OUR LAST WEEK IN RIO GRANDE, BRAZIL

Rio Grande

050209 Thursday
Tomorrow morning Lady Genyr is leaving. Josephine received many visitor's - the first was a vistor for Lucy - her friend Renato - who she absolutely loves, who she always has smiles for, arrived with a parcel, containing the most enormous purple kangaroo, belonging to the Backyardigan gang, by the name of Austin! Lucy was COMPLETELY delighted, and received Austin (swiftly rechristened Renato) with squeals of delight and open arms! We are going to need a bigger boat for all Lucy's presents the way we are going!

A little later , the cook, Rodrigo came around to share a drink and have a chat. He trained in Brazil to be a chef under a masterchef that had studied in Italy. The stories that his instructor related to him about Italy inspired him no end, so much that when he was explaining about the Napoletana sauce, and the Italian gelato, he actually got goose bumps. This man's dream is to have a pizzeria, and to serve great pizza's just like the ones in Italy to the people in Brazil. A great, humble and admirable dream!

0602 Friday
After a heartfelt goodbye and lots of hugs, a few wet eyes and lots of photos, Lady Genyr left this morning, well at least they tried to leave. This enormous super yacht could not manage to get off the jetty successfully at the first attempt. The wind that was blowing was more that 10 knots in the the wrong direction and the windage on the superstructure blew the boat back onto the jetty, grinding it into the rather rickety and slightly beetle eaten jetty with a shudder and crunch. So skipper Alex very wisely decided to wait things out a bit. A few hours later they managed to set off, stopping on their way out of the the river to refuel with 23 000 litres of diesel... is that ridiculous or what?! We carry the grand total of 250 litres, and that includes our reserve drums!

Mum and I have been thoroughly enjoying the birds in the Oceanographic Museo's gardens. There are all sorts of things that we have not seen before. There is a lovely little brown ground thrush, that sings most beautifully. There are a couple of kingfishers, one very large, and one medium, both with russet brown chests. Something that looks like a heron, but isn't - that has 3 large chicks. Another bird that was a type of heron, that had the most amazing song, and had a large blue eye (well feathers around the eye anyhow), that is apparently very rare. The ever captivating humming birds (which are called "the bird that kisses the flower" - which I thought was rather magical). A very pretty grey blue finch - which we also saw in Maresias. Flocks of spoonbills - or Spatula's as the Brazileans' call them! What is very frustrating is that challenge in finding a Brazilean bird book of any kind, and I don't think we will have any luck before we get to Buenos Aires unfortunately. Tragically, bird watching is not exactly a national sport, which seems insane when you see what bird life there is here.

0702 Saturday
A chap by the name of Marcos came to find us. He is a Brazilean, and an English teacher, and he heard about us from someone or other, so decided to come and find us! He also plays guitar and is part of a band. He seems to be a really super guy, and Andrew and Dael spent the afternoon at band practice with him, filming.

A German boat arrived today, Afun Dafu, a couple by the name of Werner and Emmy - they moored up alongside us. The jetty only takes 3 boats and since Lady Genyr left, the other 2 that were next to us moved their boats to moor against the jetty instead of rafted up on us. So since the arrival of a fourth boat, there is a raft required again. This is quite a common practice, but does mean that you have people walking over your roof all the time, which can be a little disconcerting until you get used to it!

A elderly chap arrived at the boat, not speaking any English, I tried very hard to understand, but was completely confused. Especially when he tried to give me money!! And it was Uruguayan money at that! He kept mentioning Renato's (from Lady Genyr) name. I finally understood.. he has seen Lady Genyr at the diesel jetty the day before, after they left the Museo, and Renato had given him his left over Uruguayan money from his trip to Punta del Este. The strict instructions were that it was only to be spent on cerveja (beer)... what a guy!

We invited the Germans for a prawn braai the same evening. Andrew cooked some great prawns on our good old braai. Our braai seems to be at least twice the size of anybody else's braai we have seen so far - now there's a suprise! Werner and Emmy have been cruising for the grand total of 9 years - blimey - is all I can say. They are both physiotherapists by profession, hhmmn, maybe they will offer to fix our aching baby lugging muscles!

0802 Sunday
We had dinner tonight on the German boat - kindly reciprocating our dinner the previous night. We had a very good meal, with great company, fantastic. Marcos also came along for supper, and was sharing many interesting facts about Rio Grande with us.

Andrew, Dael and the Germans went off with Marcos to an underground rock concert. As it only started at 12 it was a bit late for Mum, Lucy and I, but the boys sounded like they had fun. Three bands playing, and lots of moshing, boy am I sorry I missed the moshpit.

0902 Monday
Our book still has not arrived, and we are now going to leave with or out without it.
It seems there is a good weather window forecast for Friday through to Monday, which is what we are looking for. We will need 3 nights sailing to get to Buenos Aires. I am feeling a little apprehensive about our impending passage, as I did not love the last one.

Oh my goodness.. more presents for Lucy. Lauro has showered her with lovely gifts, Lucy's presents might become a serious problem soon!! She received a beautiful bear (christened Laura of course, as it is a 'she' bear). Along with another bear who laughs and says, "I love you!" and a mug with fishes on it.. very appropriate. Lucy has a real soft spot for Lauro, which is really cute to see. He is a big booming personality, and one might think a bit daunting for a baby. But not for Lucy. She absolutely adores him and vice versa, it is too wonderful to see.

Mum and I went off to do some shopping at a different supermarket - this one called BIG - which they pronounce - BEEGY. We also discovered that BIG happens to be a Walmart owned supermarket, how suprising...... or not. As you can see shopping takes the whole day, nothing else happened today!!

1002 Tuesday
Guess what... suprise... more presents for Lucy, oh my goodness, I don't know what to sat say anymore. The veterinarian, Nenneco, arrived with the more gorgeous multicoloured rabbit, Lucy is again delighted! We are going to have to put Lucy's toys in the dinghy and drag them behind me thinks.

Marcos took us on a tour of Rio Grande, and shared many interesting facts about this facscinating town. The old architecture is reminis of Portugal, with the most beautiful tile work everywhere. There are many buildings under renovation, but there is also a huge amount that is decrepid and wanting of some love and care. It seems that the bureacracy around the restoration discourages rather than encourages people to repair things which is rather sad, as there really some marvellous old buildings going to rack and ruin.

There is a huge gaucho culture alive and well here too. And rodeo's are a big thing it the state of Rio Grande, though we did not manage to find one to go to while we were there. There are also a huge amount of working horses and carts. The horses generally looking slightlly bedraggled, but not too disastarous. In fact there are some very useful looking ponies here, and if should ever find myself living in Rio Grande, I would certainly be starting up a little pony stud and ensuring the longevity of some of the blood that has weeded out over the years.

1102 Wednesday
Today we went for lunch at Marco's house. We met his His mother and sister had made a wonderful traditional meal of feijado (beans and bacon), rice, fried chicken and salads. It was fantastic to meet them, they were very welcoming and friendly. Lucy was in seventh heaven, having 4 young children from the age of 1.5 upwards, to entertain her. She was in rapturous giggles being chased around the lounge, with more space than she has had in a little while.

The plan is to leave on Friday, so we will need to do another victual soon. The challenge with the passage is that the first day is likely to be quite rough, as the waves will not have have settled from the rough weather yet. So we should have good wind in the right direction, but the waves will still be settling from the wind blowing the other way. We could wait another day before leaving, but then Andrew is concerned that we might not make Buenos Aires as there is another southerly wind forecast. The entrance into Buenos Aires is quite difficult as there is a channel of about 250km long into the harbour over shallow seas. So we do not want to have to worry about wind coming from the wrong direction when we get there. SO... that means we will be leaving here on Friday.. waves or no waves....

It may sound to you all that I am not loving sailing very much, well I guess there may be an element of truth in that ;->. The thing is that I very much like it when I am in the cockpit, Lucy is asleep and we are sailing with nice winds and good weather. Then I am not at all seasick, I love the feeling of the sun on my back, and the wind in my face, the sea glistening and albatrosses and petrels swooping amongst the surf, the boat responding to your movements on the wheel, and the odd pod of dolphins or sealions coming to join you for a while. However the reality is that with Lucy - who is not asleep very much at all really, this does not happen very often. More often that not we are down below, changing a nappy or entertaining Lucy out of the sun. So even when the weather is good, generally Mum and I are feeling Not So Good. Things should look up in Buenos Aires though, as we are going to get a bimini cover built for the cockpit when sailing, so the shade issue should be alleviated, and this should make a difference to life in general.

120209 Thursday
Off we go to BIG for our victual shop. We were told by Emmy that we should try something called "Para Entregar" which is actually just "For Delivery", Emmy says that they do this all over Brazil. Unfortunately it seems we managed to find the one supermarket that does not offer this service! So as we were arriving home, packets in hand (we did take a cab), Emmy's shopping arrived with a delivery boy! We will have to chat to her again about supemercado (supermarket) selection too!