Go, Gringa, Go!
Ok I am going to start a series of blogs about my time in Brazil... I miss it already. I miss my friends there. It was a very special two weeks and a very blessed two weeks. I didn't get a chance to blog while I was physically there, but hopefully these forthcoming stories will be more than sufficient as a summation of my trip!
Saturday--well my day started at 5:00 am when Thiago, Priscila, Leandro and I work up early and hit the road. We drove 3 hours to our final destination for the day, Brotas. Brotas is a small little town outside of Sao Paulo in the countryside. The drive was beautiful. We listened (and sang) to all sorts of American and Brazilian music! (Yes, I have a video or two of the singing--however Thiago sings better as a girl than as I guy, so for his sake I will refrain from sharing the videos via the internet.) Once we got to Brotas we changed clothes and then got briefed for....a whitewater rafting trip!!
Ok, let me just tell you that getting briefed for anything "adventurous" is necessary, but getting briefed for this in Portuguese is a different story! Necessary, yes, but did Aleisha get briefed...? Not really. :) I mostly just nodded every now and again and laughed when everyone else laughed. Apparently our briefing instructor was a real joker.
Once we got outside and were preparing the actual raft, I said "Ok ok--I don't need all the extra stuff...just tell me the essential words to know so that when you all yell at me, I'll know what to do!!" Those essential words ending up being (my own interpretive spelling, mind you): "french-e" "parO!" "HEH" and "grab the hope" !
The rafting was so fun and the theme song of the rafting trip was a chant that we came up with and yelled really loud, "Go Gringa, Go Gringa, GO!" Obviously, I am the Gringa and literally by the end of my time in Brazil, I was answering and responding to "Hey Gringa!"; every time I heard the word, I knew I was being talked about. :)
I am La Gringa.
During the rafting trip, I was asked a question by our guide. Once I said "huh?" a couple of times, I learned that he asked me if I was hot temperature wise. I wasn't. No, not hot! But thank you for asking. Thanks for checkin' with me. I appreciate it.
However, to my surprise, our guide strides right over and literally picks me up by my life vest and dunks me in the water over the side of the raft.
Ok, for REAL now I'm not hot anymore. :)
Our guide then made us paddle INTO the rapids and small waterfalls instead of away from them--one of those times, I was sitting in the very front of the raft and was just overcome by the rapids! We also had to stand up in the boat while going down one of the falls. I will give all credit for me being able to do such a feat to my yoga classes over the past few months (hat tip to Kristin!). I also have a video of when our boat got overturned in the river. It was pretty funny and everyone but me ended up under the boat. I was just hanging out peacefully in the water to the side...
Our guide was crazy! I loved it.
Also, we saw something very rare during our trip--a toucan!! It flew right over our heads towards the beginning of the rafting trip...it was GORGEOUS. The colors were so vibrant. It really took my breath away to be so close in it's natural environment and I just know that God has so much fun making His creation!
About halfway through the rafting trip, we came to a another waterfall, but it was pretty big. Here we stopped and I (just going with the flow of things, not really knowing what was ever going on at any point in time) thought that the trip is over. Well, it's done.
However, no. Not finished--we then had chance to zipline over the waterfall! It was beautiful.
Then (I again think the trip is over after the ziplining) it turns out we are NOT finished and we got back in the rafts and rafted down that very waterfall we just zippedlined over!
Such a fun time. On the bus on the way back to the storefront from the end of the river, all the boat guides shouted in a chant-like rhythm what I thought was a futball victory cheer or something. As you know, they are crazy about soccer here.. Well it turns out that it wasn't about sports or anything of the sort--it was actually a prayer-chant thanking God for keeping everyone safe and for His beauty, etc.
Our guide's name was Zulu but I called him "Zuuluuuuu!" You have to say his name just like that. And of course, I was the Gringa.
Go, Gringa, Go!!
We ate lunch afterwords in the middle of the nowhere/the countryside at this quaint home/restaurant. Turns out, you can also camp there in tents and it's a kind of "hotel". The food was so good and I watched a man make this juice:
Saturday--well my day started at 5:00 am when Thiago, Priscila, Leandro and I work up early and hit the road. We drove 3 hours to our final destination for the day, Brotas. Brotas is a small little town outside of Sao Paulo in the countryside. The drive was beautiful. We listened (and sang) to all sorts of American and Brazilian music! (Yes, I have a video or two of the singing--however Thiago sings better as a girl than as I guy, so for his sake I will refrain from sharing the videos via the internet.) Once we got to Brotas we changed clothes and then got briefed for....a whitewater rafting trip!!
Ok, let me just tell you that getting briefed for anything "adventurous" is necessary, but getting briefed for this in Portuguese is a different story! Necessary, yes, but did Aleisha get briefed...? Not really. :) I mostly just nodded every now and again and laughed when everyone else laughed. Apparently our briefing instructor was a real joker.
Once we got outside and were preparing the actual raft, I said "Ok ok--I don't need all the extra stuff...just tell me the essential words to know so that when you all yell at me, I'll know what to do!!" Those essential words ending up being (my own interpretive spelling, mind you): "french-e" "parO!" "HEH" and "grab the hope" !
The rafting was so fun and the theme song of the rafting trip was a chant that we came up with and yelled really loud, "Go Gringa, Go Gringa, GO!" Obviously, I am the Gringa and literally by the end of my time in Brazil, I was answering and responding to "Hey Gringa!"; every time I heard the word, I knew I was being talked about. :)
I am La Gringa.
During the rafting trip, I was asked a question by our guide. Once I said "huh?" a couple of times, I learned that he asked me if I was hot temperature wise. I wasn't. No, not hot! But thank you for asking. Thanks for checkin' with me. I appreciate it.
However, to my surprise, our guide strides right over and literally picks me up by my life vest and dunks me in the water over the side of the raft.
Ok, for REAL now I'm not hot anymore. :)
Our guide then made us paddle INTO the rapids and small waterfalls instead of away from them--one of those times, I was sitting in the very front of the raft and was just overcome by the rapids! We also had to stand up in the boat while going down one of the falls. I will give all credit for me being able to do such a feat to my yoga classes over the past few months (hat tip to Kristin!). I also have a video of when our boat got overturned in the river. It was pretty funny and everyone but me ended up under the boat. I was just hanging out peacefully in the water to the side...
Our guide was crazy! I loved it.
Also, we saw something very rare during our trip--a toucan!! It flew right over our heads towards the beginning of the rafting trip...it was GORGEOUS. The colors were so vibrant. It really took my breath away to be so close in it's natural environment and I just know that God has so much fun making His creation!
About halfway through the rafting trip, we came to a another waterfall, but it was pretty big. Here we stopped and I (just going with the flow of things, not really knowing what was ever going on at any point in time) thought that the trip is over. Well, it's done.
However, no. Not finished--we then had chance to zipline over the waterfall! It was beautiful.
Then (I again think the trip is over after the ziplining) it turns out we are NOT finished and we got back in the rafts and rafted down that very waterfall we just zippedlined over!
Such a fun time. On the bus on the way back to the storefront from the end of the river, all the boat guides shouted in a chant-like rhythm what I thought was a futball victory cheer or something. As you know, they are crazy about soccer here.. Well it turns out that it wasn't about sports or anything of the sort--it was actually a prayer-chant thanking God for keeping everyone safe and for His beauty, etc.
Our guide's name was Zulu but I called him "Zuuluuuuu!" You have to say his name just like that. And of course, I was the Gringa.
Go, Gringa, Go!!
We ate lunch afterwords in the middle of the nowhere/the countryside at this quaint home/restaurant. Turns out, you can also camp there in tents and it's a kind of "hotel". The food was so good and I watched a man make this juice:
He made it by cutting down these branches (which was actually a fruit, so I was told) and peeled them then squeezed them through a machine to get all the juice out. I didn't much like the juice itself, but the process was so interesting to watch.
After that we headed to the second adventure of the day (like whitewater rafting wasn't enough)! Ziplining, again, but this time you got to do 6 ziplines and it's called Falcon Flight because it was so high up in the air. So we get strapped in and I will admit that, even with my skydiving experience, it was nerve-racking at first! But oh-so-gorgeous.
During I think the 3rd zipline for me, I got stuck in the middle of the zipline! This had happened previously to my friend Priscila and she just had to hang there for a few minutes while a guide came to get her. Well it happened to me too. At first I thought "Oh, great" but my mind was quickly changed when I realized how peaceful it was, how happy I was to be with friends and experiencing life, and how beautiful my view was hanging 60 meters in the air helplessly.
Not a bad place to hang out, if I do say so myself.
Brotas. A great day.
Love, La Gringa
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