Our trip to Brazil was amazing! It was book-ended by days of sun,
sand, and sea, and finally, after 1.5 years, we were able to go on our
honeymoon!
We arrived in Rio de Janeiro
to 29 degree Celsius weather, and for the first time, I found myself in places
that I just realized there were famous songs about that I'd grown up
with.
There's the wealthier district of Ipanema Beach, just like the song The Girl From Ipanema,
And of course that very famous Copacabana Beach!
I have to admit though, coming from the 7000+ islands of the
Philippines, my husband and I were not as impressed with the beaches that we
saw in Brazil.
But Brazil is a huge country, and to see a lot of other places
worth seeing meant a dozen plane rides, or countless hours on a bus.
By the end of our trip, or major journeys between places to see
had reached a total of about 62 hours! Yikes!
From Rio de Janeiro, our
first stop was Paraty, a beautiful
old colonial town by the coastline. For my Filipino readers, it looked like a
cross between Boracay’s D’Mall, and Intramuros. Very beautiful place, truly
idyllic! It was a wonderful change from Rio’s hustle and bustle, it was much
quieter here, and I felt like I was finally on vacation and relaxing.
It took about 20 hours on the road to get to our main attraction
in the south of Brazil, as we travelled inland to Iguacu Falls – much grander than Niagara Falls. Here I am afraid
words will fail me. I’ve got a couple of great pictures out of about 40 shots
of the place, but there will be nothing like being there yourself, seeing such
a magnificent wonder. Nothing. You’ll have to go there yourself to see and feel
how grand this wonder of nature is. The fun part was – we took a boat ride into
the falls, and got doused by one of the falls! It is a collection of about 275
falls if I remember right. Grand, and magnificent. Must see it for yourself.
I had been dreaming about going to another inland town called
Bonito ever since we picked up our copy of Lonely
Planet: Brazil. The place promised snorkeling in the river! Now, my husband
and I had done a lot of snorkeling throughout the Philippines, off of many
islands, but I had never gone snorkeling in a river before!
We spent two days going through several rivers – the first was Rio da Prata, where the crystal clear
waters were teeming with a bevy of all sorts of fauna – there were the large,
black pacu fish, that were always
stuffing their faces with dried yellow leaves; the large, golden, sharp-toothed
dourado fish that my husband fell in love with; the blue-gray elephantine snorty-nosed
fish, lots of other little fishies, and my beloved orange-tailed piraputanga. The latter were really
peculiar – they loved to stay by the river bank, so when you swim past them,
there they would just all be there, all lined up firing-squad style, watching
you, sometimes right in your face, all placid, and calm, and not worried at all
that a big, clumsy oaf of a fish like you is crossing paths with them. What a
delight!
Our second visit was to Baia
Bonita, which presented to us a calmer river, and our first stop, just
before it bled into the moving river, was something that seemed unreal. The sun
had come out, and the green on the river bed was only 6 inches away from my face,
as I fell onto the water, held afloat by floating vest and wet suit, lest I
spoil and deface this beauty. Piraputanga
right beside me. Right in front of me. Within arms reach. It was magical. I
look ahead and behind the rows of piraputanga,
are even more rows of piraputanga. And
blue, just clear, perfect blue, it seems almost as if I were hallucinating. Everything
is so picture perfect that my senses can barely believe it. Before we come in,
we see the sign “Natural Aquarium,” and once I am inside, I fully realize why
it’s called that.
God made this, and I can’t believe it’s real. It’s like swimming
inside a gigantic aquarium, where the flora and fauna were especially chosen
for your viewing pleasure. How can this be real?
From Bonito, back to Campo Grande, and from there, off to
another main trek – the Pantanal. We
weren’t going to make it all the way up north to the Amazon with only three weeks, but the Pantanal is much like the Amazon,
according to the books, also allowing you to see a lot of animals in the wild.
And see them, we did! Great red macaws, and blue macaws, green
parrots, howler monkeys, the shy coati (they
look like raccoons, but have a longer snout), two jaguar-skinned anacondas that
were beautiful and yellow-black in the sunlight, loads of caiman lizards, and, of course, my favorite, the very cute capybara (the world’s largest rodent).
He was so cute! He reminded me of a hippo and horse at the same time, only
smaller. He loved the water, and so we saw him during our boat ride, there,
sitting by the river bank, hiding amongst the thick vegetation.
We also went piranha
fishing, and though I didn’t catch one, and we had to fight off hordes of very
angry, very nasty, extra large mosquitoes, my husband was the first to catch
one, and catch a beautiful one he did. Its skin shone like an opal gem in the
sunlight, its fins flapping in despair, trying to escape, wanting to swim back
to safety. My husband couldn’t stand the look of sorrow in the fish’s eyes, and
our guide came over to gut his throat.
We ate the caught piranhas
for dinner. Deep fried, with some lime.
There was horse-riding the next day, and it had been ten years
since I’d ridden a horse. Once I was on and we started walking, it felt
marvelous, magical even. Not a machine under you, but a living being, a
creature who can run and roam the earth freely, and you sit atop him, this
magnificent creature of the earth. You can feel his power as you both walk the fazenda together (much of the wild is
privately owned by farm and cattle owners, called fazenda in Portuguese, and hacienda
in Spanish).
At our fazenda also
lived two tamed peccaries (they have
bristly hides, and look almost like the wild board, minus the tusks), and a
gaggle of Chinese and European geese. They were quite entertaining!
And that was it. At least, the highlights really worth telling,
and I’m afraid my one paragraph has turned into several pages.
By then it was time to travel back to Rio de Janeiro again, back to the city, time to leave the wild. We
saw the famous Cristo Redentor up
close, and went atop the famous Sugar
Loaf to see the famous view of Rio from it during our last days.
And now I’m back. With a tan. Thank you, sun, sand, and sea.
Makes a few more chilly days in Prague bearable.
