But like I said, it wasn't all gloom and doom. Buzios is a gorgeous little fishing village with tons of fabulous shops and restaurants. And after taking a boat tour of the area, we found Tartaruga Beach, which me basically made our QG for the rest of our stay.

The beach was most easy to get to with the water taxis. We would get dropped off at the edge of the water, choose which beach shack looked nicest for the day and install ourselves in a couple of reclining chairs under an umbrella. Then the owner of the shack would come around with fresh cold drinks about every 45 minutes and when lunch rolled around, he would show us what the fishermen had brought in that morning so that we could choose our lunch. One day we were lucky enough to get two lobster, that were grilled for us. Obviously, it cost next to nothing and it was absolute paradise.

I had been told about other beaches that were supposed to be really nice but honestly, I can't think of anything that was missing from this one. The best thing of all was that this beach had the most amazing golden sand. The stone that lined the hills behind us were a dark color with flecks of shiny gold. You can see that the sand on the beach looks quite ordinary, but when you walked in the water and stirred it up, it looked like someone had dumped glitter in the water. I've never seen anything like it. Sadly, we couldn't manage to get a photo of it but it doesn't matter, as I'm unlikely to ever forget how gorgeous that was.

After a day at the beach, our taxi would come back to pick us up and we would wander back to our hotel for a nice sieste before getting ready for a night out. Buzios had far too many nice restaurants and bars for us to have worked our way through them all but we didn't find a single place that we didn't like. Of course, the downside was that the prices were practically the same as in Paris, but you can't have everything, I guess.

The best night out, we were invited by a friend to go to the main disco in the town. While we met lots of foreigners at our hotel and in restaurants and bars, this place seemed to be 100% Brazilian. The music was local pop music which was funny to listen and the drinks were beyond potent- which was unnecessary considering how cheap they were. The highlight of the evening was when a samba band started its show. It was so much fun! Everyone was dancing up a storm and the atmosphere was phenomenal, with the drums and the feathered dancing girls and the open air nightclub. I think my head would probably explode from excitement if I was actually in Brazil for carnival. It was better than I had ever expected it to be. Mostly, if its just B and I at a club, I think its really boring but I think we just got so swept up in things that I felt like I was there with 200 of my closest Brazilian friends rather than just being a tourist, hanging out on the sidelines with my hubby.

That night was also memorable (and I'm just using that as a figure of speech) because it is the most drunk that I have been in years. By the time we left I had drunk a grand total of 2 margaritas over the course of the entire night. I hadn't been drinking because I didn't want to poop out early and then these two drinks were so potent that I was drunk as a skunk by the time B dragged me out the front door. I think that either tequila is more potent in the southern hemisphere or margarita is just a loose translation and really I was drinking something more like lime juice mixed with rocket fuel. I may never know, but rest assured, I had enough of a hangover to convince me to never do that again. Also, B's unmerciless teasing is too too much for a girl to have to live with, when all she wants to do is be left totally unaware of her mistakes. Granted, I went home with the right person, which is very good. I didn't vomit at all over the club or the htoel or any unsuspecting spectators, which is very very good. But I must confess to a hopeless case of the giggles and general drunken shenanigans. First, I started undressing in front of the security camera to get into the hotel. I have no idea why, perhaps a clumsy seduction technique? Then once I giggled my way up all the stairs to the pool area, surely waking up every roomful of people we passed, I decided that it would be fun to get my feet wet. Bruno immediately ordered me to get out of the pool before I got my clothes wet, which inspired me to dunk myself all the way under water, in order to get all my clothes wet. Finally he persuaded me to get out of the pool and dragged me to the door of our room, where he shouted at me for being all wet, because now there would be water all over the place. Which convinced me that he was totally right, I definitely did not want the rooom all wet. So while he struggled with the lock, I undid the straps on my dress and left it in a puddle outside the room. B turned around to find me standing there as naked as the day I was born, although I think he was rather resigned to his role as useless babysitter at this point and could only shake his head in disbelief at how ridiculously drunk and stupid I was that night.

Oh Buzios, will you and I ever share drunken shenanigans again? I still have that 5 year Brazilian visa so once my liver recovers, there is no reason why not.

After all the adventures in the jungle, we were quite happy that we had planned on spending the next seven days at the beach just chilling out (our first morning, after looking out at the beach, B cancelled our flights to Iguazu Falls and extended our stay at the hotel). I had a reserved a really nice room at a hotel that had been recommended to me at a beach town a few hours up the coast from Rio, Buzios. Buzios is fantastic! Beautiful and chic and relaxed and very Brazilian. I loved it. Our hotel, Casas Brancas, was less of a delight.

Don't get me wrong- we didn't suffer through our entire stay. The hotel is beautiful, the music and atmosphere is the height of cool, and the food and drinks were great. Our room was less awesome but maybe other people would have found it perfectly adequate. Let me explain.

When we finally arrived at the hotel, it was nearly midnight and we had more or less been travelling since 8 am. We were thoroughly exhausted. The clerk showed us to our room and as we walked through the hotel we were so impressed by how gorgeous it was that I think our mouths were hanging open. Our room was enormous and very beautiful so we thanked him and quickly went about unpacking our suitcases. You see, because it had rained to hard the last night, everything in our bags felt a bit damp and after a day sitting in a closed suitcase, I was a bit worried about things smelling funny and getting wrinkled beyond repair. Once we were done we collapsed into bed.

Only to be woken bright and early by the sun shining in the room through the two windows that didn't have curtains! This didn't really matter so much though, as breakfast had started- in the room located directly above our beds and we could hear people chatting away. It sounded like our window was wide open; it wasn't just open, it was broken and couldn't be closed. We wrestled with it for about 10 minutes before giving up and climbing out of bed. I had a better look around the room and realized that we didn't have a balcony although I thought that I had reserved a deluxe room in order to have one. I figured that I must have changed my mind at the last minute. After stuffing our selves at the breakfast buffet (which was really fantastic, by the way) we flopped down on the deck chairs around the pool and talked about which of us should go and ask for a new room. By the time B finally went to talk to them, they said that there were no rooms free until Sunday night (we were Friday) so they couldn't switch us. I was feeling too lazy to actually want to repack all my things and it did look like all the ocean view rooms were quite close to the restaurant and therefore probably equally noisy, so we let it go. We had eyemasks and earplugs from the airplane, that would probably be enough to help us through the worst of it.

The hotel also has a spa and guests are treated to a 15 minute welcome massage (although I wasn't told this at the desk, it was only after a mix-up at the spa reception that I learned about this...) so the first afternoon, I went down and booked treatments for B and I. I managed to get in a facial straight away. The staff are lovely, and the decor is as lovely as the rooms but once in my treatment room, I realised that the equipment was all broken. After my facial, they asked me if I wanted to use the jacuzzi and gave me a gorgeous black bikini to wear (I wish I kept it, it was more flattering than any of them that I tried on when shopping!). I went to the room where they had a tray of drinks out for me, and... the jacuzzi wouldn't work.

It was the beginning of a long list of broken equipment at the hotel. The shower next to the pool was out of order; the pool filter was blocked, which you could see by the layer of grease and leaves floating on top of the water (and of course, as we were staying in a room just next to the pool, we were privy to the early morning meetings of the repairmen around the pool); the security gate to the beach didn't open so guests had to pull a fence aside and climb over the potted plants. It was all a bit disappointing for what was supposed to be the best hotel in Buzios.

The real disappointment though, was yet to come. We had decided that we couldn't be bothered to move rooms because it would be so much work to pack up all our things but one day, I happened across our reservation papers and lo and behold- I had reserved a deluxe room. I asked B what we had paid for the room and he said he wasn't sure because the rates were quoted in dollars but he had to pay in reales. We did the figures and sure enough, we had paid the deluxe room rate. I went to the front desk to sort things out directly and was assured by the deskclerk that my room, room 11, was definitely a deluxe room. I pointed out that there was no balcony as stated in my reservation. He admitted that there wasn't one, but that it was bigger room than the other deluxe. I insisted it couldn't be a deluxe room because it said on their own internet site (now corrected, atleast) that all the deluxe rooms had balconies. He said that they had finished up some renovation work and the website must not have been changed. I pointed out that it didn't matter to me what the excuse might be, I refused to pay the price for a room I didn't get. He couldn't do anything about it, I had to come back the next day. The next day, it was the same thing. Come back later to talk to the manager. The manager said the same thing, it was a mistake on the web, blah blah blah.

The biggest problem was then that our vacation was being ruined by having to go and argue about this everyday and then ruminate on the argument all day long. Obviously, they had our money and were convinced that it wasn't cheating to give us a room that didn't correspond to what we had paid for, so they weren't giving any of it back. We were having a lovely holiday in the sun even if we were in a (relatively) lousy room and were too lazy to move our mountain of clothes and luggage and souvenirs and books and sunscreen and... so we let it go. I think that there is a point when you have to ask yourself if the fight is worth it and in this case it definitely was not. On the other hand, how shitty. And quite frankly, what a scam. It still pisses me off.

Of course, the real reason for the trip to Manaus is to see the Meeting of the Waters, where the Rio Negro meets the Rio Solemoes and turns into the Amazon. The two rivers are different colors and end up running alongside each other for something like 6 miles before they finally mix. It seems like a bit of a tall tale, designed to get the tourists out on another silly boat tour but it was absolutely true and pretty impressive to boot. We saw dolphins playing in the water since there is a huge amount of fish at this point in the river, although I didn't manage to see any of the pink ones. Shame- how cute must that be?!

It took us literally hours to get there on the boat which was sooo boring- although they had a few coolers full of soda and beer for us. I finally managed to taste a Guarana Antartica, the local drink. I think that Red Bull is actually a base of guarnica, a hyper caffienated berry that grows in the rainforest. This drink is somewhere between a Coke and a Red Bull, I guess. Its quite sweet and fizzy and after drinking about one an hour for the duration of the boat ride, boy was I ready to kick some piranha ass on our fishing trip. Seriously guys, I could have paddled us up the river faster than the motor was pushing our little fishing canoe. Laugh, but I managed to hook the biggest fish of the day. It was so funny though because here we were out hunting for these little devil fish, half shitting ourselves thinking of them swarming around in the water under our (scary rickety) fishing boat, and what do they give us for gear? A cane pole, a tiny little hook, and a paper cup of cut up steak. I was kind of hoping for something more like chain mail and and an ax, you know?

We went out into this reserve area and hiked into the jungle a bit to see the giant lily pads and also get assaulted by children with jungle animals gripped under their arms for photo ops; I made B hug a sloth. The little baby sloth got one brush with B's furry chest and I think that he thought he had discovered his long lost daddy. Too funny- especially since that animal reeked to the high heavens and B had to grimace through every photo. I absolutely refused to pick up any of the animals offered; I did not want to hug a caiman or an anaconda or anything else on offer. Call me a spoilsport, I had had my fill with the monkeys.

On the boat ride back to the hotel, we layed out on the deck in the sun and drank beer, which was a super nice ending to an exciting of

day of jungle trekking and animal molesting. We saw some dark clouds on the horizon and all of us stupid tourists lazily discussed the possibility of it raining that night. As they blew closer and the sky got darker, we joked about how likely it was that it would rain before we reached the hotel. The look on the face of our guide should have tipped me off but i was still shocked by how sudden it went from steamy and sunny to a reenactment of Noah's Ark. Good lord, let me assure that there is a valid reason that the call it the rainforest. It was throwing down buckets on us and when we did finally arrive at the hotel, no one managed to make it to the reception dry- regardless of the length and breadth of their raincoat. B and I decided it would be better to simply embrace the wetness and went and put our swimsuits on. I think the rain was coming down twice as hard as the water in our little shower- and the temperature was pretty similar, thats to say, icey. You might notice that I have a showercap on. The problem with the rainforest is that it is sooooo damp that nothing dries out and my hair was already so frizzy and out of control that I didn't feel up to dealing with another mop of crazy person curls. My haircut which had looked Posh Spice cool in Paris had turned into Betty White when I stepped off the airplane in Rio. So awesome when the camera is out 24/7. Sigh.

A few days in the Amazon

Although our plane tickets seemed to imply that it was a direct 6 hour flight from Rio to Manaus, in fact, we had to stop in Sao Paolo and after we got off, the flight continued on to Caracas. Apparently this is the norm in Brazil- very few direct flights from one destination to another and lots of these "circuits". It wasn't that big of deal to us except for when we first arrived at the airport and could not find our flight listed on the departures board. There was some serious panicking until we finally found someone who understood enough of our pigeon Portuguese to tell us to just get in the (40 person long...) check-in line. I was still freaking out because I figured by the time we got the front of the line and were presumably able to get an explanation from the agent it would be too late to fix the problem, ie all the other flights to Manaus would already have left. It was only after having some special ticket-like things given to us by the (non-English speaking) boss ticket agent and getting sent to the international terminal that we managed to figure out what was going on.

I should say right here that we had a sort of difficult time since there were so few people who spoke English, even in the big tourist areas, like the airport. Both B and I speak quite a bit of Spanish but even this wasn't too useful. Generally, though, I was able to understand what they were saying and B was able to be understood through a very creative use of his Spanish. Its not that I expect people to speak to me in my language when I'm in their country, it was just a bit of a surprise. English is so universal now that generally in tourist traps you can atleast get your point across if you keep it simple and are good at charades. I suppose it has a lot to do with the sheer size of the country, but even more so with how much internal culture they have. In Europe, you are used to finding American movies and TV shows and music everywhere, so its not surprising that its easy to find people who understand a bit of English. Just as an example, at the airports, when I went looking for a magazine for the airplane I would look through a wall covered with roughly 150 different magazines and not a single one would be in English. There were the odd magazines in Spanish, but really only a few.

Lucky for us, at the jungle lodge where we were staying, we were assigned a guide, Nielson, that spoke perfect English and French! I had read about the Amazon Eco Park in a guide book and found good reviews of it on the Internet so I was really happy to manage to get a room there. We had the best time at this hotel that I can't recommend it enough. We didn't have very much time scheduled for this part of our trip so I decided on this place in large part due to the fact that it was only about a 20 minute boat ride from the docks (although probably more like an hour and a half from the main Manaus boat landings.) We had a really simple little cottage to stay in which was a good 10 minute walk through the jungle from the reception buildings. We were told if we ever found a big snake on the path we just needed to throw a big stick at it, an instruction that didn't make me love the hike back to the room at night but did make me feel a little more like an intrepid jungle explorer (which I am sure they intended) and less like a fat lazy tourist. The Park does a lot of education on the Amazonian ecosystem and even though we didn't sign up for any of the lectures we did get to visit the Monkey reserve, where I was very generously volunteered by Nielson as main monkey perch for the photoshoot. Sounds like fun until you have a nervous monkey clutching your skull with his long monkey toes, shaking sand down your tank top and wrapping his freaky tail around your throat- a tail that feels like a really big calloused finger. Actually, that doesn't quite capture the weirdness of the sensation. I'm such a ham, though, I'll do anything for a good photo. We didn't manage to get down to the Bird reserve but had quite a bit of fun with the two parrots that hung out in the bar area (I think this gives you a good idea of our priorities while on vacation), begging banana chips off the guests. Nielson also dragged us to the "Indian Village" to see a tribe of locals do some dancing for us. I hate stuff like this because it seems like you're treating people like animals in the zoo. In the end, that was a bit silly, because it was more like going to see a little show while their kids poked us in the back of the head with sticks. What I REALLY ended up hating was being dragged out to participate in the dancing. Ugh. And of course, B immediately turned on the video and started taping me stomping around like a dancing bear next to this tiny little naked man, to a soundtrack of him giggling madly in the background. And like good tourists, we then blew all our cash on silly souvenirs. Well, Christmas was just around the corner, seemed like a good chance to find something better than gift certificates (don't know if my siblings quite agree...) but honestly, how many lucky people found a blow dart gun under the Christmas tree? A blow dart with real piranha teeth on it? I probably would have bought a dozen if we had had the money.

View from the Corcovado of the bay of Rio

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.