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McLean High Student Travels through Brazil During Summer Break

6,000 Mile Grand Tour of Brazil

McLean High student Carlyle Howard  is spending her junior year in high school in Brazil. She’s writing a blog of her unforgettable  year abroad.

We took a trip with a program called Terra Brasil Turismo for about a month from Jan. 7 to Feb. 3 during summer break in Brazil. We visited everywhere in the Northeast. It starts in Brasilia (which is a little lower than the center of Brazil), all the way to Fortaleza (very high point in the Northeast), and then all the way down to Sao Paulo, stopping at all the cities on the way. That is a LONG way.

It was about 6,000 miles round trip from my town and back again.  So I don't really know how to explain this trip because it was really one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I made amazing friends, and a few that I know I will keep forever. Here are the highlights of the grand tour:

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 Brasilia - Capital of Brazil. Toured all of the main government buildings which had pretty cool architecture. Visited the President’s house which is so modern-looking with huge glass windows. Learned to dance forró (or at least attempted to).

Visited Chapada Diamantina - A beautiful national park that is on the way to the Northeast. We climbed a morro (a mesa type thing) and had beautiful views. We were in a really nice 5-star hotel, where groups of 4 of us had their own bungalow with a porch (really nice except for the bugs. Found three  killer spiders on the wall.)

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 Maceió - Went to the beach with clear blue waters and took colorful boats far out where there were "natural pools", but it was really just a random place out in the water that was shallow enough for people to stand. There were even little restaurants on the boats. My friend and I were so hungry that we ordered shrimp and ate it in the water.

We went to an island and it was BEAUTIFUL. So clean and perfect. My friends and I spent the whole time tanning, eating pineapple cocktail things and talking to friends that we made from Rio! We also went to a Forró dance bar which was fun. They had a transvestite comedian painted all brown and dressed in a pink fairy outfit which seemed to be funny to Brazilians.

Fortaleza- One of my favorite places personally. We did a city tour and went to the market. We went to the sand dunes and on a "buggy ride", which are basically jeeps but smaller, go really fast, and you are sitting high on the back, and you go down dunes that are SO deep. I swear I almost fell out. It started raining while we were riding, so we got soaked.

It was really fun but the rain felt like bullets in your skin. We went sandboarding also. Then the beach, and the current was SO strong and the waves were huge. I'm a really good swimmer, but I literally did almost drown. I went under the wave and the current just pulled me down and I could get to the surface. The current also pulled my bathing suit top off....which was embarrassing.

That night we went to a big party called the pirate party with a pirate theme and everything. It's supposed to be the "craziest Monday night on the planet," the New York Times said.. We went to the big beach park, which has the biggest, fastest, steepest waterslide in the world!

It's 14 floors high and goes from 0 to 101 km/h in 4 seconds. I was the seventh person to go on it! It was fun. Lasts about 5 seconds.  You actually don't touch the back of the slide while you're going down it, but then in no time you are  already at the bottom of the slide with a huge wedgie choking up water. Woo!

Morro Branco - A beach where we saw really cool formations of colored sand.

Canoa Quebrada - An old 70's hippie fishing town that is really charming. It's filled with stoner surfers with dreadlocks, hilarious!

 Natal - Had a really fun Luau party just for us at a nice hotel. Went to the biggest cashew tree in the world. It has a really weird mutation that makes it never stop growing, and it is HUGE. It looks like an entire forest, but it is really just one tree. Then we went to the beach which is right by the tree.

Recife - Took  a city tour, really a beautiful town. Some parts of the beach have reef's (recife is reef in Portuguese), but most of the other parts are full of sharks.

There are signs everywhere that say "Swim at your own risk" and a picture of a shark saying that there are a ton of them. Scary! Later we went to the biggest shopping mall in Brazil or something like that. I missed nice stores!

Porto de Galinhas - (Beach of chickens, yeah I don't get it either). It was a really pretty beach but the weather wasn't that great. Plus, I think I got food poisoning so I just passed out on the sand with all my clothes on and a shawl over me. I think people thought I was crazy. 

Almost every person on the trip got food poisoning at least once on the trip. It lasts one or two days, and the doctor said it's because the food in the northeast is cooked with so much fat and our bodies aren't used to it. I didn't even know that was possible.

 Salvador - Capital of Bahia. Not what I expected it to be AT ALL. I thought it would be very poor and ugly, but it completely surprised me. It was very beautiful and had places that looked very expensive. We went into the more historic part of the city, where my friends and I got to escape and have dinner by ourselves. We found a random hidden hotel restaurant, which surprisingly had a very nice terrace with Brazilian jazz playing and a beautiful view of the sunset and the beach. We got to see a cultural theater performance of Bahia. I didn't understand anything because they didn't even speak, but apparently it told a story. I was just paying attention to the costumes and the dancing.

 Porto Seguro - This is the place where the first Portguese explorer landed in Brazil.  We went to a really big and crazy party there, which had all different types of music and people. Some were very strange people. Spent a whole day at the beach, which was really pretty and sunny.

Rio de Janeiro! - The "marvelous city". It really is so beautiful and cool you don't believe that it's real. I went on the optional tour through the Favelas ( Brazilian slum), and it was really cool, and I'm really glad that I did it. I saw a lot, and learned a lot.

We went to the big strip where they have the carnival parade, and we got to rent carnival costumes. I wore a huge blue one, it was really hilarious.

We had time at the Copacabana beach, where I met up with my best friends from my city Bage! We knew we would overlap and have one day together in Rio so we planned to meet, and it was reallllyy great to see them again.

Later we had dinner at one of the best churrascarias in Rio yummmmm. We had a big party at the Hard Rock Cafe, and it was really fun! It was really cool to see all of the signed albums, clothing, guitars, and posters of bands and artists that I LOVE (Pink Floyd, Rolling Atones, Led Zeppelin, Velvet Underground etc.) I know I wasn't supposed to touch the guitar from Pink Floyd but I did anyway. Come on! I touched something that they touched! Couldn't resist. We visited Pão de Açucar (Sugar Loaf) and O Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) which both are really awesome with beautiful views.

Angra dos Reis - Our last stop: It's a place with a huge and really beautiful bay. We had a boat ride with really loud music so basically a party on the boat, and stopped at places to swim, including a really pretty beach.

That night we had our last party, which had no curfew, so almost everyone stayed up until the buses left that morning at 6:30 am. Saying goodbye was really, really hard. Spending a month every day with a group of people, and then randomly saying goodbye, knowing that you probably won't see any of them again because they live across the world from you is really hard. At least my best friend on the trip is from Canada, which is a lot easier to visit than any places in Europe or Asia.

That was basically an overview of my trip. I didn't even describe more than five percent of the trip, and this post is still really long. If you’re going to Brazil in the future with Rotary International, go on this trip!!! And if you’re going to Brazil in the future just to tour, go to these places and do these things! It is seriously worth every penny.

 



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