The Mountains

The next day Bill arrived. Bill is a friend from our college days. He is a commercial real estate agent with his own agency in Traverse City, Michigan. The economy being what it is, this seemed like a good time to get away from it all. He was replacing Danny and doing the leg from Brazil to Trinidad.

Once again we hired Gladstone’s services and this time headed for the mountains. Scott had been suffering back pains and decided to forego this trip.

We wound through beautiful scenery with quaint sights such as children playing in streams along side the road, a man riding a donkey with handmade baskets hanging off the saddle, and huge fields of banana trees. As we drove endlessly through these sites there seemed to be an animated conversation in Portuguese going on in the front seat between Gladstone and Armando. We learn later that Gladstone’s short cut added some time to our journey, but … so what!
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Sights along the route.

A small bar we stopped at to get some water and take a break. It was here that Rhonda and Danny (wine connoisseur’s extraordinaire) purchased a bottle of cashew wine. (Cashew wine??? How do they do that?)



Same town. You tell me what it says?

Refreshed, we continued on to our ultimate destination … the top of the mountain.
Left to right – Danny, Rhonda, Madeline, Diane, Bill.

Madeline & Bill getting a closer look. It was very overcast and we were above the clouds in spots.

We started back down the mountain going through a number of lovely towns. We had a pretty full car. We came to a town that had some very steep roads. Gladstone, for whatever reason, tried to power up the hills, slipping and not quite making it on the mossy wet cobblestone. People were coming out of their houses and scowling at us.

With much discussion between Armando & Gladstone, we headed to our next destination.

A waterfall. Everyone changed into swimsuits and took a dip.

It was agreed, the water was very cold.

Madeline was the first to make the dive.

Danny, Madeline and Bill all swam underneath the waterfall. Rhonda chose to enjoy it from a warmer place.

Brazilian plant life.

Seeds from a palm.

Bird of Paradise.

We headed home. On the way Armando had one more treat he wanted us to experience. He was looking for a place to get something called (and I may not spell it right, but this is what I thought it was) Tapioca. It is not the pudding we know. We made a few U-Turns as we came into the city, but we ended up in a little bakery where we got these pastries that were like little crepes with cheese on the outside. Hard to explain how they got the cheese on the outside and normally they have the cheese on the inside, so these were unique even to Armando.

As we were eating and talking and laughing, the young son of the proprietor was very interested in these exotic English speaking people. He ran away and brought back a whole group of friends to show them the strange people. We saw them peeking through the window at us!

Our last and final adventure before arriving back at the hotel was when we were actually back in Fortaleza. We were on a 3 lane divided highway and as we are all slightly dozing in the car, Gladstone suddenly swerves to the right. As we look up we see what he swerved to miss, a donkey walked off the side of the road right in to traffic. As Rhonda looked back she saw other cars swerving and braking. Only in Brazil!