Greetings from Brazil

We made it! Despite mounting evidence on Friday that I would absolutely not be ready in time, we made it to the airport on time, with everything we needed. Plus, with Ella gone, I managed to fit in a trip to a Power Plate gym (which I loved and now wish that I had started doing a month ago considering that I have hardly put on clothes since we landed in Brazil) and go out to a club on Thursday night AND have lunch with a girlfriend on Friday AND AND get all my Christmas shopping done. With all that productivity, its no wonder that I slept soundly for 9 hours on the plane. Poor B wasn't so lucky.

And sadly, although the location of our hotel here in Leblon is fabulous, our room is located right beneath the events room and we have been unable to sleep due to either weddings or wedding preps or wedding clean-up. The upside is that B has said that he won't be paying for the room last night due to said noise and so we can maybe spend an extra night at our gorgeous hotel in Buzios.

The beach is beach-y, but the waves are specatular! Huge crashing waves pounding the sand and its all churning white foam washing away your flip-flops, and drowning surfers and salty spray. Would like it much better if the drinks didn't cost so much on the beach. Basically, we paid 15 euro yesterday for a beer and a pina colada. Call me a lush, but on my tropical beach holidays, I like there to always be something coconutty in my hand and at those prices it is not happening. In fact, prices here seem to be more or less the same as Paris. I'm sure that there are cheap places but everyone keeps freaking us out with stories about getting mugged and warning us to stick to the nice well-known places. I hadn't really thought of Rio as dangerous but now I'm too skittish to test out my theory. Skittish and sober- bad combination.

Anyways, this afternoon (after changing hotel rooms) we are heading up to Corcovado to take photos with the Big Jesus and then over to Copacabana beach to oggle the girls in their brazilian strings. Talk about buns of steel- yesterday we bumped into a bunch of Samba dancers, as you do, and their asses were a sight to be seen. Honestly, the feathers and sequins were just distracting from the real show, which was their amazing physique. I could do Power Plate every day for a year and I could still only dream of looking like that. Sigh. This really is a country of have and have nots.