atualizações!

Happy Fourth of July! We spent our holiday (Brett took off work) in Pirenópolis hiking around some natural waterfalls. The town itself is very tourist-y. It’s bright and colorful and was pretty quiet on a Thursday afternoon. We drove about two hours to get there from where we live in Lago Sul. The drive was beautiful. The terrain of Brazil is reminiscent of Hawaii and Colorado, mixed together. We packed a lunch and started out around 10:30 am. The roads weren’t too terrible, except for one part near the end of the drive. We had to switch over to another road that would take us straight to Pirenópolis, but the way to do so was to essentially cut through this sketchy area on dirt roads. But that’s what our GPS said to do, so we did it.

It was definitely worth the drive. The waterfalls themselves were about fifteen minutes outside of town on a farm property. We parked and paid R$ 30 (a bit steep if you ask me, but whatever) and dodged a few giant roosters before starting our hike. I had no idea that the hike was going to be as strenuous as it was- I wore flip flops. The first few waterfalls were all right, but towards the end we were basically climbing a mountain to get up to the top. We even swam in one! It was really frightening though because you could not see the bottom. As soon as I got in I imagined that an anaconda lived in the bottom so I was done with that. I did, however, do a lot better than Brett.

This was the mildest climb we had all day.

Love this guy

Cachoeiras = waterfalls

Jurassic Park?

straight out of Lost 

Trying not to think about an anaconda coming up from the water.

When we were done with the waterfalls we hiked back down (much worse than going up), and made it to our car. We stopped for ice cream in the town; Brett got some popsicle type things and I got a couple scoops of coconut ice cream and a scoop of milho verde (CORN) flavored ice cream. It tasted just like corn. I’ve been spoiled- I now would like to ingest all of my vegetables in ice cream form. We hit the road again and Brett had a really good time following a speeding Jetta. I think at one point we reached 170 kmph (105 mph). After we made it through rush hour traffic we were happy to make it home.

Other things we have been up to…

- Made a United States breakfast feast for our neighbors. It included scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes.

Zion is a funny dog.

- We bought the dogs “beds” (Penny really misses her bed back home). They are pretty funny- Penny’s has barbies on it and Desmond’s has hot wheels.

- Desmond swims every single day, and he even has helped Zion learn to get in the water. This habit has resulted in his hair getting really gross and full of burrs, because he goes and runs through the brush directly afterwards. Today I gave him a bath because I suspect he and Penny rolled in something nasty. I attempted to comb out most of the burrs but he wouldn’t hold still. I took a few pictures of them together- look how big he is! His back is taller than Penny’s already.

Penny is used to being the subject. She obviously loves it, as you can see.

Desmond on the other hand was thrilled! 

Switched positions. 

100% done with this. 

- I start my classes at the University of Brasilia on Monday! Having one car will make things a bit tricky, but it will also be my first experience driving down here. We’ll let you know how that goes.

We miss you all! Starting to get a little bit homesick, but we got a package from my mom and dad this week that was full of BBQ sauce and peanut butter, so we will continue to survive.