Where in the world are the Tunstalls?

Well I have not managed to get anything out on the blog for absolutely ages, and it has been on my To Do List pretty much every day. Not very good self management going on here - to say the least. But as we are now fully entrenched in our little house in Colonia Valdense Uruguay, and have been here for going on 3 months, I think it is time that I pulled finger, and finally got a little snippet out there, just to get the ball rolling again.

In brief
- when we where in Brazil, we had numerous engine and gearbox dramas, that resulted in our visa time in Brazil running out, and us not having sufficient time to make it up to the Carribean, which was going to be our next stop
- so our plans changed (are you surprised…not) and we headed south yet again to our most familiar country – Uruguay, where we could find an inexpensive house to rent while Andrew got his teeth sunk into editing films and writing a book.
- so here we are back in Uruguay, having found a little house in a quiet rural town (town is being generous, but they don’t seem to use the words town and village here, everything is a Cuidad – or City, and that it definitely is not!), where we can get around by bicycle, Lucy has a safe garden to play in, and Andrew can work.
- Oh yes, and did I mention that we were thinking that being in a house might be a good time to see if we could manage to expand our brood and produce a sibling for Lucy ;-) , this project is now well on the go, and I am 5 months pregnant, and expecting a little boy by the name of Daniel Peter on the 10th December. As you can imagine, that is another whole adventure having a baby in a country where you really don’t speak the language anywhere near fluently! Quite interesting when your Spanish “had”, ‘have had”, “have”, “would have” and “will have” are still all a bit of a lottery, and your chances of getting a winning ticket equally dismal!
- So we are now going to have a little Uruguayan in the family, completely not what I would have predicted when we left home in 2008!

Our boat is moored in a secure port about 30kms away, an easy bus journey, and I already have absolutely no idea how we fitted into that vessel. Or as our good friend Laurence pointed out, we did not really fit at all. We have already accumulated a whole lot more stuff, and I think we need to upgrade to a cargo ship if we are planning on sailing on with an extra small person in tow! I am going to leave our news at that for the moment, and fill you in on Life in Valdense in my next update.

The return to Uruguay - Coming soon

Paraty...and Paraty - Coming soon

To Paraty - Coming soon

To Cananeia - Coming soon

Road trip to Iguacu Falls, Brasil; October 2009

After house sitting in Florianopolis, we decided to splash out and hire a car and drive to Iguacu Falls. These falls are supposed to be some of the most dramatic in the world, and you never know when you are going to be in position to visit them again. So off we went:

Road trip to Iguazu

The weather is no good for travelling to our next port – Curitiba. So we are going to travel from here to Iguazu falls by road, the falls should be spectacular, as the rain has not stopped here for the last few days.

Fortunately there is a car rental pace right outside the yacht club, and they have the perfect vehicle for us.

SO as I write we are driving up the coast. Brazil is just so green, it is amazing, the buildings seem to be completely random, as is the city planning. There is a mixture of agriculture, though there does appear to be some proper cattle farming.

Shortly after leaving town, you find yourself transported to New York, with the statue of Liberty bearing down from a department store car park. Not quite life size, but a good effort.

Then you drive through a small beach town resort, which just has wall to wall high rise buildings, amazingly enough with no vegetation in between, so you know they really have been packed on top of each other – because in Brazil, things manage to grow everywhere. No nook or cranny remains free of growth of some sort. Now we have just passed a field of planted lettuces, and other greens, the soil they are growing in is pitch black in colour.

There are road signs everywhere, billboards and random homemade and hand painted signs. This interspersed with palm trees and an odd 3 metre high globe decorated with acloud cover advertising Santa Rosa…. Then container terminals as far as the eye can see, with the familiar names of Hamburg Sur and Maersk painted across them – the same the world over.

Junk yards full of wrecked cars, shops selling enormous beach towels – Betty Boop, a toucan, Hello Kitty and a girl in a bikini on a leopard skin mat. A boat yard pops up, constructing big trawlers – reminding us that this road is actually right next to the sea. Then more towel shops, the collections equally random.

Fields on both side of the road flooded after the rains, filled with cattle and hundreds of egrets helping themselves to the tasty fat ticks that cover their hosts. Along the road walks a man with a wheelbarrow and a generator – on his way somewhere!

We cross a river, with the associated sprawl of habitation and light industry. More towels sporting ponies, a poker table, spiderman and of course a girl in a bikini under a palm tree. ‘Hotel Playtime’ languishes next to the river. Fat horses stand knee deep in grass. A valley opens, a sign advising of a ‘Parque Thematica’ – of what theme we are not quite sure. A small, mould covered castle style house hides in amongst a tree grove. Trucks big, long, short … We pull into a shop for some refreshments, there is a roof of a warehouse next to the car park, with 2 horses tethered for the day, eating their way around the skeleton of the building. We crest a small hill and a lifesized Brontasaurus greets us advertising a park I assume with dinosaurs in it! The ‘Flamboyant Hotel’ with two life sized carton style whales decorate the next hilltop. A collapsed billboard looks sadly over a poor rural area. An enormous factory boasts a smoke stack high enough that it has been painted red and white to stop planes flying into it. There is so much to describe, a lorry drives past sporting a load of new tractors.

A very smart newly painted multi story furniture shop with glass windows shows off its wares at the roadside. The Baby Jesus advertises an ‘Artesenal Cornucopia’ of stores. An abandoned churrasco shop has plants growing out of its’ windows. Bright wash day clothes are out on display after the days of rain.

A full size, restored wooden galleon stands on a pond? An ostrich farm on either side of the road. A house on a hill has fields of vegetables and a smaller field, jam packed with bee hives. Black vultures soar above a hilltop. An enormous bill board see-saw with 2 billboard children – bounce up and down in the wind. Road side shops with garden ornaments galore - flamingoes, Snow White and the seven dwarves, Mother Mary, toadstools and gnomes. A wireless network pops up as available on my computer screen. We pass a convenience store- a big one, with the second floor not built – in full use at ground floor level, but the roof and struts all there for floor number two. A hotel entrance sports a small windmill.

We stop for a snack at a road side store, a white A-frame with a latticed red window and door frames. A craft and snack shop with a camping area in the trees behind where Lucy found a wendy house to play in.

There is a German influence here, as confirmed by a few windmills over the next kilometers. A two storey high duck swigging a beer and wearing liederhausen added to the odd Germanic/Brazilean flavour of the area.

We drive through Curituba – a huge city, the capital of Parana state, the main route to Foz Iguazu going right through the city – no bypass to speak of. The road passes through some kilometers of thick, lush rain forest. Waterfalls and creepers everywhere. You can just imagine the sloths and monkeys there must be in there. We still have not seen a sloth – I would just be so super excited to see one.

We stopped at the Hotel Palmeiras, a clean and basic hotel with a buffet supper on offer and a best of all – a jungle gym for Lucy – who from being almost asleep, was wide awake and sliding down slides! We leave and start to drive through kilometers of hills, covered with a mixture of forest and farmland. Rolling hills covered with small brightly coloured houses and skewbald animals. There are teams of workers cutting the roadside grass in Brazil. A team of around 20 men armed with a weedeater/grasscutter and a yellow overall. A never ending job creator – the Brazilian verge.

The rolling hills carry on as far the eye can see. Brazil is just enormous, and the more you see, the more you realize there is. There is a brilliant purple tree – that loses all its leaves and stands by the side of the road with its’ bright purple big flowers shouting “look at me”.

There is a type of monkey puzzle tree here that is very interesting – it is has a tall trunk and the branches only start near the top – sort of the top third. The branches are really long and again only have leaves on the end – so they are sort of a skeleton tree. But the leaves that are on the end are spiky and spiny in texture. But when seen from a distance – look like green balls on the ends of the branches. Quite unusual. They also seem to grow taller than the surrounding vegetation so stick out the top, and normally make a striking silhouette.

We drive out of town past the ‘Kiss Me Motel’, these Motels are apparently only for sex, and are hired out by the hour. Rather a different scenario from our Motels at home – which are really just cheap Hotels! Imagine the four of us arriving, clueless, baby in tow – asking for two rooms for the night! Of course in the poorer communities where people live in very small houses, there is very little privacy – so it is not unseemly to go and pay for a private space for an hour to be able to enjoy your more intimate relations! We have passed a few of these hotels with special names –‘My Garden Hotel’ and the ‘Celebrity Hotel’ being two of the more amusing ones.

We pass through an area of hills where the farms are much smarter. Proper working farms – more substantial buildings with well maintained fields and fences and animals in good condition. Forestations of pine planted for the poles have been stripped of their lower branches to encourage their straight upwards growth towards the light. The floors of these forests covered in vegetation, unlike pine forests in South Africa which only have pine needles. Big ferns in particular grow happily under the shady cover.

We have seen more interesting birds– a large bird with a forked tail, that turns out to be a bird of prey – we spotted high above the forest canopy. When we stopped for refreshments, we saw another interesting fly catcher type bird – black and white with extremely long tail feathers. Mum is the birder extraordinaire, armed with binoculars, camera and field guide, diligently marks what species of birds we spot in what location.

We drive through a small town – in the parking lot of the general store there is a horse tied up amongst the cars. The road we are travelling on is very busy with trucks – but has an excellent surface – obviously quite a new road, in some places, we have been stopped as they is still working on it. There are many tolls – probably one every 80 kilometres, varying substantially in price – from a few centavos to 8 reias (x 4 for the rand). The new road looks like it is worth the price.

Another tree that has been very noticeable amongst the forest cover is a bright orange flowered tree, a similar colour to the orange gum flower. Yesterday when we stopped for one of the road works – we were gazing into the forest and there sitting not 20 metres away on a branch was a monkey and her baby. Very fluffy with a long, thin, short-haired tail.

We pass the ‘Hawai lanchonette, restaurante and filling station’. Driving through some of the thicker rainforest, there are baskets for sale by the side of the road – brilliant died grasses of pink, turquoise, blue, yellows and reds flash through your field of vision as us girls wish we could stop – I am sure we will see more at the falls.

A man and horse plough the side of a hill – it is a field, but it just seems so endless in relation to their small profiles. And it makes you think in wonder of way back when all ploughing was done by this way.

A green building marked Funeria – a funeral parlour has a pair of two metre high statures of macaw parrots standing guard at its’ entrance.

We pass a blue factory – named Cool Seed. Another Motel –‘The Bonnie and Clyde Motel’ – with a suggestive accompanying picture – as if you could not guess!

Lots of half built buildings – which have been abandoned , presumably with the crash of the world economy last year. Hotels, houses, apartments blocks – all standing empty, black mould adding to their dilapidated, deserted mood.

The Brazilean highways have a police department specially dedicated to them, and to add some clout to their message to watch your speed – at every Polica Rodavaria station along the higway –about every 80km or so – they have an area to collect all of the vehicle wrecks from accidents on the highway – so there is always an in your face reminder of the nasty result of an accident.

We reach the town of Foz do Iguacu, amazed that the trip alone could be quite such an experience. We find a reasonable hotel after some haggling and crash for the night. Looking forward with anticipation to the next few days of new sights, and hoping the falls are all we are hoping for!

House sitting for a month in Florianopolis

So what do you do house sitting for a month in Florianopolis!?

Download download download... The main reason we came to Florianopolis, to have access to power and space so that Andrew could download the tapes we had shot so far. And that is what he spent his time doing for the entire month. All the film footage that we have been filming while we have been away needed to be downloaded from the tapes onto hard drives. Not as simple as it sounds - about 30 hours of film, which needs to watched as it is downloading. Andrew needs to 1) see what we have actually shot 2) start to get to know the footage 3) watch that the download process actually happens successfully; i.e. that the connection does not get dropped 4) when completed, he needs to then get rid of the complete rubbish. Quite a process for starters, on average per 1 hour tape, it takes about 3 hours. Andrew also had to deal with the added challenge of working with a Mac as opposed to a PC, which is what he is used to. Oh yes and not to mention getting to grips with Final Cut Pro after not laying hands on it for about a year! SO, all in all Andrew had a lot on his plate, and managed very successfully to achieve all he wanted in the time we were in Floripa (the local name for Florianopolis).

Grocery shopping and being delivered in Lagoa, Floripa

I have been writing some short pieces about fun moments for http://www.trazzler.com/users/abigail-tunstall

This is a bit that I wrote about grocery shopping while in Floripa -

Just out to get the groceries, at the quaint little village of Lagoa. Had a good mooch around the shops, typical arts and crafts - t-shirts, crystals, haviannas interspersed with sushi bars and restaurants. Nice holiday mood village feel. Refuelled with a blast of caffeine and a sweet treat at one of the plentiful coffee shops. Ready to brave the Supermercado Magia and lug all our loot back home. Oh - they deliver, that's good - what about us? - oh they will take us too, hey, things are looking up - what, you'll take us in that?? And so we got our lift home in a 30 year old volkwagen bus with only 2 gears- brilliant!


Surf, surf surf...

Rupert was very happy with the location of the house sit, just off one of the good surfing beaches. He was up every morning, waxing his surfboard to head off to catch the morning waves. Lucy quickly developed an addiction to the surf wax, loving the smell and texture of it! Rupe's challenge for the morning was to get out of the gate without Lucy having running away with the wax!

Lucy enjoying the dogs and the horses and dressing up!


Climbing Morro da Limpiao
There is a hill behind the house where we are staying, and what else are hills for if not to climb!
Andrew of course was working, so Rupert, Lucy, Mum and me made our way up the hill.
We had a few false starts, as it is not very clearly signposted, and a very kind local directed us through his back yard and then gave us a guided tour up half the hill with his 6 year old daughter in tow!
We eventually made it to the top, a lovely view of Campeche island and the beach all the way to Joaquina and beyond.

A trip to Costa da Lagoa
Andrew took a day off and we took a boat to the small village of Costa da Lagoa.

Only reachable by boat, Costa de Lagoa is a vibrant, well maintained little community, supported by fishing and tourism. We ate a most delicious meal at one of the colourful restaurants on the waterfront and Lucy found a playschool ground where she entertained herself for ages.


Floripa General
Some other interesting bits and pieces from our month in Floripa.

Collecting wood with a horse and cart. The horse is very definitively still a work animal here in Brazil, many families having a horse that is used to help with manual labour.


Lucy at the amazing Clinica Tio Cecim, a private clinic where I took her for some of her vaccinations. Not the cheap option, that was for sure, but under recommendation from a friend that the state vaccinations in Brazil do not all adhere to the allowed levels of metals in some of their vaccines, we were taking no chances. The clinic was extraordinary, with every detail perfect for a children's clinic. Toys in every room and rocking horses in every reception area.
Colouring tables, stickers and fish tanks - Lucy thought she had arrived in heaven, not arrived for jabs! The whole experience was completely unexpected, and Lucy only cried a very little bit when the needles where administered! I am not sure who hates Lucy's vaccinations more, Lucy or me!

A walk around the local Lagoinha (literally little lake) after the rain encountered some additional obstacles, flooded paths and piles of rubble used to fill holes in the roads. Mom negotiating the path with the pram!

Wash day after the rains
The local fishmonger trying to understand my broken Portenol (Portuguese and Spanish mix)
Lucy loving the swing, with Rupe loving the hammock at the house
Random dog on top of a wall while walking en route somewhere!
The city centre Plaza Quinze (Fifteen) is full of beautiful old trees, vines and people enjoying the shade.
And lastly another Trazzler trip to SANTO ANTÔNIO DE LISBOA....
It's a balmy Tuesday afternoon in the quaint old Azorian quarter of Florianopolis. Artisans peddle their wares, while oysters grow fat and tasty in the nutrient rich lagoon. A speciality in Florianopolis, their rich taste is a result of being farmed in a lagoon thriving off of a continuous feed of tropical vegetation deposits. A dozen of these beauties enjoyed with fine company and a glass of golden Brazilian chardonnay in the afternoon sun—hhmmmmnnnn, where's that hammock?
We enjoyed our time in Floripa, it was great to have some space and normal facilities to enjoy for a month. When we left the house sit, we took a road trip to Foz do Iguacu to see some of the most impressive waterfalls in the world before getting back on the boat and heading North, more about the waterfalls in the next blog.

Chapter 2 Southern Brasil

From Uruguay, Piriapolis to Brazil, Florianopolis

The border town of Chuy

We left Piriapolis with Alex and Rita giving us a lift to the border town Chuy. This was not a small undertaking, as the journey was a few hundred kilometers. In Chuy one side of the main road is in Uruguay and the other side is Brazil! Alex and Rita were going to take us all the way to Rio Grande, but Alex’s insurance did not allow him to drive in Brazil. We had an interesting drive through Uruguay, passing an area that was filled with anthills covered in grass, making a bizarre green hillock pocked landscape.

We passed an area that was littered with date palms – an avenue of palms that traversed Ururugay, created by the gauchos, riding this passage over the years, eating palm nuts and discarding the seeds.

A remarkable monument to the gauchos who are the real heart and soul of Uruguay.

Alex and Rita offered to show us Santa Theresa, which is a national park run by the military. It is complete with a fort that was build in 1762 and has survived many battles and turbulent times between the Spanish and the Portuguese.

We said a very teary goodbye to Alex and Rita, they had been absolutely wonderful to us and become very good friends and we were not sure if we would ever see them again. They dropped us off at the bus station and we caught the one o clock bus to Rio Grande, stopping at Pelotas to change buses.

We saw a couple of peculiar things in our brief visit through Chuy. A converted double storey green and white house with a huge hand painted sign advertising, “Darwin’s Dentist” – I am not 100 percent sure I would be happy with him looking at my teeth.We drove past a small bar – going by the name of “Drink’s Bar’ – I was not aware there were other types of bars?

The area between Chuy and Florianopolis is primarily wetland, hundreds of kilometers of soggy earth – filled with basic dwellings with the mandatory selection of livestock – cattle, horses, ponies, goats, sheep, chickens, geese, the odd turkey – you name it – not forgetting the pack of mangy mongrels and a couple of cats thrown into the deal. All of the habitated land is reclaimed from the sea and has been drained by some means or other – with varying levels of success. Some systems looking quite primitive and manual – others more sophisticated, depending on the level of economy of the inhabitants.

The wetlands got wetter, and became unfarmable and then changed to true wetland complete with herds of up to 20 indigenous capibaras browsing on water lilies by the sides of the road and caymans lazing in the afternoon sun hoping for a snack of egret or frog. When we first saw the capibaras and caymans I thought I was seeing things, it was so extraordinary to see them like that in their natural environment. We were spoilt again with the sights of new birds, some which we managed to identify and some not. The most impressive of all was the Southern Screamer which we had previously only seen in the zoo. I sadly have no pictures worth using as they are all through a blurry bus window…

The journey was also filled with gauchos getting on and off the bus at each stop. This was not a direct bus, so it stopped on request, providing us with another new gaucho to stare at in wonder. Their attire so comfortable – slim, soft leather boots, good for keeping the feet dry and perfect in the stirrup, wide bombachas – trousers that fit snugly around the ankle of your boot – but wide in the thigh area – leaving your legs free to move unrestricted and ready to swing your leg over your horse or to bring down a calf. Long sleeve cotton shirts to keep you cool and keep off the sun.

A neckerchief to stop the sweat and sun and to have at hand if you need it for any other function. A belt to keep your trousers in place and hang your knife, whip and boleros from (boleros are two balls attached to each other with a rope used for bringing down livestock). A wide brimmed Stetson type hat to shade the face, perfect for long days in the sun. This wonderful outfit – which looks as if they come just off a film set of a Weston, are worn in various degrees of style depending on the status and wealth of the gaucho, an absolute treat to see.

Brazil - Rio Grande

The bus changes were all easy and we did not have to wait long before arriving in the familiar Rio Grande. Seeing the boat moored at the Oceanographic Museo, we felt like we had come home.

This was where we had stopped on the way down to Uruguay 6 months before. We caught up with our mates Lauro, Marcos, Barbara and the rest of the crew at the Museo. We also had the entertainment of watching some of the teenage modelling shoots that seem quite the rage in South America, where some teenage girls dress up to the nines and get a professional photographer to take some snaps!

We meet up with the boat that has sailed from Florianopolis with Andrew and a crew of 2 – Eduardo, our Uruguayan friend and Rupert. The boys had a wonderful peaceful sail, quiet sail, listening to Pink Floyd while the moon shone on the water. Andrew was bleak that we had not been on board, as it sounds like one of those once in a lifetime sails. Of course that is the trouble with sailing, whatever the weather forecast, you can never really tell exactly what you are going to get.

From Rio Grande, Mum, Lucy and I took another overnight bus to Florianopolis where we were going to house sit for one month. The boys got the boat ship shape and headed off for what turned out to be the most epic sail since the ocean crossing, below is an account from Rupert of the entire trip right through from Piriapolis to Rio Grande and then Laguna, which is where they ended up sheltering from weather, before finally making the trip to Florianopolis some days later.

“We left Piriapolis, Uruguay about ten days ago. Andrew, Edu (a Uruguayo) and I sailed/motored for 42hrs to reach Rio Grande, southern Brazil. The girls took a bus as Lucy´s not really susceptible to longer trips. The second night we had enough breeze to kill the motor and sail comfortably through the thick black water. The bright moon sinking below the horizon, stars reflected individually in the oily blackness. All of us on deck in the warm evening. Andrew´s ‘Delicate sound of thunder’ Pink Floyd concert album transporting us to those stars...

We spent 3 days there, in Rio Grande, checking into the country and doing boat customs. We even had the Receita Federal (customs) search the boat with dogs, as well as having to get certification showing our lack of pig-flu onboard. No bribes this time - but we did have to steal a stamp in order to pass through one of the doors. Backward bureaucracy running on something like African time.

Edu kindly offered to help us deliver the boat the rest of the way to Florianopolis, where we'll be house sitting a place for September. The trip should have taken no more than 65 hours. It took 84 - in which we each managed about 8-10 hrs of sleep. a powerful northeast came through two days earlier than predicted. We had to beat into this wild storm. Andrew made the call to heave-to (stop the boat and hardly make ground at all) and get some rest - so we spent 6 or so hours rolling up and down these towering black swells. Dry beneath the spray dodger, keeping lookout for passing ships. Sunday morning sunrise seemed a blessing but as the day drew on and we continued tacking toward the cape, monstrous waves began pounding the boat and the wind got back up to around 45knots. Things smashed & spilt down below, chutney on the charts, etc.Night came all too quickly and soon I was gripping the wheel as tightly as possible with powerful waves breaking onto my head - squinting into 50+knots of wind & spray. Black waves which were barely visible until the moon caught the crest just before the wave crashed into the cockpit.

Thankfully we were now close enough to the cape to use our remaining diesel and steer more directly to Laguna - the closest shelter, about which none of us really knew a thing. The engine barely audible above the heaving ocean and roaring winds. doing 3 knots, and trying to cover about 50 miles.

We motored past the mouth to the lagoon, turned downwind, and with both the reefed-main and genoa out, we flew into a gap - no wider than 50 meters (but seemingly less). Dodging hidden rocks and racing the massive waves that exploded around us. Holding the boat steady under overwhelming conditions, Andrew got us safely into the calm of the lagoon where we dropped the tired sails and motored against the current which was rushing out. Always aware of the faulty channel markers and possible discrepancies between the charts, the gps and the actual Brazilian coastline we motored along the path of light cast by the moon, our hearts still racing - we then nearly crashed straight into a mating whale couple!

I balanced on the bow, scouting for hazardous whales. The yellow moon catching whale tails in the night. A black silhouette of a big hill to port. topped by a clinically lit giant statue of jesu-cristo, el senhor. Grimy, dank favelas in the foreground.”

Wow is all I can say – great writing Rupert, I am pleased I was watching capibaras and gauchos on the bus instead though! Inevitably these types of sails happen when we have a deadline, as we choose to sail when the weather is slightly less than optimal and then normally regret it. Of course sometimes this cannot be helped, but in this case for instance, it would have been better to wait!

We learned many months later that this particular area of the sea is called Santa Marta and is completely impassable unless you have a weather window of at least more than three days, and on this particular sail, the window was just less than three days. The friend recounting this local knowledge to us, chuckled when he heard of Josephine in the storm, knowingly nodding his head when he heard of the boat being forced to take shelter and wait until the weather window had opened properly for that particular spot on the ocean.

Andrew left Rupert with the boat in Laguna, and came to Florianopolis with Edu to catch up with us as Mum, I and Lucy were looking after the house sit already, who needed to get back to work in Uruguay. Later that week Andrew returned to Laguna and he and Rupert sailed/motored the boat easily to Florianopolis, taking 24 hrs with no further excitement or dramas!

Brazil - Florianopolis - House siting for September

Butterflies, butterflies, everywhere.
It is just amazing how quickly you forget, and also how it all comes flooding back.Back in the country of rain, forest, birdsong and butterflies.
Walking down the road with Lucy in the pram, there is a cacophony of bird song, seemingly in competition with each other. There are flowers in every garden, orchids and bromeliads being standard fare. Prize wining displays that would rival the best at the Chelsea Flower Show.
Dragonflies and big bumble bees buzz pass your head with a flash of shimmering blue or purple. And then there are the butterflies – like a magic garden, new ones at every turn.
Big small, striped spotted, blue, orange, with swallow tails – they are just wonderful, and so many that you can most days guarantee seeing something new.

The birds are a special treat, as even the most drab Brazilian common garden special, is new for our eyes. And then there are the extraordinary hummingbirds, which I guess are equivalent to our South African sunbird in bird prestige circles, the difference being that there are hundreds or types of hummingbird – compared with a handful of sunbirds. The hummingbirds are a challenge to see properly in that they only seem to hang around for a few seconds – sucking some precious drops of sugar from their chosen flower, and then flitting off to the next succulent bloom.

Florianopolis city is a lovely city, clean, vibrant and reminded me a lot of Cape Town’s buildings. Colourful, old renovated buildings, open air coffee shops, incredible squares filled with trees that are hundreds of years old. Lots of markets, fruit and incredible meats and cheeses.

It is lovely to enjoy this wonderful Brazilian feel again, warm air, and although the waters are not warm yet, that will come soon as we head North. Andrew is looking forward to teaching Lucy to swim again, and jumping off the boat! After our house sitting for a month, we have another four and a half months left in Brazil, so we will have to make sure that we don’t hang around too much – which has tended to be our habit, as there are lots of places that we want to enjoy before we need to leave.