Chau Brasil!

Well sadly, the time has come for us to leave Brasil, but first, we´ll fill the gap between last post and now.

After Jericoacoara and 18 hours on various buses and other transports, we made it to another small beach town called Praia da Pipa; roughly an hour and a half south of Natal, BR (for those of you that have your maps handy). Pipa is a great beach town with cobble stone roads, lots of shops, restaurants, and pousadas. Though it was tough to gauge exactly the operating business hours of those shops and restaurants. We figured it depended on some combination of Brasil world cup games (go Brraaasssilll!), siestas, the surf, and capirinha intake the night before. We stayed at a great pousada called Cavalo Marinho, which was owned by a former New Yorker. Most of our time in Pipa was divided between the beach, the pool at our pousada, watching the World Cup games, and playing cards with Erika and Stine (pronounced Steena). A side note: we have learned two great card games on our travels, one being Yanif, which we credit Pasha, our Israeli friend, for teaching us in Rio. The other is a game I am sure everyone has heard about, but few under the age of sixty has mastered (ourselves excluded)...that would be Bridge. Tom and Dave both of English decent got us hooked. We now realize why retirees play the game religiously, it´s terrific & a bit addictive. Look out folks when we make it back to Austin, we´re starting a Bridge club... how does Saturday night sound?

But anyway, Pipa was grand, but we were supposed to be in Cusco, Peru around the 12th or 13th and it´s what?.... the 27th, and we´re still in route to the westside of the continent. We better get movin´!

From Pipa we took a 4 hour bus ride down to Recife, Brasil. Recife... how should i put this... on par with Salvador, but smelled awful and the beaches have shark infested waters, no really... it´s redeeming qualities are its shopping mall and airport, which we spent the majority of our 3 day layover split between the two.

Jen and I are at the present sitting in an internet cafe in Sao Paulo waiting for our flight on to Campo Grande with a short layover there, then on to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. We´ve both heard tons of great things about both Bolivia and Peru and very excited about the next leg of our journey. We will keep everyone updated and don´t forget to check out our pictures, we posted some new ones yesterday. Hope everything is well back home!!