Friends over for tubing

We had some friends over for pizza and tubing tonight - got some fun in before the sun went down! Scott and Caleb are in the same grade, and Meg and Piper are about the same age, but will end up one year apart in school because of their birthday months. Fun times!

Friends on the water

Our buddy Scott came by for a visit and here he is on the kneeboard going wake to wake. 

Scott's nephew Matrix who just learned how to kneeboard and wakeboard this weekend, being photographed immediately after realizing he just completed the 8 trips across the wake required for the merit badge...

Happy Meg riding the kneeboard like a big girl, though not really pulling herself all the way up on it just yet, but still happy as can be...

A video of the wake king, best viewed while humming something from a chase scene in a 007 movie...

and some pictures of us enjoying the wakeboards, including rare footage of me, which is hard to come by since I am the one who loves to take the pictures and because one other adult has to drive the boat. Many thanks to Scott B for the photos.

 and a quick throwback picture of Scott meeting Scott... 

Adventure Brazil - Part 13 Farewell to Rio with one last dip at Copacabana

On our final day in Rio we took a last quick trip to Copacabana. It was a bit cloudy, but we enjoyed about 2 hours of sand and waves before we had to get back to the hotel to catch a taxi to the airport.

It was a l--o--n--g trip back. We got in the taxi at the hotel at noon and pulled into our driveway at 5:30 pm the next day. There were four flights, Rio to Sao Paulo, then back to Porto Alegre, then the big flight to Miami, and a short flight back to Charlotte. The kids did great. Scott had to walk through the jetway around 1 am so we could get on the flight back to Miami, which was significantly delayed. I carried Meg, and Brian had all the carry on stuff, so Scott had to walk. He was punch drunk with sleep - laughing his way along, and we had to keep him moving otherwise his knees would start to buckle and he would try to sink to the floor so he could sleep again. We were able to get him to his seat and everybody crashed out for the long ride. The kids rested well and were both perky and happy when they woke up on the plane for airline food breakfast. The delay forced us to miss the connection in Miami, so we spent a little bit of time there, too, but we had no problems getting our bags and getting back to the van once we got to Charlotte. It was a great adventure!

Some favorite sayings of the trip:

Miami = Your-ami or Mom's-ami or Everybody's-ami

Copacabana = Copa banana

Party in Ipanema, Baby!

Ovos mexidos, por favor (scrambled eggs, please)

Adventure Brazil - Part 12 More Copacabana and Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro

On our last full day we went to the beach in the morning and the Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro in the afternoon with Henrique from the hotel staff as our tour guide. This time we went to Posto 5 (Leme is Posto 1 on the north side of the beach and Fort Copacabana is on the south side at Posto 6, then it wraps around to Ipanema to continue counting.) Here is a view from our rented beach chairs at Posto 5 of Fort Copacabana, which we visited the day before. 

 

This little girl, Sofia, enjoyed playing with Meg and Brian even though there was a language barrier. She got her point across that Brian was supposed to go fill the water jug with no problem, though.

Brian says to Scott, "Let's make muscles and Mom will take our picture." and right then a wave came by and flattened Scott, so this is the picture I got... 

and this is the retake - looking good guys!

We got these coconuts from Maurice, the chair rental and get-you-whatever-you-need guy. All of us were interested in trying the nonalcoholic version, and I must say we were a bit disappointed, though they look really cool, and conveniently you can just set them right in the sand. 

This is just pure happiness.

The water is cold - quick, grab onto Dad!

The view down the beach and a video of the waves

After swimming we walked down to Posto 6 for some ice cream. Here's a picture of the open air restaurant and another with a view back from there to the Posto 5 rescue station. Each of the canopy looking things is another open air restaurant. 

After cleaning up back at the hotel we went on a short tour of the Botanical Garden with Henrique, who you can see on the right walking with Brian and the kids below. His English was fabulous, and we learned a lot about Brazilian politics and government from chatting with him during the tour. He spent a winter in his high school days in Ohio as an exchange student and was quite shocked by the winter weather.

Scott is a great big brother.

Us at the fountain in the middle of the garden and several pictures of flowers and small waterfalls.

I am so excited - I have now been able to get close up pictures of hummingbirds on two continents! Yay! This little Brazilian hummingbird in the picture below made my day. Strangely enough, this was my second hummingbird encounter of the day. I had gone up to the lobby of the hotel by myself in the morning to double check the time of the tour, but found no one available - just a small green hummingbird trying over and over again to fly through a window pane. Of all the open air places in the lobby, it had selected the one small area with glass! It was so exhausted it actually let me catch it so I could move it away from the window and release it into the open air stairway. It was quite happy to zoom off.

Adventure Brazil - Part 11 Fort Copacabana and Ipanema Beach

We went to another historic fort with a military history museum on the south side of Copacabana. Below are some views from there of Sugarloaf and the city. 

From Fort Copacabana we walked a few blocks to Ipanema Beach. Here's a street sign we saw on the way - Copacabana one direction, Ipanema the other. 

As Scott quotes from the cartoon movie, "Party in Ipanema, baby!"

This is the favella you can see on the mountainside in the picture above.

This next picture shows the famous sidewalk - similar, but different from the one on Copacabana - as well as the Posto 8 rescue station (with public pay-to-use bathrooms on the first floor) and the rising nearly full moon. Sunset was pretty early, around 5:20 pm each day. According to timeanddate.com, we were getting about 10 hrs and 45 min of daylight each day in Rio as compared to nearly 14.5 hrs of daylight for Charlotte during the summer days in the northern hemisphere. Further south in Porto Alegre we had just under 10 hrs and 15 min of daylight each day. 

After the beach, we walked a few blocks in and sat outside at a restaurant for dinner. This is a view of the street there.