JUSTIN YOUNG

Rio is a beautiful and huge city. I saw some of the best sunsets ever there and that’s saying something because I have lived on the California coast for most of my life. Rio’s beaches face east-west and you can watch both the sunrise and sunset on the same beach. Rio has mountains that meet the ocean and they are filled with dense tropical forests. The various rock formations and mountains are what causes the amazing sunsets (at least that’s my theory), but i’ve never seen anything like it, look at the sky in these photos filled with rays.

The beaches in Rio are often filled with scenes like this:

And when you’re not on the beach there’s so many great places to check out with views of the whole city. Here’s some panoramas of the city from various locations.

Brazilian beach goers are pretty interesting. They are not body conscious like many Americans, you will frequently see 200+ pound women in bikinis. One of my favorite things about the Brazilian beach culture is everyone breaks into cheer and applause the moment the sun goes down. It’s amazing, especially when you are on a packed beach with thousands of people. One of the quirkiest things about Brazilian beach-goers is, they want to sit very close to each other. There will be miles of beach and for some reason they want to be right next to each other. I think it has something to do with a primitive herding mentality. This photo is one of my favorites from the trip. These people tried to recruit us into their cult, but we kept our distance.

Unfortunately our friend Bella had to head back to China for work. Booo! For her last night we decided to throw her a little going away party. A mustache party! Fortunately, I never travel without a few mustaches in tow.

We made dinner and had a few drinks and the girls chose their favorite mustaches. Our plan was to take the party to the local bar. Here they are getting ready…

We took the mustache party to the local bar, and to our surprise the locals had never seen girls with mustaches before.

They all caught on quick and within 15 minutes, we had a real mustache party happening!





We knew the party went well, when we left town the next day everyone waived as we drove off, we made a lot of new friends!

Our Brazilian friend Adnan who lives in San Francisco said Guarda do Embaú (map) is a must see place if you are in the Florianopolis area. It’s about 50km from the city centre and it takes 1-3 hours to get there. 3 hours in our case, because of course, they were setting dynamite charges in the hillsides along the highway. We spent two hours waiting around with 40 truckers, a few families, and a guy selling car phone chargers. Then finally, they let us pass! We made the turn onto an old cobblestone road and saw the sign for Guarda do Embaú!

We drove into town and checked out the various pousadas for the best place to stay. We chose the Pousada Da Preta, which is right in the center, close to the beach and places to eat and drink. We got a two bedroom place for R$150, roughly $30 per person. All places in Brazil seem to charge you per person, most of them give you a seriously home cooked breakfast included in the price.

The town has a rustic, island style feel, all cobblestone and dirt roads, lots of oxidized painted wooden buildings. Everyone is very laid back in town, and there’s lots of beach goers, surfers, and nomads selling handmade jewelry. Here are some photos of the town:

You can’t walk to the beach in Guarda, you either have to swim or take a boat. A small lagoon separates the town and the ocean. Water taxis shuttle people back and forth for R$2.

When you get out to the main part of the beach, there’s a few stands that sell food and drinks and rent things like chairs and umbrellas. The best surf is directly out front, and this is where i got the best surfing during the week. Local buses from Floripa drop people off here, so the main beach can get crowded during the day, but when you look down to the south, it’s completely pristine beach and sand dunes. Nothing but water, sand, and bird parties. We could have easily stayed here for a week.

And finally here are the post cards:

We were having drinks at a little bar in Guarda do Embau (map), when we saw lightning out over the ocean. The storm intensified and the lightning was lighting up the sky about every 20 seconds. I was able to snap these 6 photos with a hand held after about 100 tries.