Getting Boozy in Búzios

Another three day weekend means another South American adventure. Such is life when you live in Rio de Janeiro.

This time we headed slightly north to Búzios-- another beautiful beach town. I'd never been before, but the beach just calls to me, so off we went!

Transportation can sometimes be a struggle in this country. Partly because we're all so used to having our own cars to take us where we want to go while we're in the States, and partly because we don't speak Portuguese thus making public transportation a real treat. As far as we could tell, there wasn't any sort of Easy Transfer-esque service to Búzios, so we used the 1001 bus company. We left from Rodoviaria in downtown-ish Rio on Saturday morning and arrived at the Búzios bus station a few hours later. Despite not being Easy Transfer, it was quite easy.

Praia João Fernandes-- our home beach

Búzios is a beautiful city. Beautiful. It's not as small as Ilha Grande, especially because cars are permitted, but it definitely doesn't have the hustle and bustle of Rio. We had beach views basically everywhere we went and I loved it. We also really lucked out with the weather and had three gorgeous days even though we were forecasted to have three yucky, rainy days. Thank you Google Weather app for consistently being wrong. 

When we arrived on Saturday we headed straight to the beach. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. A nice little perk of life in Búzios is that the vendors on the beach will let you use their chairs for free, you just have to buy drinks from them. Since our theme of the weekend was "Getting Boozy in Búzios", this was a pretty sweet deal. I had more lime caipirinhas this weekend than I have had in my entire existence in Rio. Really. 

Caipirinha Count for the weekend? 6ish.

Unfortunately, in our haste to soak up some rays, we didn't make it into downtown until later Saturday evening. This meant that most of the tour companies were closed and we had a pretty tough time finding a tour for the following day. We did stumble across one open agency and their tour didn't look bad, so we booked with them. 

We boarded the boat the following day, all ready for some more maritime adventures. We were promised 12 beaches and 3 islands. Which is kind of misleading because then they tell you that you're only stopping at three of the places and just passing the others. We started off on our three hour tour and, unfortunately, almost had as much luck as Gilligan and friends. Stop number one went off without a hitch. Stop number 2 was great until we realized that we'd been bobbing around for quite some time. In our really great Portuguese, we found out that the boat had broken down. Cora, Erin, and I didn't really mind because if we hadn't been laying on the boat getting tan, we would have been laying on the beach getting tan. We also weren't barfing our brains out like many of our traveling companions. Once the boat finally started working, the captain just took us all back to shore and that was the end of our tour. Whomp, whomp. Moral of that story? Book tours early in the day THEN lay in the sun. And always take motion sickness medicine when you're going to be on a boat.

#shamelessselfies #gringadiaries

Group photos are never our strong point. 

We thought Monday was going to be too overcast for a good beach day, so we turned it into a shopping day. Again, Google Weather was wrong and we all fried, so thanks for that. I was able to throw away my money on things that I had to have. And did spot this big guy, so all was not lost.

Fin. Noggin. Duuuude.

We came, we saw, we got boozy in Búzios.