Arrived safely in Brazil
Lynn & Mike ..around the world
Mike Drinkrow & Lynn v/d Hoven
Wed 19 Mar 2008 19:40
JACARE, ON THE PARIABA RIVER
We are now finally in Brazil. We are on a small marina on the Pariaba
river, down from Cabedelo. It is STEAMING hot down here, but the beers
are deliciously cold, fairly cheap and the people are friendly. The guy
who has the marina, is French, and speaks English, but for the rest of the
people, we deal in sign language and smiles. Today we took the local train
to the closest city - Joao Passau, which is extremely poor. We had R$10
borrowed from another yacht, and had to find a bank/ cambio that would
change money. All this was a bit of a challenge with limited funds, no
language, no map, no tourist office etc. Anyway, after some wandering,
lots of sweating (and some cursing) we finally found an HSBC that would
take our autobank cards, and we drew cash. Hallelujah! We were down to
our last R$2 - having spent the rest on the train trip, a hairclip and
some cokes. Immediatly we headed for a local diner and replenshed on
Cheese Burgers and more coke. Willy and Mike have been reading one of
Jimmy Buffett's books, and although this was not quite a "Cheese Burger in
Paradise" it was close! We are now back on the yacht, enjoying the luxury
of WiFi internet and preparing to hit the local sunset strip. A series of
quite nice, 'beach bars', not far from us. Each evening at about 5pm they
have a pretty bizarre ritual, where a boat appears on the river with a
paddler in red and a saxophonist in white - who plays Ravel's Bolero
..which is "piped" into the bars. Pretty damn funny, specially when you
have had a lot of those ice cold beers. We are preparing for Willy to
leave us tomorrow night, which is sad, as we have a great team here. More
later. Will load some more photos soon - need to get back to those ice
cold beers. love Lynn & co