430 Miles South of the Equator

So Claire and I got married. We wanted to do something about it, so we're in Brazil. We aren't very traditional, so we wanted to go on a jungle adventure instead of just sit back and sip drinks on a beautiful beach. However, we also wanted to sit back and sip drinks, possibly on a beautiful beach. It turns out these things aren't really close together. Also, Rio de Janeiro sounds nice. We decided our trip needed to include the following:

1.) Sit on a beautiful beach w/ alcohol.
2.) See where they shot the movie "Rio."
3.) Take a lot of pictures of animals in a place where they have malaria. 

 As of this post, our vacation is 1/3rd complete. The beautiful beach / drinking part is a two-parter, but it still counts as one third.

Pipa in Pictures

Pipa is a small, bohemian villiage in Brazil. Is possibly one of the most beautiful beaches in Brazil. That's what the travel agent told us, but I never verified this by hand. Anyway, judge for yourself: 

I had never heard of Pipa before. My running theory is that Pipa is just too far away for most Americans to have visited or understand that it exists. To get there you need to fly south, A lot. Also fly sort of east, more than you think. Fly so far south (and some east) that you fly past your destination and keep going for another three hours. Then realize you went too far south and go north for three hours, but this time on a plane where almost everyone is Brazilian. You will arrive only if you believe.

Pipa was recommended to us by our travel agent, a profession which still exists. Since you can do most of their job online, agents that survived the great travel agent purge really know how to add value to the experience. All our transportation from Natal to Pipa was pre-arranged, including the 2-hour car ride from the airport to our 'pousada' (hotel / bed & breakfast / there is no direct translation).

Toca da Coruja

We stayed at Toca da Coruja (literally: "Burrow Owl"), which is possibly the nicest owl-themed place I ha ve ever stayed. Also possibly the nicest place I have ever stayed.

We stayed in a bungalow (uma bangalô) that caused us to want to return the moment we walked in:

The pousada sits on several acres of carefully cultivated jungle right near the beach. It's also located right on Avenida baía dos golfinhos, the main street in Pipa. This street has all the beach-related busin esses you would expect in a beach town ,e.g., restaurants, bars, and souvenir stores with templated novel ty tshirts. Both cars and humans struggle to coexist in this space. Check it out on street view.

The staff were all amazingly nice, plus there were free marmosets.

Baía dos Golfinhos

Baía dos Golfinhos isn't just a street, it's also a Baía (Bay). We went there. 

As Claire mentioned, the dolphins in this bay are extremely cool with hanging out near you. You can't pet them or give them beer, but they will swim within a few feet, as evidenced by this photo:

Claire and I rented a kayak, and enjoyed swimming, drinking, and eating in front of the dolphins. I hope they were jealous. See her first post for more details on the bay.

The vibe from everyone at the beach was extremely chill. There was a dude blasting Nirvana's "Come as you are" on a boom box covered in colorful strips of cloth. The man grilling shrimp for sale wanted us to be sure we put on sunscreen before we got into the ocean (we did). We met a mother and daughter from Sao Paulo while waiting in line for the kayaks. I was consistently surprised how many people spoke English and were genuinely friendly and laid back despite us butchering their mother language on a semi-regular basis. Also, everyone who didn't speak English was very receptive to me translating text on my phone or making exaggerated hand gestures.

Cruzeiro do Pescador

After we dolphined out, Claire and I found an amazing little restaurant about 1.6KM from our hotel. TripAdvisor mentioned this place looked a little run-down, but the food was amazing. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures (or tastes) to describe how awesome and delicious this place was, so I'll use words instead.

The restaurant is ran by a man named Daniel who is very good at his job. We had to call ahead 2 hours in advance (the pousada did this for us) so our meal could be ready when we arrived. After getting overcharged by a cab driver by about $4 USD (jerk), we arrived at what looked like a private residence.

As we approached the house/restaurant, we were greeted by Bagu. She was still working off a bad case of pregnancy and wanted to be pet. Also, she is a dog (puppies!).

Daniel (the owner/human) also greeted us, showed as around, and gave us a three-course meal consisting of fresh shrimp (caught from the nearby lagoon), lobster (caught from God-knows-where, no really, they're cold-water animals), squid, oysters, octopus, fish, fresh vegetables, and this delicous bread-fruit mousse that I could never recreate in my dreams (I tried, twice).

The place was enchanting as hell. We ate outside on a porch lit by candelight.  The wine was amazing. A cat wandered around by our table and pensively accepted head scratches. Our waiter (whose name I can't remember) tried his best with English as we tried our best with Portuguese. He seemed a little embarassed when we hit a word he didn't know, but we had a lovely conversation with him about living in Pipa and his expecting wife (babies were a theme for some reason.) 

I also learned how to use a very, very hot pepper to make your meal more delicious without setting fire to your mouth. Our second course came with what looked like an extremely deadly pepper (it was). After ignoring this pepper, Daniel kindly explained that one is to poke their fork into the pepper, then take a bite of the delicious food. This makes every pleasantly spicy, but doesn't leave a lasting burning sensation. Our third course was made all the better with his one weird trick.

Drinking with Brazilians

On day two we went on a 5-hour boat tour with unlimited drinks and Brazilians (the binding of "unlimited" in this sentence is left as an exercise for the reader.) See Claire's Day 2 post for more details. Here are some of my photos:

Leaving Pipa

This was a mistake. Here's a short list of things we didn't get to do:

* Go on a day-long dune buggy ride.

* Visit a sunset-centered restaurant on the cliffs of Pipa villiage.

* See sea turtles.

* Eat all the shrimp (we only at some).

* Learn to surf in the non-dolphin bay located west of Baía dos Golfinhos.

* Learn to speak Portuguese.

* Join the growing population of gringos who live and work in Pipa.

While I'm extremely excited to see the actual, unmanicured jungle and tour Rio, we only had two and a half days in Pipa. Within a few hours of our first day we were already trying to work out whether a direct flight exists from anywhere in the US to Natal (they don't). I can easily see us trying to come back here in the next year or two.