parque nacional de brasília

We haven’t updated in a while, simply because we haven’t really been up to anything exciting!

As South America is rapidly approaching the “northern solstice” the daylight is decreasing each day. Speaking of winter- all of the stores down here have been putting out their sweaters and heavy coats. HAHA. It never gets below 70 here. Funny Brazilians. When Brett gets home it’s usually dark, so we have been catching up on some TV shows and going to the mall. We’ve been eating out a lot because a) the company pays for it, and b) our kitchen is super small and I don’t have my basic pantry supplies! I will eventually buy some more staples, but from what I’ve seen there isn’t a whole lot to buy (they have like four spices at the grocery store. Total).

Our next kitchen should have a bit more counter space, and in addition to an oven we will have a wood-fire oven outside! We’re going to attempt to make a real pizza (don’t get us started on the pizza here) and also do some BBQ. I’m really excited about our next place! I think that the dogs will enjoy it as well. They will have unlimited access to the outside, something I think they really miss. (We don’t miss them ringing their bell every five minutes to be let out in the backyard, though)

Two weekends ago Brett and I went out to the lake and had lunch. We went to a place called “Surf Bar” and they had a buffet (they love their buffets here). They also had a huge sushi buffet. I obviously got after that. We then walked down by the lake. Apparently on Saturday nights they set up a huge open air movie theatre. I think they were showing Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (from what we could translate on the schedule).

a nice view of the JK bridge!

all sushi!

Then we got some acai- a sorbet type dessert. It’s an interesting dish. Definitely a berry type taste, but not tart like you’d expect. It’s similar to if a banana and a blackberry had a baby. Very hard to explain. We got strawberries on ours.

This past weekend we ventured out the Brasilia’s National Park. They have a couple of swimming pools (only one in use) and some neat trails. Apparently they have Giant Anteaters, Maned Wolves, and other native species that live in the park. I realllllly wanted to see a Maned Wolf- look at how cool these are! I might have told Brett that I wanted to stumble upon a litter of puppies and take them home, Game of Thrones style.

We didn’t really see any wildlife except for some monkeys that came down to scour the pool area for scraps of food. They are cute! But to native Brazilians they are probably like giant squirrels. Oh well, we liked them. We walked through a rainforest-y trail that was probably about 1 km long. It was very quiet (no birds) and I joked that a jaguar was probably stalking us.

Brett was overdressed for our hike judging by the number of men in speedos that passed us on the trail.

anyone who watches Finding Bigfoot knows that this is clearly a 'squatch shelter

a Dharma Station. it was filled with water and probably snakes.

We are already planning to go back and pack a lunch for a weekday swim! It was super crowded on Sunday afternoon, so a weekday is probably best. So that’s what we’ve been up to! Nothing too terribly exciting! Brett is going to chime in soon and explain what he’s actually doing while we’re down here. (That was my subtle way of reminding him that he has a blog post to write)

at the "meditation" spot 

Small story about this last photo- the trilho de agua cristal (the crystal water trail) was like 5 km long and we started to walk it, but it was so hot and unshaded that we got the car and drove up there. Expecting to get to a lake (as indicated on the map), we got out of the car at about the 2.5 km mark and walked up to the "crystal water". It was really disappointing. Just a drainage area.