South America: November 2006

Sao Paulo!

Have we mentioned that we love helipads???

Sao Paulo!!!!

Ja also mmmmh.......
..we have been spending 10 days in Sao Paulo now, or better around Sao Paulo. Fu is (happily) staying at Marianne`s place, and Chris is living at his former nanny`s. Lucky us, we are not far apart so Fu can always give me lift home...yes, Fu is driving in this crazy city. But it is surprisingly cool here. Everyone adviced us not to go here cos we would get mugged and kidnapped all the time.....well, Chris is bussing down to Fu`s everyday and we are walking though town. It is not too bad!

However, this city is HUGE (some 18+ mio) and very hectic, so as the Paulistas do, we escaped the city during the bank holiday and weekend.

The one day (Wednesday) we spent in a small colonial town about 45 mins south of Sao Paulo, Embu. It is quite touristy but they have a nice market and tempting lamp posts.

For the weekend we went to an apartment complex three hours north of Sao Paulo, 200m from the beach. It was wicked. There was a pool, fussball-tables and pool tables (both of which we did not use....) and these brazilians always have these really cool BBQ-facilities. It is amazing: proper gear, a huge grill, chopping boards, knifes and cheap, delicious meat. So we had a proper brazilian BBQ with grilled pnieapple and Caipirinha.

Dr. Fu had one very unfortunate experience: he managed to brush his teeth so vigorously that his fillings of one tooth fell off. Well, we thought, not a big deal, this is fixed quickly, but once we returned to Sao Paulo and Fu consulted the dentist, the picture should be worse: Somehow his whole tooth broke apart and was pulled that very same day. Chris offered him to pull it right away that weekend, doorhandle and threat, but he refused anxiously.

So, thats why we got stuck a bit in Sao Paulo. But his mouth is ok, everything is healing and we are ready to go west.

Departure is scheduled for Friday afternoon, 14hs bus ride to Campo Grande, coche cama! From Campo Grande we are planning to head further into the Pantanal to Bonito where we will be swimming with the fishes and stuff like that.

Marianne and FU: -->

We apologize not to show any pictures of the city itself. We did not really take any although we were shown around quite a bit by Marianne`s mother Francoise. She knows so much about Brazilian and Paulistan history, that she was mistaken as a tour guide several times. Thanks a lot!

......have we mentioned that Chris LOVES heli pads????

Florianópolis (Ilha de Santa Catarina)

Florianópolis, Brazil

After Foz do Iguaçu we headed east again to the coast of Santa Catarina. Florianópolis is a pretty nice and relaxed university town with amazing beaches and lots of surfers. We stayed at Marianne's cousin Diego's, who, according to preliminary informations, does not speak any english nor spanish nor german nor french, but portuguese. So we were hasitating a bit to go there since our portuguese is still very poor. Finding the right bus that went to his house was quite a task, but somehow we managed to get there. He was not home, of course, because he was at the bus terminal to pick us up. However, we were very relieved when he came back and started speaking english to us!!!! Two points!

Diego and his flatmate Ana are very kind and nice people and showed us around, Ana gave us her brandnew car to cruise around the Ilha de Santa Catarina and check out beaches. Amazing!

The beaches are looooong, the waves are really good for surfing (they have the Brazilian surf championships here in January) and huge dunes that were awesome to jump.We went to a restaurant on Thursday night for some seafood and stuff. We have never eaten so many shrimps before, and that for 20 Reals/person (= 7Euros).

It even was enough for breakfast the next morning!!!! Diego's Birthday breakfast: left over shrimps!!! yummy!