Adventure Stories: Hair Pin Turns

Little Guy

This monkey was one of three hanging out just beyond the terrace a couple of days ago. Saphira, our granddaughter, feeds them bananas. There's a coffee bush on a hill behind the house. This island is mountainous like Costa Rica, Jamaica, Cuba and other Latin American countries you may have visited.

You have to navigate seven scary hairpin turns between Sambaqui where Brian lives and here, about 40 minutes from the city centre. That was a surprise. The island is ringed by powdery, sand beaches with mountains in the centre. The pace, the safety and perhaps the beauty are unlike any other part of Brazil.

This is our fifth day here and only today are we mostly relaxed. Driving around has been the biggest challenge, especially at night on the highway returning here -- managing all the gearing up and down on steep slopes puts your heart in your mouth. Yikes.

Tonight we celebrated not getting lost for the first time. Another challenge is charging devices without a transformer and socket adaptor and finally having forgotten at home my iPad USB adaptor to download photos from my camera. If I could actually purchase the little gizmo here, it would be more than CAD $100. Electronics are insanely expensive.

People are much more friendly and family oriented than in Ontario. We're quite distant and reserved in comparison. We're also oddities here. People don't frown when we say we're from Canada. I was afraid Harper would have left a bad taste for our country. So far no other Canadians and no Americans or Europeans either come to think of it.

At a by-the-sea oyster bistro today, we chatted for a long time with a Brazilian visual artist and her banker husband. She is among the top ten geometric visual artists in Brazil. Amazingly friendly. We're invited to her home and studio next week.

Later today I should be in business with photos and will send. We are in Brazil summer time now, three hours ahead of Ontario and six hours ahead of B.C.