Ridding

There is something really nice about the landscape around Brasilia, this serrado. Smooth hills covered with a savanah-like vegetation, very quickly we feel like if we are in the middle of nowhere, kilometers away from our house, yet closer to our house than to the kids' school.  Set behind some small hills, there is a small ranch - one of many, where we chose to spend the day with friends. We arrived in the late morning and the kids spent explored their surroundings and meet the animals. Even if very basic, the main building definitely has a "ranch" style to it, with its large furnished covered porched, while further away a long shed is a very rudimentary shelter for the animals. We took a long ride after lunch, walking deep into a tall pinewood forest, on a red earth track. Our horses knew the way, it was not really necessary to direct them much, with the except my mount who unfortunately did not like the brushing of my ski boot to his side. The kids loved riding, and asked for more, specially after the aery sight of a young six-years old girl who was riding saddle-free a galloping horse around and around the buildings.

   
bear with me, it is difficult to take good shots while riding AND holding a child!!

Preparing for the walk

Tonight, a bunch of us gathered at Miss E's house, who kindly offered to mix some caipis, to discuss the details of a special expedition. Similarly to an earlier yoga escapade, we are planning to escape our responsibilities for five nights, leave our darlings behind and put our lives in the hand of a cute guide to walk over a great number of km around a remote area of the province of Bahia on a historical trail called Chapada da Diamantina. This is a hike entirely set in a out-of-cellphone-network-coverage area (How many of you have done this recently - gone entirely offline for a few days?).
Despite my ski boot, I have to admit I am quite excited. We discussed very important details - like the hiring of a mule or not (general consensus is positive), the size of the backpack and the type of water container to carry. A number of elements still need further clarification - will we need to carry the week's worth of provision among ourselves (or the mule might?), will we have possibilities for showers along the way? will we carry our whole day worth of water? Should we take along a pocket knife or a flashlight? We also discussed the relevance of a nail cutter and tweezers. I also sensed some doubts about my capacity to recover promptly enough to successfully complete this hike, but it happily provided everyone with a great excuse to hire this mule, with its capacity to carry my dead body if ever so the circumstance requires it.
Yesterday night, we were nine moms getting excited to follow the steps of some gold diggers. With the difference that we will probably walk around like a bunch of girls freed from their daily responsibilities: enthusiastically. The caipis probably helped us forget about the future blisters.

Be reassured, I love my kids and my hubby, but my love resurface even stronger after moments like these, in the wild.

The Veadeiros

So we headed with some friends to one of the best natural attraction near Brasilia, the Chapada (plateau) dos Veadeiros. There is a national park listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since 2001, with a huge number of waterfalls, natural basins and  pools. An even greater number are accessible from private properties.
We landed in the Vale da Lua, a valley with strange rock formation.
With us, two other couples and their kids, and Antoine, our photographer friend. We stayed in this very interesting house, a circular house with a round oculus... Roof out of dried palm, rammed earth walls, open loft for sleeping all the kids. A lush garden. And the hosts were very creative in their cooking. (Amazingly they would travel a mere 220 km to Brasilia weekly to do some of their errants).  And very relax place to be.


With Antoine I was supposed to do a small photo training. Here are a few shots of my most photogenic subject of the weekend. Unfortunately a portion of my inspiration and energies were sapped by a very intense allergic reaction to this superb house. Slowly. And to wake up like a complete rag the last morning and beg for forgiveness as we headed back half a day early...

A Walk Down Under

With so many miles on a dirt road, combined with no internet and cell phone coverage, gave us the appropriate level of remoteness. The main road in front of the possada had for any traffic a rare beaten-up car, a pick-up filled with people or materials, or a few horses lead by a cowboy. This is deep into Gaucho country. A few times each day an old school bus would pass by us, bobbing and hopping away on the road to the nearby county school. A confirmation that kids here go to school. Yet how much time would these poor guys spend shaken in this tin can?
With an official mommy ban on all electronic screen, the kids - big and small - had to find new entertainment types. Our little carry-on suitcase filled small games, toy cars and a soccer ball did it. The hammocks and other found objects did a good job too.

Every night we sat around a bonfire. In the morning we ate a wonderful selection of the best homemade cakes and cookies, to the delight of our palates. Later we would take off to visit one cave or another. Because that is why we came all the way here in Terra Ronca.
When we arrived we encountered along the road some strange mountain formation, something similar to what is found in the dolomites. I regretted not having any climbing partner in our group. These formations are in fact over the entrances of these deep sets of galeries. In the area, there are more than 200 of them. With our youngest crew member, only 2 were available for our exploration without danger. Despite our limited exploration, it was very impressive.
It was not crowded, to say the lease. It was not so much due to the fact that we were the only tourists, but also to the shear size of these holes. I mean, you could built a 5 or 6 story high building in them! The mouth of the cave makes 96 m high and 120 m wide, just to give you a bit of an idea.
The cave itself has been formed by a river running into its dept. Inside, the formations are quite large, and so is the main room at the entrance. A small altar was raised near it, with the locals still coming to pray some saint at specific times of the year.

I have to say I am not really a fan of humid dark underground places. But in a way, these galleries were so vast and so high that the feeling of oppression that one could imagine while picturing oneself in there did not occur. But again we visited the easy stuff. My little one did not really like the portion of the adventure where we experimented without the flashlights. It is really dark in there. I mean, darker than you can imagine.
In any cases, the rest of our days would be also spend in one of the many cachueras (waterfallls) found around the area. So far, from our explorations, it seems that they are so numerous that you can be on your own in most of them... Isn't there an add from Brazil Tourism that present a bunch of skimpy bikini clad women bathing under a waterfall somewhere on TV?

 

Roaring Earth

We left Rio and the Carnival while the fiesta was still going strong, flood lights blaring into the night, samba music pounding, cariocas dancing and performers boasting around. We landed a few hours later, with a strange feeling of emerging for a strange dream, our eyes dazzled by the bright morning sun, our dizzy heads still filled with the rhythms and the exhilaration of the night.
After a few required hours of sleep, I started packing everyone for our next adventure. Destination: Terra Ronca, in the Goias.
The next morning we left with our friends at the early morning hours. We drove about 300 km on a national highway:  a two-way single lane road mostly populated with heavily loaded trucks and interrupted with speed bumps at every village encountered, slowing our journey considerably. Making our way into out-of-coverage areas. At some point we turned onto a dirt road and headed further inland.

The conditions of the dusty road slowly degraded until we started progressing at walking speed. Earlier on the way, we had stopped in a trucker restaurant and purchased a CD of Martinho Da Villa, a famous samba singer and his music carried us through the pot holes and the bumps. The landscape was wonderful, both wild and tame, passing from forested areas to fields and pastures. We passed small groupings of a few houses, distanced by a field or two, away from the "main" road. Amazingly remote, yet all connected to the power line. I wondered how their kids could go to school.
Our journey culminated in an empty possada near a very sparse village, with a beaten up road cutting a few houses apart from one another. The road itself, at the center of the village, was so wide, so damaged, with pot holes so deep that it no longer looked like a road, but more like a dry bed river. And the houses along it looked lost, as if they had been separated at birth by a flood or something similarly dramatic.
Despite eight long hours our kids proved to be wonderful little travelers, in a good mood, relaxed and happy to travel. A few minutes after our arrival,  a good meal and a bonfire helped us forget the kilometers.

Big Cats

I am a cat lover. I love to petting a purring furry ball on my laps. But when we got to NEX, I realized that maybe maybe some cats are less my type.
We left Pirenopolis in the morning and drove in convoy to reach the special conservation center called NEX no extinction, a non-governental organization. It is located 80 km from Brasilia, yet it is situated very far away on a dirt road. A very pretty road. Getting there was a little long for the kids, but they forgot about it as soon as we got out of the car.

The center is a refuge for brazilian felines that have been abused or have lost their capacity to be in the wild. There are panthers, black panthers, jaguars, pumas, and a few other smaller types of wild cats. There is about two dozen animals plus a few parrots and a pretty toucan.
The panthers are really impressives. They are angry wild animals, roaring and howling and bellowing with intensity that I never suspected. The dominant male was not happy to be unable to fetch Maya, the dog of our friends. Not that Maya really cared, wagging its tail in content. But I would not want to find myself on the way of this pretty cat, in the wild. We were invited to see it feed, and we assisted to a real fight between pumas who were arguing over who would "win" Maya - or one of our kids - we were not sure.
These animals have been rescued in various ways, some were owned by drug-lords and discovered in their properties during police raids. Other were not cared properly or abandoned by their owners. Some have damages to their fur or marks that prevent them to be integrated into zoos, as they are usually are looking for perfect animals. Some other have been declawed which makes it impossible for them to be reintroduced in the wild. Others have spent too much time in captivity to also be able to fend for themselves in the wild.
It was a very interesting visit. And for some reasons, all our kids understood when we talked about not touching the fence.

Most photos are Paul's.

Moving in Large Packs

There was a "Feria" on Thursday, which meant that the country was not working for a day. Not sure why they would not try, like in China, to move the special day around to create a long weekend, but in any cases, we decided that we would make our own version of a long weekend: kids will skip school, and Paul work, on Friday.
We headed to Pirenopolis with a few friends and their kids.
Pirenopolis is in the state of Goiàs, adjacent to the DF - District Federal, where Brasilia is situated. It is a three hundred years old colonial town with roads paved of long and narrow uneven cut stones, with small colorful buildings and a relax feel of slowly being trapped in time. With its walkable sidewalks, its cafes and small artifacts stores all over the place, it feels convivial and quaint. Something that Brasilia doesn't have.  The original settlers were Portuguese who came for the gold found in the region. Today it is a near touristic destination for the inhabitants of the capital.

What started as a trip of 3 families (us tagging along with two families) turned out by Friday night to be a group of eleven adults and eleven kids. And it was so much fun! We essentially took over our resort, Alter Real.

Adults hung out while kids played. We dipped ourselves and fool around with the kids in the pools. We walked in nature to some some natural waterfalls. We ate excellent food, homemade, from homegrown produces, either in town or at Vagafogo, where the waterfall was. We ate more. We shopped for local crafts (and came back with vintage outfits instead). We practiced some light yoga. We drank a few G&T, and more. It was fun to move slowly in packs. The kids got along perfectly, the older girls playing together, the boys chasing each other or planning the next mischievous trick. It felt a bit like a summer camp, and it was lovely.

In summary, we are looking forward to the next time!

A Remote Escape

While I am here struggling to entertain my crew with interesting activities interrupted by necessary errants, my dear husband is struggling to learn the language on a fast track. No interpreter will do here, no China anymore. So a few weeks ago, foreseeing a window of opportunity, he organized for himself an intensive interlude of immersion. After considering a few options, Florianopolis, or Floripa for the locals, on the island of Santa Catarina, was selected as a good destination. For studying near a beach is certainly a more palatable option than urban learning, even if beach times are not included in the intensive learning.
So Paul left on a Sunday night for two weeks.  In the middle of it all, me and the kids landed in Floripa, dragged my husband away from his learning and escaped out of the urbanity of the small regional center to a very very remote sanctuary south of the island: The Pousada Sitio dos Tucanos.
I mean we really escaped.
It was like landing in a  jungle garden from paradise. An old German lady, Gerta, came there 30 years ago. Slowly she transformed this portion of a mountain into a lush garden of eden. One our third morning, Noam excitedly reported that hundreds of iris bloomed overnight. A few rooms and a couple of cottages, all simple but decorated with creativity and care, make us feel that we had all we needed. Scrumptious breakfasts of bread, muesli, jams, cakes and cookies, jams and fruits sauces, all homemades, fresh juices and fruits from the garden. Yummy! Dinners, even if simple, were delicious, and so pretty to eye. I really like the fresh salad decorated with edible flowers... The kids also were able to enjoy the company of one of Gerta's dog, Firula, who was the sweetest. Every time she would see Noam, she would turn herself on her back, waiting for a few caresses. A very good cure to the dog fear my two little ones had recently developed.

Do you see the nice parrot?

We also took time to explore the island. On our first day we drove north of Floripa in search of the perfect oyster spot. We ended up on the West coast, near a village called Sambaqui. Oysters were perfect. On our way back, we pasted some nice surf beaches on the East coast, where the kids played tirelessly in the foam of the waves.




On our second day, avoiding the more touristic and commercial north of the island, we went up our hill and pass to the other to the other side of the island. It was so rough we almost regretted not having rented a 4X4. There on the other side, we found a more authentic village, more secluded, and more typical, with the same divine mollusk. I think it is named Lapa, but I am unclear...
We returned via the long route around the lagoon Peri, and stopped in Reibeirao da Ilha to join the villagers cheering a girls football match. Later we tried to get some food in the village of Armaçao, a surfer hangout, but could only get some pastels, a pastry filled with various filling.



On the Monday, Paul took the car to get back to his school, in the city. The commute was a little "extreme" with a two hours of traffic, for only 45 km (or maybe less)...
On my side, I just spend the day at the beach a little village near the pousada, Pantano do Sul. There, I sat on a deck of the restaurant of an old lady with a captain hat. I spent three full hours watching the kids play with a little boy named Davide, running in and out of the water, building dams and ponds, rolling themselves in water, constructing and demolishing castles. The waves were small and the water shallow, the beach empty and the weather just perfect with some clouds. For the first time in five years, I found myself almost "forgotten". Nobody really needed anything from me. But as Murphy's law goes, I didn't carry that one book that I meant to read, as usually it is just added weight to my bag...
At the end of the day, we returned to the center of the village and waited for Gerta to pick us up in this eerie restaurant with walls covered by small notes left by patrons since 1968...
The kids landed in their bed and were gone in seconds that night.






The landscape on our way to the pousada. Isn't this beautiful?
On our last day, we went to the city and spent the morning in the market. The city is a nice escape from Brazilia. It has some street life, some sidewalks and a beach (even if bordered by a highway), so all of this is a plus. We pick up our flight later that day.