Blog issues...

I just found out that my last few posts have been cut off after the first paragraph. I thought I had figured out how to alternate text and pictures in my emails, but I was apparently too clever. I'm going to try to recover it all!

Sent from my iPhone

Driving Part 3: Country

Our favorite driving is the country driving. We do this every trip as we travel between Pipa and the highway exit town of Goianinha (10 times in total). The trip is about 30km and the GPS is worthless. It always wants to take short cuts that wouldn't be safe for a 4 wheeler.

After the first couple trips, we realized that the it reminds us of playing Mario Kart.  There are a LOT of obstacles.  The intentional obstacles are the speed bumps.  There are probably about twenty of varying sizes and colors.  Many of them sneak up on you and you have to break at the last second or just bound the rental car over them.

The pothole obstacles are the most common.  They are often in groups of 3 or 4, so that you have to pick a perfect line through them.  This is especially difficult when it rains, which is often.

The animals provide some challenging moving obstacles.  Dogs, cats, donkeys, horses, cows, goats....it never seems to end.  You can tell you are winning if you are going fast enough that the Pipa taxi cabs are not passing you in a blind corner, but your passenger is also not bouncing off the ceiling.

If you make the mistake of arriving in Pipa in the late evening, which we often did, then you will be greeted with a final obstacle:  a few hundred pedestrians between you and your hotel!

Driving Part 2: Highway

Between the larger cities is mostly highway driving. For the most part this is pretty easy. The majority of the roads we used are new, but I've heard others are pretty bad. We hit a few stretches of what Brazilians call bad and it looks like all the potholes have connected to make a lace pattern that beats your car to smithereens.

They have a different approach to on and off ramps, but it actually works pretty well. Our TomTom is mildly helpful in most areas. They don't seem to have any traffic police on the road, which I suspect is a major cause of their traffic jams. Instead they have lots of speed cameras. The speed limit changes seemingly arbitrarily and often near the traffic cameras. On several occasions we would pass a horse-drawn cart on the shoulder transporting produce or other various products (including but not limited to piles of grass) to market. We also passed the 21st century version of the horse-drawn cart - a two door sedan loaded down with a back seat full of corn going about 30 km/hour.

Driving Part 1: City

City driving is crowded and slow like most places. There are some traffic signals, but no enforcement. The sidewalks are always crowded with markets of every kind, like this corn "store". Cars, bikes, and motorcycles will just stop in the road to load up.

Italy vs Uruguay

Today we have an early game in Natal. We had breakfast (cafe' de manha) at the Tribus Bar/Cafe which as usual was delicious. There we talked to be owner (Marcia) again for a long time. She speaks many languages including perfect English. She never fails to keep us informed and laughing. We completed the trade of our USA flag for Brazil Tribus Bar shirts. She is very excited to hang the flag in the cozy bar.

Traffic was a lot tougher on this trip to Natal, because we were traveling much closer to game time.  We eventually made it to our seats about 5 minutes before game time, but we didn't even have a beer in hand!

Our seat neighbors were a great Brazilian couple named Narim and Karina.  They spoke almost exactly as much English as we spoke Portuguese, so we had a grand time trying to talk about anything and everything.  So much so, that we didn't even notice when Suarez bit the Italian defender.  We did see him running around with his shirt pulled down, but just figured it was more Italian theatrics.

After the match, Jon won the right to marry Ms. Brazil.  We're not really sure about the legality of this, but they seem happy.

Getting home was fairly straight forward.  Jon had a good clean run on the Goaninha to Pipa driving game.

Hola amigos!

Today was another big travel day. We left at 10am to drove back to Recife for the Mexico-Croatia match. We actually checked on riding the tour bus, so we could chat with our friends instead of driving for 9 hours, but we just missed the last seat.

So we hit the road in the pouring rain to travel 300km south. You'll be glad to know that we did not get breakfast before we left, so we stopped at the road stand next to the gas station for a quick bite. This time we played a new game called Carne or Queso. We would point and say "Carne?" And he would say "No, Queso". After a few minutes we has a pile of meatless baked goods but no coffee. For a country famous for their coffee it seems especially hard to find.

Today there was no serious traffic, plus we knew where we were going, which always helps. So aside from the usual driving hazards (driving blog post is almost done) it was a smooth trip.

From the moment we pulled into the parking lot, it was clear this day would belong to Mexico. Everyone was wearing bright green Mexico jerseys. At the stadium it was even crazier. Thousands of adults and kids, many of them dressed up in crazy costumes like mariachi bands and Mexican wrestlers. Inside the stadium was a sea of chanting singing green. We felt a little bad for Croatia, but I'm pulling for Team North America.

The match was fun. There were no goals in the first half and we were beginning to think we were cursed, since we had only seen 1 goal through 2 1/2 games. In the second half the game opened up and Mexico got several goals.

It was funny that the Brazilian fans in the stadium were all watching tv on their cell phones to keep track of the Brazil game going on a the same time. Every time Brazil scored (4 times) the Brazilians would abruptly stand and cheer for a totally different game.

For a brief moment in the game, Mexico scored enough goals to catch up to Brazil for first place and the Brazilian fans got very quiet but shortly afterward Brazil scored another and all was ok again.

Meanwhile, the Mexican fans were having a great time tormenting the Croatian players with their new favorite chant which is completely inappropriate, but amusing.

Several Mexican fans commented on our USA jerseys. Many were compassionate about last nights disappointment. To the ones that weren't, we reminded them that they wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for USA beating Panama last year in a game that didn't even matter for us. We said a lot of "de nada" too.

After the game, Jon accomplished a major goal. He was able to trade his Landon jersey with a young Brazilian fan who had an Oscar #11 jersey. Those are surprisingly rare here. The whole country is wearing Neymar #10. That kid's head is going to get so big it pops!

We left the stadium and had a surprisingly smooth trip back to Pipa. Much better than Fridays marathon. We got home around 11:30 and found a great pizza place a half block from our apartment. Probably should have taken a picture of the arugula pizza. Brazilians take their pizza very seriously. No Papa Johns around here. Anyway, after another very long day it was delicious and filling. Off to bed now. Our last match is in Natal tomorrow at 1pm!!

USA vs Portugal :)

Wow! I hope everyone at home was able to enjoy
the game with screaming friends. We were so lucky to have 100+ soccer fanatics to share an amazing experience with us.

The party started at 3pm for the 7pm kickoff our time. We were the first to arrive, but more decked out USA fans joined us shortly after. By 6pm the bar was packed with nervous Yankee energy.

Some brilliant fan brought an iPod loaded with the perfect play list. The bar pumped it through their massive speakers. It started with "Born in the USA" and continued through a massive sing along rendition of "American Pie".

Singing and chanting was pretty much constant throughout the pregame and game. So many fans were completely decked out with patriotic gear from home. When the USA hit their two goals the eruption in the bar was insane. I'll try to add some video to the blog later. Like all of you, the last second equalizer was a big blow for us too. I had the camera all ready to record the insane victory scene. But instead there was stunned silence in the bar.

The general consensus was good result, but what if... We outplayed one of the best teams and players in the world and we were SO close. A lot of fans slowly got their perspective back after the initial shock. We still control our destiny and this is pretty much the best case scenario that I had ever hoped for 3 months ago.

After the match we said goodbye to our very happy hosts (best party ever in that bar) and wandered out into the streets to drink probably too many Caipirinhas. Now it is finally time for bed.

Tomorrow we travel to Recife again for Mexico vs Croatia which will decide who goes to the next round. We will be pulling for our southern neighbors. Hopefully the 4 hour later start for the game will help with traffic. We just can't handle that stress again. I'm afraid that late departure probably means no Breakfast Roulette for those of you that were rooting for another round.

Todo Bem (all good)