Destination weddings are becoming very common these days for me, but over the past weekend I traveled the farthest I ever have to see one of my good friends from high school get married. This last Saturday, my friend James married his love Mariana and they held their wedding in her hometown in Brazil. Since I've starting blogging, this will be my first post about travel to another country. I'm also writing this on one of my long flights home so be prepared, it may be a bit long to read!
Getting prepared for my first trip to the southern hemisphere wasn't too difficult. To visit the country of Brazil, all that's required is to prepare a tourist visa ahead of time, which I was able to do all from home and online. I used
Passports and Visas.com to apply for a visa, mailed in the very straightforward application along with my passport, and within 30 days my passport with mailed back to me with my visa in it, good for up to 10 years. It was a bit pricey to travel to Brazil as a roundtrip ticket ran me about $1,400 and the visa was $300 itself. However, the good news is that when I got to Brazil, everything was very affordable and I don't think I spent much more than a few hundred while I was there!
I left Phoenix on Wednesday morning at around 10am with connections planned in Charlotte and Sao Paolo to reach my final destination: Florianópolis (a.k.a. Floripa). It took forever to board the plane in Phoenix (I guess some previous passengers had to reboard and were holding up the show). Ultimately, the plane was about 40 minutes late, which wasn't enough time for me to catch my plane in Charlotte where I only had a 50 minute layover to begin with. I ended up getting rerouted to Rio de Janiero, but that flight wouldn't leave Charlotte for another 4 hours. :(
After a 9-hour flight, we finally landed in Rio and interestly enough, I ran into Kyle and Jamie in the immigration and customs line at the airport! They were also booked through the same flight out of Rio to Floripa, which was pretty awesome to not have to enter the foreign country completely on my own. While we checked our bags in Rio, an American girl about the same age as us came up and asked us if she could follow us into the departures area...she had heard us speaking English and didn't want to be alone in an airport where they only speak Portuguese. Coincidentally enough, it turns out she was also en route to James and Mariana's wedding in Floripa! And so we picked up Michelle in our party as we waited in Rio for a few hours for our departing flight.
Once we arrived in Floripa, getting a taxi was a little uncomfortable. A few guys coordinating the taxi line spoke English and offered to taxi us over to our destination in an unmarked vehicle (it just looked like the guy's personal car to be honest). Everyone's seen the movie Taken by now, so of course we were all thinking the worst. There's also a story out there about how James once got kidnapped in a foreign country and only got out of it because he knew the native language. Nonetheless, we were able to kindly refuse their offer and get into an airport taxi. Unfortunately, the driver didn't know any English, but we got to the bed and breakfast safely.
When we arrived at Colinas de Lagoa, there were several Americans for the wedding already there. Rooms were a bit limited, so I found myself sharing a room with 4 of James' guyfriends...everyone called it the "Frat House" since it was literally two rooms with 6 beds and one bathroom. The room literally only had twin beds in it, one right next to the other lol. Hence it felt to me more like a hostel than a bed and breakfast.
That night, the girls were scheduled to have a bachelorette party for Mariana, so James took the guys out to an English pub where we could watch American sports on TV. They had the Dodgers-Braves game and the Bills-Browns on, albiet Brazil is 4 hours ahead of Arizona time. The interesting part about Brazilian restaurants and bars is that they give you a ticket at the beginning of the night and as you order items, it gets marked on the ticket what you've ordered (similar to how dim sum is run). You have to hold on to the ticket however and when you're ready to leave you just pay the total. I guess a lost ticket is about $50 US, which made us wonder if it's actually worth it purposely "lose" your ticket if you've ordered a lot more. :P After the pub, we headed downtown to witness some of Floripa's more exciting nightlife. The night turned out being James' unofficial bachelor party. Basically all the key people who couldn't make it to his actual bachelor party in Portland in August were in Brazil. I guess now would be a good time to give you my evaluation of the women of Florianopolis. In my opinion, the average woman is much more attractive and svelte than in America, but I feel like the cream of the crop is still better in the U.S. I guess you could say Brazil has less 5's and below, more 7's and 8's, but less 9's and 10's. Anyway, that's just my estimation!
On Friday morning, several people were scheduled to leave at 10am (that's 6am Arizona time!) on a tour of Floripa for the day, but seeing how we didn't get to bed until 3am, yours truly decided to pass on the tour and get an extra couple hours of sleep instead. :) Spencer tried to urge me to get up for the tour, suggesting that there was nothing to do in the city. I agreed with him at the time, but man, I was just too tired haha! I woke up at noon, and to my suprise, Kyle and Jamie had also opted out of the tour. James had spent the night at the "Frat House" and had errands planned for the day, but when Adam, Kyle, Jamie, and I wanted to get some lunch, he decided he had enough time to join us and took us to one of his favorite all-you-can-eat buffets in Floripa, which was very good, especially the Brazilian barbecue. His sisters and parents eventually joined us for lunch as well, but more funny was that Mariana and her brother Bruno coincidentally ended up going to the same place for lunch! After lunch we planned on going to a beach, and Mariana told James to forget about his errands for the afternoon and just hang out with everyone at the beach. So in the end, the decision to pass on the tour turned out to be a good one as I got to steal invaluable time with the bride and groom! It was a relaxing day at the beach, where we tossed a frisbee around, played the Brazilian game frescobol, and we did some boogie boarding as well.
That night, there was a dinner for all the Americans in town at a pizzeria where we enjoyed all-you-can-eat pizza and drinks. Yes, "buffet livre" as they call it is very common in Floripa! The pizza in Brazil is very "playful" as Mariana puts it, meaning they put all sorts of crazy ingredients on their pies that you normally wouldn't find on pizzas in America. There's even a dessert pizza at the end that's covered in chocolate lol. At the end of the dinner, James impressed the 30 or so people there by impromptly speaking in front of everyone and giving each individual in attendance a personal introduction of how they're connected to him or Mariana.
Saturday was the day of the wedding with the ceremony starting at 4pm. Beforehand, I ventured out on the city by myself, going on a jog and having lunch on the seafood avenue where James claimed the restaurants had the best seafood in Floripa. I ended up getting 12 ostras au natural (raw oysters) for only $10 US! I felt the desire to splurge a little, so I got a bowl of camarão au bafo (steamed shrimp) as well.
The Catholic wedding ceremony was held at a church where James and Mariana occasionaly go and I believe it is also where James proposed to her. It was built in the 1700's and there was both a Porteguese and English translation. Following the wedding, everyone was shuttled to the Almeda Casa Rosa where the reception and dancing party was held. At the bar, I tried these really stiff drinks called caipirinha that came in flavors of lime, strawberry, kiwi, or pineapple. After 3, I figured they were just too sweet and strong and my stomach started feeling upset, but once I made the switch to beer, it was all systems go! The best part about the Brazilian wedding is that servers come around constantly to fill your glass with whatever your drinking. Too often I couldn't even drink my glass of beer before finishing it completely and I had absolutely no idea how many drinks I consumed. :D The dancing was also very entertaining and the bartenders even got in the dancing show, including the blonde girl with the very tight pants who I thought was pretty hot. :P The wedding was filled with plenty of drinking, eating, dancing, speeches and slideshows - business as usual - and ended around 2 in the morning. I was really glad James and Mariana invited me and I was able to come experience it all with them!
On Sunday I got up late again after having cashed in at 4:30am, lol. So at noon, everyone who was staying in Floripa longer had already left to the beach, so I ventured out to the English pub to catch the Broncos-Cowboys on TV, which was a very exciting game! It was at the pub that I ran into another American from Wisconsin who spoke just about as much Porteguese as me. He had bought a one-way-ticket to Floripa and had only been in the city for 2 weeks. It was also then that I learned that it's still the same non-existent love story in Brazil for the hopeless Asian. :/ A group of 4 native women had been staking out at the bar all afternoon and at the end, it was the Caucasian that was asked for their number and not the Asian's! I guess this just confirms that no matter what continent I go to, I likely won't find anything. Makes the decision to not leave Tucson that much easier haha! After the game, I had some sushi for dinner (James had mentioned it), although I think I had to settle for one that was within walking distance and it was not as good. The only nigiri they had was tuna and sake salmon. :( After dinner, I got an email from Spencer that everyone was having dinner with James and Mariana, so I met up with them while they had pizza. That was the last I would see of the newlywed couple!
I didn't leave Floripa until Monday evening. Unfortunately, there were only so many flights available from Floripa to Phoenix that day. :/ Monday was very boring for me. Everyone was pretty much gone and I had no car, so I could only go to places within walking distance. After finding a buffet livre com frutas do mar (seafood buffet), I burned 5 hours by walking aimlessly around the coast and city, exploring about a square-mile of the city. I'd occasionally take breaks and find a bench to sit at, either checking out more of the talent walking around or playing Candy Crush on my iPhone. Unfortunately, the rest of my travel was just as lengthy. My flight out of Florianopolis arrived in Sao Paolo at midnight and the flight to Charlotte didn't leave until 8:25am. :'( Fortunately, Sao Paolo is much bigger than the airport in Rio de Janiero. I was able to find myself a very uncomfortable set of airport seats where I salvaged about 4 hours of sleep. Fortunately, I got a whole row to myself on the flight home to the U.S., so I could sprawl out and get some Zzz's!
And so concludes my first trip to the southern hemisphere! Four continents down! While Brazil is very beautiful, the people are friendly, the food is great and cheap, and the women on average are more attractive than the U.S., I still think I prefer America in the end! Thanks James and Mariana for the wonderful once-in-a-lifetime experience. Congratulations!
