Travel Day

We are leaving Paraty today by bus and heading to Sao Paolo for a brief stopover and then down to another beach town south of Sao Paolo called Florianopolis.  Its supposed to be a really nice, relaxed beach town with surfing and pretty coastline.  We have more pictures of our last day in Paraty where we took a boat to a bunch of small islands, but we won´t post them probably for a couple of days.  Hope everyone is doing well, we miss everyone!

Morning run

I went for a run this morning and as I was leaving I opened the gate to our hostel and was greeted by a huge horse right there in front of our place!  It was just relaxing, eating grass and barely noticed me.  It wasn´t even chained up or anything, apparently just our for a morning stroll.  Needless to say, it scared me to death!

Waterfalls

We meet some really nice people from our hostel today and planned a trip to the local waterfalls.  It was a short bus ride to them and we hungout there all day.  Its unbeliveable that this little river that runs through the mountains and creates this nice relaxing area to hangout and play.  We did some cliff jumping and they have this huge sloped rock that is similar to a ski slope with a thin layer of water running down it.  The locals get a running start and slide the whole way down on their feet and do tricks...its unbelieveable to watch, we could barely stand up and instead went the whole way down on our butts.  Here are some of the better pics of the day.  There are also a couple of videos that we cannot post right now because it takes too long to upload, as soon as we get a better internet connection, we`ll try to do that.

The people in this picture are the ones from our hostel that we went with, 3 are from Britian and 2 from Spain.  Everyone at this hostel has been really nice.  The hostel itself is more like a house with hammocks and a small pool...by pool we mean one of those above-ground inflatable ones, but its definitely relaxing. And the breakfast here was amazing with lots of local fresh fruit and the owner even made fruit smoothies which were an added bonus (you cannot pass up the free food : ).

The hills surroung this town is unbelievably green, everything looks so lush and almost like you are surrounded by jungles. 

Paraty (Parati)

We just arrived in Paraty, Brazil - south of Rio on the coast. Its a very beautiful, quaint little town...a bit more touristy but almost a good thing since we still are pretty lacking in the language department (although they seem to speak more spanish as well so we are doing a lot better than Rio).

We will post pictures later, but the old town is really cool with colorful windows and doors and tons of restaurants with outdoor tables. There are tons of islands off the coast and a waterfall near by. We have the opportunity to go scuba diving as well.

Will post more soon. Hope everyone is doing well!

Ipanema Beach

We spent the day at Ipanema Beach and the sun was blazing down on us.  The water felt great with decent waves in certain sections of the area, there were even surfers in a special section near this rock outcropping.  Right near this area on a level part of the hill were all these *for lack of a better term* primitive weight sets.  All the dumbbells and bars had these stone weights on either end and the benches they used were just slabs of rock.  It looked like a gym from the Flintstones. 

The neighborhood was definitely the nicest we have seen so far - less city like and many more trees which felt nice today! Below are the pictures we took while walking around (while I got fried...pictures to come). 

 Ipanema Beach

 End of Ipanema, around the corner is Cococabana Beach

Islands off the Coast of Ipanema

Scott sporting UVA on a hill at the end of Ipanema

We decided this was our favorite street because of all the trees and shade!

Church in Ipanema .... we decided it looks like a Lego Church :)

Hot day

Today we woke up kinda early and went for a run around the lake near our hostel called Loa=ga (Scott's idea of a good time on vacation).  It was really pretty with a nice bike/running path all the way around.  The weather has been pretty hot, about 95 degrees mid-day with the same humidity we have back in Hampton Roads (apparently we just can't get away from it).

We went to see Christ the Redeemer today (the huge statue overlooking the city), it was pretty cool, but unfortunately as you can see they were doing some cleaning and had scaffolding all over it.  The craziest thing about this statue is that it was constructed back in 1926 in several pieces and taken all the way to the top of this peak like mountain.  The roads were pretty rough with a constant 20% grade, so its unbelievable to think they moved all the equipment up there so long ago.  For those history buffs out there, the statue is 30m high with an arm span of about 27m.

Some interesting things we learned about Rio...on the metros during prime time, they reserve an entire car for only females. We went to the least crowded car, naturally he guided me to the car with only women, and got kicked out by some guards at the next stop. Luckily, they actually held the doors open to make sure we still got on a different car.  Note to men coming to Rio...do not get into the pink and black metro cars between 5 and 8. 

This is a church that was built on top of an exploded hill.

And another cool looking building....

 The other thing we thought was interesting is the way this city is built around these mounds - mountain - sheer cliff - things, called Morro in Portuguese. They are tall rocks but very steep so its hard to say it's a mountain....similar to where the Christ Redeemer statue is built. They jut up everywhere and buildings are built around them...no big deal. We tried to walk back to our hostel last night only to discover a huge road block!

Foxtrot...the Eagle has landed...

We landed safely in Rio after flying out of Reagan National through Houston, TX before a long ass flight here. We checked into our hostel after an interesting busride from the airport and went straight to Cococabana Beach for sun and relaxation.

Sorry guys, no naked chicks...but we did spot a lady with an awesome tan line (notice the tag-tan)...good stuff!!

We enjoyed the Brazilian equivalent of Icehouse (the coldest beer known to man)...Antarctica while watching some sand-futbol

Love you family and friends, we miss you already!!  Take care!

Shots, shots and more shots...

So this morning Kerry and I made the mistake of becoming "informed" about all the crap we can catch/be infected with/need immunizations for down in South America.  We met with a doctor from Passport Health in Va Beach to discuss all the shots/vaccines/medicines they "recommend" we get before embarking on our trip.  We ended up getting the vast majority of the ones they recommended even though it put a healthy dent in our wallets.  The way I see it, a $100 shot here is a hell of a lot better than getting sick down there from something that was completely preventable.  So we are now one step closer (with many many left to go) to checking off all the things on our "To-Do" lists.

Welcome to the first post on our blog. As you can probably tell from the title of the blog, we have planned a trip to South America. We plan on using this blog as a sort of diary of the interesting things that we see on our trip. As a pictorial introduction I have attached this photo of us at the Real Madrid Soccer Stadium called Estadio Santigao Bernabeu in Madrid, Spain.

We have decided to backpack for about two and half months around South America, with visits to Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. It has been something we have talked about for awhile and now are finally doing! Kerry is a bit of a wanderlust and has inspired me (Scott) to travel more and do something I've wanted to do for a very long time. There have been many convenient excuses in the past, but finally we've taken the plunge. We are both very excited about the trip and have spent the past weeks trying to plan everything. We don't have a set itinerary (plan...what plan?!?), but do plan on taking a Spanish course in Montevideo and/or Buenos Aires about the third week we are there. It's going to be an amazing trip and we cannot wait for it to start!!