Day 2 on the Road

6/18-19/14

We arrived in the picturesque beach town of Pipa in the evening, just in time to catch the tail end of the day’s second game. That’s the one bad thing about the Cup: it’s so hard to catch all 3 games every day – there’s just too much going on. But we made it into town with about an hour to spare before the next game. So while the guys were watching the end of the second game, Fe and I took a walk around town in search of a laundromat (no luck). Pipa very much resembles stereotypical beach bum towns in Costa Rica, the kind young, dirty hippy gringos flock to for months on end, living off a dollar a day, surfing, doing yoga, and selling handmade jewelry to tourists. And it was nestled in the shade of a tropical rainforest, so that resembled Costa Rica too ;o) In all honesty, it was a very cute town – definitely aimed at tourists, filled with row after row of shops and cafes – but we didn’t really have time to explore much of it, as we were only stopping over for the night. Just enough time to grab a bite to eat in front of a large screen tv (of course) to watch the last game of the day and to try my first caipirinha – Brazil’s “national” drink made from sugar cane alcohol, lime and sugar. Essentially the Brazilian version of a margarita or mojito. In other words, delicious and in need of further investigations.

Local Game

Local Girl

Caipirinha

The one drawback to Pipa, we discovered too late, was the endless population of mosquitoes. After dousing ourselves in what we thought was an adequate amount of DEET before going to bed, Nick and I spent a sleepless night tossing and turning as we attempted to fight off the relentless bastards. We woke the next morning to find that they had left trails of bites across our faces (the one place where we didn’t put DEET, go figure), my hands, and Nick’s entire back. Ugh, at least they don’t itch as bad as those in TX but, needless to say, we were glad we only had to spend one night there. [Nick: Stupid mosquitoes, I just can’t believe that the hotel cannot think of putting up screens on the windows that don’t fully close!] We left Pipa after a delicious breakfast of fruits and sweets – apparently it’s very common to have cakes (yes, plural) for breakfast in Brazil (nice!) and headed to our destination of Recife. [Nick: Brazil is great, it feeds me chocolate cake!] 

Pipa Coastline

Common Marmoset

Cute Little Guys