A Weekend Adventure- Part 2

The bus ride to the island was 5 hours long. (My feet swelled to immense proportions as we drove over the mountains.) The bus dropped us off near a ferry going over to the island. We took the ferry, then found a taxi and gave the driver the address for our hotel. We were totally exhausted by this time. We struggled through language with the hotel owner, not getting very far. Then she sent her young son and a horde of friends to “help” us. They were very helpful and eager to practice English, though maybe not that knowledgeable. Kendall got stuck in the middle of a long and labored conversation as the son wrote down things like where Kendall could go to play soccer. :) 
As darkness fell and exhaustion grew, we found ourselves out on the street, waiting on a bus that never came. We started the long walk in the direction of a main street where there were restaurants. The rain was falling and we were getting soaked. In my heart of hearts, I knew that walking around getting soaked without an umbrella or jacket was not a Brazilian thing to do. Turns out, most of the restaurants in that part of town were closed by the time we stumbled onto the main street. We finally found one that was open and charging less than $20 a plate. As we sat down to eat, our soggy spirits lifted.

Little did we know that this pattern of exhaustion and plummeting blood sugar followed by euphoria and lifted spirits as we sat to a meal was to be repeated over the next couple days. We had a couple factors working against us: It was hot, so we didn’t feel hungry as quickly even though we needed food and we were relying on public transportation to get us from place to place. There were times when one or all of us would start hitting rock bottom and we’d realize we had eaten very little that day and we were starving! One afternoon we were walking the kilometer or so toward the restaurants, hoping for a bus that never came, when Evan really hit rock bottom. I started adding it up and realized that he had basically eaten a half a piece of bread, milk with a tiny bit of coffee and 3 cookies so far that day. What were we thinking?! I guess we weren’t thinking- everything was new and different and it was hard to make plans. We would plan to do something and be back in time for lunch and then it would take 3 times longer. That day all we could do was keep dragging Evan and ourselves down the street to the nearest food source.

Here we are at that happy food source: See? You can’t even tell we had nearly collapsed just 20 minutes earlier. :)

Evan demonstrates the Brazilian way of eating using a fork and knife: 

According to Fernie, Brazilians are very conscious about not eating with their hands. Even pizza is eaten this way. I was happy to have the boys see that manners are okay.