Tabatinga (Probably spelled incorrectly)

Andre, who we'd only met once, was kind enough to let us stay at his family's condo at Tabatinga on the Sao Paulo coast. It was a fun, full service resort with, as you can see, great views.



The view from the deck.


Catch the ball Bella!

Crazy 'bird wing' fruit

Da beach

I got schooled in Brazillian beach ping pong

Rudofe the red nosed raindeer

On the beach with Guilherme, Danielle, Andre, and Cassiano

Oh, Brazillian TV

Christmas decorations

Pool with a view

A real Brazillian BBBQ (the extra B is for BYOBB)

Bye Bella, Bye Tabatinga

Ilhabela: It means beautiful island in Portuguese.

Pictures from our 1st week!

Our 1st Brasillian restarante.

The ferry lineup for Ilhabela with Andreia.

The main town at Ilhabela.

Sandro's brother's beach house. Is very nice.

All of us at the lighthouse.

The kitchen

The pool!

The dogs

We're looking for sea turtles.

On the boat.

Sao Paulo

Hey!! We're back in Sao Paulo from the beach and staying at the Radesca house with the nicest family in Brasil!! The rest of the beach was awesome. We had a barbecue (in the rain), and spent the day on the beach drinking out of coconuts!! And playing drinking games. It was fun!! They're green, not brown. TV lies, apparently. Or they don't show Brasilian coconuts.

Tomorrow we're gonna spend some time in Sao Paulo, going shopping and seeing the city. We went down to Paulista Ave this evening, but it was raining really hard (which of course the Brasilians are blaming us for!) So we'll try again tomorrow. We had a grat dinner in three languages, and now we're going to rest up for tomorrow.

Tchau!

Brazil 08-09 WOOOOOOOOOOO!

That~s the t-shirt we~re going to have made for our trip. The ^WOOOOOOOOO^ will go all the way around the stomach and back. Awesome, right!

You~ve probably noticed we~re having keyboard issues. The kind staff at the restaurant we~re sitting in are trying to help us find the question mark and apostrophe, but it~s a total mystery to all of us. Sorry!!!

We arrived in Sao Paulo of Tuesday and we greeted by Andreia and Sandro. We went straight from the airport to Ilhabela, where we stayed at Sandro~s brother~s AMAZING house!! Ilhabela is a beautiful island off the coast of Sao Paulo state. We did a little shopping (too little, according to Lauren), ate some awesome pizza (with BLUE CHEESE!!), swam in the pool, got some sun, got lots of mosquito bites and learned to samba (but not well).

Last night we arrived in Tapatinga, which is on the mainland coast of Sao Paulo. Apparently Sandro owns all of Brazil, so we could stay at his house in Tapatinga until Guilherme and Andre picked us up to go to their condos here. Today we hung out on the beach, ate patais and Greg played ping pong without a table (the game has a name, but we can~t remember!). Tonight Cassiano and Danielle are coming and we~ll get to spend the weekend with them, too. Tomorrow we~re having a real Brazilian barbecue, which we~re looking forward too. We hope they don~t ask us to samba!!

I tried to take a picture of a house on the beach that had palm trees in front of it and a Santa on the chimney. Seeing Christmas decorations here is realllllllyy strange. A little out of place. Brazil needs a summer-looking Santa.

Gotta go get ready for dinner! We~ll post some pictures when we get to a better internet connection in Sao Paulo!

Beijos. Tchau!

Oops!

Sorry, I forgot!

January 14th: meeting up with Diogo.

Saudades, Diogo!!

New Plans!

We've made new plans with Sandro and Andreia for our first few days in Brasil! The four of us will be going to Sandro's brother's place on Ilha Bela on Tuesday until Thursday or Friday, before we go to Cassiano's place on the 19th. We're really excited that Andreia can come, since this trip with Sandro sounded really exciting, but we didn't want to miss out on the time with Andreia, too, who we both really can't wait to see. So far so perfect...!

Itinerary!

Our trip starts next week!!

December 15th--leave Vancouver; Stop over in Chicago, then to Sao Paulo.
December 16th--arrive in Sao Paulo.
December 19th--going to Cassiano's Beach House for the weekend!
December 21st--back in SP for Christmas with Andreia and her family!
December 27th--fly to Rio. Arrive in Rio at 10:30am.
December 31st--New Years at Copacabana Beach with Lucas!
January 2nd--fly to Recife. Arrive in Recife at 12:50pm.
January 7th--fly to Salvador. Arrive in Salvador at 4:15pm.
January 7th-10th--Praia do Forte with Sandro and hopefully Bruno, too!!
January 11th--Sandro's wedding in Salvador!!
January 13th--fly back to Sao Paulo. Arrive in SP at 10:50pm.
January 16th--fly back home, tanned and happy!

Can't wait!!