transportation pickup spot.  Tinhare is an island with soft, sandy roads and few vehicles.  Most of the vehicles are jeeps, land rovers, and tractors.  We got a ride to the town we are staying in a jeep/tank looking car with all 7 of us, our luggage and a 10’ surf board (we rented a standup paddle board in Morro).  

Garapua is a small fishing town 10 miles south of Morro.  It sits on a crescent shaped bay with a sandy bottom, guarded by coral reefs.  The reefs keep the water calm inside the bay so there are only small waves.  The water is about 85 degrees and a beautiful blue-green color.  The beach in Garapua is soft white sand and very flat.  Because it is so flat the beach gets very wide at low tide and the entire town comes out to play soccer, foot volley, and dodge ball on the beach.  The beach is right in front of our house so we are in the middle of the action.  There are thousands of coconut trees around our house so we enjoy the sweet water from a freshly picked coconut a few times a day.  Carson has gotten pretty good at cutting them just right for us to drink.  

Since in Garapua we have experienced a much slower pace of life and it will take getting used to.  We have also been exposed to washing laundry in the sink, hanging clothes to dry on a clothes line, a house with no windows, hearing the ocean waves all night long, eating very simple but delicious food (lots of rice and beans), having sandy feet all the time, no tv, no internet and lots of free time.  

Hannah and Carson on the boat to Tinhare Island.

Walking through the town of Morro de Sao Paulo to get catch our ride to Garapua.

Some of the local transportation in Morro.

The beaches in Morro de Sao Paulo are number.  This is 2nd beach in the background.

Taryn, Maile and Derek in the back of the taxi with the surfboard on the way to our house.

View of Garapua beach from out upstairs balcony.  Most nights the locals come out to play.

Early morning shot of the beach.

Carson, Hannah and Taryn hanging laundry on the clothes line.

Our taxi to Garapua.

Derek with a sand crab on Garapua beach.

Stopping at the local market for an afternoon snack.

Carson cutting a coconut he just picked out of the backyard tree.

Our friend Lucas helping out.

Carson enjoying the tasty coconut water.

All the kids hanging out on the patio. 

Carson and Taryn swimming and playing on the paddle board.

Derek has made friends quickly.

Derek, Carson and Taryn were inspired by the Olodum in Salvador so they play some great rhythms for us every day.

Derek going for a swing in the hammock on the back patio.

Pelourinho, Capoeira, Olodum - Salvador, Brazil

We haven't had internet for 6 days so we apologize for not posting anything for almost a week.

Yesterday we flew from Rio de Janeiro to Salvador, Bahia.  The flight was 2 hours and we arrived around 5 pm.  We took a city bus from the airport to our hotel (more like a hostel) in the historic Pelourinho district of Salvador.  We were on the bus for 2 hours and 20 minutes.  We had 2 rooms at the hotel, one with A/C and one without.  It was about 90 degrees and super humid when it was time for bed so it was miserable for the kids who had to sleep in the non-A/C room.  The beds were terrible, very thin, with rock hard pillows.  We met a couple from Holland that was traveling for 4 weeks in Brazil and were staying in our hotel.  We stayed up talking to them for several hours and learned a lot about their country and their perception of the United States.  They spoke good English but no Portuguese.  A comment they made was that everyone learns English in Holland from the time they are 5 years old and most people have passports and travel outside their country regularly.  In the US the opposite is true, most people take only 2 years of foreign language in high school and learn very little and few people have passports and travel outside the US.  We are not sure why that is because the world is a huge, interesting place.

The next day we started out by visiting the beautiful catholic church of Sao Francisco that was built by the Portuguese in the 1400s.  The entire interior of the chapel, including the ceiling, is finished in gold leaf.  We also visited a museum about the history of Africans in Brazil and slavery.  Slavery began in Brazil in 1550 and officially ended in 1850.  More than 3 times as many African slaves were brought to Brazil as were to the US.  We also toured the cobblestone streets of the Pelourinho distric and did some shopping for souvenirs.  Michael Jackson visited the Pelourinho in Salvador, Brazil in 1996 and did a music video with the Olodum drumline and they still have a poster of him on the balcony where he danced in the video.  They charge $1 to stand on the balcony and get your picture taken.  We also ran into a group of students on a field trip.  They were so excited to practice their English with the kids and touch their blond hair.  One of the kids told Taryn she looked like an angel and one girl said she had never seen such beautiful blue eyes as Carson's.  We finished off the night by going to a capoeira school practice and watching an Olodum-in-training drumline.  Carson and Derek got a personal capoeira lesson from a few of the students.

Hanging out in our pousada hotel room.  

Cobblestone streets of the Pelourinho.

The Sao Francisco church from the outside.

Sao Francisco church from the inside.

One of the main squares in the Pelourinho.

The Olodum is a famous drumline band.

The balcony where Michael Jackson danced in a music video in 1996.  It is still a big deal here.

School group loved our kid's blue eyes and blond hair.

Derek doing capoeira.

Carson starting his capoeira fight.

Recreio, Rio de Janeiro - Posto 12

November 9th - 11th we spent lots of time on the beach in Recreio.  The weather was amazing with lots of sunshine, sunscreen and sunburns.  The kids played in the sand, swam in the ocean, swam in the hotel pool, and surfed on the stand up paddle board.

Annette, Maile and Hannah rode the bus into Ipanema all by themselves to do some shopping at the Ipanema Hippie Fair.  Annette made some breakthroughs with her Portuguese having to navigate the city buses and negotiate while shopping by herself.  While walking along Ipanema Beach Maile and Hannah got asked out by a 25 yr old guy from Holland...picture below.

We went to church on Sunday at the Recreio Ward.  There were about 140 people at church and they met in a house about 1 mile from our apartment so we walked there and back.  It was a warm day so we were all sweating by the time we got there.  Derek gave the opening prayer primary, Taryn was asked to recite the 4th Article of Faith and Carson passed the sacrament.  All the kids at church wanted to hear us speak English.  We had a great time and were happily welcomed by all the ward members.  We found out that the newly announce temple in Rio de Janeiro will be built in their ward boundaries in Barra da Tijuca.

On Monday, Nov. 11th we spent some time at the beach in the morning then packed up and headed to Salvador, Bahia.  It was a 2 hour plane ride to the northeast coast of Brazil.  We are sad to leave Recreio because we had so many great experiences, met so many nice people and had an incredible view of the ocean and surrounding area.

Hannah and Derek playing in the surf with the some local kids.

Derek and Taryn on the beach.

Derek with his new Brazilian friend.

Carson burying Hannah in the sand.

Carson working the SUP his first time out.

Taryn surfing on the SUP her first time out.

Maile and Hannah with their friend from Holland on Ipanema Beach.

Maile and Hannah waiting for the bus after a day of shopping in Rio.

Going to church at the Recreio Ward.

Our last day in Rio.  Sad to leave our apartment and beautiful beach.