Brazil

OK, I've been getting a whole lot of questions repeatedly about my trip to Brazil. Allow me a few words to sum up: It was awesome.
I'll write a brief summary here, but I'm working on a much grander telling.

It started in Sao Paulo when my friend's parents' former exchange student, who is now a very successful Brazilian architect, picked us up from the airport. He was accompanied by my friend's cousin, who is studying in the US to be an architect and is doing a sort of intership down there in Brazil. We stayed at the architect's apartment in Sao Paulo for a couple days and then in his friend's ocean-front apartment in Guaruja. We swam and rented a surfboard and tested out the waves. We also went to a great little seafood place where they didn't have English menus and we each ordered meals meant for 2 people because we were without translator at the time. Then we went back to Sao Paulo for a night before going to Rio de Janeiro, stopping by Taubate on the way to pick up his niece and her grandmother. We now had 6 people and luggage in the Defender, which was a pretty tight squeeze. Rio was great. We stayed at and apartment in Ipanema that was a block from the beach. We swam at Copacabana and visited the Christ statue and Sugarloaf. Then we went back to Taubate, hiked/climbed to the top of Pedra do Bau, visited Campos do Jordao, tried some Brazilian pizza, and participated in a capoiera class. We went back to Sao Paulo for a few days and travelled around the city a bit (it'd take a whole lot more than a few days to travel around a city this big). Then we went to Ubatuba for the weekend. Here we were treated to a trip on a boat out on the ocean, tried some muqueca (it's amazing), hung out at some more secluded beaches, and visited a waterfall. We returned to Sao Paulo again on Sunday and then our plane flew Monday night.

It was a really extraordinary trip. Thanks to the friend for inviting me, and thank you very much to the architect for keeping the Americans constantly entertained.