Spiderman Sells Us Ice Cream

The bird feeder outside the window of the breakfast room at this hotel is positively packed with these little yellow-orange birds. I think they're saffron finches. Yesterday there were also brown doves, some kind of blackbird with dark red-brown patches on its head and throat, and at least one pigeon. (And where there's one, there's more.)

So, some practical matters to get out of the way. A few readers asked about the location of Búzios, and also how we came up with our itinerary for this trip.

Here's the answer to the first question. See the blue dot at the far right side of this image? That's Búzios. (This is a screen shot from the maps app on my iPhone.) It's on a little rocky peninsula in the Atlantic, about three hours east of Rio by car.

As for the itinerary, we bought a pre-planned private tour from a travel agent in the UK. It's a company we've used in the past, Secret Escapes, which acts as a clearing house for other travel planners. We simply searched for tours that would take in Buenos Aires, Iguaçu and Rio and came up with this one. We chose the dates and it included all the hotels, transfers, guided activities and internal flights. Búzios was not something we'd have thought to include but it's a nice extra!

And speaking of Búzios, here's what we did yesterday.

We took a cruise with some other tourists (mostly Spanish speakers, from what I could tell) on this boat around the beaches. The itinerary promised a cruise featuring "traditional Brazilian music" and snorkeling. I'd even imagined there might be musicians. But no, there was a speaker pumping out standard dance tracks -- albeit some in Portuguese -- as you will hear in the video below. There WAS, however, snorkeling.

It was a 2.5-hour voyage ("Gilligan's Island," anyone?) and Dave decided to go with me. He didn't snorkel but he did get a video of me clambering back aboard the boat like a drowned rat after my own snorkeling excursion. So there's that.

I saw trigger fish, sergeant majors, sea anemones and sea urchins, as well as some very tired-looking corals. (We were on a rocky reef just off a main beach, which probably gets hundreds of visitors a day from various boats.) Still, it was fun and I'm glad I got in the water. I don't think I've been swimming in the ocean for years.

There are allegedly underwater photos of me -- because it is a rule in Brazil that you get photographed at every tourist location and/or event and then persuaded to buy the photos, and we had an underwater photographer aboard the boat. I did buy them in this case but they have not yet arrived. When they do I'll be sure to share one, unless they're horrible and embarrassing.

Oh, before we went on the boat trip, we waited for our ride to the docks on a bench in front of the hotel. This dog wandered up, sniffed my foot and then laid down beneath the bench on the cool tile of the patio. We think that must be its favorite spot. It knew where it wanted to go.

Here is the promised video of the boat tour:

At some point, a guy dressed as Spiderman climbed aboard with a box of ice cream to sell. Kind of a surprise. You'll see him in the video, looking bored, though I did buy one of his Oreo cones.

Anyway, the cruise was fun and afterwards Dave and I had a late lunch in a restaurant called Mata Hari, overlooking the Búzios waterfront. We once again lucked out in choosing a restaurant and had a very good meal. We walked back to the hotel, along a shoreline named for Brigitte Bardot, who apparently used to stay here in Búzios back in the day. (There's a statue of her in town. And by the way, because I had to look this up myself yesterday -- she's still alive. She's almost 90, and presumably back in France.)

Last night we rested at our hotel. Yesterday Dave spotted a guy at breakfast wearing a t-shirt that said "Fear of God," which made us once again wonder whether we're staying at a religious retreat, but I think it was just a clothing brand. There's been no proselytizing or uncomfortable moments, and the other guests all seem pretty normal, so I'm backing off the suspicion that this place is a cult. Anyway, today is our last day in Búzios, and then we're out of here ridiculously early tomorrow morning to catch a series of flights back to London. (Unless we're indoctrinated by then.)