Day 19 - 24 Dec.2011 - Balneário Camboriú

Today is Christmas Eve but none of us really feels that. This is probably that we are used to have Christmas in cold temperatures, ideally with snow and some Grühwein to heat you up. But most of all definitely no mosquitoes. To go further south from Martinhos, we had to take the ferry across the bay to Guaratuba. We arrived on the other side and drove back past countless banana plantations towards the BR-101. Today was a short day of travelling. At some point we were driving past the Statue of Liberty, or rather a replica of it. I strange sight anyway. Makes you wonder why somebody would like to have that big statue standing at the entrance of the city.
We arrived in Balenário Camboriú in the early afternoon and were thoroughly surprised by the sheer size of that place. For whatever reason, I was expecting more of a small beach town but this is more like a fully-grown city with plenty of high rises along the bay. Susi and Duncan, friends of ours from Aberdeen, were so kind to offer us to stay in their apartment. At the first sight we were already impressed by the location of the apartment block but the real shock came when we opened the door and entered the living room with a fantastic view over the bay. This is where we spent our Christmas Eve. We still had some Moquequa, a typical Brazilian fish dish, from yesterday and only needed to buy some rice, salad and wine to complement it.
Before we had our dinner, we went for a swim in the outdoor pool of the Condominio. It was really a shame that the weather was not at its best for this time of the year and after some minutes we left the pool because we were cold. Imagine this, a northern European being cold in Brazil! ;-)
We must be still used to the temperatures in Recife.
We hope you all had a good Christmas. Maybe today we would have wished as well a bit of this cosy feeling with snow outside and sitting in front of a fire place… but only for these couple of days!