Saudade

Here the final report from Brasil, well about Brasil, not from because I have returned home on Monay. It is way too cold here and I feel and see my nice tan getting less with every hour :(

Back home, on my own computer I can upload pictures easily so here are the long awaited pictures from Brasil.

This first picture is Ipanema beach with in the back the 2 brothers mountains and Gavea. We took a room without sea view but sticking our heads out of the window we still had a beautiful view. We could also see Corcovado from our room although you can't see that on the picture. Corcovado is, as I'm sure you all know, the famous Jesus statue on one of the hills in Rio.




As I wrote in a previous post, we bought these costumes, really expensive, in order to be able to parade with a samba school. Here is Anne Kjersti and me just before our "show" started. Unfortunately we left the costumes behind. We were too lazy and tired from partying to drag these costumes with us. Oh well, it was expensive but exellent fun for a short time but to never forget.




The next night we went to see the whole show. This picture is still from the start of the night. The next picture is a close up from a part of the parade.The parade went on all night and we ended in bed at 9 am!





From Rio we traveled to Trancoso, Bahia. It took us about 20 hours to get there but it was well worth it because of the beautiful village and beaches, not to forget the excellent Caipirinha's and food. My favorite food there is Moqueca de Peixe as you can see me eating on one of these pictures. I brought the main ingrediences home to try and make it myself. It is a stew of fish with coconut milk and some veggies. The ingredient giving this dish a special flavour is the dende oil though, of a certain palm. In Trancoso we saw some great capoeira again and went to dance forro at night.









We traveled back to Rio, another 20 hours, to continue right awat to Paraty, 4 hours South of Rio. We just wanted to go to a place that we hadn't been to yet. Paraty is a beautiful colonial town with cobble stone streets. Ok, I live in Gent where there are a lot of those streets but they are no comparison to the streets out there. After several caipirinha's these streets get really hard to walk on. On the pictures you see one of these streets, Anne Kjersti with the first of many on a certain night and on the last picture you see us on a beach closeby Paraty.








After Paraty back to Rio for our final day. We went out to Lapa that night, an area in Rio that is supposed to be good for going out. There were many parties/clubs with all kinds of music. You had to pay entrance fees every where and they were quite high, so since we didn't want to pay everywhere we did not know where to choose. We just hung out and met some nice people that we parties with till, again, early morning.

Just to end this blog for a while, because I haven't planned any travels in the near future, it was a damn good trip to Brasil. I don't think that I have often laughed and danced as much as I did there. To be repeated, carnaval in Salvador 2008, here we come!!!!!