Beautiful Buzios.

The other day, we went on a boat. We got to see the other beaches that make up the peninsula where we are staying. Another girl has joined our house. Anna from Sweden. We met her at the Jungle Beach Hostel and she decided to get some sun. (The Scandinavian girls need it!) So now it is me and three girls in a giant house five minutes from the beach. We have been getting up about 7 every morning, making breakfast, going to the beach, then coming back for lunch. In the afternoon, I surf or read, then come back to shower and maybe nap. We make dinner and sometimes I go take pictures. This is my life for about a week. The night Anna showed up, she and the taxi driver couldn’t find the house. They called the neighbor who was nice enough to let her in. Of course he let her in at about midnight and had to wake us up to let us know that she was here.
It was pretty scary to have a big Brazilian guy let himself into the house and start yelling stuff in Portuguese that I couldn’t understand. He knocked on my bedroom door (which has no handle so opens easily) to find me trying to put my pants on, looking bewildered, wondering if I have time to stash my valuables before we got robbed. I thought that I was going to have to hand over everything that I owned that night.
In order to get into “downtown” Buzios, we take a van. I don’t know if they are owned by a company or anybody with a van can charge 2 reais and pick up passengers. I think that it is the latter. There is a sign in the window telling you where the van is headed. You can wait at a bus stop, but most people stand on the side of the road and flag them down. They stop anytime someone is waving.
The vans can hold about 10 people, but having 20 people in one van is not an uncommon sight. The nice thing is that you don’t pay until you get to your destination. I think this is because there is a good chance you wont survive the ride. Driving in South America looks like it is fun. There are no rules that you have to obey and everyone should be getting out of your way. Of course sometimes the locals scream a bit if you slam on your brakes to avoid hitting, running over, rear ending the [insert anything here] in front of you. But the people screaming are just over reacting, every driver here knows that they are a professional race car driver. I haven’t ridden in one yet, but there are a lot of people driving carts pulled by donkeys.
Another cool thing in Brazil are the self service, buffet style, per kilogram restaurants. There is a variety of foods. Today, for lunch I saw steak smothered with gorgonzola cheese, pasta, fish, eggs, salads, fruits, vegetables, quiche, french fries, almost anything that you want, it is available. The place that I liked the most was the ice cream spot. There were about 30 flavors. Mango, chocolate chocolate chip, dulce de leche, nutella, and something I didn’t recognize, were the flavors that I mixed for dessert. There were waffles and all kinds of flavored syrups available also.
PS. I passed on the steak because I couldn’t find out if it was local, free-range, or organic beef.