Redwood Forest

One of the benefits of working at EY is getting four-day weekends on Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day. So on Friday Christina and I traveled up north of San Francisco to Muir Woods--a Redwood Forest. Yes, this idea did come to me after watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I never realized they were so close! They do have another forest further north in California, but we weren't about to drive 5 hours instead of 1.5 hours.

We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time! We decided to stop and look at the view. We had gone near the bridge before when I was interning, but never crossed it, since it does cost $6 to get back over. 

I couldn't seem to take one of us without blocking the bridge.

It's hard to get an idea of how big these really are without going there. But as you can tell the base of this one is pretty big. 

The shadows (and us blocking it) make it hard to see, but this tree had a huge opening, one you could comfortably fit a few people in.

Christina did a great job hiking. We stayed on mostly level ground. There was this one path that looked like it had some hills. I kept asking Christina, "are you sure you will be able to do this?" She said yes, but then changed her mind once we started up the first hill. That was probably a good thing. I always tell her not to push it, but she just doesn't like not being able to do things.

Christina almost didn't make it through this opening. Just kidding.

Kayaking at Half Moon Bay

A few months ago I bought a kayak rental for half off on Living Social. Maybe some other blog post I'll talk about how awesome I think Living Social is. Groupon too, but I like Living Social better. 

We'd been looking to use it for the past several weeks, but every time we have time the weather doesn't look like it'll be that great. Earlier this week I saw that it was supposed to be sunny over the weekend. Half Moon Bay is about 45 minutes away, but the temperature is always about 10 degrees lower than where we live. It was bright and sunny in Sunnyvale when we left on Saturday, but as we approached the ocean the clouds appeared. They didn't go away either. But that's okay, we still had a blast!

The rental was for a two-person kayak and included wetsuits, windbreaker jackets, and life-jackets. I had never been in a kayak (this is a sit-on-top kayak versus a traditional). Christina had once before. I'd been in canoes several times before. I sat in back and it was nice to be able to steer with a rudder, and not by synchronizing your paddle strokes. We paddled around the harbor. It was a good workout, but also relaxing when we would stop paddling and rest on the water. This is the only picture that we got because even though I wrapped it in two ziploc bags, I was worried about dropping the camera. We certainly had a fun time!

Snorkeling at Picaõzinho

One of the highlights of our João Pessoa visit deserves a blog post of its own. On our last Saturday in Brazil, and our last day to do tourist things since we left early Monday morning, we went snorkeling. Yesterday we finally got the pictures from the underwater camera developed!

We took a ferry boat about 20 minutes off the coast (a very slow-paced 20 minutes) to some coral reef and natural pools. Here is a picture from the boat. You can see a similar boat in the background.

Here is Christina doing some snorkeling with the city of João Pessoa in the background.

For some reason Christina wanted to get a picture of me like this. The light blue water is sandy, the darker has coral and not good to step on.

Here are some underwater shots of coral and fish. A little foggy, but still kind of cool taking pictures underwater. (But not quite as cool as my brothers digital camera that can go underwater!)

 

My arm and a bunch of fish. The guides know a trick to getting fish to come around them. Then they take pictures for you to buy. He said all he was doing was tapping the water and I was imitating what he did. But I think they really have some fish food, cause it worked a lot better when he did it.

 

 The guide was nice enough to take a picture for us with our own underwater camera.

João Pessoa

More posts about Brasil!!!

By this time our camera was definitely out of batteries. But we had started borrowing cameras from people we were staying with, or only take pictures when they came with us places.

We arrived in João Pessoa, the mission headquarters, on Tuesday, September 7th. Which is also Brazil's Independence Day. The parade in João Pessoa happened while we were in Patos and the one in Patos happened after we left--so we didn't get to see any big celebrations. The first few days we were in a hotel along the beach. That was nice to stay in a good hotel for a few days on Cabo Branco Beach.

Despite rain one of the days we still took a trip to the lighthouse and what is supposed to be the eastern most part of the American continents. Although, someone later told us it is a few miles south. Apparently there's some confusion.

The last three days in João Pessoa we stayed with a lady that I baptized and her two children. Their names are Zélia, Hugo, and Hibele. She took us a few places, including the Sunset at Jacaré Beach. Jacaré means alligator. 

Here is the family that we stayed with after church on Sunday.

This is part of another family in the ward that I know well. 

And here we are relaxing in a hammock. Every Brazilian home is equiped with hooks on the porch or inside so that they can put up a hammock. Two bad we don't have hooks in our new apartment.

Patos = Ducks

My last area of the mission was called Patos, which if you haven't gotten by now, means Ducks. There aren't really any ducks out there, at least none that I've seen. It's not really a small city, but it's in the middle of nowhere. The bus trip took over eight hours from Natal to Patos. It doesn't take that long by car, but the bus stopped a lot and took a longer route.

The hotel we stayed at was really bad. But since we arrived at 11:20pm at night there wasn't much time to look for another. The next day we did look, but they all looked the same. There was one nice one, but it costs 3x as much. 

Patos ended up being a lot of fun despite not having much to do in the city. We spent a lot of time with Rafaela, a girl I baptized that is now 20 and her friends, Aninha, Jessika, and Bruna. Here we are at a little park.



This is Rafaela, one of the people I baptized.



We also ate lunch with the missionaries at a Chinese restaurant then went to the only landmark in Patos. It's called the Cruz da Menina. (Young girl's cross). It's kind of a morbid story. A 15-year old girl was killed and her body found there. For some reason people started asking for things (miracles). It turned into this big monument and there are different rooms with objects people brought back when their miracle came true.



Patos was a great trip. It was good to see some people that I had baptized that are still really active and have even regularly attend the temple.

We have limited internet access now as we just moved to California. Hopefully we can get some more posts up pretty soon.

Dune Buggy Rides! ou seja, Passeio de Buggy

Friday was a blast! We left at 9:30am in a dune buggy to spend the day cruising up the coast north of Natal. We visited a few lakes, rivers, and several beaches. We also had a lot of fun going all over the sand dunes. There are two ways to do it, com emoção or sem emoção. Which means to ride in an adventurous way or not. Our driver definitely did the adventurous way. Other cars would be driving in a straight line and ours would be swerving back and forth on the sand, just for fun.

We had a lot of great picture taking opportunities. I believe this picture was taken from the Genipabu Dunes looking down at the beach.

These were the rafts that we crossed the river on.

We stopped to go swimming in this lake. I thought it was cool that some of the chairs and tables are in the water.

A cool rock formation from the sand.

Our driver dropped us off and we walked through this river. It looks brown, but is actually extremely clear and clean--that's just the sand underneath.

At the end of the river we bought this yummy drink. It wasn't quite a juice. They mashed up the pineapple a little bit, but we still were able to each chunks of pineapple.

Driving through the river.

At one point in the dune buggy we drove down this almost vertical hill that was 30 meters high. Christina describes it as being like a roller coaster, but without anything to hold you in (the back seats don't have seat belts, and that's legal in Brazil). Christina and the other Brazilian girl screamed a lot, while me and the other guy laughed a lot (with a few screams at the really scary parts like that).

We also did a cool zipline into a lake. We don't have pictures of that but did get it on film. If I can figure out how to transfer it from my video camera to here I will. That was one of the biggest highlights.

Natal has been a lot of fun. We're now in Patos, Paraíba. We took a 8 hour bus ride to get here. It's a city out in the middle of nowhere, unfortunately not close to a beach. Tomorrow we are going to João Pessoa.

Fun in Natal!

We arrived in Natal last Saturday. Even though I served in the João Pessoa Mission, I spent more time in Natal, one year of my mission in different areas of Natal. A very nice member, Ilce, has been letting us stay at her place for the week.

Here we are after church with someone that I baptized, Felipe. He was 17, but is 22 now and preparing for a mission.

Monday was a very fun day! We went to Ponta Negra Beach. There we had a very enjoyable and relaxing day.

Here I am bodyboarding. We rented one for 5 Reais and traded off using it.

We also sat back and drank some água de coco (coconut water); It is one of my favorite things to drink and I wanted Christina to try it. She says she liked it, but she had to get used to it.

On Tuesday we went to the Natal Aquarium. We saw smiley fishes, we pet sharks, and even saw some monkeys (not underwater monkeys, apparently it's more than an aquarium).

Irmã Ilce took us 1 1/2 hours south to a very popular beach called Pipa. Here we are on a ferry.

Overlooking Pipa.

There was a guy at the overlook place selling ice cream bars and such. It didn't seem like a very good area to be doing it because there was no one else up there with us. But he also takes pictures for people using their own camera. This is one of them.

On the beach.

On Friday we had a fun adventure that needs a blog post of it's own.

The Great State of Washington

We've been in Washington since August 4th, switching some time between my family in University Place and Christina's in Poulsbo. We haven't taken many pictures, but here are a few of the fun things we've done the past two weeks.

We went to Odyssey 1, a kid's play place, with Daysha.

We took a trip to the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma. Unfortunately, we went on a free Tacoma day. So it was really crowded. It took a half an hour to park. Fortunately, they counted us as Tacoma residents and we got in free. Here is Daysha and Christina on a carousel they have.

There were some tiger cubs born in the zoo. 

Here we are in a little nest that Daysha likes.

In Poulsbo we went canoeing with Cathy (Christina's mom). We went about two miles to Port Gamble in Gamble Bay, part of the Puget Sound, then back. We forgot the camera, so the only picture we took was when we got back. Our arms are tired!

We're in Poulsbo for a few more days then off to the Washington coast with my family for the weekend. Then off to Brazil!